Criterion Collection Edition #985

As World War II splits Europe, sixteen-year-old German Jew Salomon (Marco Hofschneider) is separated from his family after fleeing with them to Poland, and finds himself reluctantly assuming various ideological identities in order to hide the deadly secret of hi...

Directed by Đặng Nhật Minh • 1984 • Vietnam
Starring Lê Vân, Nguyen Hữu Mười, Nguyễn Minh Vương

Widely regarded as one of the greatest Vietnamese films ever made, this deeply moving exploration of grief and trauma centers on Duyên (Lê Vân), a young woman whose husband is killed in Vietnam’s post...

Directed by Hideo Nakata • 1998 • Japan
Starring Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Miki Nakatani

The film that launched the craze for J-horror in the West, director Hideo Nakata’s international sensation melded traditional Japanese folklore with contemporary anxieties about the spread of techn...

Directed by Robert Bresson • 1977 • France
Starring Antoine Monnier, Tina Irissari, Henri de Maublanc

“My sickness is that I see clearly.” Robert Bresson’s most controversial film (the French government banned viewers under the age of eighteen from seeing it, believing it would incite a rash of ...

Directed by Alain Resnais • 1966 • France, Sweden
Starring Yves Montand, Ingrid Thulin, Geneviève Bujold

With an Academy Award–nominated, autobiographical screenplay by Spanish political exile Jorge Semprún, LA GUERRE EST FINIE (“The War Is Over”) finds pioneering modernist Alain Resnais channel...

Directed by Med Hondo • 1979 • Algeria, Mauritania, France
Starring Robert Liensol, Roland Bertin, Hélène Vincent

Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s staggering WEST INDIES: THE FUGITIVE SLAVES OF LIBERTY is a sui generis amalgam of historical epic, Broadway revue, Brechtian theater, and joy...

Directed by Stanley Kwan • 2001 • Hong Kong, China
Starring Liu Ye, Hu Jun, Huatong Li

Filmed in secret in Beijing, this tender gay romance by Stanley Kwan combines the timeless conventions of classic melodrama with a radically frank depiction of queer intimacy as it traces, over the course of y...

Directed by Lynne Ramsay • 1999 • United Kingdom
Starring Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews, William Eadie

In her breathtaking and assured debut feature, Lynne Ramsay creates a haunting evocation of a troubled Glasgow childhood. Set during Scotland’s national garbage strike of the mid-1970s, RATCAT...

Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1975 • Senegal
Starring Thierno Leye, Myriam Niang, Seune Samb

An adaptation of Ousmane Sembène’s own 1973 novel, XALA is a hilarious, caustic satire of political corruption under an inept patriarchy. On the night of his wedding to his third bride, government offici...

Directed by Tony Richardson • 1959 • United Kingdom
Starring Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Mary Ure

Based on the smash-hit play by John Osborne that inaugurated Britain’s “angry young men” literary movement, this touchstone of the British New Wave features a searing performance from Richard Burt...

Directed by Leos Carax • 1984 • France
Starring Denis Lavant, Mireille Perrier, Carroll Brooks

The first feature by Leos Carax (made when he was just twenty-three years old) is an intoxicating, lusciously stylized evocation of a nocturnal Paris populated by moody misfits and lost souls. Among th...

Directed by Park Chan-wook • 2000 • South Korea
Starring Lee Yeong-ae, Lee Byung-hun, Song Kang-ho

Superstar director Park Chan-wook achieved his first major success with this masterful mystery thriller, which explores the complex relationship between North and South Korea with searing humanity....

Directed by Felipe Cazals • 1976 • Mexico
Starring Enrique Lucero, Ernesto Gómez Cruz, Rodrigo Puebla

One of Mexico's most highly regarded works of political cinema, CANOA: A SHAMEFUL MEMORY reimagines a real-life incident that had occurred just eight years before its release, when a group of ur...

Directed by Paul Verhoeven • 2021 • France, Netherlands, Belgium
Starring Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling, Daphné Patakia

The ever-provocative Paul Verhoeven brings his subversive vision to a seventeenth-century convent for this ecstatically blasphemous tale of religion, sex, scandal, and pla...

Directed by Lars von Trier • 2000 • Denmark, France
Starring Björk, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse

A heartbreaking performance from avant-pop icon Björk lights up this singular, emotionally wrenching musical from Lars von Trier, who made use of over a hundred handheld digital video cameras to br...

Directed by John Greyson • 1996 • Canada
Starring Brent Carver, Marcel Sabourin, Aubert Pallascio

A visually intoxicating queer rhapsody of desire and repression, revenge and redemption unfolds as a deliriously stylized play-within-a-film in this sumptuous cinematic pageant adapted from the stag...

Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda • 1998 • Japan
Starring Arata, Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima

If you could choose only one memory to hold on to for eternity, what would it be? That’s the question at the heart of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s revelatory international breakthrough, a bittersweet fantasia in which...

Directed by Kidlat Tahimik • 1977 • Philippines Starring Kidlat Tahimik, Mang Fely, Dolores Santamaria

Acclaimed by Werner Herzog as “one of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seven...

Directed by Emilio Fernández • 1951 • Mexico
Starring Ninón Sevilla, Tito Junco, Rodolfo Acosta

A treasure of Mexico’s cinematic golden age, this deliriously plotted blend of gritty crime film, heart-tugging maternal melodrama, and mambo musical is a dazzling showcase for iconic star Ninón Sevi...

Directed by Youssef Chahine • 1969 • Egypt
Starring Mahmoud el-Meliguy, Ezzat el-Alaili, Nagwa Ibrahim

Adapted from a classic novel by Abd al-Rahman Sharqawi, this howl of rage against social injustice is one of director Youssef Chahine’s most influential works, crowned by a career-best perform...

Directed by Alain Resnais • 1959 • France, Japan
Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada

A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a ...

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 ...