Directed by Mira Nair • 1991 • United States, Uganda
Starring Denzel Washington, Sarita Choudhury, Roshan Seth

The vibrant cultures of India, Uganda, and the American South come together in Mira Nair’s MISSISSIPPI MASALA, a luminous look at the complexities of love in the modern melting pot. Yea...

Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • 1945 • United Kingdom
Starring Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey

In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s stunningly photographed comedy, romance flourishes in an unlikely place—the bleak and moody Scottish Hebrides. Wendy Hiller stars as a headstr...

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin

The wildly prolific German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid homage to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk with this update of that filmmaker’s 1955 ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. A ...

Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 1997 • Hong Kong
Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing

One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheun...

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 David Lean • 1955 • United States, United Kingdom
Starring Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi, Darren McGavin

With this sublimely bittersweet tale of romantic longing, director David Lean left behind the British soundstage to capture in radiant Technicolor the sun-splashed glory of Ve...

Directed by Jean Vigo • 1934 • France
Starring Jean Dasté, Dita Parlo, Michel Simon

In Jean Vigo’s hands, an unassuming tale of conjugal love becomes an achingly romantic reverie of desire and hope. Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain, marries Juliette (Dita Parlo), an innocent country girl, and ...

Directed by Wim Wenders • 1987 • Germany, France
Starring Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Peter Falk

WINGS OF DESIRE is one of cinema’s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts—fears, hopes, dreams—of all the peopl...

Criterion Collection Edition #6

Jean Cocteau’s sublime adaptation of Mme. Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy-tale masterpiece—in which the pure love of a beautiful girl melts the heart of a feral but gentle beast—is a landmark of motion picture fantasy, with unforgettably romantic performances by Jean...

Criterion Collection Edition #902

Directed by Donna Deitch • 1985 • United States
Starring Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau

Donna Deitch's swooning and sensual first narrative feature, DESERT HEARTS, was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely inde...

Directed by Claire Denis • 2017 • France
Starring Juliette Binoche, Xavier Beauvois, Philippe Katerine

Two luminaries of French cinema, Claire Denis and Juliette Binoche, unite for the first time in this piercing look at the elusive nature of true love, and the extent to which we are willing to ...

Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1931 • United States
Starring Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Harry Myers

CITY LIGHTS, the most cherished film by Charlie Chaplin, is also his ultimate Little Tramp chronicle. The writer-director-star achieved new levels of grace, in both physical comedy and dra...

Directed by Frank Borzage • 1937 • United States

Suffused with intoxicating romanticism, HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT is a sublime paean to love from Frank Borzage, classic Hollywood’s supreme poet of carnal and spiritual desire. On the run through Europe from her wealthy, cruelly possessive husband...

Criterion Collection Edition #453

Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 1994 • Hong Kong
Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro

The whiplash, double-pronged CHUNGKING EXPRESS is one of the defining works of 1990s cinema and the film that made Wong Kar Wai an instant icon. Two heartsick...

Directed by Miranda July • 2005 • United States
Starring John Hawkes, Miranda July, Miles Thompson

With this compassionate, startling comedy that could have come from no other artistic sensibility, the brilliant Miranda July reveals a world both familiar and strange—an original vision of creativ...

Criterion Collection Edition #622

Directed by Andrew Haigh • 2011 • United Kingdom
Starring Tom Cullen, Chris New

This sensual, remarkably observed, beautifully acted wonder is the breakout feature from British writer-director-editor Andrew Haigh. Rarely has a film been as honest about sexualit...

Directed by Louis Malle • 1958 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Marc Bory

Louis Malle unveiled the natural beauty of Jeanne Moreau in his breakthrough, ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS. With his follow-up, the scandalous smash THE LOVERS (LES AMANTS), he made her a star once and for all. A deeply fe...

Criterion Collection Edition #147

Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 2000 • Hong Kong
Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung Man-yuk

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are form...

Directed by Kathleen Collins • 1982 • United States
Starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones

One of the first feature films directed by an African American woman, Kathleen Collins’s LOSING GROUND tells the story of a marriage between two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives...

Directed by David Lean • 1945 • United Kingdom
Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard

After a chance meeting on a train platform, a married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) begin a muted but passionate, and ultimately doomed, love affair. With its evocatively fog-en...

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 2010 • Italy
Starring Juliette Binoche, William Shimell

The great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami travels to Tuscany for a luminous and provocative romance in which nothing is as it appears. What seems at first to be a straightforward tale of two people—played by...

Criterion Collection Edition #973

Directed by Gillian Armstrong • 1979 • Australia
Starring Judy Davis, Sam Neill

For her award-winning breakthrough film, director Gillian Armstrong drew on teenage author Miles Franklin’s novel, a celebrated turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australian coming-of-ag...

Directed by David Lean • 1949 • United Kingdom
Starring Ann Todd, Trevor Howard, Claude Rains

Four years after David Lean crafted what may be the screen’s most piercing examination of extramarital romance with BRIEF ENCOUNTER, he returned to a similar subject in this exquisite tale of a woman to...

Directed by Jacques Demy • 1964 • France
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo

The angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a h...