Published by the Atlantic
On January 2, Raha Bahloulipour watched Sentimental Value, the latest film by the Norwegian auteur Joachim Trier, in her dorm room at the University of Tehran. It was the first film she viewed in 2026, and she liked it very much.
I know this because Raha was, like myself, an avid user of the film-cataloging app Letterboxd. With its tag system and diary, she jotted down when, where, and in what context she watched movies and what she thought of them. She started her diary in August 2023 and logged a total of 795 films during her 888 days on the app. She gave Trier’s film a heart, indicating that it was a favorite. She also tagged it with “protests,” to note that she’d watched it as anti-regime demonstrations rocked her country.