Directed by Aki Kaurismäki • 1990 • Finland, Sweden

Kaurismäki took his penchant for despairing character studies to unspeakably grim depths in the shockingly entertaining The Match Factory Girl. Kati Outinen is memorably impenetrable as Iris, whose grinding days as a cog in a factory wheel, a...

Directed by Lars von Trier • 1996 • Denmark
Starring Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, Katrin Cartlidge

Lars von Trier became an international sensation with this galvanizing realist fable about sex and spiritual transcendence. In an Oscar-nominated performance, Emily Watson stuns as Bess, a simp...

Directed by Olivier Assayas • 1996 • France
Starring Maggie Cheung, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Richard

Olivier Assayas’s live-wire international breakthrough stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself: a Hong Kong action movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in...

Directed by Mike Leigh • 1996 • United Kingdom

Mike Leigh's Palme D'Or winning family drama concerns a working class woman who is shocked when the mixed-race daughter she gave up at birth tracks her down.

Directed by Atom Egoyan • 1997 • Canada
Starring Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood

Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, Atom Egoyan’s masterful adaptation of a novel by Russell Banks traces the aftermath of a school bus accident in a small Canadian town that leaves fourteen children dead. W...

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1997 • Iran

Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry is an emotionally complex meditation on life and death. Middle-aged Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives through the hilly outskirts of Tehran, s...

Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien • 1998 • Taiwan
Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Michiko Hada, Annie Shizuka Inoh

An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, this gorgeous period reverie by Hou Hsiao-hsien traces the romantic intrigue, ...

Directed by Claire Denis • 1999 • France
Starring Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin

With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd, Sailor,” Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked ...

Directed by Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne • 1999 • Belgium
Starring Émilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, Anne Yernaux

The Belgian filmmaking team of brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne turned heads with ROSETTA, an intense vérité drama that closely follows a poor young woman struggling ...

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 formal and polite—until a discovery abo...

Directed by Edward Yang • 2000 • Taiwan, Japan
Starring Nianzhen Wu, Elaine Jin, Issey Ogata

The extraordinary, internationally embraced YI YI (A ONE AND A TWO . . .), directed by the late Taiwanese master Edward Yang, follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginnin...

Directed by Lucrecia Martel • 2001 • Argentina, Spain
Starring Martín Adjemián, Diego Baenas, Leonora Balcarce

The release of Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema. With a radical and disturbing take on narrative, beaut...

Directed by Jia Zhangke • 2004 • China
Starring Zhao Tao, Cheng Taishen, Jing Jue

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