Caligula: The Ultimate Cut

Luchino Visconti's final film is a brilliant and disturbing drama set against the opulent backdrop of decadent, late 19th-century aristocracy.

A widowed doctor has gruesome plans for his new wife in this lush, Hitchcockian Italian gothic horror.

Florence Pugh shines in this exceptional British debut of a young wife's need for freedom, whatever the cost.

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.

Peter Greenaway became a director of international status with this witty, stylised, erotic country house murder mystery.

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

Takashi Miike burst to international prominence with this deeply disturbing tale of a deadly young woman who turns the tables on her middle-aged suitor.

Andrey Zvyagintsev (Elena, Leviathan) delivers a masterpiece in this caustic look at contemporary Russian society, a failed marriage and the disappearance of a child. A major prize winner at both Cannes and BFI London Film Festival.

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.

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

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

Todd Solondz’s outstanding sophomore feature is a darkly comic portrait of suburban teen angst, starring Heather Matarazzo in her iconic breakout role as quirky high school misfit Dawn "Wiener-dog" Wiener.

Before Caligula, Italian provocateur Tinto Brass directed this controversial and transgressive drama, inspired by the true story of a Nazi-run brothel in 30s Berlin.

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

Adam Driver excels in this effortlessly charming tale of a bus driver poet in New Jersey, filmed with typically groovy elan by Jim Jarmusch.

Siblings find passion and peril online and in the real world, in this visually electric French drama.

A seductive neo-noir and cult classic centring on lesbian desire in dangerous circumstances.

The messiness of sex, the mysteries of birth and the moving spectacle of devoted parenting in the face of impending oblivion create a potent atmosphere in Claire Denis’ English-language debut.

Soulful docufiction featuring real-life porn actor Lalo Santos.