There are mountains people climb because they can. And then there is K2.

The second-highest mountain on Earth — and among the deadliest — K2 held one remaining prize for decades: a winter summit. Climbers called it the last great first in mountaineering.

When teams from around the world converged on the mountain to claim that prize, the story quickly became about far more than reaching the top. It became a story of ambition, national pride, commercial expeditions, social media, and a sport wrestling with who gets the glory — and who assumes the risk.

What followed would make history, and come at an enormous human cost.

In THE LAST FIRST: WINTER K2, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev (My Kid Could Paint That, The Tillman Story) shapes extraordinary, never-before-seen footage into something far more complicated than an adventure film: a clear-eyed look at what happens when the hunger to be first meets one of the most unforgiving places on Earth.

This week we sit down with Bar-Lev to talk about the climb, the footage, the forces changing modern mountaineering — and the questions the summit didn’t answer on INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, starting now

How far would you travel for love?

In 1977, PK Mahanandia, a young street artist from Delhi born into a poor Dalit family, set out on a secondhand bicycle with a handful of paintbrushes and almost no money. His destination was Sweden, nearly 6,000 miles away. There he hoped to find Lotta, the woman he loved and believed fate had promised him.

It sounds like a fairy tale. But THE CYCLE OF LOVE is about far more than one man’s astonishing journey across continents. It is also about caste and belonging, the wounds that shape our sense of self-worth, and the unexpected kindness that can help us see ourselves differently.

Academy Award-winning director Orlando von Einsiedel tells this remarkable true story through archival material, dramatic reconstruction, and unscripted encounters with people along PK’s original route. It is an inventive and deeply moving approach that brings the past vividly to life while exploring something timeless about our shared need for love and human connection.

At a moment when so much seems designed to divide us, THE CYCLE OF LOVE is unabashedly hopeful: a reminder that love can cross borders, challenge the boundaries society creates, and transform the stories we believe about ourselves.

This week on INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, we speak with Orlando von Einsiedel about making THE CYCLE OF LOVE and what it means to keep your heart open, even when the world gives you every reason to close it.

Two years ago, INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE began with a simple belief: films living beyond the mainstream deserve conversations as rich, curious and surprising as the work itself.

We thought no one would come.

More than one hundred episodes later, that belief has grown into a community of nearly half a million subscribers, and our conversations have been watched more than four million times. Those numbers astonish us — but what they represent matters more: people still making room for independent, international and documentary cinema.

A LOOK BACK AT TWO REMARKABLE YEARS

To celebrate our second anniversary, we’re revisiting some of the moments you watched, shared and made your own.

Jim Jarmusch takes us inside FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER.

Mark Cousins reimagines a master in MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK.

Embeth Davidtz reflects on bringing DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT to the screen.

Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni discuss their Academy Award-nominated documentary CUTTING THROUGH ROCKS.

And Alexandre O. Philippe traces the enduring—and still unsettling—legacy of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE in CHAIN REACTIONS.

Different filmmakers. Different forms. Different ways of looking at the world.

But each returns to the idea that brought us here: cinema still has the power to surprise us, challenge us and connect us.

Thank you for spending two remarkable years inside the arthouse with us.

-Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge

How do you end a marriage when the world itself feels as if it may be coming apart?

Marija tells her husband she wants a divorce on February 23, 2022.

The next morning, Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

That is the starting point for HOW TO DIVORCE DURING THE WAR, which earned Lithuanian filmmaker Andrius Blaževičius the Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

Blaževičius uses the fracture of one family to reflect a larger crisis: a Europe divided by fear, propaganda and the temptation to choose personal comfort over collective responsibility.

Set in Vilnius during the first months of the invasion, the film is sharply observed, unexpectedly funny and performed with such naturalism that it can sometimes feel like a documentary.

Blaževičius finds bittersweet humor in people trying to behave honorably—and discovering how quickly their principles can collapse under the pressures of ordinary life.

Watching from the edges is the couple’s young daughter, who understands far more than her parents realize.

In our conversation, Blaževičius discusses marriage, moral compromise, the divisions reshaping Europe and finding humanity—even humor—in a world living through crisis.

Join Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge for a thoughtful conversation about HOW TO DIVORCE DURING THE WAR on INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE.  

Three-time Academy Award-nominated director Agnieszka Holland has spent decades creating films of remarkable intelligence, moral courage, and visual power. With FRANZ, a master filmmaker working at the height of her craft turns her attention to one of literature’s most elusive figures: Franz Kafka.

This is not a conventional biopic. Rather than arranging Kafka’s life into a familiar, linear narrative, Holland creates a beautiful and restless mosaic—moving through his dreams, letters, loves, fears, and fiercely complicated relationship with the world around him.

Past and present collide as Prague remembers Kafka, reinvents him, and transforms the fragile, introspective writer into a modern cultural icon. Idan Weiss gives a deeply affecting performance as a man who could diagnose the absurdities of his time with almost prophetic clarity, yet remained a mystery even to himself.

Holland first discovered Kafka as a teenager, and his work has remained with her ever since. Decades later, she approaches him not as a puzzle to be solved, but as a man to be searched for—in fragments, contradictions, tenderness, self-irony, and dark humor.

FRANZ is bold, playful, visually exquisite, and unlike any traditional portrait of a literary figure. It is an extraordinary film to be experienced slowly and savored frame by frame.

Join us on INSIDE THE ARTHOUSEfor a conversation with Agnieszka Holland about bringing Kafka’s inner world to the screen.

French cinema has always invited us to look a little closer—not only at the world around us, but at ourselves.

This Bastille Day, we’re celebrating that tradition with a special selection of clips drawn from the INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE library of filmmaker conversations, featuring some of the most exciting voices in contemporary French cinema.

Rebecca Zlotowski explores family, identity, and the mysteries of memory in A PRIVATE LIFE.

François Ozon reimagines Albert Camus’ THE STRANGER for a new generation.

Louise Courvoisier brings warmth, humor, and authenticity to rural France in HOLY COW.

And Laura Piani reminds us that love, literature, and self-discovery are never far apart in JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE.

Different in style and subject, these films share the same spirit: bold, intimate, and deeply human. Because great cinema doesn’t simply tell us stories—it changes the way we see the world.

Celebrate Bastille Day with INSIDE THE ARTHOUSEand revisit highlights from four of our conversations about the best in contemporary French cinema, starting now.