Directed by Joan Chen • 1998 • Hong Kong
Starring Li Xiaolu, Lopsang, Zheng Qian
Introduction: This film has been programmed as part of the series Hollywood Chinese, a survey on the history of Chinese representation in American cinema, curated by filmmaker Arthur Dong. He notes: “After her break...
Directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud • 2007 • France, United States
Starring Chiara Mastroianni, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve
Growing up in 1970s Iran, Marjane, the daughter of Tehran intellectuals, is rebellious, outspoken, and enamored with Bruce Lee, Iron Maiden, and punk...
Directed by Ann Turner • 1989 • Australia
Starring Rebecca Smart, Nicholas Eadie, Mary-Anne Fahey
The dark side of childhood imagination is conjured with exquisite eeriness in this unsettling evocation of innocence lost. In what surely ranks as one of the all-time great performances by a child a...
Directed by Lone Scherfig • 2009 • United Kingdom
Starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper
From acclaimed director Lone Scherfig and writer Nick Hornby comes this captivating coming-of-age tale sparkling with the charm and style of 1960s Britain. When Jenny (Carey Mulligan in her...
Directed by Nanfu Wang • 2017 • United States
When Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow) arrives in America, Florida seems like an exotic frontier full of theme parks, prehistoric swamp creatures, and sunburned denizens. As she travels wide-eyed from one city to another, she eventually...
Directed by Sally Potter • 1992 • United Kingdom
Starring Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane, Quentin Crisp
Based on Virginia Woolf’s 1928 classic “Orlando: A Biography,” Sally Potter’s sumptuous fantasy stars a sublime Tilda Swinton as the eponymous seventeenth-century nobleman who, commanded by Queen E...
Directed by Věra Chytilová • 1987 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Miroslav Machácek, Tomás Palatý, Stepánka Cervenková
Věra Chytilová’s subversive take on the 1980s teen-horror movie assembles a gaggle of bratty adolescents for a mysterious skiing retreat at a snowbound cabin where they find themselve...
Directed by Erin Vassilopoulos • 2021 • United States
Starring Alessandra Mesa, Anamari Mesa, Pico Alexander
Garnering comparisons to the work of David Lynch, Brian De Palma, and Pedro Almodóvar—yet undeniably on its own uncanny wavelength—the debut feature from Erin Vassilopoulos is a stylishly...
Focused on pivotal moments in the lives of women, the films of trailblazing feminist director Joyce Chopra were among the first in American cinema to give authentic expression to the intimate experiences of female adolescence, sexual awakening, and motherhood. Presented in conjunction with the re...
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow • 1987 • United States
Starring Adrian Pasdar, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton
Kathryn Bigelow’s breakthrough second feature is a seductively stylish horror western in which a midwestern farm boy (Adrian Pasdar) gets taken on the ride of his life when he is abducted by a...
Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour • 2014 • United States
Starring Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi
The first Iranian vampire western, Ana Lily Amirpour’s mesmerizing debut feature blends the influences of spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, horror films, the Iranian New Wave, and Jim Jarmusch into a truly...
Directed by Amy Holden Jones • 1982 • United States
Starring Michelle Michaels, Robin Stille, Michael Villella
Scripted by lesbian feminist author Rita Mae Brown, THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE puts a smart, subversive, and lightly satirical spin on the 1980s slasher formula. When Trish (Michelle Mi...
Directed by Maryam Keshavarz • 2011 • Iran, France
Starring Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy, Reza Sixo Safai
A suspenseful tale of love and family upended by obsession and suspicion, CIRCUMSTANCE is also a provocative coming-of-age story that cracks open the hidden, underground world of Iranian yo...
Criterion Collection Edition #896
This genre-defying horror-musical mash-up—the bold debut of Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska—follows a pair of carnivorous mermaid sisters drawn ashore to explore life on land in an alternate 1980s Poland. Their tantalizing siren songs and otherworldly auras...
Directed by Dorothy Davenport • 1934 • United States
Starring Claudia Dell, Lola Lane, Richard Hemingway
When a radio star (Lola Lane) is murdered, a mysterious young woman (Claudia Dell) is accused of the crime. Can a wisecracking reporter (Richard Hemingway), who finds himself captivated by th...
With her brilliant feature debut, NANNY—winner of the 2022 Sundance Grand Jury Prize—garnering acclaim, now is the perfect time to discover the smartly stylish short films of writer-director Nikyatu Jusu. By turns irreverent, provocative, powerful, and unsettling, these films—all centered on comp...
Directed by Dania Bdeir • 2022 • Lebanon, France
Starring Khansa, Kamal Saleh, Hassan Aqqoul
Queer alienation gives way to an ecstatic experience of liberation in Dania Bdeir’s dazzlingly conceived short, a Sundance prizewinner. One morning, Mohammad (Khansa), a Syrian migrant working constructi...
Directed by Sarah Maldoror • 1972 • Angola
Starring Domingos de Oliveira, Elisa Andrade, Jean M’Vondo
This revolutionary bombshell by Sarah Maldoror chronicles the awakening of Angola’s independence movement. Based on a true story, SAMBIZANGA follows a young woman as she makes her way from the o...
Utilizing fractured editing, cacophonous sound design, and a whole lot of (possibly imaginary) cats, Lori Felker’s DISCONTINUITY brilliantly evokes the rapidly escalating pileup of interruptions, incongruities, and absurdities that arise when a long-term couple reunite after an extended separatio...
Directed by Agnès Varda • 2015 • France
Starring Jasmine Thiré, Michel Jeannès, Jacky Patin
A billowing pink dress launches a stouthearted teenage girl on a time- and space-collapsing odyssey from her humble goat farm to the big city and beyond in this playfully meandering feminist fantasia from...
Directed by Glenda Hambly • 1985 • Australia
Starring Noni Hazlehurst, Annie Byron, Alan Fletcher
Built around a dynamic, sympathetic performance from Noni Hazlehurst, this candid, funny, unflinching portrait of the challenges of single parenthood follows Fran, a fiercely loving but troubled mot...
Specializing in portraits of powerful and often controversial figures, Marina Zenovich (ROBIN WILLIAMS: COME INSIDE MY MIND, ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED) began her career with these three idiosyncratic documentaries, which range from a candid look at the struggles of American independent f...
Best known for her breakout sensation BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM, prolific filmmaker Gurinder Chadha has been exploring the intricacies of British-Indian identity for more than three decades, bringing a playful and personal perspective to the experiences of women navigating questions of tradition and c...
Many of the rigorously intelligent and slyly playful films of singular Canadian auteur Sofia Bohdanowicz play out like offbeat detective stories, with her own family history as the mystery to be solved. The inspector, as it were, is Bohdanowicz’s frequent collaborator and on-screen alter ego Dera...
