London, 1910. Young Katharine Hilbery (Haley Bennett) loves math and astronomy and conducts her own research – which is very difficult for a woman to do at the start of the 20th century. When her conservative father (Timothy Spall) catches her at an Astronomical Society event, which only men have access to, he throws Katharine’s notes into the open fire and demands that she leave the science world behind and marry her oldest friend William (Jack Whitehall). But Katharine wants to live by her own rules and dreams of studying in Cambridge. She gets support by her cousin Cyril (Misia Butler) ...

Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman as piano tuning duo Niki White and Harry Horowitz are a good team. Hoffman’s Harry is impish and quick-witted, good at his job, and a fan of fast food snacks even though he should be paying attention to his cholesterol. Niki is also a good piano tuner, an excellent one even, because he has perfect hearing, but he does suffer from hyperacusis, a hypersensitivity to sound. In everyday life he wears earplugs and headphones that he only takes off for the fine adjustments of pianos. The disease didn’t just cost Niki his career as a musician, it also makes him ...

In OBSESSION by Curry Barker – who began his career on YouTube like BACKROOMS director Kane Parsons, where he posted his first found footage horror film “No Way Out“ in 2024 after not being able to find distribution – the darkness is looming among fellow human beings. The film is set in the present, but is reminiscent of the slacker films of the 90s: mumblecore dialogue, four twenty-somethings, a McJob in the music business and a quiz night once a week. Bear is head over heels in love with Nikki but doesn’t have the guts to tell her and gives her a souvenir from a shabby esoteric ...

It’s summer in Berlin. Between tower blocks and sealed off grounds, the big city is overwhelmed by record temperatures of up to 39.2°. For Ramona (Bella Lochmann) and Nico (Pola Geiger), it’s the summer after graduation, that surreal phase wherein endings and new beginnings make life seem unreal. An escaped bird serves as the framework for one of the days in which the two friends lethargically go from the couch to the kiosk to the park bench. Over shaved ice and chips, idle conversations about the necessity of certain insect species or the existence of countless dimensions define their ...

Alec (Caolán O’Gorman) could’ve been a normal teenager. The 17 year old recently moved to his father’s Dylan (Andrew Howard), his mother is gone. This could’ve been a charming coming-of-age social study. But the feature film debut of Dutch director Muriel d’Ansembourg gets right down to the nitty gritty. In the first scene, Alec films a porn with Dylan in the main role. It’s routine for both of them, they live off of the online sex business. In the past, Dylan used to be somebody in the business, now he’s producing dirty little films together with his son in their apartment. ...

Tommy’s (Anson Boon) typical party night is reminiscent of the The Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” video. Totally high, he goes around with his clique ready to lay into anyone and has no plan beyond getting the next pill and maybe having a quickie in the bathroom. But then Tommy is knocked unconscious from behind and, upon waking, finds himself chained to a basement wall. His new host parents are the straitlaced couple Chris (Stephen Graham) and Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough) and they have a plan: turning the young hooligan into a respectable person, a GOOD BOY, with the help of video ...

On a trip to the US, Kate Beecroft discovered Tabatha Zimiga’s ranch in South Dakota, east of the city Wall. The place fascinated her so much that she returned later and spent three years living with Tabatha, the horses, and the young strays that found a home there. After that, she wrote a screenplay.

EAST OF WALL is reminiscent of Chloé Zhao’s THE RIDER, which was also set in South Dakota. The actors play out their own stories here too, and horses, family, violence, poverty, and the dramatic expanse of the landscape are important elements of the narrative. But whereas Zhao tells an ...

The future looks promising for 12 year old John (Scott Ellis Watson). He just entered secondary school and has found his first friends. He’s so good as a goalie that his trainer has invited a talent scout. But then John begins to develop tics. First it’s head twitches, then he blurts out obscenities and swear words. The crash is brutal. The adults discipline him, and the other children turn away from him. His father deserts the family. The diagnosis of Tourette years later and strong medication don’t improve things much.

I SWEAR is based on the life of Scottish Tourette activist John ...

