In a grim, claustrophobic apartment owned by a rich elderly woman, the inhabitants— her son, her nurse, her nurse’s discontented lover, and a new lodger—desperately try to relate to each other as they go about their bleak lives, revealing their darkest secrets, fears, obsessions, and hostilities.

A rare colour feature from Béla Tarr, this airless chamber piece contains the roots of the rigorous formalism with which he’d soon become synonymous. With its long takes and expressionistic tableaux, Autumn Almanac prefigures Sátántangó in its claustrophobic study of psychological ruin.