This book presents a new collection of essays exploring films from a psychoanalytic perspective, focussing specifically on the representation of loss in European cinema. Other themes familiar to psychoanalytic discourse are explored in the process.

Andrea Sabbadini is a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and honorary senior lecturer at University College London. He has published extensively in psychoanalytic journals, and edited books including Even Paranoids Have Enemies (Routledge, 1998) and The Couch and the Silver Screen: Psychoanalytic Reflections on European Cinema (Brunner-Routledge, 2003).

Gabbard, Foreword. Sabbadini, Introduction. Kline, The Night of Melancholia and the Daylight of Mourning: Anne Fontaine's Comment j'ai tué mon père. Goisis, Quest for a Lost Mother: Alina Marazzi's Un'ora sola ti vorrei. Wigoder, Berman, Is There Light at the End of the Tunnel? Keren Yedaya's Or (Mon Tresor). Costantini, Golinelli, The Anorexic Paradox: Matteo Garrone's First Love. Zwiebel, Reparation and the Empathic Other: Christian Petzold's Wolfsburg. Sabbadini, The Talking Cure from Freud to Almodóvar: Hable con ella. Portuges, Intergenerational Transmission: The Holocaust in Central European Cinema. Webber, Cut and Laced: Traumatism and Fetishism in Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou. Taylor Robinson, Two Short Films by Jan Svankmajer: Jabberwocky and Punch and Judy. Mulvey, Compilation Film as 'Deferred Action': Vincent Monnikendam's Mother Dao, the Turtle-like. Weinstein, Moving Beyond the Constraints of the Mortal Self: Universal Images of Narcissism in Jan Troell's The Flight of the Eagle. Stein, Tricycles, Bicycles, Life Cycles: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Childhood Loss and Transgenerational Parenting in Sylvain Chômet's Belleville Rendez-Vous. Diamond, Loss, Mourning and Desire in Midlife: François Ozon's Under the Sand and Swimming Pool. Sabbadini, Three Sisters: Sibling Knots in Bergman's Cries and Whispers. Christie, Time Regained: The Complex Magic of Reverse Motion. Films Index.