The Forbidden Room

The Forbidden Room (2015) is a Canadian surrealist film by Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson you can watch online on iFILM. It opens on a submarine crew trapped on the ocean floor, their cargo too unstable to touch, their air running out. Then a woodsman arrives. Then the film opens into another story, and that one opens into another.

Maddin and Johnson shoot in a style built from the wreckage of silent cinema — nitrate grain, double exposures, intertitles bleeding into the image. Charlotte Rampling, Mathieu Amalric, Geraldine Chaplin and Udo Kier each appear inside their own nested tale. There is no through-line. That is the point. This one rewards surrender more than patience. Stream The Forbidden Room (2015) online on iFILM.