Diva (Beineix)

Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Stars: Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Frédéric Andréi, Richard Bohringer
Genre: Thriller
Country: France

Two tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed all twist their way through an intricate and stylish French-language thriller.

 

Quartet (Ivory)

Director: James Ivory
Stars: Isabelle Adjani, Suzanne Flon, Sébastien Floche
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: UK | France

Marya Zelli finds herself penniless after her art dealer husband, Stephan, is convicted of theft. Marya accepts the hospitality of a strange couple, H.J. and Lois Heidler, who lets her live in their house.

 

Bolero (Lelouch)

Director: Claude Lelouch
Stars: Robert Hossein, Nicole Garcia, Geraldine Chaplin
Genre: Drama, Music
Country: France

Trough fabulous music, this movie tracks three generations of musicians and dancers from Russia, Germany, France and the U.S., from before World War II through the war and the Holocaust, to the 1980s. Their lives become intertwined through the historical circumstances, and the culmination is the presence of several, including a former Nazi pianist and a French Jewish Holocaust survivor at an anti-famine concert.

 

Lola (Fassbinder)

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Stars: Barbara Sukowa, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Mario Adorf
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: West Germany

In post-war West Germany, the charming Von Bohm is appointed a city’s new Building Commissioner. His morality is tested when he unknowingly falls in love with a brothel worker, Lola, the paid mistress of a corrupt property developer.

 

Rasputin (Klimov)

Director: Elem Klimov
Stars: Aleksey Petrenko, Anatoliy Romashin, Velta Line
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Soviet Union

Details the life of the Russian monk Rasputin. The film shows his rise to power and how it corrupted him. His sexual perversions and madness ultimately leads to his gruesome assassination.

 

La Chevre (Veber)

Director: Francis Veber
Stars: Pierre Richard, Gérard Depardieu, Pedro Armendáriz Jr.
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Crime
Country: France | Mexico | Malta

A daughter of a millionaire, distinguish by incredible bad luck, goes missing. The idea how to find her is either insane or brilliant – to send after her an equally unlucky person.

 

Pixote (Babenco)

Director: Hector Babenco
Stars: Fernando Ramos da Silva, Jorge Julião, Gilberto Moura
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Brazil

The life of a boy in the streets of Sao Paulo, involved with crimes, prostitution and drugs.

 

El crack (Garci)

Director: José Luis Garci
Stars: Alfredo Landa, María Casanova, Manuel Tejada
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: Spain

Private detective Germán Areta gets a terminally ill client who wishes to see his long lost, runaway daughter before he dies. But when Areta starts looking into case, it leads him to the dark underbelly of Madrid where he finds that he is not only one looking for the girl. Someone else is also interested in her, someone powerful and dangerous who will stop at nothing to prevent Areta from discovering the truth.

 

Shortcuts (Menzel)

Director: Jirí Menzel
Stars: Magda Vásáryová, Jirí Schmitzer, Jaromír Hanzlík
Genre: Comedy
Country: Czechoslovakia

An evocation of the childhood memories of Bohumil Hrabal in his provincial town of Nymburk, dominated by the local brewery.

 

Mephisto (Szabó)

Director: István Szabó
Stars: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Krystyna Janda, Ildikó Bánsági
Genre: Drama
Country: West Germany | Hungary | Austria

In early-1930s Germany, a passionate stage actor finds himself before a dilemma: renounce his apolitical stance and comply with the Reich’s doctrine, or face oblivion. But, Faustian bargains never end well. What is the price of success?

 

Love and Lies (Frez)

Director: Ilya Frez
Stars: Tatyana Aksyuta, Nikita Mikhaylovsky, Elena Solovey
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Soviet Union

A movie about two high school kids who meet in class and fall madly in love with each other. Unfortunately, His father and her mother had a history of their own between them which creates uneasiness in both of them. Also because of that, the boy’s mother is very jealous and tries to separate them. The only person that tries to help them is their teacher who has relationship problems of her own.

 

Polyester (Waters)

Director: John Waters
Stars: Divine, Tab Hunter, Edith Massey
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA

A suburban housewife’s world falls apart when she finds that her pornographer husband is serially unfaithful to her, her daughter is pregnant, and her son is suspected of being the foot-fetishist who’s been breaking local women’s feet.

 

Der Bockerer (Antel)

Director: Franz Antel
Stars: Karl Merkatz, Alfred Böhm, Hans Holt
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Austria | West Germany

A politically naive Viennese butcher (Bockerer) manages to survive the Nazi occupation of Austria and the second world war.

