The complaint is familiar: nothing happens. A man drives to work, sweeps a street, eats his lunch, and two hours pass. But the complaint often means something more specific. It means the film did not tell us how to feel, and we had to do the work ourselves.

Slow cinema asks for a different kind of attention. Not the attention of following a plot, but the attention of noticing: a light changing on a wall, a pause before an answer, the sound of a room. Once you start watching for those things, the films stop being slow and start being full.

Here are five places to begin, from easiest to hardest.

Perfect Days

2023 · 7.8 TMDBPerfect DaysHirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.

Wim Wenders' film about a Tokyo toilet cleaner who finds contentment in routine. It is the gentlest possible introduction: warm, beautiful, and built around music and books rather than incident. Kōji Yakusho won Best Actor at Cannes in 2023 for it, and most of that performance is a face.

Paterson

2016 · 7.1 TMDBPatersonA week in the life of Paterson, a poet bus driver, and his wife Laura, a very creative artist, who live in Paterson, New Jersey, hometown of many famous poets and artists.

Jim Jarmusch's week in the life of a bus driver who writes poems, played by Adam Driver. Almost nothing happens, and it is the kind of nothing you will think about for days. It is a film about how small a life can look from outside and how large it is from within.

Aftersun

2022 · 7.7 TMDBAftersunSophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories fill the gaps between camcorder footages as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the troubled man she didn't.

Charlotte Wells' debut, about a father and daughter on a holiday, remembered years later. It is quiet in the way memory is quiet: full of gaps, and all the more powerful for them. Paul Mescal was nominated for an Oscar for it.

Ikiru

1952 · 8.3 TMDBIkiruKanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

Kurosawa's 1952 drama about a bureaucrat who learns he is dying and asks himself what his life has been for. It is longer and more classical than the others, and it is one of the most human films ever made.

Tokyo Story

1953 · 8.1 TMDBTokyo StoryThe elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

Ozu's 1953 film about an elderly couple visiting their grown children in the city. It is the reference point for almost everything else on this list: calm, precise, and devastating in the last third. Save it for when you are ready.

How to watch them

  • Turn your phone off. Not silent. Off. These films are made of small gestures, and a screen in your hand will always win.
  • Do not judge the first twenty minutes. The rhythm takes time to arrive. When it does, it is worth it.
  • Watch in the evening. Slow films work best when you are a little tired and have nowhere to be.
  • Notice the sound. In quiet films, sound does the work that dialogue does elsewhere.

If one of these lands, follow it: browse the best dramas of all time, or the shelf of Japanese cinema. And when you find your own favourite, put it on a list and share it.