Director: Ken Loach
Stars: Robert Carlyle, Emer McCourt, Jim R. Coleman
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
The story of Stevie, a construction worker, and his girlfriend, an unemployed pop singer, serves to show the living conditions of the British poor class.
Director: Spike Lee
Stars: Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra, Spike Lee
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Friends and family of a married black architect react in different ways to his affair with an Italian secretary.
Director: Nancy Savoca
Stars: River Phoenix, Lili Taylor, Richard Panebianco
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Before leaving to fight in Vietnam, a group of teenagers play a game where they try to seduce the ugliest girl they can find.
Director: Lars von Trier
Stars: Barbara Sukowa, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: Denmark | Sweden | France | Germany | Switzerland | Poland
Just after W.W.II, an American takes a railway job in Germany, but finds his position politically sensitive with various people trying to use him.
Director: Maurice Pialat
Stars: Jacques Dutronc, Alexandra London, Bernard Le Coq
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: France
The final sixty-seven days of Van Gogh’s life are examined.
Director: Seijun Suzuki
Stars: Kenji Sawada, Tomoko Mariya, Masumi Miyazaki
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
Painter and poet Yumeji Takehisa (1884-1934) gets involved with a beautiful widow, becoming a rival of her dead husband’s ghost and the jealous lover who murdered him.
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Stars: Hugo Weaving, Geneviève Picot, Russell Crowe
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Australia
The life of a blind photographer who is looked after by a housekeeper is disrupted by the arrival of an agreeable restaurant worker.
Director: Neil Jordan
Stars: Beverly D’Angelo, Donal McCann, Niall Byrne
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | Ireland
The two teenagers Jimmy and Rose spend their vacation at the small Irish sea-resort Bray. Out of boredom they observe other people and imagine wild stories about them. One day they observe the blonde Renee, and Jimmy is immediately fascinated by her and even follows her home. She, too, seems to like him, but for a mysterious reason keeps him at a distance.
Director: Diane Keaton
Stars: Beau Bridges, Susan Blakely, William McNamara
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
An abused and partially deaf girl is helped back into society by two resourceful children.
Director: Sven Nykvist
Stars: Stellan Skarsgård, Ewa Fröling, Erland Josephson
Genre: Drama
Country: Sweden | Norway | Denmark
Swedish pauper’s family is starving. In desperation, he steals his lord’s ox. He hopes that the crime will not be revealed, but it happens.
Director: Stanley Kwan
Stars: Maggie Cheung, Han Chin, Tony Ka Fai Leung
Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: Hong Kong
Biopic of 1930’s Chinese actress Ruan Ling Yu.
Director: John Sayles
Stars: Vincent Spano, Tony Lo Bianco, Stephen Mendillo
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
City of Hope is a portrait of a typical middle-sized American city of the present day. The crux of the story is an old apartment block which stands in the way of a major commercial development.
Director: James Lapine
Stars: Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, Mandy Patinkin
Genre: Biography, Comedy, Music
Country: UK | France
In 1830s France, pianist/composer Frédéric Chopin is pursued romantically by the determined, individualistic woman who uses the name George Sand.
Director: María Novaro
Stars: María Rojo, Carmen Salinas, Tito Vasconcelos
Genre: Drama
Country: Mexico | Spain
Set in ’50s Spain, a young man (Sanz) leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée (Verdu) can get married. He rents a room from a widow (Abril), and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.
Director: Vicente Aranda
Stars: Victoria Abril, Jorge Sanz, Maribel Verdú
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Spain
Set in ’50s Spain, a young man (Sanz) leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée (Verdu) can get married. He rents a room from a widow (Abril), and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.
Director: Satyajit Ray
Stars: Utpal Dutt, Dipankar Dey, Mamata Shankar
Genre: Drama
Country: India | France
A well-off family is paid an unexpected, and rather unwanted, visit by a man claiming to be the woman’s long-lost uncle. The initial suspicion with which they greet the man slowly dissolves as he regales them with stories of his travels, tales that are at odds with their conventional middle-class perspective on the world.
Director: Bruce Beresford
Stars: Lothaire Bluteau, Aden Young, Sandrine Holt
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: Canada | Australia
In the 17th century, a Jesuit missionary nicknamed Black Robe by the natives and his small party of companions try reaching the Huron tribe in Canada all while facing mistrust, Iroquois warring parties and harsh winter conditions.
