Dekalog (Season 1)

Dekalog (1989) is Krzysztof Kieslowski's ten-part drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Every episode unfolds in and around a single grey apartment block on the edge of Warsaw, where the neighbours take turns at the centre of the story.

Each film grows out of one of the Ten Commandments, though none of them simply illustrates the rule. A father trusts a computer's math and lets his son skate on a frozen pond. A doctor weighs how much truth to tell a frightened wife. A loveless cab driver and a teenager planning a murder end up in the same car. A silent young man (Artur Barcis) drifts through nearly every story, watching without ever stepping in.

Made for Polish television with a score by Zbigniew Preisner, the cycle later gave rise to two feature films, A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love. Kieslowski never lectures; he sets up an impossible choice and lets you sit with it. Stanley Kubrick famously singled the screenplay out as one of a kind. Stream Dekalog (1989) online on iFILM.