Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life

Jakob (Mark Rylance) comes to the Institute Benjamenta to learn how to be a servant, and finds a school with no visible way out: the same seven men, the same lessons in movement and drawing circles, and no one ever leaving for a post. Lisa Benjamenta (Alice Krige) runs the classroom while her brother Johannes drifts above it. She begins to unravel as winter sets in, and Jakob is drawn to her, perhaps as she is to him.