Film

Pasolini

A portrait of Pier Paolo Pasolini's final hours, braiding together his conversations with loved ones, creative work, and nocturnal cruising into a meditation on art, desire, and mortality. Director Abel Ferrara treats the Italian filmmaker-poet with unflinching honesty: no hagiography, no distance, just the man as he was—brilliant, hungry, contradictory. For those who can sit with ambiguity and moral complexity.

TMDb rating2.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy portraits that wander through conversations, meals and night drives, letting an artist's life and his art bleed into one another, with Dafoe carrying the whole thing.

Skip it if you want a conventional biopic with a clear timeline and tidy arc, since this is fragmentary, slow and more interested in mood than in telling a life story straight.

What it asks of you: Eighty-seven minutes of loose, fragmented scenes that loop back on themselves, rewarding close attention more than any plot you can follow.

If you liked this

The Last Days of Disco1998

Whit Stillman's dissection of a specific time and place through character conversation, blending intellectual rigor with genuine affection for his subjects. Captures the texture of a world ending.

But Shifts between past and present in ways that can feel mannered. Demands patience with lengthy dialogue scenes.

The Last Days of Disco poster

My Own Private Idaho1991

Gus Van Sant's fever dream about hustlers and desire, treating its subjects with radical compassion while never looking away from harm. A film that trusts poetry over explanation.

But Non-linear, dreamlike structure alienates viewers wanting narrative clarity. Some found it exploitative on release.

My Own Private Idaho poster

A Ghost Story2017

David Lowery meditates on time, loss, and what lingers after death through a deceptively simple image. Quiet and devastating without sentimentality.

But Deliberately paced to the point of stasis. The central conceit may feel gimmicky rather than moving.

A Ghost Story poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Pasolini

More like this (6)

The Passenger1975

Michelangelo Antonioni's exploration of identity, reinvention, and the impossibility of escape. Visual mastery married to existential dread. Jack Nicholson at his most enigmatic.

But Moves like an interrogation, not a story. Long takes and philosophical abstraction wear on some viewers.

The Passenger poster

Contempt1963

Godard's portrait of creation under pressure, marriage under strain, and the collision between art and commerce. Brigitte Bardot has never been better. Visually intoxicating.

But Meta-fictional games with cinema itself can feel more clever than moving. Pacing is deliberately artificial.

Contempt poster

The Death of Louis XIV2016

Albert Serra's radical decision to spend 90 minutes watching a king die—attending to body, breath, ritual, the mundane horror of physical decline. Hypnotic and strange.

But Almost nothing 'happens.' Extreme close-ups and repetition will feel like punishment to impatient viewers.

The Death of Louis XIV poster

Shadows1960

John Cassavetes' improvised, grainy portrait of three mixed-race siblings in New York. Feels documentary-real yet deeply emotional. A masterpiece of American independence.

But The roughness of the film stock and sound is genuine; some find it hard to watch. Plot is secondary to mood and character.

Shadows poster

Late Spring1949

Yasujirō Ozu's tender, devastating film about a father and daughter and the approach of necessary separation. Composed with mathematical perfection; humanist to its core.

But Ozu's patient compositional style bores viewers accustomed to cutting and movement. The 'plot' is minimal.

Late Spring poster

F for Fake1973

Orson Welles' essay-film on truth, fakery, and authorship, cut with kinetic energy and doubt. Formally inventive and endlessly rewatchable; a love letter to cinema's possibilities.

But Deliberately fractured and contradictory; if you want coherent argument, look elsewhere. The structure itself is the point.

F for Fake poster

People

Cast

Directing

Production

Recommended by