Food for the Soul – Dilemmas on Screen

By Nina Heyn

We all face choices—large and small. For some types of choices that would be very painful to experience in real life, we are fine seeing them on screen. They can help to clarify our ideas or at least make for a good conversation piece. Here are a few viewing recommendations of stories that are about dilemmas of one kind or another. You might enjoy checking some of them out.

The Pitt (U.S., 2025, 1 season)

One of the most popular TV shows of 2025, this is a realistic look at the work of doctors, nurses, and medical admin staff at a hospital in Pittsburgh who are daily faced with grave medical decisions for their patients. Unlike previous famous medical shows like Grey’s Anatomy or even the older one, ER, this show focuses on depicting both the characters and the medical procedures with utmost realism, gore, and character flaws included. You can find in this show some great acting, fascinating medical cases, and excellent casting that favors interesting faces and dramatic arcs rather than the soap opera artifice of some older medical shows.

Hijack (UK, 2024, 1 season)

Idris Elba stars as Sam, a corporate negotiator on a seven-hour flight to London. Early into the flight, several hostage-takers commandeer the plane, and Sam is one of the few on that flight who has the skills and bravery to solve the situation while 30,000 feet in the air. The ground control staff, the people inside the plane, and even the relatives of the passengers are continuously faced with life-or-death decisions. Season 2 is scheduled to be released later this year.

Force Majeure (2014)

One of the best small films of the 21st century, this film asks a simple question: What would you do if you had to choose between saving yourself and your loved ones? It is a story of a Scandinavian family on a skiing holiday, suddenly threatened by an avalanche. The choices made by parents will haunt everyone involved. It’s about betrayal, trust, and redemption—all within the idyllic setting of a vacation in the French Alps.

The Farewell (2019)

What is a good lie? This is the question posed by a very poignant film starring the American comedienne known as Awkwafina. Departing from her typical comedy roles, she stars here as Billi, the grown-up daughter of an emigrant Chinese family, who is a doctoral student in the U.S. When she learns that her grandmother back in China is ill, she rushes there to discover that the family is hiding the cancer diagnosis from the matriarch, trying to protect her from bad news. For Billi, a woman raised in the American culture, this white lie feels wrong, but her Chinese relatives favor a different approach. This hard choice of telling the cruel truth to loved ones feels very universal.

Murderbot (U.S., 1 season, 2025)

And now for something very different. This is a new TV show popular with Gen Z-ers who, more than older generations, may feel more affinity with the themes of robots, hacking, and planet colonization as well as social alienation and inability to work with a group. Alexander Skarsgåard is the titular “murderbot”—a security android sent to a planet with a group of misfit scientists. Murderbot has gained self-consciousness by hacking its own programming, but it is hiding this ability from humans. All it really wants to do is watch old soap operas, but it is forced to protect humans who have soft bodies and cannot process information as fast as it can. So, should Murderbot protect them, or should it abandon them? This story is told from the robot’s point of view, so its inability to make correct decisions just underscores that humans can be motivated by things the machine cannot relate to: loyalty, shame, love, desire, honorable behavior, sacrifice for the greater good, as well as jealousy or lust for power.

Materialists (U.S., 2025)

From the acclaimed director Celine Song (Past Lives) comes a new movie starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans in a fairly light romance/ drama that tackles a question some people may ask themselves. Would you marry for love or for money? Which choice is better in the end? Which one is more ethical? Which one has bigger consequences for the rest of one’s life?

The 1993 movie Indecent Proposal, starring Demi Moore, Robert Redford, and Woody Harrelson once tackled a similar dilemma. This new movie updates the theme with the heroine’s profession of a matchmaker—in itself a good commentary on the difficulties that young people have today in connecting with the right partner in the age of digital relationships. The movie can serve as a good conversation piece across generations and genders—possibly just what the director intended.