Where the story begins
Thomas Anderson works as a programmer by day and lives as the hacker Neo by night. He cannot shake the feeling that something important lies beneath the everyday world.
Meeting Trinity and Morpheus turns that suspicion into a question with personal consequences: can you trust the reality you take for granted?
Questions to explore after watching
In The Matrix, action is inseparable from a way of seeing the world. Familiar streets, offices and the human body become part of a system of rules that the protagonist learns to notice and change.
Three questions offer a starting point for discussion: who defines the choices available to us, why does a familiar picture of the world feel convincing, and what changes when we take responsibility for a decision?
This is an invitation to interpretation, rather than a single definitive explanation. Katya Abdulova’s talk follows all four films, from the promise of awakening to our own participation in the system.
The four films
The Matrix · 1999
Neo’s story begins. Reality and awakening.
The Matrix Reloaded · 2003
The story continues. Choice, prophecy and the system.
The Matrix Revolutions · 2003
The original trilogy concludes. Conflict and the possibility of another resolution.
The Matrix Resurrections · 2021
A return to Neo and Trinity. Memory, repetition and freedom.
The first three films were directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski. The fourth was directed by Lana Wachowski.