Love when the World is Burning: Fremont (2023)

Fremont understands the specific loneliness of being single while carrying such heavy grief. Donya is a 20-something Afghan refugee living alone in Fremont, California, working at a Chinese-owned fortune cookie factory. 

Shot in black and white, the film feels quiet, unfinished, and deeply human. It asks whether it is even permissible to want to love when people back home are still dying. 

Yet Fermont remains warm and gently funny, suggesting that small things like fortune cookies, shared meals, and unexpected encounters connect all of us. We hope Donya finds happiness, but more importantly, that she realizes she is worthy of it.

Love Finds You First: Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

This is a loud and chaotic romance film about how love arrives without warning. Adam Sandler plays Barry, a man overwhelmed by emotions, noises, and the randomness of life. Then, almost out of thin air, Lena appears. The soundtrack comes alive and makes the film energetic, yet tender. 

We are used to Sandler being the funny guy, but here he is raw and sincere. In just 90 minutes, Punch-Drunk Love argues that love is easy — not because it is simple, but because it saves you when it finally shows up.

You’re Not the Only One Alone: Sidewalls (2011)

For artsy people, Sidewalls feels like looking directly into a mirror. Set in Buenos Aires, it captures urban loneliness, the strange isolation of living in a big city while constantly surrounded by people. Martin, a web designer who owns Criterion DVDs and listens to Radiohead’s In Rainbows, feels instantly familiar to many of us. 

The film understands how architecture and screens shape our emotional lives. It is a quiet romance made for art students, creatives, and anyone who ever felt invisible in their own city (Toronto included).

How Far Would You Go for Love?: They Will Be Dust (2024)

We say things like “I love you to death” very commonly, but They Will Be Dust asks whether we truly mean it. It is a slow, layered exploration of love, family, mortality, and death, blending music and dance into its storytelling. It is unlike anything you’ve seen before. 

Rather than focusing on death itself, the film examines how one’s decision ripples outward through guilt, tension, devotion, and fear. Watching it with your partner will open space for deep conversations about choices and endings. It reveals how people think differently and how love persists through that difference.

What You Escaped: Marriage Story (2019)

This is what it could’ve been and why it is good that it didn’t. Marriage Story captures the slow, painful unravelling of a relationship with brutal honesty. Adam Driver saying, “You’ve regressed,” and then naming all the women he did not have sex with when he was a hot and young director in his twenties should make you feel lucky that things did not work out with that film person… 

Queer and Unfixable: Happy Together (1997)

Happy Together begins with the most dangerous sentence in any relationship: “Let’s start over.” It is a queer love story that understands how desire can both be a shelter and a trap leading to self-destruction. 

Wong Kar-wai captures intimacy as something repetitive, passionate, tender, and impossible to stabilize. The film is not interested in healing or providing closure. It sits in the mess of wanting someone who cannot love you properly and choosing them anyway. 

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