Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1947 • Japan
Starring Choko Iida, Hohi Aoki, Eitaro Ozawa

Yasujiro Ozu’s first post–World War II film takes place in an impoverished Tokyo neighborhood that has been partly destroyed in bombing raids. Here, a hard-hearted middle-aged widow (Choko Iida) reluctantly take...

Directed by Nils Gaup • 1987 • Norway
Starring Mikkel Gaup, Ingvald Guttorm, Nils Utsi

The first feature-length film in the Sámi language (spoken by the Indigenous people of Scandinavia) is a thrilling blend of coming-of-age tale and epic adventure set against the stark, snowy beauty of Norway’s...

Directed by Mike Leigh • 1971 • United Kingdom
Starring Anne Raitt, Sarah Stephenson, Eric Allan

Mike Leigh announced himself as a unique, powerful new voice in British cinema with BLEAK MOMENTS, a stunning debut of understated melancholy. Adapting his own theatrical play for the screen, Leigh f...

Directed by Jacques Rivette • 1981 • France
Starring Bulle Ogier, Pascale Ogier, Pierre Clémenti

Perfect strangers Marie (Bulle Ogier) and Baptiste (Bulle’s daughter Pascale Ogier) run into each other three times on an otherwise ordinary day in Paris and decide that fate has brought them togeth...

Directed by David Schickele • 1971 • United States
Starring Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam, Elaine Featherstone, James Earl Garrison

When Paul Okpokam arrived in the U.S. in 1968, David Schickele decided to make a film about his Nigerian friend’s experience of coming to teach at San Francisco State Coll...

Directed by Jacques Rivette • 1969 • France
Starring Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, André S. Labarthe

In many ways a breakthrough work for director Jacques Rivette (and a thematic precursor to his legendary OUT 1, released two years later), this epic portrait of a relationship in breakdown fou...

Directed by Dennis Hopper • 1980 • United States
Starring Linda Manz, Dennis Hopper, Sharon Farrell

Dennis Hopper’s hurricane-force domestic tragedy is the ’80s answer to EASY RIDER, following troubled youth subculture to its frightening, screaming, self-annihilating extreme. Just out of prison ...

Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville • 1967 • France, Italy
Starring Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between ...

Directed by Med Hondo • 1979 • Algeria, Mauritania, France
Starring Robert Liensol, Roland Bertin, Hélène Vincent

Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s staggering WEST INDIES: THE FUGITIVE SLAVES OF LIBERTY is a sui generis amalgam of historical epic, Broadway revue, Brechtian theater, and joy...

Directed by Héctor Babenco • 1985 • United States, Brazil
Starring William Hurt, Raúl Juliá, Sônia Braga

Héctor Babenco’s follow-up to his electrifying international breakthrough PIXOTE is another powerful, boldly realized portrait of life on the margins of Brazilian society. Based on the novel ...

Directed by Arturo Ripstein • 1996 • France, Mexico, Spain
Starring Regina Orozco, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Marisa Paredes

Mexican provocateur Arturo Ripstein takes the ever-ripe lovers-on-the-run premise of dime-store pulp to its deliriously overheated, wickedly perverse extreme. In 1940s Mexico, ...

Directed by Julius-Amédée Laou • 1983 • France
Starring Serge Ubrette, Marilyne Canto

Playwright Julius-Amédée Laou’s first foray into filmmaking is an explosive call to revolution in which a young Black artist—after learning that his brother has been murdered in Paris by far-right racists—hijac...

Directed by Raoul Peck • 1991 • Democratic Republic of Congo

Investigating revolutionary Patrice Lumumba’s brief tenure as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as the machinations behind his shocking assassination, legendary Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck (I AM NOT ...

Directed by Patrick Tam • 1989 • Hong Kong
Starring Kenny Bee, Joey Wong, Tony Leung Chiu-wai

Patrick Tam, perhaps the Hong Kong New Wave’s most daring modernist and a crucial influence on Wong Kar Wai, teams with cinematographer Christopher Doyle, a regular Wong collaborator, for a stylish “he...

Directed by Gregg Araki • 1997 • United States
Starring James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton

You can practically smell the pheromones wafting off this kaleidoscopic odyssey, which finds director Gregg Araki crossing soap-operatic elements with blasts of science fiction, indie-kid cool, and sh...

Directed by Kidlat Tahimik • 1977 • Philippines Starring Kidlat Tahimik, Mang Fely, Dolores Santamaria

Acclaimed by Werner Herzog as “one of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seven...

Directed by Kidlat Tahimik • 1981 • Philippines
Starring Homer Abiad, Iñigo Vito, Maria Pehipol

Mixing documentary-like observation with playful irony, Kidlat Tahimik’s cautionary fable depicts the corrosive effect...

Directed by Kazuki Omori • 1989 • Japan
Starring Kunihiko Mitamura, Yoshiko Tanaka, Masanobu Takashima

Diving into delirious realms of imagination, this second film of the Godzilla fran...

Directed by Bob Odenkirk • 2003 • United States
Starring Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price

Perhaps the finest conversation movie this side of MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ, Bob Odenkirk’s directorial debut invites you along for a stimulating evening of hilarious, engrossing, and disarmingly...

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 Isaac Julien • 1991 • United Kingdom
Starring Valentine Nonyela, Mo Sesay, Sophie Okonedo

From the moment Parliament’s “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” erupts over the opening of Isaac Julien’s breakthrough feature, we know we’re in for a wild ride. The changes keep coming as a murd...

Directed by Timothy Carey • 1962 • United States
Starring Timothy Carey, Gil Barreto, Betty Rowland

Timothy Carey—the unforgettable character actor whose weird, wiggy energy brought a manic edge to classics like THE KILLING and PATHS OF GLORY—wrote, produced, directed, and starred in this outrag...

Directed by Michael Roemer • 1984 • United States
Starring Brooke Adams, Jon DeVries, Ari Meyers

Like director Michael Roemer’s prior features—the powerful civil-rights-era landmark NOTHING BUT A MAN and the offbeat mob comedy THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY—this continuously surprising, cuttingly incisi...