 

Muddy River (Oguri)

Director: Kôhei Oguri
Stars: Takahiro Tamura, Mariko Kaga, Nobutaka Asahara
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

In post-War Japan, a boy from a noodle store-owning family befriends a neighboring boy living in poverty.

 

Kagero-za (Suzuki)

Director: Seijun Suzuki
Stars: Yûsaku Matsuda, Michiyo Yasuda, Mariko Kaga
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Thriller
Country: Japan

A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron’s deceased wife.

 

Christiane F. (Edel)

Director: Uli Edel
Stars: Natja Brunckhorst, Eberhard Auriga, Peggy Bussieck
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: West Germany

A teen girl in 1970’s Berlin becomes addicted to heroin. Everything in her life slowly begins to distort and disappear as she befriends a small crew of junkies and falls in love with a drug-abusing male prostitute.

 

You Are Not I (Driver)

Director: Sara Driver
Stars: Suzanne Fletcher, Evelyn Smith, Luc Sante
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A young woman escapes from a mental hospital during the chaos of a nearby multiple-car accident. She is mistaken for a shock victim and is driven to her sister’s house by a rescue volunteer. Then the real story begins…

 

Liar, The (Kaurismäki)

Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Stars: Aki Kaurismäki, Pirkko Hämäläinen, Juuso Hirvikangas
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Finland | West Germany

Talkative, hyperactive young drifter Ville Alfa goes around Helsinki, basically trying to borrow money from friends and strangers by means of an incessant delivery of quirky and snappy quasi-intellectual lines and fabricated excuses.

 

Garde à vue (Miller)

Director: Claude Miller
Stars: Lino Ventura, Michel Serrault, Romy Schneider
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: France

A police inspector, suspecting an attorney of two child sex murders, has him held for a questioning session that goes on for hours.

 

Four Friends (Penn)

Director: Arthur Penn
Stars: Craig Wasson, Jodi Thelen, Michael Huddleston
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA

This story of four working-class kids in a small industrial town–who go their separate ways after high school in the innocence of 1961 and come together again at the end of the turbulent Sixties–is as much about the coming of age of America as it is about the changes the characters go through.

 

Adaptatziya (Radev)

Director: Vulo Radev
Stars: Eli Skorcheva, Antony Genov, Ivan Grigorov
Genre: Drama
Country: Bulgaria

A gifted young psychiatrist sets up a group for people deemed ‘insane’ and uses new methods to help them integrate with society at large.

 

Why Not? (Imamura)

Director: Shôhei Imamura
Stars: Shigeru Izumiya, Kaori Momoi, Masao Kusakari
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

Near the turbulent end of the Edo era, a man returning to Japan after exile in America searches for his wife and becomes swept up in the current of revolution in this incisive period drama from the great Shohei Imamura.

 

Fantasma d’amore (Risi)

Director: Dino Risi
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Romy Schneider, Eva Maria Meineke
Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Country: Italy | West Germany | France

Over two decades after their affair ended, a married man is haunted by the presence of his former lover.

 

Elephant Parts (Dear)

Director: William Dear
Stars: Michael Nesmith, Bill Martin, Lark Geib
Genre: Comedy, Music
Country: USA

A collection of comedy skits and music videos, such as a game-show spoof called “Name That Drug”, a visit to the office of the Clandestine Typing Service, and a man providing a skewed translation of a Mexican serenade for his girlfriend.

 

Chosen, The (Kagan)

Director: Jeremy Kagan
Stars: Maximilian Schell, Rod Steiger, Robby Benson
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

In 1944, in Brooklyn, two Jewish kids become friends. One is from a very conservative family, and the other is more liberal. The issues of importance of tradition, parental expectations and the formation of Israel cause constant friction.

 

Allons z’enfants (Boisset)

Director: Yves Boisset
Stars: Lucas Belvaux, Jean Carmet, Jean-Pierre Aumont
Genre: War, Drama
Country: France

This is a coming of age drama adapted from the 1952 Yves Gibeau novel of the same title. A young anti-militarist is forcibly sent to military school by his father. He’s a bookish pacifist who endures being bullied by his superiors all throughout school, not out of weakness rather out of strength to deny violence it’s coveted reciprocity. On the eve of his much anticipated graduation day, Word War II ensues and swaps out the freedom he earned for the brutality of its first front lines.

