In the following conversation, recorded remotely in 2020, filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Ari Aster discuss the mission, evolution, and ongoing work of The Film Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving motion-picture history that Scorsese established in 1990.

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 through the eyes of three women, each na...

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 rung of Brazilian society helped put th...

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-hsien, TAIPEI STORY chronicles the grow...

Directed by Ermek Shinarbaev • 1989 • Soviet Union
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 collaboration between director Ermek Shinarbaev...

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 popular in its home country when it was rele...

Directed by Mikko Niskanen • 1972 • Finland
Starring Mikko Niskanen, Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala, Paavo Pentikäinen

Newly restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, this long-unsung Finnish classic has been hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as “one of the masterpieces of European Cinema.” A relentles...

Directed by Mikko Niskanen • 1972 • Finland
Starring Mikko Niskanen, Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala, Paavo Pentikäinen

Newly restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, this long-unsung Finnish classic has been hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as “one of the masterpieces of European Cinema.” A relentles...

Directed by Mikko Niskanen • 1972 • Finland
Starring Mikko Niskanen, Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala, Paavo Pentikäinen

Newly restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, this long-unsung Finnish classic has been hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as “one of the masterpieces of European Cinema.” A relentles...

Directed by Mikko Niskanen • 1972 • Finland
Starring Mikko Niskanen, Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala, Paavo Pentikäinen

Newly restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, this long-unsung Finnish classic has been hailed by Aki Kaurismäki as “one of the masterpieces of European Cinema.” A relentles...

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 who is unable to readjust to civilian life...

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 politically and emotionally searing REDES. In th...

Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty • 1973 • Senegal
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 French New Wave-influenced fantasy-drama, tw...

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 sensation (Western music critics have ofte...

Directed by Sergei Parajanov • 1969 • Soviet Union

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 splen...

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 invasion, the bourgeois intellectual Serg...

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 director had turned to after building a career...

Directed by Mario 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 haunting André Kertész photograph on the cov...

Directed by Lütfi 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 had already made some of his country’s ...

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 selfish tobacco farmer who builds a dam t...

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 the Titas River in pre-Partition East Benga...

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 Jean Vigo • 1934 • France

In Jean Vigo's hands, an unassuming tale of conjugal love becomes an achingly romantic reverie of desire and hope. Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain, marries Juliette (Dita Parlo), an innocent country girl, and the two climb aboard Jean's boat, the L'Atalan...

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 monk recognizes a new brother at his cloi...