11 year old Crowley McCuistion lives with his family on a ranch somewhere in Colorado. He knows what he wants to be when he grows up – a cowboy! The environment he’s growing up in is either an idyll or a desolate place, depending on your vantage point. From the perspective of the boy with the much too large cowboy hat it’s like Marlboro Country. A paradise for the kid who allegedly rode a horse at three months old, who can already drive and heads out into the steppe with his grandma to shoot at tin cans. If he were puffing on a cigarette while doing so it wouldn’t be a big surprise. ...

Filmmakers have grappled with the post-war Nuremberg trials many times. A documentary was made in parallel with the 1948 trial. The most known retelling is the star studded court film JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG by Stanley Kramer which won two Oscars in 1962. The most recent iteration was the Russian feature film NUREMBERG from 2023 and in the past year there was a big television film about it. Now, Hollywood is doing it again with Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring. What makes the film by James Vanderbilt (TRUTH) interesting is its perspective. Based on hitherto unreleased documents, journalist Jack ...

German director and cinematographer Ute Briesewitz lives in the US and has mostly directed TV until now (“In Treatment,“ “Jane the Virgin,“ “Severance,“ “Stranger Things“ among others). AMERICAN SWEATSHOP, her first feature film, is set in the world of social media moderators who check content that users have flagged day after day. Is it a satire, news, art, or pornography and violence? Keep or delete? The images, which the film itself doesn’t show, by the way, haunt the employees when they leave their austere office cubicles, and almost everyone has broken down at some ...

ROSEBUSH PRUNING is mostly set in the opulent Spanish estate of a filthy rich US family. The family’s financial resources have been boundless since the death of their mother and every wish that a family member could have can be immediately fulfilled. Ed (Callum Turner) assures us, however, that wealth hasn’t change them. They were always superficial and materialistic. Ed himself, for example, is proud of not reading or writing and is only interested in fashion labels and confusing his environment with his own made up (and meaningless) sayings. His siblings are similarly self-involved and ...

IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY is a classic music doc with talking heads and archival material. The documentary is probably not a reaction to Buckley’s song “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” becoming viral on TikTok in 2025 and even overtaking his version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as the most streamed song, but fittingly, given the renewed interest in Buckley, the film’s release is well-timed.

Jeff Buckley was a very different type of musician than the stars of today. In the last years before the spread of the internet, there was barely any video footage of him for most fans. ...

The New Hollywood cinema of the early 60s and 70s and European auteur cinema of the same time is teeming with drifter figures – characters who drift, aimlessly, with no discernible reason nor social belonging, usually without money too. Barbara Loden shows us a female figure like that for the first time in her 1970 film WANDA. The film is the only one she directed. In the era of Coppola, Penn, and Scorsese, a female director was a rarity, and in the famous films of this era it’s hard to find a multi-layered female character. Wanda, played by Loden herself, has left her husband and ...

Oliver Hermanus’ film THE HISTORY OF SOUND is the the right film for hopeless romantics, incredibly sad but also comforting. The film is set in the early 20th century and is about Lionel (Paul Mescal), the son of a farmer, whose singing talent enables him to get a scholarship at a conservatory in Boston, and about his friendship – and love – for David (Josh O’Connor), who is studying composition and passionately collects old folk songs. After World War I, the two of them go on an expedition in Maine in order to record folk songs with a phonograph.

On their trip, David and Lionel are ...

It isn’t an easy endeavor, to capture the life and work of a person which mostly plays out hidden behind bookshelves and a desk in a cinematic way. Sabine Lidl's tender, resonant portrait of the renowned writer Siri Hustvedt ("What I Loved", "The Blazing World") achieves this and much more: in artful circular movements, it traces its paths around her life, writing and thinking. Interview scenes with her and companions follow short Super 8 style interludes – novel characters, who walk the pulsating streets of Manhattan as the writer’s alter egos, or interspersed animated sequences in ...

Ray (Alexander „Eric Northman“ Skarsgård) races by in a skin-tight black and wide motorcycle suit on rainy streets through the night. Curly haired Colin (Harry Melling) sings Christmas songs wearing a straw hat and suspenders in a pub with his acapella barbershop quartet. After the performance he watches the leather boys as they play darts in a corner of the pub. Ray is part of the gang. They meet for the first time at the bar. Ray orders chips and nods to Colin. After a confusing moment he understands – and wordlessly pays for the snacks for the gay BDSM biker gang.

