Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet • 2001 • France, Germany
Starring Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus

The Gallic sensation that charmed the world, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s irresistible cinematic soufflé introduces us to the unforgettable Amélie (Audrey Tautou in the role that made her an internat...

Directed by Jean Eustache • 1973 • France
Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Françoise Lebrun, Isabelle Weingarten

After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and May 1968 came THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE, the legendary, autobiographical magnum opus by Jean Eustache that captures, through the microc...

Directed by Peter Ho-sun Chan • 1996 • Hong Kong
Starring Leon Lai, Maggie Cheung, Kristy Yang

This immensely moving tale of love struggling against fate unfolds over the course of a decade as a pair of Chinese mainlanders—the naive Li Xiao-jun (Leon Lai) and the streetwise Li Qiao (Maggie Cheun...

Directed by Rosine Mbakam • 2011 • Belgium, Cameroon
Starring Pierrette Aboheu, Karelle Kenmogne, Cécile Tchana

Over the past decade, Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam has distinguished herself with her incisive observational documentary portraits of African women. With MAMBAR PIERRETTE, her f...

Directed by Lionel Rogosin • 1959 • United States
Starring Miriam Makeba, Vinah Makeba, Zachria Makeba

One of the bravest and most powerful political films ever made, Lionel Rogosin’s urgent indictment of racial injustice—filmed in secret in 1950s Johannesburg, South Africa—follows a young Zulu ...

Directed by Olivier Assayas • 2016 • France
Starring Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz

With this intimate supernatural drama, the celebrated French filmmaker Olivier Assayas conjures a melancholy ghost story set in the world of celebrity and haute couture. Starring Kristen Stewart, ...

Directed by Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky • 2000 • Hungary
Starring Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla

This mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by László Krasznahorkai, WERCKMEISTER HARMONIE...

Directed by Paul Vecchiali • 1970 • France
Starring Jacques Perrin, Julien Guiomar, Eva Simonet

A singularly strange and haunting French giallo released before directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci brought the subgenre to international prominence, Paul Vecchiali’s THE STRANGLER equally su...

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick • 1955 • United Kingdom
Starring Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom

This classic caper comedy is one of the finest examples of the distinctly English brand of macabre humor that flourished at Britain’s celebrated Ealing Studios. Alec Guinness stars as the ...

Directed by Marleen Gorris • 1982 • Netherlands
Starring Edda Barends, Nelly Frijda, Henriëtte Tol

After three women—strangers with no premeditated motive—kill a male shopkeeper in the middle of the day, a female psychiatrist (Cox Habbema) is assigned to the case to find out why. Marleen Gorris’...

Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien • 1983 • Taiwan
Starring Doze Niu Cheng-Tse, Zhang Shi, Lin Hsiu-Ling

THE BOYS FROM FENGKUEI was Hou Hsiao-hsien’s fourth film as director, but in many ways it can be viewed as his first mature work—the one in which he moved away from commercial comedies toward a more...

Directed by Makoto Shinkai • 2016 • Japan
Starring Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita

Mitsuha and Taki are complete strangers living separate lives until they suddenly switch places. Mitsuha wakes up in Taki’s body, and he in hers. This occurrence happens randomly, and they must ad...

Directed by Lawrence Huntington • 1947 • United Kingdom
Starring James Mason, Rosamund John, Pamela Mason

Brooding gothic atmosphere and an intense performance from James Mason (at the height of his British stardom just before he decamped for Hollywood) crank up the tension in this Hitchcockian ...

Directed by Michael Powell • 1960 • United Kingdom
Starring Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey

Having brought British cinema into exalted realms of fantasy and imagination, Michael Powell took a dark detour into obsession, voyeurism, and violence with this groundbreaking metacinematic invest...

Directed by James Ivory • 1987 • United Kingdom
Starring James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves

James Ivory’s sumptuously romantic adaptation of E. M. Forster’s posthumously published novel “Maurice” is a heart-racing story of coming to terms with one’s sexuality and identity in the face of disa...

Directed by Jindřich Polák • 1963 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Zdeněk Štěpánek, František Smolík, Dana Medřická

A visionary work of Eastern Bloc science fiction, this mesmerizing Czechoslovak adaptation of a novel by Stanisław Lem melds Cold War ideology and utopian futurism into a tour de force of...

Criterion Collection Edition #304

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH is a daring exploration of science fiction as an art form. The story of an alien on an elaborate rescue mission provides the launching pad for Nicolas Roeg’s visual tour de force, a formally adventurous examination of alienation in cont...

Directed by Mick Jackson • 1984 • United Kingdom, Australia
Starring Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, David Brierly

In September 1984, it was aired on the BBC and shocked tens of millions of UK viewers. Four months later, it was broadcast in America and became the most-watched basic-cable program ...

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier • 1980 • France, West Germany
Starring Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton

Part human drama, part sci-fi cautionary tale, Bertrand Tavernier’s DEATH WATCH unfolds in a future where death by disease has become extremely rare. When it is discovered that...

Directed by Geoff Murphy • 1985 • New Zealand
Starring Bruno Lawrence, Alison Routledge, Anzac Wallace

In this utterly original and provocative take on the “sole survivor” genre, Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence), a mid-level scientist working on a global energy project, wakes up to a nightmare. After...

Directed by Ken Russell • 1986 • United Kingdom
Starring Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Natasha Richardson

Ken Russell imagines the origins of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” as only he could: with a feverish, hallucinatory excess bordering on the demented. On a stormy night in 1816 at Lord Byron’s ...

Directed by Val Guest • 1961 • United Kingdom
Starring Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Edward Judd

Distinguished by its chilling, matter-of-fact realism and thought-provoking dialogue, this Cold War–era doomsday thriller stands as one of the finest examples of its kind. Following simultaneous nuclear d...

Directed by Vojtěch Jasný • 1963 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Jan Werich, Emília Vášáryová, Vlastimil Brodský

In this modern-day fairy tale and rediscovered Czech New Wave cult classic, an ordinary Bohemian village is visited by a magician (Jan Werich), his beautiful assistant (Emília Vásáryová), a...

Directed by Mark Lewis • 1988 • Australia
Starring Tip Byrne, Glen Ingram, H. W. Kerr

Mark Lewis takes the nature documentary into new realms of the humorous, surreal, and downright bizarre with this stranger-than-fiction tale of the ultimate environmental self-own. The cane toad—Bufo marinus, a...