3 You Must See

Marcel Carné's masterpiece of French cinema portrays the theatrical milieu of Paris' 'Boulevard du Crime'.

King Hu's epic swordplay saga combines ghost story, martial arts mastery and Buddhist mythology to stunning, hypnotic effect.

A mesmerising and complex character study of alienation amid tumultuous social change, from one of Cuba’s greatest directors, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.

Ophuls’ exquisite, imaginative adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play about a carousel of erotic encounters involving characters of different social status.

Academy Award and Palme d'Or-winning adaption of the Orpheus myth, incorporating the music, costume and dance of Brazil’s Rio Festival.

Based on the story of Moulin Rouge founder Charles Zidler, Jean Renoir’s tale of an impresario’s commitment to his art is a masterpiece of Technicolor brilliance.

A director struggles to film a difficult sex scene between two actors who happen to hate each other, in Catherine Breillat's witty exploration of intimacy coordination.

Catherine Breillat's rigorously intellectual exploration of sexuality, about a woman who employs a gay man to spend days watching her naked.

Shockingly explicit, Catherine Breillat’s critically acclaimed Romance is one of the most controversial films of modern cinema.

Warm-hearted, funny and moving portrait of a village life from Jiří Menzel, the Oscar-winning director of Closely Observed Trains.

The great novelist Milan Kundera adapated his own novel for this tragi-comic story set against the backdrop of Stalinist repression in fifties Czechoslovakia

The world of Czech myths and legends inhabited by puppets is magically brought to life by master animator, Jiří Trnka, in this stunning stop-motion spectacle of folklore.

Peter Firth stars as a musician haunted by visions of a mystical nemesis, in this bold and poetic horror with stunning visuals.

A small farming community is rocked by the arrival of a mysterious young boy, in Juan Diego Escobar Alzate’s harrowing yet beautiful mix of folk horror, acid western and dark arthouse.

Hanna Bergholm’s terrifying debut is a dark Finnish fairytale about a teenage gymnast, her image-obsessed mother and the grotesque bird-like creature that hatches in their house.

An unnervingly brilliant portrait of the ways in which the Pinochet dictatorship realised its brute force and pervasive influence, from debut director Manuela Martelli. Winner of the 2022 BFI London Film Festival First Feature Competition.

The Best Film winner at the 2013 BFI London Film Festival is an exquisitely shot, moving drama about a Polish nun exploring her family past, from UK-based director Pawel Pawlikowski.

Hope Dickson Leach's hugely impressive first feature about a middle class farming family’s crisis, set against the backdrop of the Somerset floods.

Set in Donetsk against the backdrop of the downing of Malaysian flight MH17 in 2014, a Ukrainian family attempts to live a normal life amid the absurdity and futility of conflict, in Maryna Er Gorbach’s visually striking film.

This riveting feature debut from Makbul Mubarak patiently details the journey of a young man as he begins to taste power for the first time.

The investigation into a series of unexplained deaths hints to the supernatural, in this thrillingly unconventional police procedural.

A bureaucrat’s life finds new meaning in Kurosawa’s classic original, the source for Bill Nighy’s brilliant drama, Living.

In director Wim Wenders' (Paris, Texas) most metaphysical work, a guardian angel desires nothing more than to be human. Presented in a stunning new restoration.

Abel Ferrara's disturbing character study of a corrupt N.Y.C. cop and his slide into insanity, starring Harvey Keitel in a career-best performance.

François Truffaut’s French New Wave landmark is one of the greatest movies about adolescence.

Jerzy Skolimowski’s most ‘New Wave’ film, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as a man dreaming of motor-racing stardom.

The last days of the Sun King, evoked with sombre beauty by Albert Serra. The legendary Jean-Pierre Léaud brings ineffable presence to the title role.

Academy Award and Palme d'Or-winning adaption of the Orpheus myth, incorporating the music, costume and dance of Brazil’s Rio Festival.

A young Rastafarian toaster (rapper) aims for success at a Reggae Sound System competition, in this cult classic from Franco Rosso that pulsates with an irresistible dub soundtrack.

Menelik Shabazz (Burning an Illusion) shines a light on the music genre often dubbed ‘romantic reggae’; a uniquely black British sound that developed in the late 70s and 80s against a backdrop of riots, racial tension and sound systems.

The controversial exploits of baby-faced Argentine serial killer Carlos Robledo Puch are exhilaratingly reinterpreted in this stylish biopic.

Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Stoker) channels Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith, to create a sumptuous twisty psychological thriller full of erotic intrigue.

In this cult piece of New Queer Cinema, two unlikely buddies hit the road with a nihilistic mission after they're both diagnosed with HIV.

