Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery • 1981 • United States
Starring Willem Dafoe, Robert Gordon, Marin Kanter

The first feature by both acclaimed director Kathryn Bigelow and future David Lynch producer Monty Montgomery, as well as the screen debut of star Willem Dafoe, this edgy, s...

Directed by Tim Blake Nelson • 2016 • United States
Starring Sam Waterston, Kristen Stewart, Glenn Close

A snowy New York City night, a beloved teacher, a shocking crime: this provocative drama pieces together the puzzle of a man’s life just before it changes forever. While on his way home one e...

Directed by Sierra Urich • 2023 • United States

In this moving first-person documentary, a young filmmaker delves into her mother and grandmother’s complicated pasts and her own fractured Iranian identity. Having grown up in rural Vermont, far removed from the homeland of her mother, Mitra, and ...

Directed by Tim Blake Nelson • 1997 • United States
Starring Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Nick Stahl

One of the great but long-unheralded debut films, Tim Blake Nelson’s first feature is an emotionally shattering tale of existential desolation in a small Oklahoma town. Unfolding in a fractur...

Directed by Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen • 2000 • United States

Far from a standard music documentary, Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen’s loving portrait of underground musician Benjamin Smoke—speed freak, drag queen, and a true outsider artist in every sense of the word—captures his singular personalit...

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola • 1966 • United States
Starring Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page, Peter Kastner

Francis Ford Coppola’s oft-overlooked second feature is a zanily offbeat entry in the 1960s sex-comedy canon. Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner), a naive nineteen-year-old virgin li...

Directed by Alan Arkin • 1971 • United States
Starring Elliott Gould, Marcia Rodd, Vincent Gardenia

The black-comic stage play by writer and Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer provides the basis for Alan Arkin’s directorial debut, a surreal satire of urban alienation and the sensele...

Directed by Bridgett M. Davis • 1996 • United States
Starring Jake-Ann Jones, Ron Cephas Jones, Patricia DeArcy

A long-unseen jewel of 1990s Black independent filmmaking, Bridgett M. Davis’s fearless exploration of Black female agency centers on Cicely (Jake-Ann Jones), the daughter of a former ...

Directed by Jerry Schatzberg • 1971 • United States
Starring Al Pacino, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint

A fragile romance unfolds against the backdrop of 1970s New York in this unsparing look at heroin addiction, scripted by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne and directed by Jerry Schatzberg. Taking its t...

Directed by Sidney Lumet • 1968 • United States
Starring George Segal, Jack Warden, Joseph Wiseman

Director Sidney Lumet made his first foray into comedy with this wildly irreverent farce, rich in 1960s New York City flavor and Borscht Belt humor. When their buddy, the writer Leslie Braverman (“...

Directed by Harmony Korine • 1999 • United States
Starring Ewen Bremner, Chloë Sevigny, Werner Herzog

The first Dogme 95 film made outside of Europe, Harmony Korine’s follow-up to his divisive GUMMO finds him and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (who shot the original Dogme film, Thomas Vinter...

Directed by Hal Ashby • 1975 • United States
Starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn

SHAMPOO gives us a day in the life of George (Warren Beatty), a Beverly Hills hairdresser and lothario who runs around town on the eve of the 1968 presidential election trying to make heads or tails ...

Directed by Peter Sollett • 2002 • United States
Starring Victor Rasuk, Judy Marte, Melonie Diaz

Vividly set amid New York City’s Dominican community, this warm, naturalistic slice-of-life is one of the brightest gems of early-2000s American independent cinema. Growing up on the Lower East Side,...

Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1977 • United States
Starring John Heard, Lindsay Crouse, Jeff Goldblum

Inspired by director Joan Micklin Silver’s time working at New York’s storied alt weekly the “Village Voice,” this unsung gem of 1970s slice-of-life seriocomedy offers an incisive, bitterswe...

Directed by Cauleen Smith • 1998 • United States
Starring Toby Smith, April Barnett, Will Power

A rediscovered treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s DRYLONGSO embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rat...

Directed by RaMell Ross • 2018 • United States
Starring Quincy Bryant, Daniel Collins

An inspired and intimate portrait of a place and its people, RaMell Ross’s HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING looks at the lives of Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, two young African American men from rura...

Directed by Brady Corbet • 2015 • United States, United Kingdom, Hungary
Starring Robert Pattinson, Bérénice Bejo, Liam Cunningham

A child’s angelic face conceals a budding sociopath in the audacious, senses- shattering feature debut from actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet (THE BRUTALIST). A po...

Directed by Richard Kelly • 2001 • United States
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, James Duval

Described by director Richard Kelly as “‘The Catcher in the Rye’ as told by Philip K. Dick,” this cult classic is a mind-altering experience whose metaphysical enigmas are still being unraveled. T...

Directed by Dennis Hopper • 1980 • United States
Starring Linda Manz, Dennis Hopper, Sharon Farrell

Dennis Hopper’s hurricane-force domestic tragedy is the ’80s answer to EASY RIDER, following troubled youth subculture to its frightening, screaming, self-annihilating extreme. Just out of prison ...

Directed by Michael Lehmann • 1988 • United States
Starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Kim Walker

The ’80s teen comedy gets a deliciously warped and wicked twist in this acidic, ultraquotable cult classic. In one of her definitive roles, Winona Ryder stars as Veronica Sawyer, who becomes pa...

Directed by John Carpenter • 1980 • United States
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins

Long-buried secrets come back to haunt a small town in this triumph of atmosphere and creeping unease from genre great John Carpenter. Drawing inspiration from the moody masterworks of Val L...

Directed by Gregg Araki • 1997 • United States
Starring James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton

You can practically smell the pheromones wafting off this kaleidoscopic odyssey, which finds director Gregg Araki crossing soap-operatic elements with blasts of science fiction, indie-kid cool, and sh...

Directed by Karyn Kusama • 2000 • United States
Starring Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Paul Calderon

Bullied by her father at home and feeling adrift at school, Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) finds refuge in an unexpected pocket of her native Brooklyn—a timeworn boxing gym, where she lea...