It is the ...

They were Broadway’s dream couple: between 1919 and the early 1940s, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart composed some of the biggest hits of the 20th century. Hart wrote the clever lyrics, Rogers composed the unforgettable melodies. They created evergreen songs like “My Funny Valentine“ and “Blue Moon.“ They wrote over 500 songs for countless musical successes. Director Richard Linklater has wanted to film Lorenz Hart’s tragic life for a long time, but it was only when his friend and regular Ethan Hawke reached the right age that it was time. As it so often happens, the impressive ...

Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up from a coma in a spaceship and can’t remember anything. Beside him are two dead colleagues and after doing some calculations he realizes that the “sun” that he’s seeing isn’t actually the sun but that he’s in a solar system light years aways from Earth, heading towards Tau Ceti. As he tries to get used to his new surroundings, his memories slowly start coming back. Piece by piece, he remembers a past where he was a simple physics teacher until an apocalyptic threat made his special expertise necessary. He’s still unclear on how he came to be ...

Bradley Cooper’s exacting look at a fragile relationship is reminiscent of Robert Altman’s films, remaining close to the people and plunging right into the thick of things. When the film starts, the relationship has just ended. While brushing her teeth in the bathroom, Tess (Laura Dern) soberly says to Alex (Will Arnett): “shall we call it?“ He soberly agrees and suggests to sleeps on the sofa. Tess says no. Both of them are visibly tired, exhausted from year-long conflicts that are felt without having to be verbalized. IS THIS THING ON? follows what happens after a separation which ...

It’s been clear that Richard Linklater internalized French New Wave films quasi intravenously since his debut SLACKER (1990). The spaced out characters in this episodic film who see the return of Krishna in The Smurfs and want to earn out money by selling Madonna’s pap smear don’t live in Paris, but Austin, but they were clearly heirs to François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel and Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU. Unlike any other director in the last 35 years, the nonchalance in Linklater’s films mirror the Nouvelle Vague films, the love for outsiders and improvisation and the belief in ...

THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE by Mona Fastvold is one of the most striking Oscar snubs of 2026: the US musical about the life of sect leader Ann Lee is neither nominated for its lush visuals nor for its excellent score (Daniel Blumburg) nor for Amanda Seyfriend’s performance. She probably delivers the performance of her career in the role of the deeply afflicted ascetic with a Messiah complex that founded the religious „Shaker“ group in the 18th century and migrated to America. It remains apparent that the academy doesn’t give the same attention to women-led productions like they do to the ...

Actress Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut is based on the eponymous autobiographical novel by US writer Lidia Yuknavitch. In it she writes about the sexual abuse in her childhood, of the discover of words, and of water as escape. Of drugs, self-destruction, relationships. Self-healing and an encounter in a writing seminar with Ken Kesey – the author of “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.” Stewart wraps the narrative in dream-like images. Close-ups, 16 mm footage, reflections, quick cuts. She uses all of the tools in the analog film toolbox, but uses it in a cautious enough way so it ...

Josh Safide was considered a shoo-in for winning at least one Oscar for his film MARTY SUPREME until January 26th. Then an article was published in the tabloid rag “Page Six Hollywood” in which writer Tatiana Siegel alleges that the didn’t brothers separate due to “artistic development” but because of an incident on the set of GOOD TIME: In a sex scene, a 17 year old girl was hired who was meant to be naked in front of the camera with amateur actor Buddy Duress. Duress, who was high during the scene, allegedly undressed and asked the actress if he can “put it in.” Josh Sadie ...

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER doesn’t just have a title that rhymes. Jim Jarmusch has made a poem about family relationships. In three chapters that work like three stanzas, adult children visit their parents. At first glance, the stories don’t have much in common besides the basic constellation, but like quiet echoes, small, recurring events, sentences and thoughts run through the film, connecting the scenarios. A few skaters go by on the sidelines of every episode, like migratory birds, en route at a different flow than the protagonists that navigate the strange standstill that family ...

