Where does the line between spirit and body lay? Between dedication and obsession, prayer and combat, a religion and a cult? Valentina Pedicini’s extraordinary immersion into a unique group that fervidly blurs such boundaries reveals our capacity both for extreme passion and disturbing obedience.
In this delicate drama Ann Hui pays homage to the women who raise not their own families but those of others. Moving realism about the challenges of aging in Hong Kong is married to a wonderful fantasy: That the upper class, personified brilliantly by Andy Lau, will justly offer its own devotion.
Xiao Hong became a literary giant by conveying the struggles of working class Manchuria in a lyrical blend of fiction and nonfiction. Ann Hui takes a similarly multifaceted approach, introducing self-reflexive character portraits to the film’s sprawling story to paint a rich, insightful biopic.
Inspired by real-life events, this WWII drama from Ann Hui is an urgent tale of bravery and camaraderie. Rejecting the garish depictions of other wartime stories, Hui sweeping drama observes the altruism of underground resistance through the eyes of a young woman and her growing political struggle.
Antonio Pietrangeli was an integral contributor to the “Commedia all’italiana” genre, directing comedic critiques of post-WWII Italy’s changing economic and social makeup. The Girl from Parma is a strikingly shot take on urbanization and the patriarchy, boosted by Catherine Spaak’s bold performance.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s movies love to flirt—often comically—with horror: the fear that behind the façade of society is a gaping maw of existential terror. In this dastardly short, a shrewdly cast Matt Dillon realizes that no role in life is irreplaceable. Suddenly, nothing is safe—not even ourselves.
An entire generation of French children was enchanted by the story of the tiny Kirikou, based on a West African folk tale. A valiant child animated through Michel Ocelot’s style made of his sumptuous, colorful images and his playful, wild imagination! A classic for adults and children alike.
From Errol Morris to The Act of Killing, cinema often uses reenactments to conjure the past. Yoon Sung-A goes further, observing Filipino women role-play in anticipation of what awaits them. Revealing how fear is rooted in historical trauma, Overseas is a triumph of empathy, dignity and sisterhood.
Dubbed by Norman Mailer as the finest movie made about the Mafia, Francesco Rosi’s Lucky Luciano is a brilliant portrait of the father of organized crime. Jumping around various stages of Luciano’s life, and starring his real-life adversary, the film is an electrifying web of politics and power.
A hectic cab ride through the maze of Cairo’s streets turns into a confrontation between three people from vastly different backgrounds. Director Ahmad Abdalla’s humorous take on issues of class and gender perfectly captures the simmering tensions among diverse strata of Egyptian society.
This fierce spaghetti western from Sergio Corbucci (Django) shows Confederate fervor as savage violence, miles away from depictions in Hollywood westerns. Starring Joseph Cotten as a hellish killer, the morally-ravished American frontier is backed by a stunning score from composer Ennio Morricone.
Björk made her dazzling film debut in this monochromatic medieval fantasy, in which she channels a witchy, supernatural energy. A feminist retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, director Nietzchka Keene shoots the otherworldliness of Iceland on 35mm: enjoy it in this stunning restoration.
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s only film to be completed in color was also the last of his career. Set within the buzzing, psychedelic art scene of 1960s Paris, Woman in Chains explores the oppressive and utterly hallucinatory tensions of a love triangle while spying on the bourgeois society of the time.
Rüdiger Suchsland’s (From Caligari to Hitler) insightful and captivating essay films look back at German film to reveal cinema’s place in history. Hitler’s Hollywood, narrated by Udo Kier, scrutinizes the often forgotten films of Nazi Germany to illustrate their complicity in the Third Reich.
Inspired by early adventure films and subverting the tropes of nature docs, artist Carlos Casas takes us on a slow-mo jungle odyssey—perhaps an elephant’s dream? Hypnotic and tactile, Cemetery is a sensory meditation on memory and extinction made of images and sounds we haven’t seen or heard before.
