Film

Procession

Procession follows six survivors of abuse by Catholic clergy who channel their trauma into collaborative filmmaking. Director Robert Greene watches as they script, perform, and direct scenes that reclaim their narratives. It's tender and fierce—part therapy, part art project, entirely unsentimental. A film about survival that refuses pity in favour of creative dignity.

TMDb rating3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to documentaries where a group's shared process matters as much as the subject, and you can stay with grief while watching people turn it into craft.

Skip it if you need a tightly plotted story or relief from heavy material; at nearly two hours this lingers with the wounds rather than moving briskly past them.

What it asks of you: Two hours of slow, patient attention: long stretches of conversation and the unhurried work of making films, with the darkness arriving through testimony rather than spectacle.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Act of Killing2012

Like Procession, it asks perpetrators and survivors to performance their experiences, examining how re-enactment can process trauma. A masterclass in using cinema as testimony and moral reckoning.

But The subject matter is genocide. It's unsparing, deliberately provocative, and emotionally punishing in ways that feel intentional rather than accidental.

The Act of Killing poster

Unrest2017

A documentary where the filmmaker positions herself and her community as subjects, not objects. About chronic illness but really about reclaiming agency and narrative from institutions that erase you.

But The pacing is meditative and elliptical. If you want clear answers or a traditional arc, you'll find it frustratingly open-ended.

Unrest poster

Hoop Dreams1994

A three-hour documentary that trusts its subjects completely, following two basketball players over years without voiceover or editorial hand-wringing. It's about systemic inequality told through intimacy.

But It's long, and the structure is deliberately unhurried. Some will find it a slog; others find that exactly the point.

Hoop Dreams poster

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

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Souvenir2019

Both use formal innovation and collaborative performance to examine how we process harm—not to resolve it, but to sit inside it honestly.

Joanna Hogg's semi-autobiographical film about a young art student and her relationship with an older, controlling man. It's told through memory and dream-logic, fragmentary and disorienting—how trauma actually lives in the mind.

But The narrative refuses clarity. You won't get straightforward answers about what happened or why. It demands patience and tolerates ambiguity.

The Souvenir poster
More like this (8)

The Farewell2019

A narrative film about family trauma and cultural displacement, but it moves with documentary-like precision and emotional honesty. Awkwafina is extraordinary. It's both comedy and heartbreak.

But Some viewers find the tonal shifts jarring—it won't stay sad or funny long enough to be comfortable.

The Farewell poster

Stories We Tell2012

Michael Vartan's documentary interviews family members about a secret that reframes everything. It's formally audacious, blending home video and interviews into something that feels like truth-telling.

But The manipulation of form can feel precious. Some will see it as a gimmick rather than a genuine exploration of memory.

Stories We Tell poster

Ghostland2018

A horror film about home invasion that doubles as a study of trauma and how the mind protects itself. It's formally daring and deeply unsettling in psychological rather than jump-scare ways.

But The structure is deliberately disorienting and the violence is graphic. It's not interested in comforting you.

Ghostland poster

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas2008

Told through a child's limited perspective during the Holocaust, it shows how innocence and horror can coexist. The restraint is what makes it devastating.

But Some find the approach too soft for such atrocity. The ending will flatten you, and that can feel manipulative if you're defensive about it.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas poster

Manchester by the Sea2016

A film about grief so precise it doesn't announce itself. Casey Affleck's performance is a masterclass in showing pain through silence and gesture rather than catharsis.

But Nothing is resolved. There's no emotional climax or redemption arc. It's portrait-like, which some find frustrating rather than profound.

Manchester by the Sea poster

Let the Right One In2008

A vampire film that's really about loneliness, predation, and the kindness that grows between damaged people. It's formally beautiful and genuinely haunting.

But The pace is glacial and the violence toward children will disturb you. It's not a crowd-pleaser despite being a masterpiece.

Let the Right One In poster

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both documents the impulse to transform pain into art, to stage your truth rather than simply state it. Both trust the process more than the product.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's director creates a theatre inside his warehouse where fiction and reality collapse. It's about art as survival, about making something from catastrophe and failure.

But It's a puzzle box that never quite solves itself. Some people love that; others find it self-indulgent and exhausting.

Synecdoche, New York poster

Requiem for a Dream2000

Like Procession, it refuses easy comfort and asks you to witness people's attempts to reclaim agency within systems designed to crush them. Both use cinema's formal possibilities as resistance.

Darren Aronofsky's film about addiction in four lives, each pursuing their own dream into hell. It's formally radical, using montage and sound design to put you inside spiralling consciousness.

But It's relentlessly bleak and the film itself feels punishing. It's designed to hurt. The ending offers no catharsis, only recognition.

Requiem for a Dream poster

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