Film

The Trouble with Being Born

A haunting Austrian sci-fi film about an android girl living in isolated domesticity with a man who treats her as a replacement for his dead daughter. Quietly devastating, it moves between mundane summer routines and creeping dread, asking what it means to be loved as a substitute rather than a self. Difficult and precise.

TMDb rating2.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like science fiction that keeps its android quiet and its questions unsettling, where the strangeness builds through stillness, composed frames and a lingering sense of something wrong at the edges of ordinary life.

Skip it if you need plot momentum or tidy answers, since it moves at a glacial pace and holds its cards close through long, wordless stretches.

What it asks of you: Ninety-four unhurried minutes of quiet scenes that linger on water, empty rooms and blank faces, so the mood must carry you more than the plot does.

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

If you liked this

Ex Machina2015

A cerebral thriller about artificial consciousness and desire. Like *The Trouble with Being Born*, it traps you in intimate spaces with an android who gradually reveals depths the humans around her refuse to see.

But It's more of a puzzle-box thriller than a character study. If you want emotional resonance over intellectual play, this leans harder into suspense.

Ex Machina poster

Arrival2016

Gorgeous, meditative sci-fi about language, memory, and what we're willing to sacrifice. It shares the same sense of quiet profundity—asking big questions without needing explosions to make them matter.

But It's optimistic where this film is haunted. The emotional register is almost opposite, even if the themes align.

Arrival poster

Under the Skin2014

A haunting, slow-burn film about an alien in human form moving through a familiar landscape. Both films use sci-fi as a lens to explore alienation and the distance between bodies and connection.

But It's elliptical and genuinely strange. Some viewers find it beautiful; others find it remote and frustrating. You have to meet it halfway.

Under the Skin poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Trouble with Being Born

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

We Need to Talk About Kevin2011

Both examine the violence of being loved as a replacement or a vessel for someone else's needs rather than as yourself.

A fractured, non-linear portrait of a mother's impossible love for her son—a person she didn't choose to become who he became. Like this film, it grapples with maternal projection, grief, and the gap between who we hope someone will be and who they are.

But It's bleak and morally murky. Some find it brilliant; others find it punishing and misanthropic.

We Need to Talk About Kevin poster
More like this (8)

Blade Runner 20492017

Visually stunning meditation on what it means to be real, whether memories make us human, and the grief of not belonging. The thematic depth rivals the cinematography.

But Nearly three hours and deliberately paced. It's contemplative rather than dramatic; some will call it slow.

Blade Runner 2049 poster

Annihilation2018

A sci-fi film that prioritizes atmosphere and existential unease over plot clarity. It's concerned with transformation and what it costs to enter spaces that change us fundamentally.

But It refuses to explain itself. Ambiguity is the point, which can feel unsatisfying if you want answers.

Annihilation poster

Bicentennial Man1999

A rare Hollywood film about an android learning to be human through genuine connection rather than programming. Robin Williams plays it straight, and the film earns its sentimentality.

But It's earnest in a way that can feel dated. If you're allergic to sentiment, this will seem naive.

Bicentennial Man poster

Fanny and Alexander1982

Bergman's family epic about memory, childhood, and the stories we inherit. It shares an obsession with how the past lives inside us, shaping everything we become.

But It's nearly four hours of dense family drama. Not accessible on first viewing, and demands your full attention.

Fanny and Alexander poster

Heartbeats2010

A Quebec film about obsessive love and the ways we project onto others. It's visually inventive and captures the claustrophobia of loving someone who cannot love you back.

But It's slight and doesn't offer solutions. Some find it elegant; others find it emotionally evasive.

Heartbeats poster

Robot & Frank2012

A gentle film about an aging man and his robot caregiver, exploring companionship and the question of what we owe each other. It's tender without being sentimental.

But It's quirky in a very indie way. If you're not charmed by whimsy, it may feel too light for its premise.

Robot & Frank poster

Kin2021

Both use intimate, insular settings to explore how families replicate damage across generations, and how love and harm become indistinguishable.

A BBC drama series about a rural Irish crime family, weaving generational trauma with intimacy and violence. It has the same unsettling quality—domestic spaces that harbour darkness, the past that shapes everything.

But It's gritty and Irish in dialect and tone. Not everyone finds rural crime narratives compelling.

Kin poster

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu2005

Both films are about bodies—human or artificial—moving through systems that cannot see them as fully real, and the loneliness that follows.

A Romanian film following an elderly man's descent through the health system over one night. It's formally restrained, unbearably patient, and excavates how we become invisible to systems designed to help us.

But It's two and a half hours of bureaucratic indifference and slow deterioration. Genuinely difficult to watch. Not cathartic in any conventional sense.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu poster

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