A western couple struggling to conceive a child visit a fertility shrine in Karachi and find themselves caught in a world of fantasy and exploitation.

Allegorical tale of revolutionary struggle against injustice and oppression which follows the mourning procession for the murdered Hussain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

Weaving together scenes of Zoroastrian funerary rituals, Jamil Dehlavi's early experimental film juxtaposes traumatic landscapes of sex, death, and faith.

A lavish trip to the Turkish Riviera goes horribly awry in this disturbing tale of power, exploitation and complicity from the writer of Border.

Gripping account of repressed sexual desire in a hyper-masculine environment, with British newcomer Harris Dickinson as a virulently macho Brooklyn teen.

Set in mid-1950s Australia, with the fear of communism in the air and rabbit plagues overrunning the countryside, Ann Turner’s debut film depicts a long, hot summer seen through the eyes and wild imagination of a young girl.

Barbie creators Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach hit their stride with this critical smash about an awkward girl and her complex passions.

Greta Gerwig shines as one of four filmmaking friends who find their slasher screenplay idea turning into a terrifying reality, in this in ‘mumblegore’ horror-comedy.

Mia Hansen-Løve’s stylish and transcendent story of house music is one of the great films about dance culture.

Youssef Chahine’s masterpiece holds a mirror up to toxic masculinity and Egyptian society.

Chahine’s ode to the earth is considered his masterwork.

A boisterous and brilliant autobiographical reflection set during the Second World War.

Albert Serra’s explicit and opulent exploration of the limits of the erotic imagination is realised in this remarkably radical and subversive cinematic experience.

The last days of the Sun King, evoked with sombre beauty by Albert Serra. The legendary Jean-Pierre Léaud brings ineffable presence to the title role.

Maverick auteur Albert Serra’s imagines a meeting between the ageing Casanova and Count Dracula in this deliciously eccentric baroque reflection on pleasure and erotic desire.

A teenage Björk stars in this Brothers Grimm adaptation, which finds witchcraft thriving in the wilds of medieval Iceland.

A notorious 17th-century witch trial turns into a powerful allegory of life under totalitarian rule, in this chilling Czech political fable.

Depraved sexual practices and satanic violence envelop a remote country village in this exciting period horror.

An exquisite, wry tribute to the experience of cinema-going from director Tsai Ming-liang.

Acclaimed Taiwanese-Malaysian director Tsai Ming-liang returns with his muse and star Lee Kang-sheng in this romantic drama about loneliness, love and abuse in Kuala Lumpur.

Ming-Liang Tsai's outrageous blend of sex, comedy, musical and drama is a daring, controversial and hilarious smorgasbord from one of Taiwan's most acclaimed directors.

Steven Arnold's psychedelic odyssey is a hedonistic celebration of gender-fluidity and pan-sexuality in late 60s San Francisco.

A young woman struggles with her demons, in this arresting sophomore feature from Tucked (Flare 2019) director Jamie Patterson.

A mesmerising portrait of a family grappling with teenage gender dysphoria, this uplifting documentary exudes the defiant message that love is all you need.

Dario Argento’s phantasmagoric gothic nightmare blends operatic violence, disorienting dream logic and hyper-real visuals to create a horror classic.

Making stylistic excess look effortless, Argento’s sumptuous giallo marked the beginning of the director’s golden age.

Dario Argento's hugely influential thriller, about a murder witness who becomes amateur detective, added sex and style to the murder-mystery and kick-started Italy's 'giallo' genre.

Nina Menkes’ extraordinary debut feature is an intoxicating blend of poetry, witchcraft and feminist critique.

A bewitching dark fairy tale about a woman struggling to escape her overbearing family.

Dostoyevsky is relocated to contemporary Tel Aviv in a riveting portrait of alienated masculinity.

Abel Ferrara's disturbing character study of a corrupt N.Y.C. cop and his slide into insanity, starring Harvey Keitel in a career-best performance.

Christopher Walken is the dogged drug-lord determined to keep his empire together, in Abel Ferrara's brutally gritty crime thriller.

Tom Berenger, Melanie Griffith and Billy Dee Williams star in this tough crime thriller about a talent agent who takes the law into his own hands when his strippers are targeted by a serial killer.

Ursula Meier's dark semi-comic fable concerns a family living next to an unused motorway. Isabelle Huppert and Olivier Gourmet excel as the parents.

A line is painted to divide rivals in a warring family drama, circled by ice but told with warm humanity by the great Ursula Meier. Nominated for the Golden Bear at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival.

Ursula Meier’s tender drama follows two siblings living at the base of a luxury ski resort in Switzerland, starring Léa Seydoux and Gillian Anderson.