 

Looks and Smiles (Loach)

Director: Ken Loach
Stars: Graham Green, Carolyn Nicholson, Tony Pitts
Genre: Drama
Country: UK

Thatcherism and the Irish troubles provide the backdrop for this study of Mick, a well-meaning youth in Sheffield, who has, unlike Dickens’ Pip, no expectations. Mick lives with his parents, works on his motorbike, looks for work, and every two weeks gets his check from the dole. There are no jobs. His best mate Alan joins the army to fix tanks and is sent to Belfast to quell Catholics. At a disco, Mick meets Karen, who works at a shoe shop and lives with her recently-separated mom.

 

Montenegro (Makavejev)

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Stars: Susan Anspach, Erland Josephson, Per Oscarsson
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA

A bored wealthy housewife on the verge of insanity cuts loose with some lively Yugoslavian immigrants who delight in their bohemian lifestyle.

 

Cutter’s Way (Passer)

Director: Ivan Passer
Stars: Jeff Bridges, John Heard, Lisa Eichhorn
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: USA

Richard spots a man dumping a body, and decides to expose the man he thinks is the culprit with his friend Alex Cutter.

 

Short Working Day (Kieslowski)

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Stars: Waclaw Ulewicz, Lech Grzmocinski, Tadeusz Bartosik
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland

A local party secretary (this is still the time when Poland was behind the iron curtain) has to face a mob of strikers protesting hefty increases in food prices by the central government. The embattled secretary decides at first to stick it out at the party’s office instead of making the recommended hasty escape. Most of the footage is from the point of view of the party secretary.

 

Rhythm of a Crime (Tadic)

Director: Zoran Tadic
Stars: Ivica Vidovic, Fabijan Sovagovic, Bozidarka Frajt
Genre: Crime, Drama, Horror
Country: Yugoslavia

A single teacher allows a stranger to share his home with him before it is to be torn down by developers. The stranger has a fascination with statistics, and claims he can predict crimes based on statistical analyses. Intrigued by this talent, the teacher tells a married, female friend that the man seems to have done what he claims. Then the numbers show that there is a slip-up and a murder that was supposed to have occurred, did not. The stranger is adamant that a balance has to be achieved or the whole town will suffer – and he leaves.

 

Day After Trinity, The (Else)

Director: Jon Else
Stars: Hans Bethe, Holm Bursom, Haakon Chevalier
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA

Scientists and witnesses involved in the creation and testing of the first ever atomic bomb reflect on the Manhattan project and its fascinating leader, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who upon completion of his wonderful and horrible invention became a powerful spokesperson against the nuclear arms race.

 

Lili Marleen (Fassbinder)

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Stars: Hanna Schygulla, Giancarlo Giannini, Mel Ferrer
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: West Germany

In 1938, a German singer falls in love with a Jewish composer in Zurich, who helps Jews flee Nazi Germany. She wants to help but is forced back to Germany. Her song “Lili Marleen” becomes a hit with soldiers and the Nazi top.

 

Deep Water (Deville)

Director: Michel Deville
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Sandrine Kljajic
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: France

Melanie enjoys flirting and having little affairs. Her husband Victor seems to bear her antics with utmost calm and nonchalance. This impression turns out to be wrong, very wrong indeed.

 

Passion of Love (Scola)

Director: Ettore Scola
Stars: Valeria D’Obici, Bernard Giraudeau, Jean-Louis Trintignant
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy | France

In the 1860s, Giorgio (Giraudeau), a young Italian soldier, is sent to a remote post, far away from his lover, Clara (Antonelli). He is lodged in the house of the colonel (Girotti). He becames friends with the colonel and the local doctor (Trintignant). Among the inhabitants of the house there is a strange young woman: Fosca (d’Obici) who is both unattractive and mad. However, she has a passion that Giorgio will have to cope with.

 

Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Laing)

Director: John Laing
Stars: David Hemmings, John Hargreaves, Tony Barry
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: New Zealand

A docu-drama covering one of the most famous murder cases in New Zealand history. Did Arthur Thomas kill Jeannette and Harvey Crewe at their Pukekawa farm house? Arthur was sure that trusting the police and co-operating fully would prove his innocence. The police held a very different view of this simple farmer.

 

God’s Angry Man (Herzog)

Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Gene Scott, Werner Herzog
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: West Germany

The documentary follows Gene Scott, famous televangelist involved with constant fights against FCC, who tried to shut down his TV show during the 1970’s and 1980’s, and even argues with his viewers, complaining about their lack of support by not sending enough money to keep going with the show. Werner Herzog presents the man, his thoughts and also includes some of his uncharacteristic programs.

