The name of Message to Man Film Festival’s new programme is inspired by David Lynch’s cult classic, which introduced a surrealist concept of a shifted reality that was groundbreaking for the late 20th century. The show anticipated much of modern life and remains relevant to this day.

The five films featured in the programme reflect cinema’s dual nature. On the one hand, it is becoming increasingly realistic: this near-documentary authenticity is felt in MMXX by Romania’s Cristi Puiu and All We Imagine as Light by India’s Payal Kapadia and Bakur Bakuradze (Snowflakes in My Yard). On the other hand, there is the absurdist world in Universal Language by Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin and the hypnotically shifted Shambhala by Nepalese director Min Bahadur Bham.

Yet, more often than not, documentary realism and surreal hypnosis go hand in hand, creating films that, as one entry in the programme describes, are «comedies of disorientation set somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg.»

Twin Peaks is as much about the layering of reality, where «everything is ambiguous,» as it is about the search for a sublime, perfect style that captivates the most original cinematic talents of today.