As I began composing this piece, the Hebrew phrase “Mikol melamdai hiskalti” came to mind. It’s a verse from Psalms 119:99, often quoted in Talmudic and rabbinic literature:

“From all my teachers, I have gained understanding.”

Interpretations vary, but they share a common theme: wisdom can come from anyone. Even those who challenge us, or don’t intend to teach us, can open our eyes. That idea of learning from unexpected sources resonates deeply with the films I’ve recently watched.

Over the past month, I’ve seen The Phoenician Scheme, What About Chuck, and 28 Years Later. Each one was difficult to sit through, not because they were poorly made (they’re all sharp and compelling), but because they hold up an unflinching mirror to a world that feels increasingly unstable.

They are dystopian, yes. But the chaos they depict doesn’t feel far-fetched; it feels eerily familiar. These aren’t speculative futures. They’re thinly veiled portraits of our present.

The Phoenician Scheme explores the subtle expansion of soft power—how technology, finance, and shifting moral norms are reshaping not only governments and corporations, but also personal and family dynamics.

At the heart of the film is a question about power and narrative: Who gets to decide which stories are told? In government halls? In Silicon Valley boardrooms? When unelected billionaires make sweeping decisions about AI, surveillance, and global markets, what voice do the rest of us have?

What About Chuck presents as absurdist satire, but its humour cuts painfully close. It mocks the normalization of dysfunction—how we laugh off what should alarm us: internet blackouts, surreal traffic jams, garbled billboards, even the afterlife.

In today’s media climate, where wars are live-streamed, hostages remain underground after 228 days, and propaganda spreads faster than truth, its surrealism feels less like parody and more like prophecy. What once seemed outlandish now feels like the nightly news.

28 Years Later is the most direct. Its premise is simple: a pandemic that leads to societal collapse. But it doesn’t stop at the biological level. The film shows how fear seeps into everything, governance, science, and our capacity to coexist.

That fear feels familiar. We’re living in a time when political polarization dominates, public trust in science teeters on the edge of conspiracy, and crimes of fraud and violence are on the rise. As a Jew, I no longer take safety for granted, not even in places that once felt secure, even familiar.

That sense of unease isn’t mine alone. It crosses borders and identities. The consequences of conflict show up not only in headlines from war zones, but also in quieter ways—in the slow erosion of trust, and in the growing feeling that the systems meant to protect us can no longer do so.

The film imagines a stark divide: a cooperative, self-sufficient island, shielded by tides and fences, separated from a lawless wasteland decimated by plague. The boundary isn’t just geographic; it’s moral. To cross it is to abandon safety, knowing no one will come to help.

In one haunting scene, a father and his adolescent son step into the forest and are met by a terrifying sight, an onrushing horde of naked, upright humans, no longer civilized, driven only by violence.

It reminded me of the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea—one side ruled by a totalitarian regime where famine and surveillance dominate daily life; the other, a thriving democracy built with the support of Western allies. The few who have escaped the North tell of lives marked by hunger, fear, and absolute control.

This isn’t the only place where such divides exist. Other regions carry similar shadows:

• The secretive detention of Muslims and political dissidents in Chinese reeducation camps
• The persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar
• The suffering of civilians in Yemen and Sudan, displaced and starved by militia rule

And yes, I watched these films while scrolling headlines:

War. Hostages. Antisemitic attacks. Civilians buried under rubble. Forest fires. Famines. Drought. Authoritarian elections. Protest marches. Billionaires shaping our digital reality. A planet inching toward collapse.

These films didn’t provide answers, but they articulated a feeling I’ve been experiencing, the ache of being alive in this moment. When everything seems to be spiralling out of control, art can help us identify what hurts.

I don’t have a clear conclusion. But I do know this: I’m glad I watched, even when it hurt. The best art doesn’t let us look away. It holds our gaze and says, “See this. Feel this.”

And right now, choosing to look—choosing to stay present—feels like one of the few clear things we can do.