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...

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 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 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 Lionel Rogosin • 1959 • United States
Starring Miriam Makeba, Vinah Makeba, Zachria Makeba

One of the bravest and most powerful political films ever made, Lionel Rogosin’s urgent indictment of racial injustice—filmed in secret in 1950s Johannesburg, South Africa—follows a young Zulu ...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1976 • United States
Starring Kathryn Bigelow, Ariel Bock, Marion Cajori

While Lizzie Borden’s features BORN IN FLAMES and WORKING GIRLS have taken their place as landmarks of feminist cinema, her debut—the fascinating experimental documentary REGROUPING—has gone larg...

Directed by Yuen Woo-ping • 1981 • Hong Kong
Starring Yuen Biao, Bryan Leung Kar-yan, Kwan Tak-hing

Everything that made 1980s Hong Kong action cinema such a blast—the furious fights, bursts of wild comedy, and larger-than-life performances—is cranked up to eleven in this audacious cult classic...