When martial law is declared back home, a Polish builder (Jeremy Irons) decides not to tell his colleagues in Jerzy Skolimowski's Cannes-winning drama.

Vincent Gallo goes on the run in the dead of winter in Jerzy Skolimowski’s near-wordless thriller.

Jerzy Skolimowski’s most ‘New Wave’ film, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as a man dreaming of motor-racing stardom.

A defining Merseyside film, in which two Liverpool lasses hook up with a pair of Russian sailors only to wonder if they might be better off behind the Iron Curtain.

Frank Sidebottom was a pillar of alternative comedy of the late 80s/early 90s, and this charming documentary remembers the man behind the papier-mâché head.

Terence Davies' debut feature is a remarkable evocation of working-class family life in the 40s and 50s and a visionary exploration of memory.

Whit Stillman crosses the Atlantic for this irresistible Jane Austen adaptation, following the delicious and devious exploits of Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale).

Eric Rohmer's pleasingly precise portrait of obstinately perverse longing, with Béatrice Romand as the student determined to marry an uninterested lawyer.

Sophia Loren and Marcelo Mastroianni are irrepressible as a long-married couple in this exquisite and timeless comedy of our all-too-human foibles.

The lives of a London gay rugby team, both on and off the pitch, are explored in this assured feature which reveals the many different games that people play.

Three young Finnish women explore love and sex in this spirited coming-of-age drama, which won the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance 2022.

Diamantino, Portugal’s (the world’s!) top football player, becomes embroiled in a genetic experiment and a conspiracy to leave the EU, in this joyful, postmodern political fantasy.

Based on the true story of a crime that gripped Taiwan in the 1960s, Edward Yang’s epic explores the heartache and loneliness of adolescence amid the country’s political unrest.

Edward Yang’s life-affirming story of the intergenerational lives of a middle-class family living in Taipei won him Best Director and a Palme d’Or nomination at Cannes.

Ming-Liang Tsai's outrageous blend of sex, comedy, musical and drama is a daring, controversial and hilarious smorgasbord from one of Taiwan's most acclaimed directors.

An ultra-violent cult thriller starring Vincent Cassel as a ruthless bank robber and Monica Bellucci as his partner-in-crime.

Brutal, shocking and incredibly powerful, this close-up examination of a child protection police unit in Paris is hard-hitting and heart-stopping cinema.

Julien Tavernier plans the perfect murder of his boss. Having emerged from the scene of the crime, he returns to retrieve a vital piece of evidence but finds himself trapped in a lift, increasingly desperate to escape before the police arrive.

Robert Altman’s Oscar-winning foray into the world of the British aristocracy of the early 1930s combines social comment, satirical comedy and a murder mystery to dazzling effect.

Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Stoker) channels Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith, to create a sumptuous twisty psychological thriller full of erotic intrigue.

Jack Clayton directs this romantic, love-triangle drama featuring Simone Signoret in an Oscar-winning performance.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s tour de force about Russia’s famous medieval painter won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes and was voted the best arthouse film of all time by The Guardian in 2010.

Tarkovsky’s philosophical allegory about three men crossing a forbidden zone in search of a fabled room.

Andrei Tarkovsky drew on memories of a rural childhood before WWII for this personal, impressionistic and unconventional film poem.

Ken Loach's warm and characteristically understated drama deals with the challenges of a cross-cultural romance as Casim, a second-generation Scottish-Pakistani, falls for Irish-Catholic teacher, Roisin.

Mark Stanley plays the petrol-head who never left town, in this Bruce Springsteen-inspired tale of thwarted dreamers.

Andrea Arnold’s highly acclaimed film, winner of top prizes at Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival, is a haunting drama about a woman confronting past demons.

Hope Dickson Leach's hugely impressive first feature about a middle class farming family’s crisis, set against the backdrop of the Somerset floods.

Based on a story by Honoré de Balzac, a young Napoleonic soldier (Ben Daniels, Benediction) forms an intense attachment with a wild leopard in Lavinia Currier’s feature film debut.

Credited with bringing Japanese cinema to worldwide audiences, Akira Kurosawa’s breakthrough tells the story of a murder in the woods from four differing perspectives.

A bureaucrat’s life finds new meaning in Kurosawa’s classic original, the source for Bill Nighy’s brilliant drama, Living.

The on and off-screen character of Toshiro Mifune, Japan’s first international movie star, is explored in this illuminating documentary exploring the life and legacy of this mercurial icon.

The first part of Ingmar Bergman's 'Faith Trilogy', about a writer (Björnstrand) who joins his daughter, son and son-in-law on holiday, where tensions soon arise.

