Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive was nominated for Palme d’Or but won the Soundtrack Award. The film is full of music from different centuries, much of it performed by Jarmusch’s own band, SQÜRL. It spans from Paganini to Wanda Jackson and the Lebanese singer Yasmine Hamdan. Equally, the sources of the music also vary from a Renaissance lute to vinyl and YouTube. And no wonder, the main characters, Adam and Eve, are vampires.

Set in Detroit and Tangier, the underground musician Adam is reunited with his wife Eve, but their love story is crashed when Eve’s sister relocates to Detroit. Having lived through several centuries, the question is if their love will be able to survive in the modern world. Socialising with jet-set old celebrities, Only Lovers Left Alive is full of arty references. Adam and Eve recall their friendship with Byron and Shelley, they rely on their old friend Christopher Marlowe, and Adam is said to have composed music for Chopin. The names of the main characters, however, originate from Mark Twain’s book The Diaries of Adam and Eve.

“A vampire movie unlike any other”, BFI

There is “something magical and magnetic about this world of mature know-it all, ultra-cool vampires”, TimeOut