Directed by Todd Solondz • 2010 • United States
Starring Ally Sheedy, Allison Janney, Ciarán Hinds

In LIFE DURING WARTIME, independent filmmaker Todd Solondz explores contemporary American existence and the nature of forgiveness with his customary dry humor and queasy precision. The film functio...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1986 • United States
Starring Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, Amanda Goodwin

Sex work is portrayed with radical nonjudgment in Lizzie Borden’s immersive, richly detailed look at the rhythms and rituals of society’s most stigmatized profession. Inspired by the experience...

Directed by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin • 1961 • France

Few films can claim as much influence on the course of cinema history as CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER. The fascinating result of a collaboration between filmmaker-anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, this vanguard work of what Mor...

Directed by Jacques Deray • 1969 • France
Starring Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet

The bright sun of the French Riviera is deceptive in this alluring work of slow-burn suspense from thriller specialist Jacques Deray and legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. Formerly one of Euro...

Directed by Jacques Audiard • 2015 • France
Starring Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby

With this Palme d’Or–winning drama, which deftly combines seemingly disparate genres, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard cemented his status as a titan of contemporary world ...

Directed by Orson Welles • 1952 • Italy, United States
Starring Orson Welles, Suzanne Cloutier, Micheál MacLiammóir

Gloriously cinematic despite its tiny budget, Orson Welles’s OTHELLO is a testament to the filmmaker’s stubborn willingness to pursue his vision to the ends of the earth. Unmatched...

Directed by Steve James • 1994 • United States

Two ordinary inner-city Chicago kids dare to reach for the impossible, professional basketball glory, in this epic chronicle of hope and faith. Filmed over a five-year period, HOOP DREAMS, by Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert, follows y...

Directed by Richard Linklater • 1991 • United States
Starring Richard Linklater, Kathy McCarty, Rudy Basquez

SLACKER, directed by Richard Linklater, presents a day in the life of a loose-knit Austin, Texas, subculture populated by eccentric and overeducated young people. Shooting on 16 mm for a ...

Directed by Mike Leigh • 1999 • United Kingdom
Starring Allan Corduner, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall

The world of Gilbert and Sullivan comes to vivid life in director Mike Leigh’s extraordinary dramatization of the staging of the duo’s legendary 1885 comic opera THE MIKADO. Jim Broadbent and All...

Directed by Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne • 1999 • Belgium
Starring Émilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, Anne Yernaux

The Belgian filmmaking team of brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne turned heads with ROSETTA, an intense vérité drama that closely follows a poor young woman struggling ...

Directed by Monte Hellman • 1966 • United States
Starring Jack Nicholson, Cameron Mitchell, Harry Dean Stanton

Working from a thoughtful script by Jack Nicholson, Monte Hellman fashioned this moody and tense western about a trio of cowhands who are mistaken for robbers and must outrun and hide f...

Directed by Wim Wenders • 1999 • Germany, United States

Traveling from the streets of Havana to the stage of Carnegie Hall, this revelatory documentary captures a forgotten generation of Cuba’s brightest musical talents as they enjoy an unexpected encounter with world fame. The veteran vocalists...

Directed by Ramin Bahrani • 2005 • United States
Starring Ahmad Razvi, Leticia Dolera, Charles Daniel Sandoval

A modest miracle of twenty-first-century neorealism, the acclaimed debut feature by Ramin Bahrani speaks quietly but profoundly to the experiences of those living on the margins of the ...

Directed by Joyce Chopra • 1985 • United States
Starring Laura Dern, Treat Williams, Mary Kay Place

Suspended between carefree youth and the harsh realities of the adult world, a teenage girl experiences an unsettling awakening in this haunting vision of innocence lost. Based on Joyce Carol Oate...

Directed by Ramin Bahrani • 2007 • United States
Starring Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales, Rob Sowulski

For his acclaimed follow-up to MAN PUSH CART, Ramin Bahrani once again turned his camera on a slice of New York City rarely seen on-screen: Willets Point, Queens, an industrial sliver of au...

Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1968 • Senegal
Starring Makuredia Guey, Yunus Ndiaye, Isseu Niang

This second feature by Ousmane Sembène was the first movie ever made in the Wolof language—a major step toward the realization of the trailblazing Senegalese filmmaker’s dream of creating a cinema by,...

Directed by Claire Denis • 2017 • France
Starring Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois, Philippe Katerine

Two luminaries of French cinema, Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche, unite for the first time in this piercing look at the elusive nature of true love, and the extent to which we are willing to ...

Directed by Stanley Kubrick • 1964 • United Kingdom
Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden

Stanley Kubrick’s painfully funny take on Cold War anxiety is one of the fiercest satires of human folly ever to come out of Hollywood. The matchless shape-shifter Peter Sellers plays thr...

Directed by David Gordon Green • 2000 • United States
Starring Candace Evanofski, Donald Holden, Damien Jewan Lee

Over the course of one hot summer, a group of children in the decaying rural South must confront a tangle of difficult choices. An ambitiously constructed, elegantly photographed med...

Directed by Carlos Reygadas • 2002 • Mexico
Starring Alejandro Ferretis, Magdalena Flores

In this preternaturally assured feature debut by Carlos Reygadas, a man (Alejandro Ferretis) travels from Mexico City to an isolated village to commit suicide; once there, however, he meets a pious elderly ...

Directed by Shohei Imamura • 1962 • Japan
Starring Jitsuko Yoshimura, Yoko Minamida, Hiroyuki Nagato

A dazzling, unruly portrait of postwar Japan, PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS details, with escalating absurdity, the desperate power struggles between small-time gangsters in the port town of Yokosuka. Sho...