Two sisters, one ailing, the other with her young son, check into a hotel in a foreign city readying itself for war, in Ingmar Bergman's nightmarish vision of emotional isolation.

Ingmar Bergman's highly personal treatise on the torments of faith, in which a widowed village pastor struggles to deal with his parishioners and ex-lover.

Nicolas Winding Refn's sequel follows Tonny (Mads Mikkelsen) on the path to redemption, as he balances a life of crime with the demands of a new family.

Robert Machoian’s terse, Utah-set drama explores the anguish of a couple whose relationship has disintegrated, but with only one of them wanting out.

Emily Beecham stars in a powerful character study about a 31-year-old chef who's drifting through her London life, until she witnesses a shocking event…

Sex, death, number counting and game playing co-exist in Greenaway’s morbidly humorous and quite brilliant work.

The splendour of Rome is the setting for Greenaway’s richly symbolic work, with Brian Dennehy as the American architect.

Martin Freeman’s hearty turn as Rembrandt anchors one of Peter Greenaway’s most accessible films, charting the creation of the Dutch master’s key work, ‘The Night Watch’.

John Cassavetes' powerful drama stars Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk as a blue-collar couple struggling to cope with the wife's slide into mental illness.

Directed by Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider) this story of a blue-collar family coming apart features an astonishing performance from Linda Manz (Days of Heaven).

Alice Lowe directs and stars in this riotous tale of a pregnant serial killer, hellbent on revenge.

Claire Denis' fully formed debut offers a child’s-eye-view of racial and sexual tension that bubbles with unspoken desires.

Claire Denis’ moody and atmospheric thriller about an absent brother returning to the fold to investigate his family’s murky secrets.

Isabelle Huppert plays a plantation owner clinging to her land as civil war creeps ever closer, in Claire Denis' mesmerising rumination on the effects of colonialism.

A stylish, sensuous film about a young man’s journey into an unusual form of escort work.

Gripping account of repressed sexual desire in a hyper-masculine environment, with British newcomer Harris Dickinson as a virulently macho Brooklyn teen.

Blistering thriller of a teen groomed to work for a brutal, organised drugs network.

A comic book artist contracts flu during an epidemic and subsequently embarks on a strange journey through Russian society.

A gripping drama about a group of teenage girls living in residential care, and a powerful examination of the impacts of abuse.

Ben, an innocent immigrant from a remote village in Guyana, arrives in Brixton and falls prey to an assortment of streetwise characters in Anthony Simmons' Palme d’Or nominated comic drama.

Two sons struggle to make sense of their father’s sudden disappearance in Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's vivid drama.

Growing up in a remote Aboriginal community, 10-year-old Daniel is drawn into a world of drugs and violence, forcing him to make some difficult choices, in Ivan Sen’s Cannes-nominated film.

The Aboriginal Australian screen legend David Gulpilil takes us on the journey that was his extraordinary life and career.

John Hillcoat and Nick Cave's brilliant, brutal bushranger western, with Guy Pearce as the outlaw tasked with tracking down his psychopathic elder brother (Danny Huston).

Jenny Agutter plays the teenage girl reliant on a young Aboriginal (David Gulpilil) for her survival, in Nicolas Roeg's stunning Australian outback drama.

Bill Gunn’s revolutionary masterpiece about two vampiric lovers received a standing ovation and the Critics’ Choice prize when it screened at Cannes in 1973.

A Black cop struggles with his inner and outer demons in Christopher St John’s experimental debut feature.

Julie Dash’s groundbreaking Daughters of the Dust remains urgent and poetic and continues to resonate, inspiring Beyoncé’s iconic visual album Lemonade.

François Truffaut’s French New Wave landmark is one of the greatest movies about adolescence.

François Truffaut’s hugely popular classic depicts one of cinema’s most captivating love triangles

Happily married Bernard (Gérard Depardieu) has his life is thrown into turmoil when Mathilde (Fanny Ardant) - an old flame - moves into the house opposite.

With a blazing star performance from Hanna Schygulla in the title role, this was the greatest critical and commercial success of Fassbinder’s career.

Jeanne Moreau plays a jaded brothel madam caught up in the violent sexual awakening of Brad Davis' naïve young sailor in Fassbinder's fever dream of subversive eroticism.

Fassbinder’s international breakthrough, this unconventional love story combines lucid social analysis with devastating emotional power.

The cult classic, acknowledged as the catalyst for the popularisation of reggae in the US, sees Jimmy Cliff traversing the underbelly of Jamaican shanty-town life.

Perry Henzell’s long-lost second feature is a love letter to Jamaica, as we follow a filmmaker searching the island for a lost actor.

A treasure trove of rescued tapes revives the golden age of reggae and reveals the fascinating story behind one of Jamaica’s most legendary recording studios, Randy’s Studio 17.

