Inland Empire

Inland Empire is a 2006 surrealist experimental psychological art film written, directed, and produced by David Lynch in his final directional feature film before his death in 2025. Released with the tagline "A Woman in Trouble", the film follows the fragmented and nightmarish events surrounding a Hollywood actress (Laura Dern) who begins to take on the personality of a character she plays in a supposedly cursed film production. It was completed over three years and shot primarily in Los Angeles and Poland. The process marked several firsts for Lynch: the film was shot without a finished screenplay, instead being largely developed on a scene-by-scene basis; and it was shot entirely in low-resolution digital video by Lynch himself using a handheld Sony camcorder rather than traditional film stock. The film was an international co-production between the United States, France, and Poland. The cast includes such Lynch regulars as Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, and Grace Zabriskie, as well as Jeremy Irons, Karolina Gruszka, Peter J. Lucas, Krzysztof Majchrzak, and Julia Ormond. There are also brief appearances by a host of additional actors, including Nastassja Kinski, Laura Harring, Terry Crews, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Ladd, and William H. Macy. The voices of Harring, Naomi Watts, and Scott Coffey are included in excerpts from Lynch's 2002 Rabbits online project. The film's cinematography, editing, score, and sound design were by Lynch, with pieces by a variety of other musicians also featured, including Beck, Nina Simone, Kroke, Dave Brubeck, and Krzysztof Penderecki. The title borrows its name from a metropolitan area in Southern California. Inland Empire premiered at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival where Lynch was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. It tied the second-best film of 2007 by Cahiers du cinéma and was listed among Sight & Sound's films of the decade, as well as The Guardian's "10 most underrated movies of the decade". The film was remastered by Lynch and Janus Films in 2022.