 

Le Pont du Nord (Rivette)

Director: Jacques Rivette
Stars: Bulle Ogier, Pascale Ogier, Pierre Clémenti
Genre: Adventure, Crime, Drama
Country: France

Young unhinged female ex-con with a motorcycle helps a sickly young homeless woman in red discover what the map of Paris she took from her gangster boyfriend leads to.

 

Marianne & Juliane (von Trotta)

Director: Margarethe von Trotta
Stars: Jutta Lampe, Barbara Sukowa, Rüdiger Vogler
Genre: Drama
Country: West Germany

Two sisters both fight for women’s rights. Juliane is a journalist and Marianne a terrorist. When Marianne is jailed, Juliane feels obligated to help her despite their differing views on how to live.

 

Prince of the City (Lumet)

Director: Sidney Lumet
Stars: Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach, Richard Foronjy
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: USA

A New York City narcotics detective reluctantly agrees to cooperate with a special commission investigating police corruption, and soon realizes he’s in over his head, and nobody can be trusted.

 

Stations of the Elevated (Kirchheimer)

Director: Manfred Kirchheimer
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Stations of the Elevated (1981) is a 45-minute city symphony directed, produced and edited by Manfred Kirchheimer. Shot on lush 16mm color reversal stock, the film weaves together vivid images of graffiti- covered elevated subway trains crisscrossing the gritty urban landscape of 1970s New York, to a commentary-free soundtrack that combines ambient city noise with jazz and gospel by Charles Mingus and Aretha Franklin.

 

Rece do góry (Skolimowski)

Director: John Chapman, Chris Marker, Frank Simeone
Stars: Arielle Dombasle
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: France

A short film that shows Boundless, Surreal objects that are juxtaposed with our present World. Cars, Motorways, noise of our modern society; A giant city in the distance – all that shrouds this lonely and forgotten island of Dreams. Filmed at the Emeryville Mudflats near San Francisco.

 

Circle of Deceit (Schlöndorff)

Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Stars: Bruno Ganz, Hanna Schygulla, Jean Carmet
Genre: Drama, War
Country: West Germany | France

Laschen, a German journalist, travels to the city of Beirut during the fights between Christians and Palestinians to produce an essay about the situation. Together with his photographer, he meets some important people and discovers the everyday face of the war. He also has to figure out about his home life, where his marriage is in a big crisis.

 

Run, Waiter, Run! (Smoljak)

Director: Ladislav Smoljak
Stars: Josef Abrhám, Libuse Safránková, Daniela Bakerová
Genre: Comedy
Country: Czechoslovakia

A comedy concerning a down on his luck bookshop owner with a penchant for women who decides to make some money by pretending to be a waiter and collecting cash from unsuspecting diners.

 

Brooklyn Bridge (Burns)

Director: Ken Burns
Stars: Paul Roebling, Julie Harris, Arthur Miller
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: USA

This documentary chronicles the world-famous Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. The difficult construction process is described in interesting detail; later parts of the film interview current notables who describe the effects that the Brooklyn Bridge has had upon New York society and beyond.

 

Aviator’s Wife, The (Rohmer)

Director: Éric Rohmer
Stars: Philippe Marlaud, Marie Rivière, Anne-Laure Meury
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: France

A young student is devastated when he finds that his girlfriend is cheating on him. In order to find out why she did it, he decides to spy on her and her lover.

 

They Don’t Wear Black Tie (Hirszman)

Director: Leon Hirszman
Stars: Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, Fernanda Montenegro, Carlos Alberto Riccelli
Genre: Drama
Country: Brazil

Union leader’s son doesn’t want to engage in a strike, because his wife is pregnant, thus disregarding his father’s tradition of political activism.

 

Tales of Ordinary Madness (Ferreri)

Director: Marco Ferreri
Stars: Ben Gazzara, Ornella Muti, Susan Tyrrell
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | France

Poet/lecturer Charles Serking awakens from his alcoholic haze long enough to take a bus back to L.A. and plunge into an orgy of drink and sexual depravity.

 

Buddy Buddy (Wilder)

Director: Billy Wilder
Stars: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Paula Prentiss
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA

During a high profile Mafia testimony case in California’s Riverside County, a hired killer checks-in a hotel room near the courthouse while his next door depressed neighbor wants to commit suicide due to marital problems.

