Directed by Yuen Woo-ping • 1979 • Hong Kong
Starring Sammo Hung, Kwan Tak-hing, Yuen Biao

Hot on the heels of his blockbuster Jackie Chan hit DRUNKEN MASTER, the legendary martial-arts director Yuen Woo-ping helmed another rollicking star vehicle. This time, rising talent Sammo Hung plays Lam S...

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 Cristi Puiu • 2005 • Romania
Starring Ion Fiscuteanu, Luminița Gheorghiu, Doru Ana

Hailed as one of the defining works of twenty-first-century cinema thus far, Cristi Puiu’s unflinching, darkly comic bureaucratic nightmare heralded the arrival of the Romanian New Wave as a major cine...

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 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 P. J. Hogan • 1994 • Australia
Starring Toni Collette, Bill Hunter, Rachel Griffiths

The perfect marriage of feel-good comedy and heartfelt drama, MURIEL’S WEDDING is the beloved Australian hit that launched the careers of Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths and put ABBA back on the c...

Directed by Bo Widerberg • 1967 • Sweden
Starring Pia Degermark, Thommy Berggren, Lennart Malmer

Bo Widerberg reached new heights of visual lyricism with this sublime retelling of a real-life nineteenth-century romantic tragedy. Bound by their all-consuming desire, a young circus tightrope walke...

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 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 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 Jacques Audiard • 2005 • France
Starring Romain Duris, Niels Arestrup, Jonathan Zaccaï

A riveting character study in the guise of a gritty underworld thriller, Jacques Audiard’s international breakthrough features an explosive performance from Romain Duris as a real-estate broker tor...

Directed by Alberto Gout • 1950 • Mexico
Starring Ninón Sevilla, Tito Junco, Andrea Palma

A darkly glittering feminist revenge tale played at fever-pitch delirium, this oft-cited pinnacle of the popular Mexican cine de rumberas genre—dizzyingly plotted “fallen women” melodramas studded with show...

Directed by Olivier Assayas • 1998 • France
Starring Mathieu Amalric, Virginie Ledoyen, François Cluzet

Having chronicled the heady abandon of adolescence in COLD WATER, renowned French auteur Olivier Assayas turned his attention to another in-between stage of life: the moment when the seemingly...

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...

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 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 Jia Zhang-Ke • 2004 • China
Starring Zhao Tao, Cheng Taishen, Jing Jue

An at once intimate and expansive exploration of globalization from visionary director Jia Zhang-Ke, THE WORLD takes place in the eponymous theme park on the outskirts of Beijing, where iconic monuments from the E...

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 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 Hasse Ekman • 1950 • Sweden
Starring Eva Henning, Ulf Palme, Anders Ek

One of the most acclaimed Swedish films of all time (heralded as a masterpiece by no less than Ingmar Bergman), this moody, masterfully crafted psychological mystery unfolds in a tantalizing series of CITIZEN KANE...

Directed by Kira Muratova • 1989 • Ukraine, Soviet Union
Starring Olga Antonova, Sergei Popov, Galina Zakhurdayeva

Widely considered Kira Muratova’s masterpiece, THE ASTHENIC SYNDROME is also Soviet cinema’s grand avant-comic opus, a deconstructive portrait of the nation in the final, frenzied s...

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...