Directed by Michael Glawogger • 2005 • Austria, Germany

Michael Glawogger’s startling, unflinching look at some of the world’s most dangerous jobs is an eye-opening confrontation with the kind of backbreaking, life-threatening labor that is often rendered invisible. Shooting amid the harsh condi...

Directed by Joseph Losey • 1951 • United States
Starring John Drew Barrymore, Preston Foster, Joan Lorring

The last film director Joseph Losey made in Hollywood before being blacklisted is both a searing crime drama and a sensitive loss-of-innocence tale, bristling with hard-hitting social criti...

Directed by Jem Cohen • 2018 • United States

Hardcore punk legend Ian MacKaye (Fugazi, Minor Threat) discusses memorable experiences from the many live shows he’s played.

Directed by Jem Cohen • 1997 • United States
Starring Elliott Smith

This intimate portrait of singer-songwriter Elliott Smith features him performing three songs.

Directed by Jem Cohen • 2010 • Spain

A portrait of the film critic, educator, and daughter of legendary filmmaker Jean Vigo combines her memories with footage shot in Northern Spain.

Directed by John Berry • 1951 • United States
Starring John Garfield, Shelley Winters, Wallace Ford

John Garfield’s final film before his blacklisting and untimely death is a slam-bang pulp noir crackling with tightly wound tension. In one of his finest performances, Garfield plays a hardened so...

Directed by Robert Altman • 1973 • United States
Starring Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden

Robert Altman updates Raymond Chandler for the liberated, hedonistic 1970s in this brilliantly idiosyncratic adaptation of one of the writer’s most renowned novels. Elliott Gould brings a ...

Directed by Tim Blake Nelson • 2001 • United States
Starring David Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel

An unflinching reckoning with the horrors of the Holocaust, this intense moral drama from Tim Blake Nelson (adapting his own play) considers the cost of survival in the most extreme of circu...

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni • 1957 • Italy, United States
Starring Steve Cochran, Alida Valli, Dorian Gray

Years before his international breakthrough L’AVVENTURA, Michelangelo Antonioni made his first masterpiece with IL GRIDO, a raw expression of anguish that remains one of Italian cine...

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery • 1981 • United States
Starring Willem Dafoe, Robert Gordon, Marin Kanter

The first feature by both acclaimed director Kathryn Bigelow and future David Lynch producer Monty Montgomery, as well as the screen debut of star Willem Dafoe, this edgy, s...

Directed by Sierra Urich • 2023 • United States

In this moving first-person documentary, a young filmmaker delves into her mother and grandmother’s complicated pasts and her own fractured Iranian identity. Having grown up in rural Vermont, far removed from the homeland of her mother, Mitra, and ...

Directed by Anatole Litvak • 1941 • United States
Starring John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell

John Garfield and Ida Lupino star in the big-screen adaptation of Irwin Shaw’s play “The Gentle People,” a pre–World War II allegory warning of the seductive allure and danger inherent in preten...

Directed by Robert Wise • 1959 • United States
Starring Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters

Star Harry Belafonte produced this gritty, New York–set noir, which doubles as both a tense heist thriller and an X-ray of 1950s racial tensions. In need of quick money, fallen former cop David ...

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis • 1950 • United States
Starring Peggy Cummins, John Dall, Berry Kroeger

Bart Tare (John Dall) has been enamored with firearms since he was a kid. Annie Laurie Star (Peggy Cummins) is the sharp-shooting queen of a traveling carnival. When Bart beats Laurie in a sexuall...

Directed by Edward Dmytryk • 1947 • United States
Starring Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan

This gritty film noir made history as the first Hollywood film to confront antisemitism. Three of the era’s most celebrated Roberts—Young, Mitchum, and Ryan—star in the hard-hitting tale of a pol...

Directed by Jem Cohen • 2022 • United States

An unconventional exploration of the life and art of the singular painter grapples with his work’s radical legacy.

Directed by Tim Blake Nelson • 2009 • United States
Starring Edward Norton, Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss

Director Tim Blake Nelson’s audacious, tonally assured blend of black comedy and crime thriller features a marvelous dual performance from Edward Norton as identical twins Bill and Brady ...

Directed by Jem Cohen • 2015 • United States

In fifteen linked chapters shot in locations ranging from Moscow to New York to Istanbul, Jem Cohen merges city symphony, diary film, and personal/political essay to create a vivid portrait of contemporary life. Perhaps the most personal of Cohen's fi...

Directed by Fritz Lang • 1943 • United States
Starring Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan, Anna Lee

The combination of Bertolt Brecht’s eloquent script (the legendary playwright’s only Hollywood credit), director Fritz Lang’s potent moral themes, and noirish cinematography by the great James Wong How...

Directed by Aram Avakian • 1970 • United States
Starring Stacy Keach, James Earl Jones, Harris Yulin

This X-rated, cult-classic black comedy is one of the most subversive, totally nihilistic transmissions from the fringes of the 1970s New Hollywood. A daring adaptation of the novel by John Barth...

Directed by André De Toth • 1944 • United States
Starring Alexander Knox, Marsha Hunt, Henry Travers

The first Hollywood film to confront the atrocities of the Holocaust, this chilling exploration of the psychology of fascism was made during World War II, but actually anticipates the Nuremberg t...

Directed by Ifeyinwa Arinze • 2023 • United States
Starring Odera Adimorah, Isley Key Brison, Lauralie Mufute

When her widowed mother has a male friend over for dinner, an observant Nigerian American teenager acts out, setting up a clash that ultimately leads her to a deeper understanding of her...

Directed by John Carpenter • 1980 • United States
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins

Long-buried secrets come back to haunt a small town in this triumph of atmosphere and creeping unease from genre great John Carpenter. Drawing inspiration from the moody masterworks of Val L...

Directed by Jia Zhangke • 2006 • China
Starring Zhao Tao, Han Sanming, Wang Hongwei

Jia Zhangke employs an eloquent hybrid of documentary and fiction to tell the story of those left behind by a rapidly transforming Chinese society. Great changes have come to the town of Fengjie due to the constr...