Directed by Rachel Amodeo • 1993 • United States
Starring Rachel Amodeo, Richard Edson, Nick Zedd

Rachel Amodeo wrote, produced, directed, and stars in this grimily poetic time capsule of life on the margins of a pregentrification East Village. She plays Lisa, a young woman on a downward slide w...

Directed by Blerta Basholli • 2021 • Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia
Starring Yllka Gashi, Çun Lajçi, Aurita Agushi

This Sundance award winner—the first film in the festival’s history to receive the Grand Jury Prize, the Audience Award, and the Directing Award—is a searing portrait of loss and ...

Directed by Agnès Varda • 2008 • France
Starring Agnès Varda

“If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. If we opened me up, we’d find beaches.” Originally intended to be Agnès Varda’s farewell to filmmaking, this enchanting auto-portrait, made in her eightieth year, is a freewheeling journey...

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 Marin Håskjold • 2020 • Norway
Starring Mina Alette Høvik, Eva Johansson, Louise Löwenberg

A discussion occurs in a women’s locker room when someone asks a transgender woman to leave. Tackling complex issues head-on in a frank, naturalistic style, Norwegian director Marin Håskjold ex...

Directed by Jill Sprecher • 1997 • United States
Starring Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow

Something of a female-driven precursor to OFFICE SPACE, Jill Sprecher’s lost indie gem stars Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, Toni Collette, and Alanna Ubach as a quartet of temp workers who bond over th...

Directed by Lynne Ramsay • 2012 • United Kingdom
Starring Tom Litten

Stunning monochrome cinematography and impressionistic sound design turn a young man’s aquatic odyssey into a ravishing sensory experience.

Directed by Halina Dyrschka • 2019 • Germany

Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term existed, a visionary, trailblazing figure who, inspired by spiritualism, modern science, and the riches of the natural world, began in 1906 to reel out a series of huge, colorful, sensual, strange...

Directed by Joyce Chopra • 1985 • United States
Starring Laura Dern, Treat Williams, Mary Kay Place

Suspended between carefree youth and the harsh realities of the adult world, a teenage girl experiences an unsettling awakening in this haunting vision of innocence lost. Based on Joyce Carol Oate...

Directed by Ann Hui • 1982 • Hong Kong
Starring George Lam, Andy Lau Tak Wah, Cora Miao

One of the major films of the Hong Kong New Wave, Ann Hui’s BOAT PEOPLE is a work of indelible humanity and searing political resonance. Invited to document the progress of postwar Vietnamese society, a Japan...

Directed by Jan Oxenberg • 1991 • United States

A lost-and-found revelation from indie film and TV maverick Jan Oxenberg is a docu-fantasy narrative focused on the filmmaker’s hilarious, messy, Jewish family as they prepare to say goodbye to someone they love. Narrated by a cardboard cutout of O...

Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1985 • United States
Starring Ornette Coleman

This freewheeling documentary captures Ornette Coleman’s evolution over three decades. Documentary footage, dramatic scenes, and some of the first music-video-style segments ever made chronicle his boyhood in segregated T...

Directed by Raven Jackson • 2018 • United States
Starring James Vincent, Jordan-Amanda Hall, Duygu Eser

In six chapters, the “stinging moments” that mark the lives of various women are evoked with striking, poetic intimacy.

Directed by Haley Elizabeth Anderson • 2020 • United States
Starring Kadence King

One Sunday at church, twelve-year-old Amber experiences her first kiss, a moment of innocence that triggers a series of awakenings: sexual, emotional, and religious.

Directed by Miranda July • 2005 • United States
Starring John Hawkes, Miranda July, Miles Thompson

With this compassionate, startling comedy that could have come from no other artistic sensibility, the brilliant Miranda July reveals a world both familiar and strange—an original vision of creativ...