Director: Percy Adlon
Stars: Rosel Zech, k.d. lang, Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany
A woman who grew up in a small town in Alaska goes to the public library to try and find out who her parents were. She was brought to town as a baby in a cardboard box with “Kotzebue” on it, which is the name of the town and also the name of the family that founded the town. She eventually befriends the librarian, an East German immigrant who lost her husband while escaping from behind the Iron Curtain. They help each other try to find closure to the events in their past.
Director: Ang Lee
Stars: Sihung Lung, Lai Wang, Bozhao Wang
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Taiwan | USA
All the while, Master Chu tries to find his place in the foreign American world.
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Stars: Victoria Abril, Marisa Paredes, Miguel Bosé
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Spain | France
A girl’s mother returns after 15 years to find her daughter has married one of her (the mother’s) old boyfriends. They try to mend their broken mother/daughter relationship and deal with their common lover.
Director: Terry Gilliam
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Adam Bryant
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
A former radio DJ, suicidally despondent because of a terrible mistake he made, finds redemption in helping a deranged homeless man who was an unwitting victim of that mistake.
Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Stars: Joy Constaninides, Witold Schejbal
Genre: Short, Animation
Country: UK | France
A porcelain doll and a sleeping woman. How will they interact through her dreams?
Director: Valeriy Todorovskiy
Stars: Evgeniy Mironov, Natalya Petrova, Dmitriy Maryanov
Genre: Romance
Country: Soviet Union
Two Moscow students are mostly concerned with scoring with women but their lives change radically when one of them falls for a Jewish girl whose family is being persecuted by anonymous anti-Semites and is preparing to emigrate to Israel.
Director: Peter Charles Downey
Stars: John Seed, David Holmgren, Michael Reynolds
Genre: Documentary
Country: Australia
About the planetary animal called Gaia and the human animal we deny.
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Stars: Badema, Bayaertu, Vladimir Gostyukhin
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Soviet Union
A curious friendship develops between Gombo, a young Mongolian shepherd living with his wife and family in a hut, deep in the wilderness of the steppes, and Sergei, a Russian worker whose truck breaks down not far from Gombo’s hut.
Director: Mike Newell
Stars: Alfred Molina, Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson
Genre: Drama
Country: UK
Four English women, after World War I, who are unhappy with their lives, and their time away on vacation in a beautiful Italian villa.
Director: Sean Penn
Stars: David Morse, Viggo Mortensen, Valeria Golino
Genre: Drama
Country: USA | Japan
A Vietnam vet comes home to his small town and finds himself in conflict with rules that his brother has vowed to uphold.
Director: Agnès Varda
Stars: Philippe Maron, Edouard Joubeaud, Laurent Monnier
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: France
Jacquot Demy is a little boy at the end of the thirties. His father owns a garage and his mother is a hairdresser. The whole family lives happily and likes to sing and to go to the movies. Jacquot is fascinated by every kind of show (theatre, cinema, puppets). He buys a camera to shoot his first amateur film… An evocation of French cineast Jacques Demy’s childhood and vocation for the cinema and the musicals.
Director: Isao Takahata
Stars: Miki Imai, Toshirô Yanagiba, Yoko Honna
Genre: Animation, Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
A twenty-seven-year-old office worker travels to the countryside while reminiscing about her childhood in Tokyo.
Director: Christopher Munch
Stars: David Angus, Ian Hart, Stephanie Pack
Genre: Drama, Music
Country: USA
A fictionalized account of what may have happened when John Lennon and Brian Epstein went on holiday together to Spain in 1963.
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Stars: Claude Maki, Hiroko Ôshima, Sabu Kawahara
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
The lives of a young, hearing-impaired and gloomy couple are fulfilled after the boy holds interest in surfboarding.
Director: Gabriele Salvatores
Stars: Diego Abatantuono, Claudio Bigagli, Giuseppe Cederna
Genre: Comedy, Drama, War
Country: Italy
In WW2, an Italian Army unit of misfits occupies an isolated non-strategic Greek island for the duration of the war.
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Stars: Marie-Laure Dougnac, Dominique Pinon, Pascal Benezech
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: France
Post-apocalyptic surrealist black comedy about the landlord of an apartment building who occasionally prepares a delicacy for his odd tenants.
Director: Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Stars: Marie-Laure Dougnac, Dominique Pinon, Pascal Benezech
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: France
Post-apocalyptic surrealist black comedy about the landlord of an apartment building who occasionally prepares a delicacy for his odd tenants.
