When you think of Yorgos Lanthimos, a Greek filmmaker known for unsettling, deadpan stories that twist normal life into something alien. Also known as the king of absurdist drama, he doesn’t just tell stories—he breaks the rules of how stories should feel. His films don’t ask you to cheer for characters. They ask you to wonder why you ever expected them to behave like real people.
He’s not alone in making strange movies, but what sets him apart is how he uses silence, awkward pacing, and robotic dialogue to make you feel like you’re watching humans through a broken mirror. In Yorgos Lanthimos’ world, people don’t hug to comfort each other—they stare. They don’t cry when they’re sad—they laugh. And love? It’s a contract, a game, or a prison. His work connects deeply with dark comedy, a genre that finds humor in discomfort, not punchlines. It also lives right in the heart of surreal film, cinema that rejects logic to expose deeper truths. You won’t find car chases or last-minute rescues. Instead, you’ll get a man marrying his sister’s corpse in The Lobster, or a queen forcing her court to act like animals in The Favourite.
He doesn’t just make movies—he builds worlds where social rules collapse. His characters are trapped by expectations: to be paired off, to be obedient, to be normal. And when they try to break free, the system doesn’t fight back with violence. It just stares. Quietly. Coldly. Like a therapist who’s heard it all and doesn’t care anymore. That’s why his films stick with you. They don’t entertain. They unsettle. They make you question your own relationships, your own behavior, your own need to fit in.
There’s no grand moral. No redemption arc. Just raw, strange, beautifully shot moments that force you to sit with the discomfort. If you’ve ever felt like the world is rigged, or that people are just pretending to be normal, Lanthimos made a movie about it. Below, you’ll find reviews and analysis of his most defining works—films that don’t just break rules, they laugh while doing it.
Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things is a visually stunning, emotionally raw masterpiece starring Emma Stone as a woman reborn with the mind of a child. A bold feminist fable wrapped in surrealism, it’s one of the most daring films of the decade.
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