Somewhere in the rainbow fog of the gay universe lies Planet Clitopia – hard to find for beginners. The cool and dazzling queen and queen reign here, who enjoy immense popularity. Quite unlike their daughter, Princess Saira: introverted and lacking in self-confidence, she doesn't even possess a magical labrys, the mythical double axe of the Amazons and an absolute must-have in this solar system. When Saira’s super hot bounty hunter girlfriend Kiki breaks up with her after just two weeks, the princess is destroyed. But fate gifts her with an opportunity to take her life into her own hands. ...

After THE RIDER and NOMADLAND, Chloé Zhao arrived at the cineast Mount Olympus. THE RIDER was the better film, but NOMADLAND won the Academy Awards, also because of Frances McDormand’s star power. Then came the catastrophe, which probably only turned out to be relatively mild because people who like Chloé Zhao's films usually don't watch "Marvel" superhero movies. THE ETERNALS was a bad idea from the start, the original comic was boring, a product of its time, when everything bad about youth was blamed on soul-corrupting comics, and publishers defended themselves by incorporating all ...

Working as a housemaid for the rich Winchester family seems like a dream come true at first for Millie (Sydney Sweeney). Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) is warm, the house is beautiful and pristine, the man of the house Andrew (Brandon Sklenar) is a feast for the eyes and her tasks – cleaning, cooking, and taking nine year old Cecilia to the ballet – are all doable. Even the little room in the attic seems divine to Millie, who recently lost her job and place and has been living in a car. But it is weird that you can only lock it from the outside and that the window doesn’t open, ...

Neil Diamond might be one of the most successful songwriters of all time, but he didn’t really gain traction in Europe. Diamond belong to the generation of songwriters like Carole King, and like King he worked in the Brill Building, the hit factory of the 60s. Diamond wrote pop hits for The Monkees (“I’m A Believer“), and filled stadiums with older fans from the 70s on. In the 90s a hint of a revival when the hardcore band Urge Overkill was featured on the PULP FICTION soundtrack, which was ubiquitous for months, with their cover version of Neil Diamond's “Girl, You'll Be A Woman ...

Loneliness is so widespread in urban Japan that there’s even a state organized ministry against the consequences of being alone since 2021. At the same time, psychological therapy is far less normalized in Japan than it is in the US or Europe. This is how the first “Rental Family Service“ launched in the early 90s – a service in which actors can be rented out for platonic relationships. In RENTAL FAMILY, director Mitsuyo Miyazaki, known under the pseudonym Hikari, tells the story of Phillip (Brendan Fraser), a failed commercial actor from the USA, who comes into contact with the ...

Agnes and Lydie have been close friends since their college days. While Lydie moved to New York, Agnes works as a literature professor at her old university in New England. Despite her career success, her life seems to be standing still in contrast to Lydie. Not only has her location and relationship status remained unchanged, she also lives in the same house that she now shares with her cat Olga instead of Lydie. Between the lighthearted, teasing conversations between the two, Lydie's caring nature and Agnes's insecurity suggest that Agnes is not simply lazing under the sofa blanket, but is ...

What does it mean to be a popstar, to always be on the road and in the public eye 24/7? Abel Tesfaye just tried to show what it means to be The Weeknd in HURRY UP TOMORROW, a mixture between concert film and drama. In LURKER, which celebrated its premiere at the Berlinale, director and screenwriter Alex Russell asks the question from the perspective of a fan, though Matthew ((Théodore Pellerin) isn’t actually familiar with Oliver’s (Archie Madakwe) music when he comes to the clothing store where Matthew works. A relaxed, friendly relationship develops between the two and the ...

Sisters Agnes (Inga Ibsbotter Lilleaas) and Nora (Renate Reinsve) share a love for the red storybook house of their childhood. When their mother dies, their father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård) suddenly stands right outside the door after years of absence. The eccentric director wants to use the house where he grew up for the shoot of his long-awaited, possibly last film. His older daughter Nora is meant to play the main role and finally leave the theater stage, where she is plagued by stage fright that is nerve-wracking for everyone. But Nora declines to embody Gustav’s mother, her ...