Director: Jonathan Heap
Stars: Jane Alden, Don Amendolia, John Bachelder
Genre: Short, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
A man is stuck living his life in the same 59 minute time frame. He tries various methods of finding out why, eventually consulting a physicist.
Director: Paul Cox
Stars: Sheila Florance, Gosia Dobrowolska, Norman Kaye
Genre: Drama
Country: Australia
Uplifting and intimate look at the last days of an elderly cancer victim. The film is even more relevant as it was written specifically for the lead actress, Sheila Florance, who was in fact dying of cancer as she created what is essentially a self-portrait.
Director: Seiji Arihara
Stars: Masako Ikeda, Katsue Miwa, Masako Nozawa
Genre: Animation, Drama, War
Country: Japan
Kayoko is a young girl in 1940, just starting first grade. She’s a bit of a crybaby, which is no secret to those around her. She loves playing with friends and singing cute schoolyard chants, and occasionally having fun with her three older brothers. Her mother is pregnant, and so she looks forward to being a big sister, only partially understanding the responsibility that might bring. Meanwhile, the war effort is growing, and it’s only the natural thing to do to be patriotic and support the country…
Director: Olivier Assayas
Stars: Judith Godrèche, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Thomas Langmann
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Italy
Adrien is 19 years old. He has not met his father, Clément for 4 years. Adrien returns home and the two try to better understand each other. Clément lives together with Louis, a twenty-something girl who wants to be an actress. The boy starts a flirt with Louise which pushes the father-son relationship back to a crisis…
Director: Philippe Garrel
Stars: Benoît Régent, Johanna ter Steege, Yann Collette
Genre: Drama
Country: France
For those who were young, living under the delusions of love and soft drugs in Paris, May 1968 – even if the guitar is still playing, they can’t hear it any longer.
Director: Jaco Van Dormael
Stars: Michel Bouquet, Mireille Perrier, Jo De Backer
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Belgium | France | Germany
Thomas and Alfred were born around the same time; a fire in the nursery had nurses scrambling to save the newborns. Because he felt that he deserved Alfred’s good fortune at being born into a wealthy family, Thomas conceives the idea that he and Alfred were switched at birth, and he can’t help seeing that his unhappiness should be Alfred’s, from the loss of his sister to his inability to have a relationship with the woman Evelyne. So, as his life is ending, he formulates a plan of revenge against his bitter enemy, his lifetime adversary, the man who stole his existence.
Director: Claude Chabrol
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Jean-François Balmer, Christophe Malavoy
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA | Germany
In nineteenth-century France, the romantic daughter of a country squire marries a dull country doctor. To escape boredom, she throws herself into love affairs with a suave local landowner and a law student, and runs up ruinous debts.
Director: Julie Dash
Stars: Cora Lee Day, Alva Rogers, Barbarao
Genre: Drama, History, Romance
Country: USA | Germany
Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastions of these mores in America. Set in 1902.
Director: Alan Parker
Stars: Robert Arkins, Michael Aherne, Angeline Ball
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: Ireland | UK | USA
When Jimmy Rabbitte wants to start a band, he has open auditions at his house.
Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: UK
A calligrapher creates his own quill pen.
Director: Chantal Akerman
Stars: Guilaine Londez, Thomas Langmann, François Négret
Genre: Drama
Country: Belgium | France | Switzerland
Jack and Julie live in a bare flat in Paris. At night, Jack drives a taxi while Julie wanders around the city, and in the day they make love. One day Julie meets Joseph, the daytime driver of the taxi, and soon Julie is spending her nights with Joseph and her days with Jack.
Director: Karen Shakhnazarov
Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Oleg Yankovskiy, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Soviet Union | UK
A patient in a modern day mental institution believes that he is the man who assassinated Tsar Alexander in 1881 and Tsar Nicolas II in 1918. He and his doctor soon slip out of reality and are forced to relive the events of 1918 in order to break the spell.
Director: Larry Elikann
Stars: Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Anthony Higgins
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Luxembourg | USA
Mary Lindell works for the French Red Cross in Occupied France during World War II and helps allied soldiers who have been shot down to escape to the unoccupied side. Her activities are complicated by her high profile and her daughter’s love affair with a German officer. Based on the true story.
Director: Peter Greenaway
Stars: John Gielgud, Michael Clark, Michel Blanc
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Country: UK | Netherlands | France | Italy | Japan
The magician Prospero attempts to stop his daughter’s affair with an enemy.
Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Pietro Falcone
Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Germany | France | Australia
In 1999, Claire’s life is forever changed after she survives a car crash. She rescues Sam and starts traveling around the world with him. Writer Eugene follows them and writes their story, as a way of recording dreams is being invented.
Director: John Singleton
Stars: Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne, Hudhail Al-Amir
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Follows the lives of three young males living in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles, dissecting questions of race, relationships, violence, and future prospects.
Director: Alexander Payne
Stars: Holgie Forrester, Charley Hayward, Joe Marinelli
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
A lonely photographer gradually develops a rather unhealthy obsession with a young woman he once met by sheer chance.
Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay, Weiser Quay
Stars: Witold Schejbal
Genre: Documentary, Animation, Short
Country: UK
Uses animation to explore anamorphosis, a method to put hidden images within an artwork, by distorting it using the rules of perspective.
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: UK
A bust of Stalin is cut open on an operating table, leading to an elaborate animated depiction of Czech history from 1948 (the Communist takeover) to 1989 (the Velvet Revolution). Some knowledge of the subject is essential in order to understand the film, which is entirely visual.
Director: Ken Burns
Stars: Jason Robards, Red Barber, Erik Barnouw
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: USA
For 50 years, radio dominated the airwaves as the first mass medium. Ken Burns examines the lives of three men who shared the responsibility for its invention and early success.
Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Stars: Silu Seppälä, Marjo Leinonen, Matti Pellonpää
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: Finland
Antti “Zombie” Autiomaa does two things well: play the bass guitar and drink. After several months’ sleeping on the streets of Istanbul, he returns to Helsinki where he’s called into the army but discharged on mental health grounds after adding turpentine to the officers’ soup. Zombie lives bleary-eyed in an apartment off his parents’ house where his lonely, unemployed father suffers from heart disease. His girl-friend Marjo has taken up with a hairdresser but comes back to Zombie. His friend Harri hires him as a roadie for his band “Harry and the Mulefukkers” then gives him a chance as a bass player. He has his girl and he has a gig, but can Zombie put the bottle down?
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Eddie Constantine, Hanns Zischler, Claudia Michelsen
Genre: Drama
Country: France
Characterized by deconstructivism and philosophical references and by briefly exposing the good, bad, and ugly periods of the country’s history, this post-modern film portrays the abstract need for guidance of Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Director: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, Gregory Patrick Karr
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France | Greece | Switzerland | Italy
A reporter stuck in a border town with an overcrowding of refugees sees a man he believes to be a long lost politician.
Director: Norman Stone
Stars: Bob Peck, Janet McTeer, Geraldine Somerville
Genre: Drama
Country: UK
In the 1830’s in northern England, Riah Millican, a widow with three children, takes a job as housekeeper to a reclusive former teacher, Percival Miller. Miller makes Riah the gift of a black velvet gown, and even educates her children. But when Riah discovers the reason behind Miller’s gifts, she vows to leave his house, but Miller has a hold on her, even after his death, when he leaves his house to her on the condition that she never marry. Riah’s daughter, Biddy, grows up and becomes a laundress in a large house where her education keeps her from fitting in and makes her a target. But it also catches the eye of a son of the house, and with Miller’s legacies, Biddy may yet find her way to happiness.
Director: Alain Corneau
Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Anne Brochet
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: France
The story of Monsieur de Sainte Colombe, fierce and somber man, grand master of the viola da gamba and professor of Marin Marais, prestigious musician in the court of Louis XIV.
Director: Hark Tsui
Stars: Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Biao Yuen
Genre: Action, Adventure, History
Country: Hong Kong
Late 1800s Foshan, Guangdong: Wong Fei Hung/Jet Li trains men in martial arts to help defend against foreign powers already holding Hong Kong and Macau. He looks after cute 13th Aunt, who’s just returned from England. Lots of fight scenes.
Director: Robert Mulligan
Stars: Sam Waterston, Tess Harper, Gail Strickland
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A coming of age story set in the south of the U.S. when Elvis was King.
Director: David Blair
Stars: Father Bessarion, David Blair, William S. Burroughs
Genre: Documentary, Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: USA | Germany
A man recalls the story of how his bees implanted in him a bee television, causing him to lose all perception of space, time, and self in the deserts of the American West.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Stars: Sachiko Murase, Richard Gere, Hisashi Igawa
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
Three generations’ responses to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.