The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2024) is Wes Anderson's anthology of four short films adapted from Roald Dahl — watch online on iFILM. The stories are "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," "The Swan," "The Rat Catcher," and "Poison." The centerpiece follows a wealthy gambler who trains himself to see without eyes and promptly uses the ability to strip casinos of their money. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Henry; Ralph Fiennes appears as Dahl himself; Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, and Richard Ayoade cycle through roles across all four films.

Anderson shoots every story in the same layered, theatrical mode: actors read directly from manuscripts on camera, narrators hand off to other narrators mid-scene, the sets openly look like sets. It reads less like cinema and more like a book being performed — which is very much the point. Dahl's prose style survives the translation because Anderson builds the adaptation around it rather than around visual storytelling.

Henry Sugar picked up the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, making it Anderson's first Oscar-winning project. Taken together, the four pieces run 88 minutes and feel like a single coherent argument for why Dahl works so well on screen when someone trusts the words. Stream The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2024) online on iFILM.