Instead of filming the entire Odyssey, which is allegedly what Christopher Nolan is planning on doing, Uberto Pasolini has adapted the last chapter of the most important literary text in literary history. In doing so, he attempts to set the story among modern people, with modern inner conflicts. He tells a different story than Homer, even though many elements, scenes, and characters have remained. The ODYSSEY is a story of pretense, subterfuge, and revenge. THE RETURN is about trauma, guilt, and forgiveness. The most important difference is that there aren’t any Gods here, not Zeus, ...

Ari Aster has made a name of himself as an excellent horror director with the occult masterpieces HEREDITARY (2018) and MIDSOMMAR (2019). Their success paved the way for him to make his very own kind of films. His last film BEAU IS AFRAID (2023) sent Joaquin Phoenix on an unusual psycho-roller coaster. In EDDINGTON he also goes deep into the disturbing worlds of his characters and delivers a vitriolic commentary on the US present by doing so. The plot is set in a very specific time, May 2020, when the Covid pandemic swept across the world and called into question everything that was thought ...

You can’t accuse Osgood Perkins of being lazy. When the filming of the Stephen King adaptation THE MONKEY was interrupted due to the US strike, he just drove across the border to Canada, looked for a small cast and crew there, and shot the chamberpiece KEEPER. The premise is appropriately simple: Liz (Tatiana Maslany, “She-Hulk: Attorney at Large) and Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) go to a remote wooden cabin that belongs to Malcolm’s family to celebrate their one year anniversary. It is clear that this won’t be a pleasant trip from the start of the film, when we see a series of short ...

The short, dense novel “Die, My Love“ by Ariana Harwicz is written as an inner monologue. The observations, feelings, and set pieces of a family story are wildly strung together as they tumble through the mind of a young mother on the verge of psychosis. A stranger appears there whose gaze at the woman is also in her imagination. Frustration, contempt, violence, and sexuality simmer beneath the text, and the anchoring of what is said in an external reality becomes increasingly questionable.

Director Lynne Ramsay likes to explore extreme psychological situations in her films. In ...

ANNIVERSARY tries to show the madness of an authoritarian movement by the impact it has on a bourgeois family. The dramaturgical model is based on Chekhov's plays. Professor Ellen and her husband Paul, a successful restaurant owner, are having a family gathering. Lesbian daughter Anna is a comedian with a rock star demeanor, daughter Cynthia and her husband Rob are engaged, left-wing lawyers, daughter “Birdie” puts stars on her face and looks at the world with bewildered puppy eyes. Son Josh, a failed writer, has brought his new girlfriend, Elizabeth, who seems kind of unhinged from the ...

Teddy (Jesse Plemons) who works as a packer in a factory, and his mentally handicapped cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) are planning to save the world. In order to do so, the two are planning on kidnapping the head of a gigantic corporation that Teddy also works for. Teddy is certain that she’s an alien who is planning on destroying the world. Michelle (Emma Stone) is a very confident, successful woman with both martial arts and marketing skills. Teddy and Don are poor, grimy losers who live in the decrepit house of Teddy’s absent mother and seem to be sinking deeper and deeper into madness. ...

Ben Leonberg says it took him 400 shooting days to film his 73 minute debut. That’s due to his protagonist, the director’s dog, a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever named Indy, which won him the “Howl of Fame Award” invented just for him for the best dog acting at the SXSW Film Festival. Indy is a loyal and lovable dog, not the youngest anymore, and his prevailing mood is being worried. With distrustful, squinty eyes, he follows his very ill master Todd, as he moves back to the remote estate of his dead grandfather. While Todd doesn’t seem to notice anything unusual, Indy takes in ...

Guillermo Del Toro loves monster stories and fabulous, mythical creatures, which he has created in films like PAN’s LABYRINTH or his Oscar winning THE SHAPE OF WATER. His fascination with science and technology often plays a role too. Now the Mexican director has fulfilled his longtime dream which unites all of his passions with a lavish new interpretation of Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” – backed by Netflix, but in its grandiose staging is clearly meant for the cinema.

Del Toro’s reverence for the original text is inscribed in the imposing epic, yet the film does carry ...

