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...

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...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Bahram Beyzaie • 1972 • Iran
Starring Parviz Fannizadeh, Parvaneh Massoumi, Manuchehr Farid

With brash stylistic exuberance, this first feature from Bahram Beyzaie helped usher in the Iranian New Wave. When he takes a job as a schoolteacher in ...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1963 • Senegal
Starring Ly Abdoulay, Albourah

This groundbreaking short film, which won first prize at the 1963 Touris Film Festival in France, was the directorial debut of Ousmane Sembène.

Restored in 2013 by the Cineteca di...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Juan Bustillo Oro • 1934 • Mexico
Starring Víctor Urruchúa, Carlos Villatoro, Magda Haller

This vividly stylized, broodingly intense early Mexican sound melodrama by Juan Bustillo Oro hinges on an audacious flashback structure. When an ailing m...

Directed by Francesco Rosi • 1962 • Italy
Starring Salvo Randone, Frank Wolff, Pietro Cammarata

July 5, 1950—Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano’s bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon t...

Directed by John Cassavetes • 1959 • United States
Starring Lelia Goldoni, Anthony Ray, Hugh Hurd

John Cassavetes’s directorial debut revolves around a romance in New York City between Lelia (Lelia Goldoni), a light- skinned black woman, and Tony (Anthony Ray), a white man. The relationship is p...

Directed by Albert Lewin • 1951 • United States
Starring James Mason, Ava Gardner

This timeless romance based on the legend of the Flying Dutchman features sumptuous color cinematography by Jack Cardiff. Ava Gardner, one of the most beautiful screen goddesses of all time, plays Pandora, a wom...

Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1961 • United States
Starring Warren Finnerty, Jerome Raphel, Garry Goodrow

Shirley Clarke made a splash—and ignited a landmark censorship case—with her controversial feature debut, an innovative adaptation of Jack Gelber’s off-Broadway play in which the line between...

Directed by Federico Fellini • 1955 • Italy

Federico Fellini's IL BIDONE follows a trio of Italian swindlers who resort to petty schemes in order to con poor people out of their money.

Directed by Jia Zhangke • 1997 • China, Hong Kong
Starring Wang Hongwei, Hao Hongjian, Zuo Baitao

The feature debut of visionary director Jia Zhangke announced the arrival of arguably the most important Chinese filmmaker of his generation. Left behind by friends who have taken advantage of the c...

Directed by Lewis Milestone • 1939 • United States
Starring Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jr., Betty Field

George and Lennie are California migrant workers on the run from the law because of something the simple-minded giant Lennie did. They find work at a local ranch, where they dream of making ...

Criterion Collection Edition #854

Directed by Ermanno Olmi • 1978 • Italy
Starring Luigi Ornaghi, Francesca Moriggi, Omar Brignoli

A painterly and sensual immersion in late nineteenth-century Italian farm life, Ermanno Olmi’s THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS lovingly focuses on four families working fo...

Directed by Agnès Varda • 1968 • France

In her effervescent first California film, Agnès Varda delves into her own family history. The short documentary UNCLE YANCO features Varda tracking down a Greek emigrant relative she’s never met, discovering an artist and kindred soul leading a bohemian l...

Directed by Laurence Olivier • 1955 • United Kingdom
Starring Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Claire Bloom

In RICHARD III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier brings Shakespeare’s masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to ravishing cinematic life. Olivier is diabolically captivat...

Directed by Agnès Varda • 1970 • United States

Agnès Varda turns her camera on an Oakland demonstration against the imprisonment of activist and Black Panthers cofounder Huey P. Newton. In addition to evincing Varda’s fascination with her adopted surroundings and her empathy, this perceptive sho...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1950 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori

A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, RASHOMON is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Four people give different accou...

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project

Directed by Lino Brocka • 1976 • Philippines
Starring Hilda Koronel, Mona Lisa, Ruel Vernal

Jealousy and violence take center stage in this claustrophobic melodrama, a tautly constructed character study set in the slums of Manila. Lino Brocka crafts an evi...

Criterion Collection Edition #965

Directed by Barbara Loden • 1970 • United States
Starring Barbara Loden, Michael Higgins

With her first and only feature film—a hard-luck drama she wrote, directed, and starred in—Barbara Loden turned in a groundbreaking work of American independent cinema, bri...

Directed by Jean Renoir • 1951 • France, United Kingdom, India, United States
Starring Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields

Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature, shot entirely on location in India, is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the fi...