Directed by Robert Lee King • 2000 • United States, Australia
Starring Lauren Ambrose, Thomas Gibson, Nicholas Brendon

Adapted from the play by camp icon Charles Busch, this wickedly satirical genre mash-up combines the GIDGET-style beach movie of the ’60s with the ’80s teen slasher for a wildly...

Directed by Shinji Somai • 1993 • Japan
Starring Tomoko Tabata, Junko Sakurada, Kiichi Nakai

When her parents split and her father (Kiichi Nakai) moves out of their family home, Renko (Tomoko Tabata), a bright and energetic sixth-grade girl, is left alone with her mother, Nazuna (Junko Sakurada)...

Directed by Michael Imperioli • 2009 • United States
Starring Steve Schirripa, Sharon Angela, Emory Cohen

The directorial debut from “Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli is an intense, emotionally raw portrait of lost souls attempting to fill the spiritual voids at the center of their lives. Over t...

Directed by Christophe Honoré • 2004 • France, Portugal, Spain
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Louis Garrel, Emma de Caunes

Sex, death, and forbidden desires merge in Christophe Honoré’s daring, controversial adaptation of the novel by transgressive eroticist Georges Bataille. Amid the sun-splashed r...

Directed by Susan Streitfeld • 1996 • United States, Germany
Starring Tilda Swinton, Amy Madigan, Karen Sillas

In her stunning American film debut, the singularly arresting, chameleonic Tilda Swinton stars as Eve Stephens, a ruthless, bisexual Los Angeles lawyer on the edge. As she struggles to ...

Directed by Lino Brocka • 1980 • Philippines
Starring Nora Aunor, Phillip Salvador, Raquel Montesa

Director Lino Brocka brings his trademark blend of melodrama and social realism to this lost-and-found masterwork of Filipino cinema, a troubling character study at the intersection of fandom, sexu...

Directed by Moustapha Alassane • 1966 • Niger, France
Starring Harouna Diarra, Djingarey Abdoulaye Maïga, Zalika Souley

The Wild West comes to Africa in this raucous send-up of cultural colonialism—an influence on Djibril Diop Mambety’s TOUKI BOUKI—in which a young Nigerien man returns home from...

Directed by Ann Hui • 2002 • Hong Kong
Starring Jacky Cheung, Anita Mui, Karena Lam

Brimming with serene, ineffable beauty, JULY RHAPSODY is a profound and soothing tale from Hong Kong auteur Ann Hui (BOAT PEOPLE) about paddling through life’s chaos—even as things that seem eternal, like the Yan...

Directed by Todd Haynes • 1991 • United States
Starring Edith Meeks, Larry Maxwell, Susan Norman

Inspired by the writings of Jean Genet, Todd Haynes’s debut feature deftly interweaves a trio of transgressive tales—“Hero,” “Horror,” and “Homo”—that build towards a devastating climax. “Hero,” shot...

Directed by Anthony Harvey • 1966 • United Kingdom
Starring Shirley Knight, Al Freeman Jr., Frank Lieberman

Adapted from the explosive one-act play by Amiri Baraka, this intense chamber drama remains as provocative today as it was in 1966. In an empty New York City subway car, a sexually audacio...

Directed by Tim Blake Nelson • 1997 • United States
Starring Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Nick Stahl

One of the great but long-unheralded debut films, Tim Blake Nelson’s first feature is an emotionally shattering tale of existential desolation in a small Oklahoma town. Unfolding in a fractur...

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 Bridgett M. Davis • 1996 • United States
Starring Jake-Ann Jones, Ron Cephas Jones, Patricia DeArcy

A long-unseen jewel of 1990s Black independent filmmaking, Bridgett M. Davis’s fearless exploration of Black female agency centers on Cicely (Jake-Ann Jones), the daughter of a former ...

Directed by Alejandro Amenábar • 1997 • Spain
Starring Penélope Cruz, Eduardo Noriega, Chete Lera

A dazzling science-fiction thriller circling around Hitchcockian themes of double identities and obsession, the sophomore feature from Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar (THE OTHERS) is a stylisti...

Directed by Joyce Chopra • 1999 • United States
Starring Mary McDonnell, William Russ, Jack Coleman

Director Joyce Chopra brings her usual sensitivity to this made-for-television look at a woman in the process of rebuilding her shattered home. When Linda (Mary McDonnell) discovers that her husba...

Directed by Đặng Nhật Minh • 1984 • Vietnam
Starring Lê Vân, Nguyen Hữu Mười, Nguyễn Minh Vương

Widely regarded as one of the greatest Vietnamese films ever made, this deeply moving exploration of grief and trauma centers on Duyên (Lê Vân), a young woman whose husband is killed in Vietnam’s post...

Directed by Horace Ové • 1976 • United Kingdom
Starring Herbert Norville, Oscar James, Frank Singuineau

The fiction debut by esteemed Trinidadian-British documentarian Horace Ové marked a watershed in the history of British cinema. This gripping and immersive drama was the nation’s first feature...

Directed by Menelik Shabazz • 1981 • United Kingdom
Starring Cassie McFarlane, Victor Romero Evans, Beverley Martin

Made in 1981, the first feature by the pioneering Barbados-born British filmmaker Menelik Shabazz marked a coming-of-age for Black British cinema. This hard-edged, wholly absorbing...

Directed by John Maybury • 1998 • United Kingdom
Starring Derek Jacobi, Daniel Craig, Tilda Swinton

The torrid psychosexual world of uncompromising British painter Francis Bacon is brought to terrifying life in this unflinching portrait of the artist as a monster. Bacon (Derek Jacobi) is at the ...

Directed by Marcel Carné • 1946 • France
Starring Yves Montand, Pierre Brasseur, Serge Reggiani

The last of the celebrated collaborations between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (CHILDREN OF PARADISE) unfolds in a dreamily beautiful vision of a wintry, nocturnal Paris shor...

Directed by Sara Gómez • 1977 • Cuba
Starring Yolanda Cuéllar, Mario Balmaseda, Mario Limonta

The only feature from the radical Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez—who also worked as an assistant director with Agnès Varda and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea before her untimely death at age thirty-one—is an ext...

Directed by Jean Grémillon • 1941 • France
Starring Jean Gabin, Madeleine Renaud, Michèle Morgan

Poet Jacques Prévert cowrote this atmospheric tale of the romantic trials of a tugboat captain, played by the iconic French star Jean Gabin. For André (Gabin) and the other members of the Cyclone’s c...

Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1982 • Belgium, France
Starring Aurore Clément, Tchéky Karyo, Jan Decorte

A hot summer evening in Brussels: couples dance in bars and cafés, part outside homes, or escape together under the darkness of night; some discover or reignite romance, some end it, while sti...