In each episode, 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
Recording together in Paris, Elena and Manuela discuss two of the buzziest films of the year: Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime stars Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, infamous host of the reality TV show To Catch a Predator; while Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger stars Tom Cruise as the living manifestation
Hard Truths
In this catch up episode, Elena and Manuela discuss Dolly Parton and the fantasies of 9 to 5 (Colin Higgins, 1980), the undeniably dystopian One Night Only (Will Gluck, 2026), the butt of the joke in Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal (2022-), trust in Oasis of Fear (Umberto Lenzi, 1971)
Hard Truths
When Curry Barker’s Obsession (2025) came out in cinemas a few months ago, a small debate emerged online about audience reactions and the director’s intentions. Was this a film about dating a “crazy” girlfriend, or about misogynistic fantasies of domination and control? Although most online discourse could do
Hard Truths
Elena and Manuela try on a looser podcasting style in Bologna, at Il Cinema Ritrovato. Among the topics they cover are: Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, libraries, file sharing, budding cinephiles, Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid, F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans,
Hard Truths
As Elena’s season Finding Your Way: The Films of Peter Weir was winding down at the BFI Southbank in London, she joined Manuela to talk some more about the cinema of this fascinating Australian filmmaker, from Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, to Fearless, Witness to
Hard Truths
French filmmaker Maurice Pialat initially wanted to be a painter. He did not fulfill that dream, and it’s hard not to trace at least part of his legendary anger and bitterness back to this early frustration. Centred on protagonists who can be brutal with one another as they cope
Hard Truths
Is love real, or a socially accepted form of delusion? Is there such a thing as chemistry, or are random encounters only perceived as meaningful connections through the lens of expectation and memory? Is romance a choice, or written in the unalterable script of our destiny? As Richard Linklater’s
Hard Truths
Gleefully playing with established tropes, the three films Elena and Manuela discuss in this new episode of Hard Truths toe the line between comedy and terror, irony and sincerity, fiction and reality: early true crime spoof Man Bites Dog (Rémy Belvaux and André Bonzel, 1992), meta franchise sequel Wes Craven’
Hard Truths
It’s only a matter of time before Joachim Trier wins a Best Picture Oscar. In this new episode of Hard Truths, Elena and Manuela damn the Norwegian director with faint praise but also give him his flowers as they discuss three of his best known films: Oslo, August 31st
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
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
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’