A seemingly ordinary typist moonlights as a fun-loving gangster's moll in one of Ozu's most enduring silent films.

In a Japan recently devastated by World War II a devoted, near-destitute mother turns to prostitution to pay medical bills when her son falls dangerously ill.

Ozu's deft comedy takes an ironic look at the decline of paternal authority.

Robert Bresson’s tale of sexual intrigue, rivalry and revenge among Parisian socialites, with glittering dialogue by Cocteau.

Robert Bresson’s riveting tale of a Gestapo prisoner determined to regain his freedom, based on real events.

The legendary story of Joan of Arc is powerfully retold in Robert Bresson’s minimalist masterpiece.

Eric Rohmer's final collaboration with the great cinematographer Néstor Almendros follows a holidaying teenager as she begins to navigate the adult world.

Four thirtysomethings find some much-needed time to reconnect in this beautifully observed and subtly insightful debut.

In this classic, broiling Australian thriller, an exasperated schoolteacher finds himself stranded in the dusty outback town of Bundanyabba, where the growing isolation and unhinged locals begin to eat away at his sanity.

Michelangelo Antonioni's debut feature is a noirish thriller following a jealous industrialist who hires a private eye to investigate his wife.

Antonioni’s masterpiece of modern alienation, with Monica Vitti as the young woman searching for her friend who's inexplicably disappeared.

Michelangelo Antonioni's masterpiece stars Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau as a couple re-examining their emotional bonds.

Apichatpong's Cannes prizewinner, about an ailing man revisiting his past, is a measured, lyrical evocation of mysterious beauty and quiet humanity

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s imaginative, sensuous and enigmatic film about soldiers suffering from a mysterious sleeping sickness.

Thai filmmaker and Palme d'Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul's hallucinatory debut feature is an extraordinary combination of experimental documentary and fiction.

The ever-prolific François Ozon directs this richly-evocative period piece, set in the aftermath of World War I.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as doppelgängers in this dark, pulsating thriller from Denis Villeneuve.

A young mixed heritage man confronts the psychological complexities of his identity in this essential, truly cinematic discovery for anyone interested in Black British cinema.

A beautiful blood-red dress unleashes a curse on its wearers in Peter Strickland's erotic and twisted horror.

In 1970s Italy, a timid British sound engineer joins the crew on a violent horror film. But the disturbing world of the film soon seeps into reality.

Peter Strickland’s visually and aurally intoxicating tale of sadomasochistic power-play is a daringly erotic sensory feast.

Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki relive a literary love affair, fiery and forbidden, with a remarkable legacy.

Kenyan couple Samuel and Alex remain committed to each other despite the danger and hardship facing them in Peter Murimi’s moving documentary portrait.

A newlywed biker becomes disenchanted with married life after joining a motorcycle gang, in one of British cinema's earliest sympathetic depictions of a gay working class man.

Beautifully told true story of the love affair between American poet Elizabeth Bishop and Brazilian architect Lola de Macedo Soares.

From director Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure) comes a satire on the hypocrisy of the art world, starring Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss and Dominic West. Winner of the Palme d'Or.

Abbas Kiarostami directs Juliette Binoche in a personal and playful drama about a day in the life of a French gallery owner and a British author.

Jia Zhangke’s state-of-the-nation report on contemporary China is comprised of four stories about shocking acts of violence.

A British indie crime film of great style and ingenuity, executive produced by Ben Wheatley and starring Tom Meeten and Alice Lowe.

Two self-confessed hedonists wreak wanton havoc in Věra Chytilová's visually spectacular neo-dadaist farce.

Shockingly explicit, Catherine Breillat’s critically acclaimed Romance is one of the most controversial films of modern cinema.

Olivier Assayas' neo-noir cyber-thriller is a chilling exploration of the nexus between sex and violence available at the click of a button.

The long-awaited second feature from Lucile Hadžihalilović (Innocence) is a gorgeously surreal coming-of-age tale laced with bizarre body-horror.

An inventive and acclaimed British feature following the transformation of a teenager who agrees to portray her missing college friend in a highly detailed crime reconstruction.

Desperate Optimists' deliriously deconstructed biopic of the extraordinary Ambrosio O'Higgins, who left Ireland to become the captain general of Chile in the Spanish Empire.

A young woman seeking her biological mother journeys into dangerous territory in this gripping psychological thriller from Irish directing duo Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor.

Gunfire breaks out in the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea in this gripping thriller from Park Chan-wook.

Park’s wilfully grotesque fable about an abductee trying to fathom the mysteries of his past.

Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Stoker) channels Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith, to create a sumptuous twisty psychological thriller full of erotic intrigue.

