The Phantom of Liberty (Le Fantôme de la liberté)

The Phantom of Liberty (French: Le Fantôme de la liberté) is a 1974 French-Italian surrealist dark comedy directed by Luis Buñuel, who co-wrote the screenplay with his longtime collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière. Rather than following a conventional storyline, the film unfolds as a chain of loosely connected, often absurd episodes, with characters drifting from one strange situation into the next.

Through this fragmented structure, Buñuel delivers a ribald satire aimed at family, church, the military and bourgeois conventions, questioning the stability of social norms and reality itself. The title echoes the famous opening of the Communist Manifesto, and Buñuel later counted the film among a loose trilogy devoted to the search for truth, alongside The Milky Way and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The ensemble cast includes Adriana Asti, Julien Bertheau, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michael Lonsdale, Michel Piccoli and Monica Vitti, and the film is widely regarded as one of Buñuel's finest works.