Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville • 1967 • France, Italy
Starring Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between ...

Directed by Med Hondo • 1979 • Algeria, Mauritania, France
Starring Robert Liensol, Roland Bertin, Hélène Vincent

Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s staggering WEST INDIES: THE FUGITIVE SLAVES OF LIBERTY is a sui generis amalgam of historical epic, Broadway revue, Brechtian theater, and joy...

Directed by Héctor Babenco • 1985 • United States, Brazil
Starring William Hurt, Raúl Juliá, Sônia Braga

Héctor Babenco’s follow-up to his electrifying international breakthrough PIXOTE is another powerful, boldly realized portrait of life on the margins of Brazilian society. Based on the novel ...

Directed by Arturo Ripstein • 1996 • France, Mexico, Spain
Starring Regina Orozco, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Marisa Paredes

Mexican provocateur Arturo Ripstein takes the ever-ripe lovers-on-the-run premise of dime-store pulp to its deliriously overheated, wickedly perverse extreme. In 1940s Mexico, ...

Directed by Julius-Amédée Laou • 1983 • France
Starring Serge Ubrette, Marilyne Canto

Playwright Julius-Amédée Laou’s first foray into filmmaking is an explosive call to revolution in which a young Black artist—after learning that his brother has been murdered in Paris by far-right racists—hijac...

Directed by Raoul Peck • 1991 • Democratic Republic of Congo

Investigating revolutionary Patrice Lumumba’s brief tenure as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as the machinations behind his shocking assassination, legendary Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck (I AM NOT ...

Directed by Patrick Tam • 1989 • Hong Kong
Starring Kenny Bee, Joey Wong, Tony Leung Chiu-wai

Patrick Tam, perhaps the Hong Kong New Wave’s most daring modernist and a crucial influence on Wong Kar Wai, teams with cinematographer Christopher Doyle, a regular Wong collaborator, for a stylish “he...

Directed by Gregg Araki • 1997 • United States
Starring James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton

You can practically smell the pheromones wafting off this kaleidoscopic odyssey, which finds director Gregg Araki crossing soap-operatic elements with blasts of science fiction, indie-kid cool, and sh...

Directed by Kidlat Tahimik • 1977 • Philippines Starring Kidlat Tahimik, Mang Fely, Dolores Santamaria

Acclaimed by Werner Herzog as “one of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seven...

Directed by Kidlat Tahimik • 1981 • Philippines
Starring Homer Abiad, Iñigo Vito, Maria Pehipol

Mixing documentary-like observation with playful irony, Kidlat Tahimik’s cautionary fable depicts the corrosive effect...

Directed by Kazuki Omori • 1989 • Japan
Starring Kunihiko Mitamura, Yoshiko Tanaka, Masanobu Takashima

Diving into delirious realms of imagination, this second film of the Godzilla fran...

Directed by Bob Odenkirk • 2003 • United States
Starring Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price

Perhaps the finest conversation movie this side of MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ, Bob Odenkirk’s directorial debut invites you along for a stimulating evening of hilarious, engrossing, and disarmingly...

Directed by John Greyson • 1996 • Canada
Starring Brent Carver, Marcel Sabourin, Aubert Pallascio

A visually intoxicating queer rhapsody of desire and repression, revenge and redemption unfolds as a deliriously stylized play-within-a-film in this sumptuous cinematic pageant adapted from the stag...

Directed by Isaac Julien • 1991 • United Kingdom
Starring Valentine Nonyela, Mo Sesay, Sophie Okonedo

From the moment Parliament’s “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” erupts over the opening of Isaac Julien’s breakthrough feature, we know we’re in for a wild ride. The changes keep coming as a murd...

Directed by Timothy Carey • 1962 • United States
Starring Timothy Carey, Gil Barreto, Betty Rowland

Timothy Carey—the unforgettable character actor whose weird, wiggy energy brought a manic edge to classics like THE KILLING and PATHS OF GLORY—wrote, produced, directed, and starred in this outrag...

Directed by Michael Roemer • 1984 • United States
Starring Brooke Adams, Jon DeVries, Ari Meyers

Like director Michael Roemer’s prior features—the powerful civil-rights-era landmark NOTHING BUT A MAN and the offbeat mob comedy THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY—this continuously surprising, cuttingly incisi...

Directed by Lionel Rogosin • 1959 • United States
Starring Miriam Makeba, Vinah Makeba, Zachria Makeba

One of the bravest and most powerful political films ever made, Lionel Rogosin’s urgent indictment of racial injustice—filmed in secret in 1950s Johannesburg, South Africa—follows a young Zulu ...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1976 • United States
Starring Kathryn Bigelow, Ariel Bock, Marion Cajori

While Lizzie Borden’s features BORN IN FAMES and WORKING GIRLS have taken their place as landmarks of feminist cinema, her debut—the fascinating experimental documentary REGROUPING—has gone large...

Directed by Yuen Woo-ping • 1981 • Hong Kong
Starring Yuen Biao, Bryan Leung Kar-yan, Kwan Tak-hing

Everything that made 1980s Hong Kong action cinema such a blast—the furious fights, bursts of wild comedy, and larger-than-life performances—is cranked up to eleven in this audacious cult classic...

Directed by Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien • 1986 • United Kingdom
Starring Anni Domingo, Joseph Charles, Carlton Chance

One of the major works of the revolutionary Sankofa Film and Video Collective, this radically innovative film explores issues of Black British culture, gender, and sexuali...

Directed by Chen Kaige • 1993 • China
Starring Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi, Gong Li

A breathtakingly intimate romance unfolds against a sweeping backdrop of social upheaval in renowned director Chen Kaige’s sumptuous saga of passion, fate, and the transcendent possibilities of art. Spanning fift...

Directed by Tod Browning • 1927 • United States
Starring Lon Chaney, Norman Kerry, Joan Crawford

The most celebrated and exquisitely perverse of the many collaborations between Tod Browning and his legendary leading man Lon Chaney, THE UNKNOWN features a wrenchingly physical performance from “th...

Directed by Jindřich Polák • 1963 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Zdeněk Štěpánek, František Smolík, Dana Medřická

A visionary work of Eastern Bloc science fiction, this mesmerizing Czechoslovak adaptation of a novel by Stanisław Lem melds Cold War ideology and utopian futurism into a tour de force of...