Ingmar Bergman’s best-known film is a brilliant allegorical drama starring Max von Sydow as a knight trying to elude his own death.

Victor Sjöström is magnificent as the crabby professor taking a nostalgic road trip with his daughter-in-law, in Ingmar Bergman's elegiac masterpiece.

Ingmar Bergman’s scandalous tale of two lovers enjoying the freedom of youth.

When the sole survivor from an orbital mission returns, the brilliant Professor Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) discovers the astronaut is not quite all that he seems...

Two men with opposing views undertake a dangerous Himalayan search for the legendary lost creature, in this typically intelligent take on the Yeti mythology from the pen of Nigel Kneale.

While researching for his moon colonisation programme, Professor Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) is intrigued by the strange readings his radar is picking up.

Kim Longinotto’s observational documentary delves into Iran’s difficult and one-sided divorce process.

Jeanie Finlay's elegaic account of the very last record shop in Teesside, UK.

Romantic sparks fly between the daughters of two opposing politicians in Wanuri Kahiu’s neon-bright story of forbidden love in Kenya.

Amat Escalante follows Heli with a boundary-pushing, mind-blowing mix of sex, sci-fi and social drama.

Kristen Stewart reunites with Olivier Assayas to play an A-List celebrity's personal shopper, who keeps receiving strange text messages from an unknown source.

A beautiful blood-red dress unleashes a curse on its wearers in Peter Strickland's erotic and twisted horror.

Fassbinder's visual and verbal extravaganza about a successful but lonely fashion designer who falls in love with a beautiful younger woman.

This intoxicating drama about an adolescent girl's sexual awakening launched the careers of both its star Abbie Cornish and director Cate Shortland.

An intimate and moving exploration of motherhood and the frustrations of being unable to care for the ones we love.

The working-class community of Hoxton Street face the upheavals of gentrification, austerity and the eruption of Brexit, in this portrait of a rapidly changing London.

In 1970s Belfast Terri Hooley and his Good Vibrations record store become spawning ground for the city's fledgeling punk scene.

Charmingly idiosyncratic comedy reworking of Cyrano de Bergerac, with Alex Lawther as a boarder who helps the school hero woo a French teacher's daughter despite being besotted with her himself.

Mismatched lunchboxes lead to an unlikely romance in this exquisite Indian drama, brimful of tantalising food and elegantly delivered wisdom.

An unflinching study of brutality and resistance, fear and desire in a Japanese WWII POW camp, directed with verve by Oshima and starring David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tom Conti.

David Bowie’s image and music gives brooding energy to this tale of a junkie sex-worker in 70s Berlin.

David Bowie stars as the soldier-turned-drifter-turned-dancer for rent, in David Hemmings' Berlin melodrama set at the end of the Great War.

A passionate writer of film versions for the visually impaired meets an older photographer who is slowly losing his eyesight, in this luminous Cannes-winning love story from Naomi Kawase (Sweet Bean).

A struggling street food vendor accepts help from an elderly lady with a sensational recipe up her sleeve, in Naomi Kawase's bittersweet drama of culinary redemption.

A beautiful and contemplative portrait of grief from Cannes-winning filmmaker Naomi Kawase (Sweet Bean, Still the Water).

After COP25 in 2019, thousands of young Danish people took to the streets to demand instant action on climate change. In the subsequent general election the new Danish government pledged bold climate policies, but will they be able to enact them?

After a violent storm, Kisilu, a Kenyan farmer, transforms from a father and community leader to an acitivist on the global stage, as he visits COP21 in Paris to bring his message to the world.

A young artist relocates to coastal Bangladesh to practice his art, but in doing so up-turns the local community’s age-old customs and taboos.

A journalist sets out to uncover in urban legend about a supposedly cursed videotape, in Hideo Nakata's chilling and highly influential tale of technological terror.

Stylish, symbolic and erotically charged Japanese horror in which the fortunes of a murderous mother-and-daughter team are upended by a strangely masked samurai.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's dark and apocalyptic J-Horror foretells how technology serves to isolate us as it grows more important to our lives.

Julie Dash’s groundbreaking Daughters of the Dust remains urgent and poetic and continues to resonate, inspiring Beyoncé’s iconic visual album Lemonade.

What if an immaculate conception took place in a South London household? Idris Elba stars in a subtle, thought-provoking and original family drama.

A young mixed heritage man confronts the psychological complexities of his identity in this essential, truly cinematic discovery for anyone interested in Black British cinema.

Living in the sand dunes just outside the city of Timbuktu, a cattle herder and his wife find their peaceful existence disturbed by forces attempting to dictate their lifestyle.