Director Guo Ke returns to the subject of “comfort women”—Chinese women forced into sexual slavery during WW2—that he movingly explored in the short Thirty Two with this feature documentary. Fearlessly shining a spotlight on a delicate, secretive topic, the film was a box-office sensation in China.
Amit Dutta’s first feature-length work, Ramkhind spotlights his characteristic use of riveting sound design and keen eye for the environment. Shot at the beginning of the new millennium, this film beautifully captures the unchanged life and culture of a tribal village barely 100 km away from Mumbai.
Focusing on the unstable psychology of a woman writer, Robert Altman’s ‘70s fever dream blurs the lines between fantasy and reality. Shot in impressionistic strokes by Vilmos Zsigmond and haunted by John Williams’ eerie score, this dreamlike psych-horror won Susannah York Best Actress at Cannes.
Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang won the Silver Bear at Berlin for this riveting treasure, based on long-time muse Lee Kang-sheng’s own mysterious neck injury. Stretching the boundaries of formal innovation, The River touchingly illuminates urban melancholia and the symbiosis between mind and body.
Golden Lion-winner Vive l’amour, with its contemplative, humorous, and tenderly melancholic style, made Tsai Ming-liang one of the world’s most important directors. Equally essential are Lee Kang-sheng and Yang Kuei-mei, whose presences exquisitely personify urban loneliness, yearning, and desire.
Based on a Marathi play by Mahesh Elkunchwar, Party is a timeless political and social satire by Govind Nihalani. In the process of unravelling the hypocrisy of the intellectuals and artists of urban Indian society, the film also reveals the angst, and loneliness of the privileged.
Inspired by medical sketches of dissections, Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo) transforms the excesses of body horror into an imaginative story of the relationship between identity and the human body. Giving life to a sober subject, actor Tadanobu Asano tenderly embodies the disorientation of an amnesiac.
A maverick of transgressive cinema, multi-hyphenate auteur Shinya Tsukamoto’s cinema goes beyond the scrappy sci-fi of Tetsuo: The Iron Man. His fierce, enthrallingly raw approach to storytelling is equally evident in this lurid but empathetic story of a perverse triangle of desire and obsession.
Karolis Kaupinis’s boldly assured debut is a wonderfully unusual historical drama about our need for hope in order to escape a desperate situation. With a beautiful period recreation and a tone that wavers between dry comedy and earnest melancholy, an eccentric story comes to stand for so much more.
Stephen Nomura Schible’s wonderful feature debut is a revelatory exploration of Ryuichi Sakamoto, his work, environmentalism, and the incredible album async. This lovely and graceful exploration offers a rare glimpse into the artistic process of the renowned musician.
Winner of the prestigious Audience Award at Sundance in 2019, this provocative domestic drama from Denmark echoes at once the self-reflexive nature of a Douglas Sirk melodrama and the slow-burning tension of a Hitchcockian thriller. A true filmmaking feat, starring actor-songwriter Trine Dyrholm.
Nagisa Ōshima shocks once more in this deliciously Buñuelian farce on bourgeois marriage. Billed as “the greatest ape romance since King Kong,” it stars Charlotte Rampling in another sexually unconventional, unforgettable role: a kinky diplomat’s wife who is in love with a circus chimp. Oh là là!
Suppressed by the Soviet Union for sixteen years, Kira Muratova’s celebrated second film is a melancholic, monochrome study of a complicated mother-son relationship. Aching with maternal love, loss, and longing, the film remains a searing and tender portrayal of the agonies of motherhood.
Rising talent Luise Donschen evokes the cinema of Angela Schanelec in her mysterious short, using striking framing and superb sound to make what is off-screen as meaningful as what we see. Her bold storytelling sheds a surprising light on disability, exploring the fears of adolescence along the way.
A nation has many histories, most of which are left behind in popular retelling. John Gianvito’s extraordinary documentary, beautifully restored, has the courage to find a new way of understanding the history of the United States: through the markers, honored or forgotten, placed for us to remember.
