Every other week, Animus founder and editor Elena Lazic catches up from London, UK, with her twin Manuela, who can usually be found across the pond in Paris. Expect animated conversations about cinema, digressions into unrelated topics, and trivial facts from our personal lives. Do NOT expect to immediately be able to tell us apart.
Hard Truths
What unites the three apparently very different films of this 10th, Jukebox episode of Hard Truths? In Sidney Lumet’s The Offence (1972), Sean Connery plays a detective-sergeant who has seen too much. Milton Moses Ginsberg’s underseen, Rip Torn-starring arthouse gem Coming Apart (1969) charts the psychological unravelling of
Hard Truths
From the ultraviolence of Raw (2016) to the over-the-top silliness of Palme d’Or-winner Titane (2021) and the emo intensity of Alpha (2025): the cinema of French director Julia Ducournau is hard to ignore. With Alpha now playing in French cinemas, Elena and Manuela gather in London to talk about
Hard Truths
With just four feature films, American filmmaker Ari Aster has established himself as one of the foremost voices of our phone-addicted, psychically damaged, paranoid generation. As his 2020-set neo-western Eddington comes out in cinemas this summer, Elena and Manuela—recording together in the rich soundscape of Elena’s garden—discuss
Hard Truths
Two massive stars fight for relevance in two of this summer’s blockbusters: Brad Pitt in Joseph Kosinski’s F1, and Tom Cruise in Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Both have things to hide, and things to prove. In this episode of Hard Truths, Elena and Manuela
Hard Truths
Recording together in the same room for the first time in Hard Truths history, Elena and Manuela discuss the wonders of Il Cinema Ritrovato directly from Bologna, Italy, where the annual repertory cinema festival organised by Cineteca di Bologna takes place. Talking about some of the prints and restorations playing
Hard Truths
In Letter From an Unknown Woman (1949), a young woman spends the better part of her life fantasising about a man who barely knows of her existence. It is difficult to imagine the pleasure-seeking characters from La Ronde (1950) or Le Plaisir (1952) ever adopting such an impractical view of
Hard Truths
The sun of June can be oppressive in its own way. For the fourth year in a row, the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles has given local cinephiles a refuge from the mirth of spring-summer months with Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair — a week-long season of soul-crushing and gruelling masterpieces.
Hard Truths
This third episode of Hard Truths, about Ryan Coogler's Sinners (2025), is a lot less about twins than we expected — but that's only because the film is so rich. Elena and Manuela talk about Coogler's far-reaching vision for the possibilities of IMAX and cinema
Hard Truths
In this second episode of Hard Truths, Elena and Manuela discuss three fantastic, very different films, all of them westerns: Forty Guns (Sam Fuller, 1957), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962), and Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, 1959). They recently screened in Paris as part of the Cinémathèque
Hard Truths
In this first episode, we come up with the name of the podcast on the spot, and go on to discuss two differently delightful French films, both of which stand out from the usual French output for being set in the countryside: Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, and Louise Courvoisier’s