Directed by Suzanne Lindon • 2021 • France
Starring Suzanne Lindon, Arnaud Valois, Florence Viala

The delicate, beautifully observed debut feature from writer-director-star Suzanne Lindon is the rare tale of adolescent romantic awakening to be told from the perspective of an actual teenager. Lin...

Directed by Gillian Armstrong • 1992 • Australia
Starring Kerry Fox, Miranda Otto, Bill Hunter

Working from a script by acclaimed writer Helen Garner, director Gillian Armstrong (MY BRILLIANT CAREER) charts a family’s dissolution with supreme sensitivity in this complex, bittersweet look at the ...

Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania • 2017 • Tunisia, France
Starring Mariam Al Ferjani, Ghanem Zrelli, Noomane Hamda

When Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, is raped by police officers after leaving a party, she is propelled into a harrowing night in which she must fight for justice even though power l...

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 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 Nathalie Álvarez Mesén • 2021 • Sweden, Costa Rica
Starring Wendy Chinchilla Araya, Ana Julia Porras Espinoza, Daniel Castañeda Rincón

This revelatory first feature from Nathalie Álvarez Mesén is a mesmerizing portrait of a woman in the process of taking ownership of her body and sel...

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...

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...

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 Jeanie Finlay • 2019 • United Kingdom
Starring Freddy McConnell

Freddy is thirty and yearns to start a family, but for him this ordinary desire comes with unique challenges: he is a gay transgender man. Deciding to carry his own baby took years of soul searching, but nothing could pr...

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...

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...

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...