Children of Paradise (2023)

Children of Paradise (named after Marcel Carné’s 1945 French film) tells the story of Holly, a young woman just arrived in an unnamed city, who takes a job at its oldest cinema, The Paradise. The cinema is clearly a relic of a bygone age, staffed by a memorable motley crew of misfit cinephiles, barely existing on pitiful wages and whatever their customers leave behind underneath their seats (money, valuables, unidentifiable narcotics) in its one screen. Holly is a relative novice to the world of the cinema, and initially an outsider. She soon becomes accepted by her fellow employees, and begins to live their life of seemingly 24/7 film viewings, subsisting on pilfered booze, popcorn, dubious nachos and those even more dubious abandoned drugs. She begins to have regular encounters with a fellow employee, Paolo, though later discovers that this was merely par for the course - everyone is sleeping with everyone else at the Paradise.