A cross section of the last seven decades of international cinema, this lineup of past winners of the Academy Award for best foreign-language film includes masterpieces by titans like Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, and Luis Buñuel; high-water marks of the Czechoslovak New Wave;...

All’s fair in love—including a bit of deception, as seen in these glittering comedies of impersonation, trickery, and mistaken identity. An integral element of the romantic-comedy formula since the time of Shakespeare and Molière, the masquerade finds characters faking their names, class, gender,...

As a chameleon who continually reinvented his musical persona, David Bowie was a natural actor who lent his singular yet slippery presence to a number of carefully chosen, always surprising film projects. While his first major screen role in Nicolas Roeg’s hallucinatory science-fiction epic THE M...

A precocious journalist turned wunderkind filmmaker, Cameron Crowe broke through in the 1980s and ’90s with a series of warm, bittersweet stories that gravitate around young love and music. This trio of films—the definitive Gen X romances SAY ANYTHING . . . and SINGLES and the semi-autobiographic...

Ethan Hawke’s uniquely personal work as a director reflects his restlessly curious mind, deep engagement with music and literature, and iconoclastic approach to the biopic form. From a wonderfully warm documentary portrait of an octogenarian classical pianist (SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION) to a boldl...

Extravagant, dazzlingly stylish visions of decadence and decay, the films of Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino train a cunning eye on the worlds of wealth, celebrity, and power to reveal the moral rot lurking below their seductively glittering surfaces. All made in collaboration with his regular le...

As his latest film, the Palme d’Or–winning ANORA, continues to garner acclaim, we’re revisiting the early work of Sean Baker, who for more than twenty years has carved out a distinctive place within American independent cinema exploring the lives of characters on the margins of society with a com...

A consummate artist, Ethan Hawke brings deep intelligence and passion to every project as an actor, writer, and director, revealing a serious, soul-searching intellect. In this first installment of a new series that invites acclaimed actors to reflect on their craft, Hawke sits down with Isaac Bu...

A sui generis icon of counterculture cinema and style, John Waters upends traditional notions of “good taste” and heteronormative social conventions with a gleefully transgressive mix of camp humor, outrageous provocation, and daring empathy. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, he sits d...

The great prickly humanist of British cinema, Mike Leigh has forged a body of work unique in its concern for the struggles of ordinary people and the social fabric of working-class London. Famously born from a process of extensive improvisation with his powerhouse actors, Leigh’s films inhabit a ...

In the early 1930s—when the censorial Hollywood Production Code wasn’t yet enforced and sex, sin, and sleaze were splashed across the screen with abandon—Columbia Pictures was distinguished by the working-class, populist milieu of their productions, which stood in contrast to the polished, escapi...

Originator of the hugely popular ZATOICHI and LONE WOLF AND CUB franchises, Kenji Misumi was a master of the chanbara (“sword fighting”) genre who brought thrilling stylistic flourishes and unique psychological and emotional depth to his many classic films. Among his finest achievements, the thre...

Steeped in Irish history and lore, the films of Dónal Foreman are searching, shape-shifting explorations of place, cultural memory, and national identity. Working across narrative, documentary, and experimental practices, his three features to date—the vivid Dublin-set youth portrait OUT OF HERE,...

Of all the cinematic New Waves that broke over the world in the 1960s, the one in Czechoslovakia was among the most fruitful, fascinating, and radical. With a wicked sense of humor and a healthy streak of surrealism, a group of fearless directors—including Miloš Forman (THE FIREMEN’S BALL), Vera ...

Queerness simmers beneath the surface of classical Hollywood noir, with its heightened ambiguity, shadowy identities, and free-floating sensuality. Made during the era of the Production Code, which banned “any inference of sex perversion,” these films, with their characters’ murky pasts and murki...

Though best known as one of American cinema’s greatest live-wire actors, John Turturro has carved out a rich parallel career making highly personal, emotionally complicated films stamped with his own uncompromising vision. Built around committed performances from powerhouse ensemble casts, his fi...

To celebrate the release of his acclaimed latest, EMILIA PÉREZ, we’re revisiting the intense, visceral films of French auteur Jacques Audiard, whose masterful crime dramas infuse genre conventions with new freshness through their empathetic focus on the marginalized and oppressed. From his early ...

Dedicated to supporting documentary storytellers whose voices have long been marginalized within the film industry, IF/Then Shorts breaks down barriers to access, exposure, and funding in the media landscape. To date, IF/Then has been instrumental in bringing more than fifty projects from across ...

Whether you’re just getting started on your journey into film noir’s dark world of glamorous femme fatales and down-on-their-luck average Joes, interested in exploring new avenues, or just want to rewatch your favorites, there’s no better time of year to soak in the atmosphere of Hollywood’s shad...

Following in the footsteps of his revered documentarian father, Les Blank, Harrod Blank makes films that immerse viewers in the offbeat subcultures and proudly unconventional fringes of American society. A leading figure in the art-car community explored in WILD WHEELS and AUTOMORPHOSIS—both abou...

The boldly transgressive films of Stephanie Rothman use the conventions of low-budget exploitation cinema to cannily subvert patriarchal systems and the male gaze. Beginning her career as an assistant to Roger Corman, she made the leap to director at his newly formed production company New World ...

Director of both the first American feature-length documentary by and about LGBTQ+ people (GAY USA) and the first feature-length drama about AIDS (BUDDIES), intrepid filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan Jr. brought images of queer struggle, joy, pain, love, and liberation to the screen with a humanity and...

With his very first film ON THE BOWERY, Lionel Rogosin forever changed the art of nonfiction filmmaking in America, bridging narrative and documentary practices to portray life on New York’s skid row with an unvarnished authenticity and immediacy steeped in the spirit of neorealism. Born one hund...

Born one hundred years ago this September, Marcello Mastroianni made being a movie star look effortless, wearing his suave good looks and worldly sophistication with a sly, self-deprecating lightness that was perhaps only matched by his American counterpart, Cary Grant. Though he will forever be ...