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 Glauber Rocha • 1964 • Brazil Starring Geraldo Del Rey, Yoná Magalhães, Othon Bastos

Myth, mysticism, and revolution collide in a blistering existential western from Glauber Rocha, a pioneer of B...

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 Mikhail Kalatozov • 1964 • Cuba, Soviet Union
Starring Raquel Revuelta, Luz María Collazo, José Gallardo

Both a landmark of radical political cinema and one of the most visually ravishing films ever made, this legendary hymn to revolution shimmers across the screen like a fever dream...

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

After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and the upheavals of May 1968 came the near religiously revered magnum opus by Jean Eustache. In his long-unavailable body of work, rangin...

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 Rosine Mbakam • 2023 • 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 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 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...

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 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 Ousmane Sembène • 1977 • Senegal
Starring Mamadou Dioumé, Ousmane Sembène, Tabata Ndiaye

In precolonial Senegal, members of the Ceddo (or “outsiders”) kidnap Princess Dior Yacine (Tabata Ndiaye) after her father, the king, pledges loyalty to an ascendant Islamic faction that plans to...

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...

Directed by Lam Nai-choi • 1991 • Hong Kong
Starring Fan Siu-Wong, Gloria Yip, Yukari Oshima

The ultimate Hong Kong black-comic gorefest, this live-action adaptation of the cult manga is a blood feast of entrail-wreathed splatter and literally eye-popping ultraviolence. After he’s sentenced to a...

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 Claire Denis • 2001 • France
Starring Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle

Claire Denis’s poetic take on the body-horror genre is an atmospheric reverie of blood and lust that lays bare the filmmaker’s core artistic concerns around power, desire, and delirium. Newlyweds Shane...

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 Ricky Lau • 1985 • Hong Kong
Starring Lam Ching-Ying, Ricky Hui, Chin Siu-Ho

The film that, along with producer Sammo Hung’s SPOOKY ENCOUNTERS, launched an entire hopping-vampire horror-comedy subgenre is Hong Kong cinema at its most gleefully inventive and gloriously unrestrained. T...

Directed by Lou Ye • 2000 • China
Starring Zhou Xun, Jia Hongsheng, Nai An

A landmark of Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaking, Lou Ye’s international breakthrough reworks elements of VERTIGO and film noir into an impressionistic wash of dreamy images and intoxicating romanticism. Along the indust...

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...