Directed by Leslie Harris • 1992 • United States
Starring Ariyan A. Johnson, Kevin Thigpen, Ebony Jerido

Leslie Harris’s indie touchstone made a splash when it won a special jury prize at Sundance in 1993, offering a window into a world still sorely underrepresented in mainstream cinema: that of...

Directed by Sierra Urich • 2023 • United States

In this moving first-person documentary, a young filmmaker delves into her mother and grandmother’s complicated pasts and her own fractured Iranian identity. Having grown up in rural Vermont, far removed from the homeland of her mother, Mitra, and ...

Directed by Claire Denis • 2001 • France
Starring Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle

Claire Denis’s poetic take on the body-horror genre is an atmospheric reverie of blood and lust that lays bare the filmmaker’s core artistic concerns around power, desire, and delirium. Newlyweds Shane...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1986 • United States
Starring Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, Amanda Goodwin

Sex work is portrayed with radical nonjudgment in Lizzie Borden’s immersive, richly detailed look at the rhythms and rituals of society’s most stigmatized profession. Inspired by the experience...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1983 • United States
Starring Honey, Adele Bertei, Jean Satterfield

A blistering rallying cry issued loud, clear, and unapologetically queer, Lizzie Borden’s explosive postpunk provocation is a DIY fantasia of female rebellion set in America ten years after a revoluti...

Criterion Collection Edition #965

Directed by Barbara Loden • 1970 • United States
Starring Barbara Loden, Michael Higgins

With her first and only feature film—a hard-luck drama she wrote, directed, and starred in—Barbara Loden turned in a groundbreaking work of American independent cinema, bri...

Criterion Collection Edition #743

Directed by Lucrecia Martel • 2001 • Argentina
Starring Martín Adjemián, Diego Baenas, Leonora Balcarce

The release of Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema. With a radical and disturb...

Criterion Collection Edition #896

Directed by Agnieska Smoczyńska • 2015 • Poland
Starring Kinga Preis, Michalina Olszańska, Marta Mazurek

This genre-defying horror-musical mash-up—the bold debut of Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska—follows a pair of carnivorous mermaid sisters drawn ashore ...

Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis • 1999 • United States
Starring John Earl Jelks, Michelle A. Banks, Nirvana Cobb

A poignant portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love at both ends of the twentieth century, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film is a groundbreaking story of inclusion and...

Criterion Collection Edition #334

Directed by Barbara Kopple • 1976 • United States

Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award-winning HARLAN COUNTY USA unflinchingly documents a grueling coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ somet...

Directed by Ayoka Chenzira • 1994 • United States
Starring Kim Weston-Moran, Victoria Gabrielle Platt, Mizan Nunes

A rediscovered treasure of independent cinema, this incisive comedic drama follows Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt), a teenager coming of age in Brooklyn, as she looks to two...

Directed by Mina Shum • 1994 • Canada
Starring Sandra Oh, Stephen Chang, Alannah Ong

An irresistible, star-making performance from Sandra Oh lights up this warm, sharp-witted look at what it means to hold onto heritage while forging one’s own identity. She stars as Jade, a young Chinese Canadian...

Criterion Collection Edition #957

Directed by Elaine May • 1976 • United States
Starring Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Ned Beatty

Elaine May crafted a gangster film like no other in the nocturnal odyssey MIKEY AND NICKY, capitalizing on the chemistry between frequent collaborators John Cassavete...

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 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 Maura Delpero • 2024 • Italy, France, Belgium
Starring Giuseppe De Domenico, Tommaso Ragno, Martina Scrinzi

Secrets swirl beneath the surface of a remote Italian community in Maura Delpero’s exquisite wartime drama, winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize. In a majestic...

Directed by Payal Kapadia • 2024 • France, India, Netherlands
Starring Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam

Payal Kapadia’s acclaimed fiction-feature debut is a radiant ode to hope-giving connections forged amid big-city anonymity. Set against the hypnotic luminescence of Mumbai, ALL WE IMAG...

Directed by Rungano Nyoni • 2017 • Zambia, United Kingdom
Starring Maggie Mulubwa, Nellie Munamonga, Dyna Mufuni

The acclaimed debut feature from Rungano Nyoni is a daring, sharply satiric feminist fairy tale set in present-day Zambia. When nine-year-old orphan Shula (Margaret Mulubwa) is accuse...

Directed by Diana Peralta • 2019 • United States
Starring Sasha Merci, Darlene Demorizi, Héctor Aníbal

Sibling bonds are both rekindled and tested in the achingly alive feature debut from Diana Peralta. Rita (Sasha Merci) and Carolina (Darlene Demorizi), two high-spirited sisters raised in New Y...