Upstream Color is nominally about a man and woman who are each brainwashed by a thief who controls their minds through a parasite. Once the couple rids themselves of the parasite, they struggle to put their lives back together. But the setup is really just a mechanism for Carruth to explore larger ideas about how our personal histories shape our lives. “It’s about everything that we suspect is the reason why I did that thing yesterday and why I’ll continue to do those things tomorrow,” Carruth says. “It gets to really explore big, big, big ideas.” http://artandseek.net/2013/03/11/shane-carruth-reimagines-the-movies/