Directed by Ronald Bronstein • 2007 • United States

Longtime Safdie brothers collaborator Ronald Bronstein has described his lone directorial effort as "a rotten egg lobbed with bad aim at the silver screen." Be forewarned: audience response has been intensely divided. FROWNLAND has garnered bot...

Directed by Leilah Weinraub • 2018 • United States

Charting the eight-year run of Shakedown, a peripatetic black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles, director Leilah Weinraub attempts “to portray the before and after of a utopic moment.” Weinraub presents a world unto itself, shaped by the desires...

Directed by Carlos Reygadas • 2002 • Mexico
Starring Alejandro Ferretis, Magdalena Flores

In this preternaturally assured feature debut by Carlos Reygadas, a man (Alejandro Ferretis) travels from Mexico City to an isolated village to commit suicide; once there, however, he meets a pious elderly ...

Directed by Götz Spielmann • 2008 • Austria
Starring Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Ursula Strauss

A gripping thriller and a tragic drama of nearly Greek proportions, REVANCHE is the stunning, Oscar-nominated international breakthrough of Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann. In a ragged section...

Directed by Steve McQueen • 2008 • Ireland, United Kingdom
Starring Michael Fassbender, Stuart Graham, Liam Cunningham

With HUNGER, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history’s most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experie...

Directed by Todd Solondz • 2010 • United States
Starring Ally Sheedy, Allison Janney, Ciarán Hinds

In LIFE DURING WARTIME, independent filmmaker Todd Solondz explores contemporary American existence and the nature of forgiveness with his customary dry humor and queasy precision. The film functio...

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 2010 • Italy
Starring Juliette Binoche, William Shimell

The great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami travels to Tuscany for a luminous and provocative romance in which nothing is as it appears. What seems at first to be a straightforward tale of two people—played by...

Directed by Cristian Mungiu • 2012 • Romania
Starring Cristina Flutur, Cosmina Stratan

With this arresting drama based on notorious real-life events, Cristian Mungiu mounts a complex inquiry into faith, fanaticism, and indifference. At a desolate Romanian monastery, a young novice nun, Voichita ...

Directed by Christian Petzold • 2014 • Germany
Starring Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf

This evocative and haunting drama, set in rubble-strewn Berlin in 1945, is like no other film about post-World War II Jewish-German identity. After surviving Auschwitz, a former cabaret singer (Ni...

Directed by Jonathan Demme • 2014 • United States
Starring Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Lisa Joyce

Twenty years after their brilliant cinema-theater experiment VANYA ON 42ND STREET, Wallace Shawn and André Gregory reunited to produce another idiosyncratic film version of a classic play, this t...

Directed by Jacques Audiard • 2015 • France
Starring Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby

With this Palme d’Or–winning drama, which deftly combines seemingly disparate genres, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard cemented his status as a titan of contemporary world ...

Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 2016 • United States
Starring Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams

The expanses of the American West take center stage in this intimately observed triptych from Kelly Reichardt. Adapted from three short stories by Maile Meloy and unfolding in self-containe...

Directed by Aki Kaurismäki • 2017 • Finland
Starring Sherwan Haji, Sakari Kuosmanen

This wry, melancholic comedy from Aki Kaurismäki, a response to the ongoing global refugee crisis, follows two people searching for a place to call home. Khaled (Sherwan Haji), a displaced Syrian, lands in Helsin...

Directed by Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm • 2016 • United States, Denmark

A rare glimpse into the mind of one of cinema’s most enigmatic visionaries, DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE offers an absorbing portrait of the artist, as well as an intimate encounter with the man himself. ...

Directed by Andrew Haigh • 2015 • United Kingdom
Starring Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay

In this exquisitely calibrated film, Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay perform a subtly off-kilter pas de deux as Kate and Geoff, an English couple who, on the eve of an anniversary celebration, fin...

Directed by Lee Chang-dong • 2007 • South Korea
Starring Jeon Do-yeon, Song Kang-ho

A master of intensely emotional human dramas, director Lee Chang-dong is a luminary of contemporary Korean cinema, and his place on the international stage was cemented by this stirring and unpredictable work exa...

Directed by Olivier Assayas • 2014 • France, Germany, Switzerland
Starring Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moretz

This multilayered, immensely entertaining drama from the great contemporary French director Olivier Assayas is a singular look at the intersection of high art and popu...

Directed by Lucrecia Martel • 2001 • Argentina, Spain
Starring Martín Adjemián, Diego Baenas, Leonora Balcarce

The release of Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema. With a radical and disturbing take on narrative, beaut...

Directed by Kirsten Johnson • 2016 • United States

A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home with the director: Kirsten Johnson weaves these scenes and others into her film CAMERAPERSON, a tape...

Directed by Catherine Breillat • 2001 • France, Italy
Starring Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero de Rienzo

Twelve-year-old Anaïs is fat. Her sister, fifteen-year-old Elena, is a beauty. While the girls are on vacation with their parents, Anaïs tags along as Elena explores the dreary seaside ...

Directed by Paolo Sorrentino • 2013 • Italy
Starring Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli

For decades, journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the glittering nightlife of Rome. Since the legendary success of his only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in t...

Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 2000 • Hong Kong
Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung Man-yuk

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery abo...

Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska • 2015 • Poland
Starring Kinga Preis, Michalina Olszańska, Marta Mazurek

This genre-defying horror-musical mash-up—the bold debut of Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska—follows a pair of carnivorous mermaid sisters drawn ashore to explore life on land in an alte...

Directed by Andrew Haigh • 2011 • United Kingdom
Starring Tom Cullen, Chris New

This sensual, remarkably observed, beautifully acted wonder is the breakout feature from British writer-director-editor Andrew Haigh. Rarely has a film been as honest about sexuality—in both depiction and discussi...