Dancer in the Dark is a film about escapism, its breadth, and its insufficiency. Björk, in a sublimely blistering performance, pirouettes and palpitates through a tale of a mother wracked by circumstance.

The film is a Greek tragedy without the abstraction of offstage violence–it depicts the worst that life has to offer in unpronounced cinematic prose. Every moment simmers with the possibility of blunt brutality or diegetic melody as the film makes its rhythmic descent. As it celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, Dancer in the Dark remains a stark deconstruction of one’s outer and inner world.

Presented by Bleak Cinema