The World Gets Bigger in the Dark
Updated: 1 day ago
By Julie Sisk | August 11, 2026
Last week I wrote about something I have been thinking about recently: what happens when we watch a film together, in a theater, as opposed to alone at home.
And then this week I came across a review in The New York Times of the documentary The Last Picture House, about the independent movie theaters and art houses that are slowly disappearing.
One line stayed with me:
“A trip to the cinema expands the world and stretches time.”
From Esther Kinsey’s “Seeing Further”
I love that.
There is so much hype about what we as an audience have gained through streaming. Almost any film, from almost anywhere in the world, is available to us at the touch of a button. That is extraordinary.
But I wonder sometimes about what we've lost.
Going to the movies requires us to get up and go somewhere. To choose a film. To arrive at a particular time. To sit in a darkened room with other people and give ourselves over to someone else's story for two hours.
For those two hours, we don't control the experience. We can't speed it up. We can’t fast forward through the scenes that don’t interest us. We can't casually wander into another room. We can’t open and close the door of the fridge throughout….And, ideally, we aren't checking our phones.
The film gets our attention.
And so do the people around us.
There is something wonderfully communal about hearing a roomful of strangers laugh at the same moment — or feeling the silence that follows a scene that has affected everyone in the theater.
That collective experience becomes part of the film.
And perhaps that is what Esther Kinsey means when she says a trip to the cinema can “stretch time.” For a little while, we have stepped outside the rhythms of our everyday lives and entered another world.
And then there are film festivals.
If going to the movies expands the world, a film festival throws the doors wide open.
For days and sometimes weeks, you live differently.
You see films you might never have chosen from a streaming menu. You hear languages all around you that you don't necessarily speak. You encounter filmmakers and stories from places you may never have been. You sit beside people who often see the very same film completely differently than you do.
And then you talk about it.
Over coffee. Walking out of the theater. At lunch. Standing in line for the next screening.
One film leads to another conversation, which leads to another idea, which sometimes leads you back to the film you saw yesterday and makes you understand it differently.
That is one of the things I love most about film festivals. They don't simply show us movies. They create an entire community around them.
For a few days in Cannes, Venice, San Sebastian, London, or Toronto, cinema becomes the organizing principle of your life.
Where do we need to be? What are we seeing next? What did you think? What shouldn't we miss?
Time does feel different.
And the world feels bigger — more expansive.
Perhaps that's why, after all these years, I still believe so strongly in getting on a plane, walking into a theater, sitting down among strangers and waiting for the lights to go out.
Because sometimes the most important part of seeing a film is simply being there.
– Julie
