Directed by Werner Herzog • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Bruno S., Walter Ladengast, Brigitte Mira

Based on real events, THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER tells the story of a young man imprisoned in a basement dungeon for the first seventeen years of his life, devoid of human contact, until his capto...

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 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 John Woo • 1990 • Hong Kong
Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Jacky Cheung, Simon Yam

One of director John Woo’s most ambitious and emotionally charged films, this intense action epic follows the fates of three friends—gangsters Ben (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), Frank (Jacky Cheung), and Paul (...

Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien • 2001 • Taiwan
Starring Shu Qi, Jack Kao, Duan Chun-hao

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s neon-splashed reverie is a dreamlike drift through the night world of early-2000s Taipei. From the year 2011, the wayward Vicky (Shu Qi)—a bar hostess caught between a jealously possessive boyf...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1982 • West Germany
Starring Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale

Werner Herzog’s infamously arduous productions were already legendary when he outdid himself with FITZCARRALDO, a feat as utterly quixotic and improbable as its protagonist. Klaus Kinski stars as the wild-ey...

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...

Criterion Collection Edition #535

Directed by Nagisa Oshima • 1983 • Japan
Starring David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tom Conti

In this captivating, skewed World War II drama from Nagisa Oshima, David Bowie regally embodies Celliers, a British officer interned by the Japanese as a POW. Rock star R...

Directed by Maurice Pialat • 1991 • France
Starring Jacques Dutronc, Alexandra London, Bernard Le Coq

Maurice Pialat’s visually stunning penultimate work is an epic, masterful dramatization of the final months in the life of the troubled painter (played by musician Jacques Dutronc in a César-win...

Directed by Bigas Luna • 1993 • Spain, Italy, France
Starring Javier Bardem, Maribel Verdú, Benicio Del Toro

Bigas Luna’s follow-up to his international hit JAMÓN JAMÓN is a deliriously libidinous, scathingly satirical takedown of toxic machismo and capitalist excess. A superbly earthy Javier Ba...

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 Mikio Naruse • 1960 • Japan
Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko Dan

WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse’s finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko (played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine), who works as a bar hoste...

Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 2008 • Hong Kong, Taiwan
Starring Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung Man Yuk

From director Wong Kar Wai comes the definitive version of ASHES OF TIME, an epic martial-arts fever dream of larger-than-life characters, breathtaking landscapes, and stunning ...

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 ...

Directed by Atom Egoyan • 1989 • Canada
Starring Michael McManus, Arsinée Khanjian, Gabrielle Rose

Haunting images and obsessive sexuality merge in this postmodern thriller about loss, love, power, and the distance that modern technology puts between us. The story of four people—an actor/gigolo ...

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 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 Chantal Akerman • 1975 • Belgium
Starring Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte

A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, whose chores ...

Directed by Stanley Kwan • 1987 • Hong Kong
Starring Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, Alex Man Chi-leung

Cantopop superstars Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung display the androgynous magnetism that made them icons as doomed lovers in this emblematic film of Hong Kong’s Second New Wave, directed by pioneering...

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 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 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...