 

Chariots of Fire (Hudson)

Director: Hugh Hudson
Stars: Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nicholas Farrell
Genre: Biography, Drama, Sport
Country: UK

Two British track athletes, one a determined Jew, and the other a devout Christian, compete in the 1924 Olympics.

 

War of the Worlds: Next Century, The (Szulkin)

Director: Piotr Szulkin
Stars: Roman Wilhelmi, Krystyna Janda, Mariusz Dmochowski
Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: Poland

Film opens on December 28, 1999, three days before the dawn of the new century. A local reporter, Iron Idem, announces that the Martians have landed. Shortly after that his program loses its independence: he is given the script telling the crowds how to welcome the invaders. Then the chaos breaks out: the Martians and police mistreat the populace; things become violent.

 

Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians, The (Lipský)

Director: Oldrich Lipský
Stars: Michal Docolomanský, Evelyna Steimarová, Vlastimil Brodský
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
Country: Czechoslovakia

In 1897, in a castle near the town of Werewolfville in the Carpathians, a slightly deranged Professor Orfanik experiments with his new inventions which include, even at this early date, television and a film camera.

 

Merry-Go-Round (Rivette)

Director: Jacques Rivette
Stars: Maria Schneider, Joe Dallesandro, Danièle Gégauff
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: France

Elizabeth sends telegrams to her old boyfriend Ben in NYC and to her younger sister Leo in Rome to join her in Paris, where she is selling her dead father’s estate. When Ben and Leo arrive, a mysterious adventure begins.

 

Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (Kusturica)

Director: Emir Kusturica
Stars: Slavko Stimac, Slobodan Aligrudic, Ljiljana Blagojevic
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Yugoslavia

A young man grows up in Sarajevo in the 1960s, under the shadow of his good, but ailing father, and gets attracted by the world of small-time criminals. They hire him to hide a young prostitute and he falls in love with her.

 

Agatha and the Limitless Readings (Duras)

Director: Marguerite Duras
Stars: Bulle Ogier, Yann Andréa, Marguerite Duras
Genre: Drama
Country: France

A dialogue-driven drama about a woman and her brother who meet at a deserted seaside hotel to deal with their passionate incestuous feelings for each other and reminisce about their happy childhood.

 

Lady of the Camelias (Bolognini)

Director: Mauro Bolognini
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Gian Maria Volontè, Bruno Ganz
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy | France

A young girl from the provinces, comes to Paris with one goal: to become a part of the rich bourgeoisie. To achieve this she will use her unique beauty and charm.

 

Bunker, The (Schaefer)

Director: George Schaefer
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Richard Jordan, Cliff Gorman
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: France | USA

Dramatization depicting the events surrounding Adolf Hitler’s (Sir Anthony Hopkins’) last weeks in and around his underground bunker in Berlin before and during the battle for the city.

 

Coup de Torchon (Tavernier)

Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Stars: Philippe Noiret, Isabelle Huppert, Stéphane Audran
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: France

A pathetic police chief, humiliated by everyone around him, suddenly wants a clean slate in life – and resorts to drastic means to do so.

 

Thief (Mann)

Director: Michael Mann
Stars: James Caan, Tuesday Weld, Willie Nelson
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: USA

Coming closer to his dream of leading a normal life, a professional safecracker agrees to do a job for the Mafia, who has other plans for him.

 

Gallipoli (Weir)

Director: Peter Weir
Stars: Mel Gibson, Mark Lee, Bill Kerr
Genre: Adventure, Drama, History
Country: Australia

Two Australian sprinters face the brutal realities of war when they are sent to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey during World War I.

 

Man of Iron (Wajda)

Director: Andrzej Wajda
Stars: Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Krystyna Janda, Marian Opania
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Poland

A few years after the events of Man of Marble (1977), a journalist investigates Mateusz Birkut’s son Maciek Tomczyk, now an activist leading a shipyard strike.

 

Howling, The (Dante)

Director: Joe Dante
Stars: Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Dennis Dugan
Genre: Horror
Country: USA

After a bizarre and near deadly encounter with a serial killer, a television newswoman is sent to a remote mountain resort whose residents may not be what they seem.

 

Time Bandits (Gilliam)

Director: Terry Gilliam
Stars: Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, John Cleese
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
Country: UK

A young boy accidentally joins a band of time travelling dwarves, as they jump from era to era looking for treasure to steal.