Classy jazz ripples quietly. Autumn is lit in subtle warm colors that also determine the landscape, the cars, sweaters and knit dresses. THE MASTERMIND is set in 1970, but you barely notice that, because the nonchalance and confidence of the elegant, well-dressed bourgeois-bohemians that populate Kelly Reichardt’s film are timeless. The most nonchalant of them all is James Mooney (Josh O’Connor), the judge’s son with artistic ambitions. Every step and every gesture seems to be just right when he checks out the local art gallery and casually steals a small figurine. The bigger robbery ...

The clock is ticking in Luca Guadagnino’s AFTER THE HUNT – it’s unclear for who. The threatening sound of a time bomb about to explode repeatedly overlays the soundtrack. A disturbing element of suspense that the Italian director prominently uses without ever solving the mystery. This is exemplary of this film, which hints at many things but doesn’t explain much.

The key figure in the film is the charismatic philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts). It isn’t a given to her that she’s teaching at the prestigious Yale University. Her confident demeanor on campus is founded ...

When it comes to guardian angels, Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) isn’t exactly playing in the big leagues. He does have the fitting white wings on his back, along with a trench coat, but his assignment is limited to preventing car accidents caused by cell phone use while driving in Los Angeles. Then he meets Arj (Aziz Ansari) – and makes the young man his new mission.

Arj is quite disillusioned by life. Along with his badly paid job at a hardware store, he also uses an app to hire him for all kinds of jobs, including from the well-heeled tech entrepreneur Jeff (Seth Rogen). It’s not enough to ...

Fatih Akin’s third collaboration with Hark Bohm, who worked together with him on AUS DEM NICHTS and TSCHICK, is in the same vein as Bohm’s fantastic youth films like NORDSEE IS MORDSEE, MORITZ, LIEBER MORITZ or TSCHETAN, DER INDIANERJUNGE. AMRUM depicts the childhood memories of Hark Bohm, and is primarily a children’s film, but also a film that tells adults something about the perception of children at the end of the war. Most of all, AMRUM is a North German film, Akin and his cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub (INDEPENDENCE DAY), who grew up in Bremen but is a Hollywood veteran, ...

Benny Safdie’s THE SMASHING MACHINE won the Silver Lion Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Based on real events, ex-wrestler Dwayne Johnson plays the mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr, a star of the scene in the 90s, before the sport became popular in the US. Kerr rarely fights in the US, more often in Brazil, where the sport known as “Vale Tudo“ has been popular since the 20s, and in Japan. There isn’t a lot of money to be earned, the main prize, which Mark Kerr is competing for in Japan, is 200,000 Dollars. Safdie doesn’t linger on Mark Kerr’s success for long. After 20 ...

Since their first feature AMER (2009), directing duo Helène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have released a new film every four years or so. Their films are nominated at festivals, but they mostly win in technical categories. This isn’t totally surprising. Like the recently departed David Lynch, Cattet & Forzani make very individual, intense, polarizing films. They create a homage to a film genre, concentrate and fragment the corresponding images and sounds and the narrative set pieces to create a (according to Bruno Forzani) “orgasmic“ film experience. REFLECTIONS IN A DEAD DIAMOND is ...

Christian Petzold’s new film is named after a music piece, “Miroirs No. 3” by Maurice Ravel. The piece is played by Paula Beer’s character Laura in the film, but the actual musical leitmotif in this film is different, namely the northern soul dance floor banger “The Night“ by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (1972). The song is played three times, just one of the three mirrorings in this film. Frankie Vallis “The Night” is a song with chasms. It begins with a brutal bass line, which, after the first run-through, is underpinned by a weeping Hammond organ and a tambourine ...

There’s hardly a museum of contemporary art that doesn’t have a room with an old, illuminated CRT television. The installations have titles like Zen for TV (1963) or Video Fish (1975) and are in every case by Nam June Paik, a founder of so-called media art. The medium of television, especially antique CRT televisions, may seem like anything but contemporary these days. But Paik’s reflections on the dependence of continuous entertainment and the flood of information and his research on self-determined, mindful alternatives can easily refer to today’s discourse on the addiction ...