A Touch of Zen

Kurosawa’s classic about a drifting samurai who plays two gangs off against each other, famously remade as A Fistful of Dollars.

Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling mix of fairy story and samurai movie - a story of rival clans, hidden gold and a princess in distress - was famously a key inspiration for George Lucas’ Star Wars.

Adapted from Noh and Kabuki theatre, Kurosawa’s classic tale of deception sees a lord and his bodyguard disguise themselves as monks to bypass an enemy roadblock.

Fellini triumphantly conjured himself out of writer's block with this magnum opus about a film director experiencing his own creative crisis.

Anna Karina shines in Jean-Luc Godard’s critically acclaimed account of a Parisian woman's slow descent into prostitution.

The first feature by Barbet Schroeder (Maîtresse, The Valley), More created a sensation when it was released in 1969, quickly becoming a cult classic and famed for its Pink Floyd soundtrack.

In this stylish, dark crime thriller, a policeman’s complex web of underworld relationships is threatened by an internal affairs investigator.

A séance results in a man’s first wife returning from the dead in Noël Coward’s wonderful comedy.

Jean-Luc Godard’s extraordinary debut feature, an insouciant and iconoclastic crime film that paved the way for the French New Wave.

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

The Russian media's obsession with the election of Donald Trump is told entirely through clips, in this fascinating essay on news bias, pop culture and the power of images.

Rüdger Suchsland’s 2014 documentary on the social and cultural impact of German cinema during the Weimar Republic.

This under-appreciated classic of German silent cinema stars Emil Jannings as Boss, a middle-aged circus acrobat whose life is derailed by a seductive stranger (Lya de Putti).

Four infantrymen on the Western Front suffer the everyday hardships and insanity of trench warfare, in G.W. Pabst's anti-war classic.

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).