15 years after Ken Fero’s ground-breaking film Injustice, which examined deaths in police custody, comes a compelling follow-up that feels as timely as ever.

Andrew Bujalski serves up a big-hearted comedy with his day-in-the-life look at Double Whammies – a Hooters-style bar and its tight-knit, all-female staff.

An innocent man sentenced to rot in a Cambodian jail is released for the sadistic pleasure of twisted trophy hunters and forced to fight – or die.

A mother bequeaths two life-altering letters to her children in Denis Villeneuve’s powerful and compelling drama.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as doppelgängers in this dark, pulsating thriller from Denis Villeneuve.

Denis Villeneuve’s profound dramatisation of the tragic Montreal Massacre.

In Ameen Nayfeh’s accomplished feature debut, a Palestinian father navigates the complexities of life under occupation, where the wall separates him from his family.

An exploration of identity, as told by the women in the family of the great Egyptian filmmaker, Youssef Chahine.

Beautifully shot documentary about four members of the 'Sudanese Film Club' who decide to revive an old cinema.

Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch star as a pair of social outcasts struggling to make sense of the world around them, in this sublime love story based on the work of underground artist Daniel Clowes.

Before The Hunger Games there was Battle Royale, Kinji Fukasaku's magnificently twisted shocker in which tearaway teens are given three days to kill or be killed.

Leontine Sagan’s pioneering and internationally acclaimed lesbian love story.

A summer of love turns into a dark tale of revenge. This compelling film by Jean Becker features a stunning Isabelle Adjani in one of her most extraordinary performances.

Besieged in an abandoned police station, a lone cop and his skeleton staff recruit a condemned killer from the cells in a desperate battle to survive the night, in John Carpenter's brutal and unrelenting cult classic.

A boy strikes up a friendship with a projectionist in this timeless and charming love letter to cinema from Giuseppe Tornatore.

Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece about the last years of French colonial rule in Algeria, seen from the perspective of both the revolutionaries and the French authorities.

Pasolini’s classic about a handsome, enigmatic stranger (Terence Stamp) who arrives at a bourgeois household and seduces an entire family.

Ingmar Bergman’s intriguing directorial debut, in which a young woman is torn between the traditional rural life of her family and the bright lights of the big city.

Arguably the most acclaimed of Bergman's early films, this charts the unsteady relationship between a girl bruised by her parents’ unhappy marriage and a sailor tired of years at sea.

Victor Sjöström (the great director later cast in Wild Strawberries) plays a conductor overseeing the tempestuous relationship between two violinists under his tutelage, in this early romance from Ingmar Bergman.

Britain beats to the sound of Bhangra and Bangla in Gurinder Chadha's debut film.

Funny, acerbic and moving story of a young man's sexual awakening as family life crumbles around him.

The debut film of both Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) and Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale) is a ferociously gritty crime thriller about a drug dealer's dizzying descent into self-destruction.

Ryan Gosling plays the stunt double leading another life as a getaway driver in Nicolas Winding Refn's timeless cult thriller.

Ryan Gosling takes on Bangkok’s criminal underworld in this kaleidoscopic revenge fantasy from cult director Nicolas Winding Refn.

A thoughtful, observational drama about a young woman’s fight to retain her integrity despite falling in love.

Celebrated as the first time a woman (or a Hungarian) director was awarded the Golden Bear at Berlin, Adoption is a powerful statement on female agency.

The first part of Márta Mészáros' award-winning autobiographical Diary trilogy, set in Hungary from 1947 to 1953.

Technology and sexuality meet in head-on collision in David Cronenberg’s controversial adaptation of writer J.G. Ballard’s hugely transgressive 1973 novel, starring James Spader and Holly Hunter.

From singularly talented Canadian director David Cronenberg comes this sci-fi/horror classic about people with powerfully violent telepathic powers.

David Cronenberg’s classic outbreak horror introduces us to a young woman (Marilyn Chambers) who hungers for human blood after an experimental plastic surgery goes wrong.

Sandy Dennis excels in this unsettling psychological thriller, the first truly personal film from American master filmmaker Robert Altman.

Robert Altman's psychological horror in which a pregnant children’s author (Susannah York) suddenly begins to experience paranoia, hallucinations and visions of a doppelgänger.

Robert Altman revisits the 1930s city of his childhood, vividly recreating its jazz clubs, speakeasies, political corruption and lively crime scene.

Agnes Varda’s classic character study follows a successful pop singer as she wanders around Paris while awaiting the results of serious medical tests.

The story of Mona, a young hitchhiker who cannot communicate with the world, is told in flashback by people who came into contact with her.

In her final film, Agnès Varda offers a personal insight into her oeuvre, using excerpts from her work to illustrate her unique artistic visions and ideas.

