Synopsis for
Dancer in the Dark (2000) More at IMDbPro »

Selma is a young Czech mother living in Washington state in the early 1960s. How she loves musicals! Alas, she is going blind, and this is threatening her job (not to say her limbs) at the local factory, where she is friends with Cathy, who is a bit flummoxed by Selma's increasing workload, which includes pinning hairpins to unbent cardboard as a side job.

Selma lives with her understandably ungrateful 12-year-old delinquent son in a mobile trailer on the property of a local sheriff and his happy-go-lucky wife. One day, the sheriff reveals a dark secret to Selma, and being the type to cement friendships, she tells him a secret, too: that she is going blind. Life spirals downard for her after this revelation, but Selma is resolute in protecting her friend's secret.

Cathy, who grows increasingly frustrated with Selma's decisions, comes to realize Selma's methodology was right after all, and in the gripping final moments of the film, she tells Selma that she did right.

This is a curious, highly depressing, yet exhilarating film (with various experimental camera techniques) about the power of friendship and maternal love -- not to be watched alone!