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.

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

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.

The importance of human connection lies at the heart of this powerful, nuanced portrait of a young Portuguese warehouse employee in Scotland.

Co-written with Céline Sciamma, Noémie Merlant’s bright and bold film follows three friends as they try to dispose of the body of an abuser they’ve accidentally killed.

A professor takes drastic action to silence a barking dog in this superb debut feature from Bong Joon-ho, the Oscar-winning director of Parasite.

A pair of detectives clash trying to solve the brutal murder of two women, in Bong Joon-ho’s masterful blend of true crime and dark social satire.

During the Napoleonic wars, a soldier discovers a strange manuscript that reveals endless stories-within-stories. Wojciech Has' opus is a major cult film of the 60s, revered by Luis Buñuel, David Lynch and Jerry Garcia.

Wojciech Has’ dazzling feature debut, a bleak, mordantly funny, all too human portrait of an alcoholic.