Smiles of a Summer Night

Vojtěch Jasný’s enduring masterpiece chronicles the saga of Czech villagers forced into collective farms by their new Communist rulers.

Charmingly idiosyncratic comedy reworking of Cyrano de Bergerac, with Alex Lawther as a boarder who helps the school hero woo a French teacher's daughter despite being besotted with her himself.

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.

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

An 18th-century Bavarian community falls apart when the local glassmaker dies, in Werner Herzog's mesmerising drama for which he famously directed his actors under hypnosis.

Ozu's comic pre-war feature about a professor who falls into the clutches of his audacious niece.

A fixture in the critical canon almost since its premiere, Eisenstein’s film about a 1905 naval mutiny was revolutionary in both form and content.

The first sound-film by one of the greatest of all filmmakers, Carl Theodor Dreyer, is akin to a waking-dream; guiding the viewer on a trance-like journey between reality and the supernatural.

Waterway hi jinks abound in this Buster Keaton classic, in which he plays the reluctant heir to his father's paddle steamer business.

A group of weary travellers arrive at a spooky mansion with a madman on the loose, in this classic horror-comedy from James Whale (Bride of Frankenstein)

Věra Chytilová's 'fictionalised documentary' uses non-actors to portray girls' lives in the cotton mills of Náchod.

Simmering tensions between locals and newcomers in a modern-day Cornish fishing village reach boiling point in this hugely acclaimed British independent film.

Ingmar Bergman's excellent ensemble piece concerns a 19th-century mesmerist and a scientist and police chief out to discredit him.

Ingmar Bergman’s scandalous tale of two lovers enjoying the freedom of youth.

Ingmar Bergman's excellent ensemble piece concerns a 19th-century mesmerist and a scientist and police chief out to discredit him.

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.

Mark Stanley plays the petrol-head who never left town, in this Bruce Springsteen-inspired tale of thwarted dreamers.

Do we ever really get over our first love? Asako is about to find out, in this quirky romantic drama with a dash of the uncanny.

A haunting, silent, modernist classic, visibly influenced by The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

Toshio Matsumoto's kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most intoxicating films of the 60s.

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).

Voted the best Czech film ever made, František Vláčil’s groundbreaking 13th-century epic is a story of a fierce inter-clan rivalry and doomed love.