Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Humberto Solás • 1968 • Cuba
Starring Raquel Revuelta, Eslinda Núñez, Adela Legrá

A breathtaking vision of Cuban revolutionary history wrought with white-hot intensity by Humberto Solás, this operatic epic tells the story of a changing country ...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Héctor Babenco • 1981 • Brazil
Starring Fernando Ramos da Silva, Jorge Julião, Gilberto Moura

With its bracing blend of unflinching realism and aching humanity, Héctor Babenco’s electrifying look at lost youth fighting to survive on the bottom ...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Edward Yang • 1985 • Taiwan
Starring Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Chin

Edward Yang’s second feature is a mournful anatomy of a city caught between the past and the present. Made in collaboration with Yang's fellow New Taiwan Cinema master Hou Hsiao-hs...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Usmar Ismail • 1954 • Indonesia
Starring A. N. Alcaff, Dhalia, Netty Herawaty

Giving voice to the anguish of a nation fighting for its soul, Usmar Ismail’s AFTER THE CURFEW follows the descent into disillusionment of a former freedom fighter wh...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Emilio Gómez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann • 1936 • Mexico
Starring Silvio Hernández del Valle, Antonio Lara, Miguel Figueroa

Early in his career, the Austrian-born future Oscar winner Fred Zinnemann codirected with Emilio Gómez Muriel the politica...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Ermek Shinarbaev • 1989 • Kazakhstan
Starring Aleksandr Pan, Valentina Tyo, Kasym Zhakibayev

A child is raised in Korea to avenge the death of his father’s first child in this decades-spanning tale of obsession and violence, the third collabora...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Kim Ki-young • 1960 • South Korea
Starring Kim Jin-kyu, Ju Jung-nyeo, Lee Eun-shim

A torrent of sexual obsession, revenge, and betrayal is unleashed under one roof in this venomous melodrama from South Korean master Kim Ki-young. Immensely popu...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty • Senegal • 1973
Starring Magaye Niang, Mareme Niang, Aminata Fall

With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this Fren...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Ahmed El Maânouni • 1981 • Morocco

The beloved Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane is the dynamic subject of this captivating musical documentary. Storytellers through song, with connections to political theater, the band became an international sens...

Criterion Collection Edition #918

A breathtaking fusion of poetry, ethnography, and cinema, Sergei Parajanov’s masterwork overflows with unforgettable images and sounds. In a series of tableaux that blend the tactile with the abstract, THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES revives the splendors of Armenian ...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea • 1968 • Cuba
Starring Sergio Corrieri, Daisy Granados, Omar Valdés

This film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea is the most renowned work in the history of Cuban cinema. After his wife and family flee in the wake of the Bay of Pigs i...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Lino Brocka • 1975 • Philippines
Starring Hilda Koronel, Rafael Roco Jr., Lou Salvador Jr.

Lino Brocka achieved international acclaim with this candid portrait of 1970s Manila, a breakout example of the more serious-minded filmmaking the direct...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Mário Peixoto • 1931 • Brazil
Starring Olga Breno, Taciana Rei, Carmen Santos

An astonishing creation, LIMITE is the only feature by the Brazilian director and author Mário Peixoto, made when he was just twenty-two years old. Inspired by a haun...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Lütfi Ö Akad • 1966 • Turkey
Starring Yılmaz Güney

Set along the Turkish-Syrian frontier, this terse, elemental tale of smugglers contending with a changing social landscape brought together two giants of Turkish cinema. Director Lütfi Ö. Akad ...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Metin Erksan • 1964 • Turkey
Starring Erol Taş, Hülya Koçyiğit, Ulvi Doğan

Winner of the prestigious Golden Bear at the 1964 Berlin International Film Festival, Metin Erksan’s wallop of a melodrama follows the machinations of an unrepentantly s...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Ritwik Ghatak • 1973 • Bangladesh
Starring Kabari Choudhury, Roushan Jamil, Prabir Mitra

The Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak’s stunningly beautiful, elegiac saga concerns the tumultuous lives of people in fishing villages along the banks of th...

Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • 1948 • United Kingdom
Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring

THE RED SHOES, the singular fantasia from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is cinema’s quintessential backstage drama, as well as one of the most glorious Tech...

Directed by Fernando de Fuentes • 1934 • Mexico
Starring Marta Roel, Enrique del Campo, Carlos Villatoro

Lost in the forest, a trio of hikers enmeshed in an adulterous love triangle take refuge in a strange monastery that seems frozen in time. As bizarre portents—a bat-shaped shadow without a so...

Directed by Sarah Maldoror • 1972 • Angola
Starring Domingos de Oliveira, Elisa Andrade, Jean M’Vondo

This revolutionary bombshell by Sarah Maldoror chronicles the awakening of Angola’s independence movement. Based on a true story, SAMBIZANGA follows a young woman as she makes her way from the o...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul • 2000 • Thailand
Starring Duangjai Hiransri, Somsri Pinyopol, Kannikar Narong

Apichatpong Weerasethakul brought an appetite for experimentation to Thai cinema with his debut feature, an uncategorizable work that refra...

Directed by Satyajit Ray • 1958 • India
Starring Chhabi Biswas, Padma Devi, Pinaki Sen Gupta

With THE MUSIC ROOM (JALSAGHAR), Satyajit Ray brilliantly evokes the crumbling opulence of the world of a fallen aristocrat (the beloved actor Chhabi Biswas) desperately clinging to a fading way of life....

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1966 • Senegal, France
Starring M'Bissine Thérèse Diop

Ousmane Sembène was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most renowned African director of the twentieth century—and yet h...