The Stranger

The Stranger is screening at Harbour Lights Picturehouse on Tuesday 30 June. It's a film by Simon Staho, and the whole thing turns on a single, pretty heavy question: How do we encounter what we do not understand?

That's the starting point for the psychological ground Staho covers. The film looks at the mechanisms of fear and fascination — the two things that usually fight for the lead when we come across someone we don't recognise. It's not just a character study, though; it sets that tension against a backdrop that'll feel familiar to anyone paying attention to the news. We're talking global tensions, refugee crises, xenophobia and political polarisation — the kind of things that shape how we see strangers long before we've actually met them.

It's a film that asks you to think about why we react the way we do when we're faced with the unknown, and how the world around us feeds into that. If you're into cinema that leans more towards the psychological and the social than the purely narrative, this is right in that wheelhouse. It's the kind of thing that sticks with you after the credits roll, rather than something you just switch off and forget.

Harbour Lights is over at Maritime Walk in Ocean Village, SO14 3TL. It's a Picturehouse screen, so you'll get the usual cinema setup — comfortable seats and a proper screen. The screening is on Tuesday 30 June, and you can book your tickets through the Picturehouse website.