Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1959 • Japan
Starring Ganjiro Nakamura, Machiko Kyo, Ayako Wakao

In 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent classic A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS in color with the celebrated cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (RASHOMON, UGETSU). Setting his later version in a seaside locati...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1934 • Japan
Starring Takeshi Sakamoto, Choko Iida, Koji (Hideo) Mitsui

In 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent classic A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS in color with the celebrated cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (RASHOMON, UGETSU). Setting his later version in a seaside...

Directed by Cauleen Smith • 1998 • United States
Starring Toby Smith, April Barnett, Will Power

A rediscovered treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s DRYLONGSO embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rat...

Criterion Collection Edition #893

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 M...

Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien • 1998 • Taiwan
Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Michiko Hada, Annie Shizuka Inoh

An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, this gorgeous period reverie by Hou Hsiao-hsien traces the romantic intrigue, ...

Directed by Jayro Bustamante • 2019 • Guatemala
Starring María Mercedes Coroy, Margarita Kénefic, Sabrina de la Hoz

A country’s bloody history stains the present in the Guatemalan auteur Jayro Bustamante’s transfixing fusion of folk horror and searing political commentary, inspired by the real-l...

Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie Walker

The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye s...

Directed by Christopher Nolan • `1999 • United Kingdom
Starring Jeremy Theobald, Alex Haw

Before he became a sensation with the twisty revenge story MEMENTO, Christopher Nolan fashioned this low-budget, 16 mm black-and-white neonoir with comparable precision and cunning. Providing irrefutable ev...

Directed by David Lynch • 2006 • United States
Starring Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux

“Strange, what love does.” The role of a lifetime, a Hollywood mystery, a woman in trouble . . . David Lynch’s first digitally shot feature makes visionary use of the medium to weave a vast meditatio...

Directed by Jessica Beshir • 2021 • Ethiopia, United States, Qatar

A sublime work of trance-state cinema, the debut feature by the Mexican Ethiopian filmmaker Jessica Beshir is a hypnotic immersion in the world of rural Ethiopia, a place where one commodity—khat, a euphoria-inducing plant once p...

Directed by Paul Schrader • 1990 • United States
Starring Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson

Two couples are drawn into a dark psychosexual vortex in Paul Schrader’s stylish take on the erotic thriller. Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson are a British couple hoping to repa...

Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese • 2019 • Lesotho, South Africa
Starring Mary Twala, Makhaola Ndebele, Jerry Mofokeng

With a poet’s eye for place, light, and the spiritual dimensions of everyday existence, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese crafts a meditation on the concept of homeland and a transcen...

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni • 1960 • France, Italy
Starring Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti

Michelangelo Antonioni invented a new film grammar with this masterwork. An iconic piece of challenging 1960s cinema and a gripping narrative on its own terms, L’AVVENTURA concerns the enigmatic di...

Directed by Atom Egoyan • 1994 • Canada
Starring Bruce Greenwood, Mia Kirshner, Elias Koteas

Atom Egoyan’s acclaimed commercial breakthrough is both a seductive, hypnotic thriller and a shattering meditation on loss and grief. At the eponymous strip club, Francis (Bruce Greenwood), a deeply depr...

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • 1997 • Japan

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s arresting international breakthrough established him as one of the leaders of an emerging new wave of Japanese horror while pushing the genre into uncharted realms of philosophical and existential exploration. A string of shocking, s...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1967 • France
Starring Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne

This scathing late-sixties satire from Jean-Luc Godard is one of cinema’s great anarchic works. Determined to collect an inheritance from a dying relative, a bourgeois couple travel across the French countryside while...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1962 • France
Starring Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot, André Labarthe

VIVRE SA VIE (a.k.a. MY LIFE TO LIVE) was a turning point for Jean-Luc Godard and remains one of his most dynamic films, combining brilliant visual design with a tragic character study. The lovely Anna ...

Criterion Collection Edition #408

There was before BREATHLESS, and there was after BREATHLESS. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for “Cahiers du cinèma.” With its lack of polish,...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin • 1972 • France, Italy
Starring Jane Fonda, Yves Montand

In 1972, newly radicalized Hollywood star Jane Fonda joined forces with cinematic innovator Jean-Luc Godard and collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin in an unholy artistic alliance that resulted i...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1963 • France
Starring Michel Subor, Anna Karina, Henri-Jacques Huet

Before his convention-shattering debut, BREATHLESS, had even premiered, Jean-Luc Godard leapt into the making of his second feature, a thriller that would tackle the most controversial subject in F...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1966 • France
Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, Marlène Jobert

With MASCULIN FÉMININ (“Masculine Feminine”), ruthless stylist and iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard introduces the world to “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola,” through a gang of restless youths engag...

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1967 • France
Starring Marina Vlady, Anny Duperey, Joseph Gerhard

In 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (2 OU 3 CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D’ELLE), Jean-Luc Godard beckons us ever closer, whispering in our ears as narrator. About what? Money, sex, fashion, the city, love, langu...