Werckmeister Harmonies
Dir. Béla Tarr
Werckmeister Harmonies is perplexing, to say the least. No one would expect that a circus would somehow disrupt a village…
Le Doulos
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Le Doulos starts with an explanation of the title. While the word refers to the specific type of hat the…
Belle de Jour
Dir. Luis Buñuel
What makes something sexy? Belle de Jour doesn’t have any definite answers, nor does it present a straightforward narrative, especially…
Eyes Without a Face
Dir. Georges Franju
Eyes Without a Face is aptly titled. As the mad Dr. Génessier goes to extreme lengths to restore his daughter…
Martin Eden
Dir. Pietro Marcello
Loosely based on the 1909 novel, Martin Eden is a stunning film about the hollow success of individualism. The plot…
Jean de Florette
Dir. Claude Berri
As the Provence countryside is painted in golden sunshine, Jean de Florette seems like a straightforward period drama, celebrating the…
The Tracker
Dir. Rolf de Heer
At first, The Tracker seemed to be a straightforward Australian Western with three white men tracking down a murderer, with…
No Man's Land
Dir. Danis Tanović
The situation in No Man’s Land isn’t something we usually see in war movies, considering how often the genre has…
Open Your Eyes
Dir. Alejandro Amenábar
While the mixed reception of its near-faithful American remake Vanilla Sky might make some viewers pause, there’s an intuitive brilliance…
Charlie's Country
Dir. Rolf de Heer
One’s home country should be the place where a citizen has their rights, but that’s not the case in Charlie’s…
Santa Sangre
Dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky
With an acrobat in a sanitarium, elephant trunks spouting blood, and a religious cult whose patron saint is a rape…
Queen Margot
Dir. Patrice Chéreau
Before Games of Thrones delivered court intrigues, shocking murders, and adulterous affairs, Queen Margot delivered all these nearly two decades…
The Consequences of Love
Dir. Paolo Sorrentino
What exactly are The Consequences of Love? At first glance, this seemingly mundane drama offers its audience an Italian loner…
Manon of the Springs
Dir. Claude Berri
Manon des Sources (Manon of the Springs), directed by Claude Berri, follows a young woman named Manon living reclusively in…
The Source
Dir. Radu Mihăileanu
It’s obvious that there’s an inequality between the sexes, but while knowing the problem is helpful, it can be tough…
Land and Freedom
Dir. Ken Loach
Stereotypically made to look like one-note villains in many other films, the kinds of characters who lead Land and Freedom…
Night on Earth
Dir. Jim Jarmusch
An absolute delight of a gem starring a young Winona Ryder as well as an amazing cast. Arguably Jim Jarmusch’s…
In the Fade
Dir. Fatih Akin
In Fatih Akin’s In the Fade, Katja is seeking justice after the killings of her Turkish husband and their young…
Intervista
Dir. Federico Fellini
Intervista isn’t just a film, nor is it just a film-within-a-film. It’s actually four films in one– the mockumentary itself,…
In the Soup
Dir. Alexandre Rockwell
Making a film is sort of a miracle– to make one can sometimes come into fruition through a lucky combination…
Shun Li and the Poet
Dir. Andrea Segre
Life can get tough if you move to another country. You have to adjust to the language, to the culture,…
The Son's Room
Dir. Nanni Moretti
The Son’s Room is about grief, but there’s something refreshing about the way it depicts how the family navigates it,…
Certified Copy
Dir. Abbas Kiarostami
Certified Copy starts straightforward enough as it follows an unnamed shopkeeper (Juliette Binoche) and a writer (William Shimell) taking a…
The Red Violin
Dir. François Girard
We mostly think of objects as just stuff to buy, to sell, to give, and to throw away, but for…