Smoldering emotion. Impossible choices. Love constrained by the world around it.

This fall, PDF@Zoetropolis presents a four-week Zoetropolis Crash Course on melodrama—films of longing, sacrifice, social judgment, forbidden love, and emotional lives pressed against the limits of family, class, race, and respectability.

Join us for four classic films that show why melodrama remains one of cinema’s richest ways of thinking about ordinary suffering and moral recognition.

Oct. 19: Now, Voyager
Oct. 26: All That Heaven Allows
Nov. 2: Imitation of Life
Nov. 9: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul