Directed by Claire Denis • 1990 • France, West Germany
Starring Isaach De Bankolé, Alex Descas, Solveig Dommartin

Inspired by the writings of anticolonialist philosopher Frantz Fanon, Claire Denis’s thrillingly intense second feature is a moody exploration of immigrant alienation. Two young men ...

Directed by Robina Rose • 1981 • United Kingdom
Starring Jordan, Anne Rees-Mogg, Mitch D

A gorgeously photographed work of surreal, somnambulant cinema, Robina Rose’s singular snapshot of London’s early 1980s art scene casts a hypnotic spell all its own. Over the course of a single nightshift, a...

Directed by Uli Edel • 1981 • West Germany
Starring Natja Brunckhorst, Thomas Haustein, Jens Kuphal

Adapted from actor and musician Christiane Felscherinow’s harrowing account of her teenage years, CHRISTIANE F. depicts the impact of West Berlin’s 1970s heroin epidemic on one of its youngest and...

Directed by Shu Lea Cheang • 1994 • United States
Starring Sarita Choudhury, Erin McMurtry, Abraham Lim

A disturbingly prescient ecofeminist parable and a brain-wave-scrambling cyberpunk fantasia, the debut feature from new-media pioneer Shu Lea Cheang merges a bold vision of resistance with an ...

Directed by Kozaburo Yoshimura • 1956 • Japan
Starring Fujiko Yamamoto, Ken Uehara, Eitaro Ozawa

Exquisitely lensed in gorgeous color by master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, this sublimely subversive melodrama employs ravishing mise-en-scène to lend layers of subtextual meaning to the story of...

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 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 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...