3 You Must See

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 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, most recently inspiring Beyoncé’s 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.

The taped crusader: VHS nerds, media scholars and archive enthusiasts will appreciate this documentary about the African-American activist who recorded 30 years of TV news.

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.

The first man in Poland to receive a full face transplant achieves national notoriety, but struggles with his own identity in this ingenious tragicomedy.

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 doppelgangers 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 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.

Ralph Fiennes delivers a sensational performance as one of four passionate souls sharing a villa in the Sicilian sunshine, with jealousy, intrigue and violence simmering beneath the surface.

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.

Bassam Tariq’s visceral directorial debut, co-written with Riz Ahmed, finds a British-Pakistani rapper’s life spiralling out of control when, on the cusp of success, he succumbs to a debilitating illness.

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.

On a family holiday to the French Alps, a couple see stress put on their marriage when, during a crisis, the father abandons his family.

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

Tilda Swinton stars in Sally Potter's dazzling interpretation of Virginia Woolf's novel.

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.

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.

Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or-winner, about an octogenarian couple trying to cope when a stroke leaves the wife partly paralysed and speechless.

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