From the co-writer of Anatomy of a Fall (winner of the 2024 Best Original Screenplay Oscar) comes an arthouse body-swapping movie that moves slowly, with a ’70s style placed within the modern day. It follows David Zimmerman, who has a chance encounter with a woman and, when he wakes up, finds himself inhabiting her body. With the help of social media and technology, David, now in this woman’s body, discovers things about her and eventually learns that he is not the only person who has experienced this body-swapping phenomenon.

The performances are very good but subtle. Often, you have characters staring, and we have to think about what they are thinking about. Thus, the meaning is found more in the edit and in what the characters are choosing to look at. You get very voyeuristic shots that slowly zoom and pan between different objects of interest. Through this, we get an idea of what it’s like to literally, in this case, live with yourself and look at your life from outside of it. The film never delves super deep into any one dynamic, maybe out of a need to keep the plot moving. It never seems to have the confidence to create an even weirder scenarios out of this already very weird situation.

Its cerebral and slower pace allows you to think about the complicated things you might consider if you were put in the protagonist’s shoes. There is a lot of time to think about what to do and how to solve this body-swapping issue. While it demands empathy, it is not exactly relatable.

There is music that maintains a dreadful tone, making this film very sombre. It is not exciting, but it is also not uninteresting in most scenes, as the screenplay turns effectively and brings up common solutions and problems that would be encountered by the characters in this situation. There is one particular turn where another character shows up that changes the dynamic and presents the most interesting character relationship in the whole movie.

The Unknown is playing at TIFF ’26. For more information, click here.