For Fans of Before Sunrise

The original film runs on possibility. Before Sunset, made nine years later in real time, is something harder: a film about what you do when the night you never stopped thinking about turns out to be true. Shot in real Parisian time with a ticking clock and no safety net, it is 80 minutes of two people trying not to say the one thing they have come all this way to say. The final scene is one of the most quietly devastating endings in cinema.

Made between Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, Waking Life applies the same walking-and-talking method to pure philosophy. Rotoscoped over real footage, it sends its protagonist through a series of conversations about consciousness, free will, and lucid dreaming. It is stranger and more demanding than the Before films, but it is the best companion piece for anyone who loves the way Jesse and Celine reason out loud into the dark.

Sally Rooney's novel (and the Hulu series) traces two people who are right for each other and unable to stay together, across the same years of early adulthood the trilogy covers. Both works understand that the real subject is not romance but the terrifying work of being known by another person. The series handles physical intimacy with the same unhurried attention Linklater gives to conversation.

Disco Elysium is built almost entirely from dialogue and internal monologue. Its detective protagonist reconstructs himself through conversations with the people around him, and the game rewards curiosity and honesty in the same way the trilogy does. The same sense that talking carefully to another person can change who you are runs through both works.