We love this film but are saddened to play it. Why? It is Chilean exile-fabulist Raúl Ruiz’s final film, marking the end of a career that seemed to be always expanding in wild, unexpected directions. Here Ruiz returns to his homeland to fashion an oneiric and playful ode to old age and cinephilia.

A Borgesian matryoshka doll of storytelling, Mysteries of Lisbon is Chilean maestro Raúl Ruiz’s magnum opus—a sumptuous period epic in six parts. Playing in its rarely screened extended version, this sweeping melodramatic saga is Dickensian in scope and magisterial in novelistic ambition.