Floating Clouds

Dazzling epic, in which the young Pharaoh Ramses XIII clashes with Egypt's clergy over influence on the affairs of the state and its coffers.

A mysterious time-travel experiment becomes a warped voyage through memory, in this mesmerising sci-fi from acclaimed director Alain Resnais.

Sumptuous historical drama starring Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil; a thunderous yarn full of dastardly plots, familial hatred and perverse desire

1980s borstal drama – billed as the female Scum – featuring Amanda York and Kathy Burke as inmates in a ruthless women’s prison.

An ungainly cockney chauffeur navigates the seedy streets of London, gradually falling for the elegant and mysterious prostitute who is his passenger.

Saoirse Ronan gives a bracing performance as a young recovering alcoholic returning home to Orkney in this moving adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoir.

Family secrets echo around a Spanish clan, ringing loud enough to rouse the dead, in Pedro Almodóvar's assured melodrama.

Tilda Swinton and Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous, operatic vision of an aristocratic family disrupted by unstoppable forces of passion.

Céline Sciamma’s BAFTA-nominated film about the tentative love between a painter and her subject in 18th-century France.

Sizzling, feverish melodrama set amid Mexico City’s red-light district nightclubs

Lars von Trier’s unique and divisive dissection of the American Dream, featuring Björk as an immigrant worker finding escape in musical cinema.

Writer Nadia M Oliva tracks the development of the melodrama genre and how it plays out across film, TV and online.

Mikio Naruse’s best-known film is a masterful study of a Ginza hostess struggling under constant pressures to compromise her honour.

Mikio Naruse’s best-known film is a masterful study of a Ginza hostess struggling under constant pressures to compromise her honour.

The first film made by Akira Kurosawa's own production company is a dark tale of greed, corporate corruption and revenge.

Mikio Naruse’s best-known film is a masterful study of a Ginza hostess struggling under constant pressures to compromise her honour.

Dazzling epic, in which the young Pharaoh Ramses XIII clashes with Egypt's clergy over influence on the affairs of the state and its coffers.

An intimate portrait of legendary techno producer, DJ and record label creator Carl Craig and an ode to his beloved city, Detroit.

A mysterious time-travel experiment becomes a warped voyage through memory, in this mesmerising sci-fi from acclaimed director Alain Resnais.

Sumptuous historical drama starring Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil; a thunderous yarn full of dastardly plots, familial hatred and perverse desire

1980s borstal drama – billed as the female Scum – featuring Amanda York and Kathy Burke as inmates in a ruthless women’s prison.

An ungainly cockney chauffeur navigates the seedy streets of London, gradually falling for the elegant and mysterious prostitute who is his passenger.