Chris Petit's cult classic is one of the most striking feature debuts in British cinema – a haunting blend of edgy mystery story and existential road movie.

One of the finest achievements of New German Cinema, Wenders' remarkable road-movie follows two young men as they travel through a country in the midst of momentous change.

On a Tuscan break a fortysomething woman finds herself drawn to the company of a group of partying teens, including a young Tom Hiddleston (in one of his earliest roles).

Starring Tom Hiddleston, a family holiday to the Isles of Scilly sees fractures emerge in this sun-filled drama from Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir).

Joanna Hogg's sleek and minimalist comedy about a pair of artists and their emotional attachment to their ultra-modernist apartment.

Olivier Assayas' neo-noir cyber-thriller is a chilling exploration of the nexus between sex and violence available at the click of a button.

Olivier Assayas' sexy and stylish ode to the madness of filmmaking, with Maggie Cheung as the Hong Kong movie star playing a Catwoman-style anti-heroine.

Kristen Stewart reunites with Olivier Assayas to play an A-List celebrity's personal shopper, who keeps receiving strange text messages from an unknown source.

A gutless moment comes to define a man in this glorious comedy of unease from the creator of Triangle of Sadness.

Teenage friends get the chance to be boys for a while in this supernatural, gender fluid fantasy from the director of Kiss Me.

Washed out interiors provide the backdrop for a motley crew of characters: a stout depressive and her long-suffering husband; a young girl with a crush on a rock musician; couples with too much to say, or too little; a diligent tuba player...

Gabriel Axel’s Oscar-winning story of a Parisian chef who finds refuge in a Danish village; a magical film about the power of the senses.

After tragedy strikes, a couple retreat to a cabin in the woods in order to grieve. However, they find things go from bad to worse, in this brutal interrogation of nature from Lars von Trier.

Susanne Bier’s sumptuous, Oscar-winning drama explores the duality of a doctor working in a Sudanese refugee camp and his troubled family life in rural Denmark.

The world’s troubles recede, at least for a moment, in this intimate drama about an affair between a Finnish man and a Syrian immigrant.

When husband and wife Lauri and Ilona lose their jobs due to a recession, they are too proud to use the social welfare system for support, and so attempt to find new jobs. However things don't go to plan with one disaster following another.

The wife of a reindeer herder acquires a potion to make her an irresistible object of desire, but at a terrible cost, in this extraordinary vampiric fairy-tale set amongst the starkly beautiful fells of Finnish Lapland.

When a practical young student helps her manipulative friend, it proves to be a devastating, life-changing experience for both. This Palme d’Or-winner is as taut as a thriller and comes from the director of Beyond The Hills.

Porumboiu's daring and darkly comic masterpiece is a policier unlike any other.

Cristi Puiu's multiple award-winning drama about a seriously ill man caught in an absurdist bureaucratic nightmare over the course of one night.

Julien Tavernier plans the perfect murder of his boss. Having emerged from the scene of the crime, he returns to retrieve a vital piece of evidence but finds himself trapped in a lift, increasingly desperate to escape before the police arrive.

A French boarding-school friendship threatened by Nazi hatred in Malle's elegant tale of World War Two.

It is 1944 and in rural France an eighteen-year-old finds himself caught between his job as a member of the Gestapo, and the Jewish girl he is falling in love with.

A stylish, sensuous film about a young man’s journey into an unusual form of escort work.

Peter Strickland’s visually and aurally intoxicating tale of sadomasochistic power-play is a daringly erotic sensory feast.

The first solo feature of acclaimed director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, Dogtooth) follows the cryptic, bizarre activities of three inscrutable residents of a Greek holiday resort.

Yorgos Lanthimos' scary, witty tale of a dysfunctional Greek family is original, ingenious and sadly relevant as a study of parent-child relationships

Yorgos Lanthimos directs this odd drama in which a group of people start a company where they impersonate the dead to help customers through the grieving process.

A literary TV chat-show host (Daniel Auteuil) discovers the drawbacks to celebrity when he and his wife (Juliette Binoche) start receiving anonymous messages in the form of videos of their home and naively violent drawings.

Michael Haneke's Cannes prizewinner, set in a pre-WW1 German village, explores the oppressively strict social conditions that gave rise to Nazism

Ryan Gosling takes on Bangkok’s criminal underworld in this kaleidoscopic revenge fantasy from cult director Nicolas Winding Refn.

Kristen Stewart reunites with Olivier Assayas to play an A-List celebrity's personal shopper, who keeps receiving strange text messages from an unknown source.

Roberto Rossellini's acerbic but finally very moving masterpiece about marital crisis boasts great performances from Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders