Schalcken the Painter

In this haunting adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's 1839 story, Godfried Schalcken, a struggling painter, is forced to confront his own cowardice and ambition when he discovers that his true love, Rose, has been sold into marriage by contract to the ghostly Vanderhausen. As the boundaries between reality and the supernatural blur, Schalcken's world unravels in a tragic dance of love, loss, and terror. Directed and adapted for BBC's Omnibus series, the film is a 70-minute-long docudrama that pays homage to the style of 17th-century painter Schalcken himself, with eerie atmospheric lighting inspired by Vermeer's works.