Nine Lives

Nine Lives (2005) is a US–Mexican drama directed by Rodrigo Garcia — watch online on iFILM. Nine stories, nine women, each filmed in a single unbroken take: no cuts, no close-up escapes, just the camera locked to one person until the scene is done.

The cast is extraordinary by any measure. Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Sissy Spacek, Robin Wright, Kathy Baker, Molly Parker, and a very young Dakota Fanning each get their own contained chapter — a prison yard, a grocery store aisle, a hospital corridor. The settings are mundane; what happens inside them is not. Garcia structures the film so that the episodes brush against one another without ever fully connecting, leaving the audience to feel the weight of all these parallel lives.

What makes the film stick is the method itself: one long, claustrophobic take forces you to stay with a character long after you'd normally cut away. Stream Nine Lives (2005) on iFILM.