Michael Haneke’s 2013 Oscar and Palme d’Or winning drama AMOUR follows an elderly couple facing their greatest challenge yet. A police unit breaks into a Paris apartment and discovers the body of an elderly woman. Her husband is nowhere to be found. We then jump back in time to one of their last outings together before Anne becomes incapacitated as a result of an illness. What we witness is the cost of love – not the romance of cinema, but the day-to-day activity of caring for another person, no matter the physical or emotional cost. Michael Haneke’s most sensitive film refuses to pull any punches in his depiction of the ageing process, but avoids sensation in favour of empathy.

Part of Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective.