Author: Oliver Sacks
Date: 2007
Genre: Neurology, Psychology
Country: USA
It explores a range of psychological and physiological ailments and their connections to music. It is divided into four parts, each with a distinctive theme: Haunted by Music examines mysterious onsets of musicality and musicophilia (and musicophobia); A Range of Musicality looks at musical oddities musical synesthesia; parts three and four are entitled Memory, Movement, and Music and Emotion, Identity, and Music.
Author: Ambrose Bierce
Date: 1964
Genre: Horror, Short Stories
Country: USA
This volume contains 24 of Bierce’s best tales of the unknown. Morbid, cynical, eerie, they take you to a twilight region of flesh and spirit — and into the darkest recesses of the human mind.
Author: Samuel Beckett
Date: 1997
Genre: Essays
Country: USA
The first novel of Samuel Beckett’s mordant and exhilarating midcentury trilogy introduces us to Molloy, who has been mysteriously incarcerated, and who subsequently escapes to go discover the whereabouts of his mother. In the latter part of this curious masterwork, a certain Jacques Moran is deputized by anonymous authorities to search for the aforementioned Molloy. In the trilogy’s second novel, Malone, who might or might not be Molloy himself, addresses us with his ruminations while in the act of dying. The third novel consists of the fragmented monologue–delivered, like the monologues of the previous novels, in a mournful rhetoric that possesses the utmost splendor and beauty–of what might or might not be an armless and legless creature living in an urn outside an eating house. Taken together, these three novels represent the high-water mark of the literary movement we call Modernism. Within their linguistic terrain, where stories are taken up, broken off, and taken up again, where voices rise and crumble and are resurrected, we can discern the essential lineaments of our modern condition, and encounter an awesome vision, tragic yet always compelling and always mysteriously invigorating, of consciousness trapped and struggling inside the boundaries of nature.
Author: Oliver Sacks
Date: 2012
Genre: Neurology, Psychology
Country: USA
Sacks recounts stories of hallucinations and other mind-altering episodes of both his patients and himself and uses them in an attempt to elucidate certain features and structures of the brain including his own migraine headaches.
Author: Laila Lalami
Date: 2025
Genre: Literary Science Fiction
Country: USA
Sara Hussein is a Moroccan American woman who, upon her return from a trip to the United Kingdom, is detained by a government agency tasked with determining citizens’ propensity to committing crimes. She is detained in what starts as a temporary arrangement but, through bureaucratic hiccups and intentional mismanagement, begins to seem more and more permanent.
Author: H. G. Wells
Date: 1895
Genre: Science Fiction
Country: UK
Utilizing a frame story set in then-present Victorian England, Wells’s text focuses on a recount of the otherwise anonymous Time Traveller’s journey into the far future. A work of future history and speculative evolution, The Time Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells’s era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi; and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes respectively.
Author: Oliver Sacks
Date: 2011
Genre: Neurological Case Studies
Country: USA
The book contains case studies of people whose ability to navigate the world visually and communicate with others have been compromised, including the author’s own experience with cancer of the eye and his lifelong inability to recognize faces.
Author: Kenzaburō Ōe
Date: 1964
Genre: Semi-autobiographical
Country: Japan
It tells the story of a young father who must come to terms with the fact that his newborn son is severely mentally disabled.
Author: Denis Diderot
Date: 1796
Genre: Philosophical Novel
Country: France
The novel follows the adventures of Jacques and his master, exploring their philosophical discussions on life, fate, and free will. Jacques believes that everything that happens is predestined, while his master argues for the existence of free will. Their journey is filled with comical and absurd situations, unexpected twists, and intriguing stories within stories. The narrative structure is innovative and playful, often breaking the fourth wall and questioning the nature of storytelling itself.
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Date: 2022
Genre: Historical Fiction, Family Saga, Mystery
Country: USA
Kingsolver was inspired by the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield. While Kingsolver’s novel is similarly about a boy who experiences poverty, Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia and explores contemporary issues. The book touches on themes of the social and economic stratification in Appalachia, child poverty in rural America, and drug addiction with a focus on the opioid crisis.
Author: Azar Nafisi
Date: 2003
Genre: Memoir
Country: USA
Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.
Author: Philip Roth
Date: 1997
Genre:
Country: USA
Roth’s protagonist is Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father’s Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede’s beautiful American luck deserts him.
For Swede’s adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth’s masterpiece.
Author: Toni Morrison
Date: 1970
Genre: African American
Country: USA
The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison’s first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author’s girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves’ garden do not bloom. Pecola’s life does change—in painful, devastating ways.
Author: Italo Calvino
Date: 1979
Genre: Postmodern
Country: Italy
The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter’s night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book they are reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader (“you”) finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones.
Author: James Baldwin
Date: 1953
Genre: Semi-Autobiography
Country: USA
“Nothing but the darkness, and all around them destruction, and before them nothing but the fire–a bastard people, far from God, singing and crying in the wilderness!” First published in 1953, Baldwin’s first novel is a short but intense, semi-autobiographical exploration of the troubled life of the Grimes family in Harlem during the Depression.
Author: Shirley Jackson
Date: 1962
Genre: Psychological Horror
Country: USA
Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian for company, Merricat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life. But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn’t leaving the Blackwoods alone. And when Cousin Charles arrives, armed with overtures of friendship and a desperate need to get into the safe, Merricat must do everything in her power to protect the remaining family.
Author: David Markson
Date: 1988
Genre: Postmodern, Experimental, Philosophical
Country: USA
A highly stylized, experimental novel in the tradition of Samuel Beckett. The novel is mainly a series of statements made in the first person; the protagonist is a woman named Kate who believes herself to be the last human on earth. Though her statements shift quickly from topic to topic, the topics often recur, and often refer to Western cultural icons, ranging from Zeno to Beethoven to Willem de Kooning. Readers familiar with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus will recognize stylistic similarities to that work.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: 1845
Genre: Autobiography
Country: USA
The pre-eminent American slave narrative published in 1845, the Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838: how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die.
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Date: 1949
Genre: Short Stories
Country: Argentina
With uncanny insight, Jorge Luis Borges takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father’s “killer,” and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house. This anthology also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity collected in The Maker, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.
Author: Daniel Defoe
Date: 1722
Genre: Historical Novel
Country: UK
In 1665 the plague swept through London, claiming over 97,000 lives. Daniel Defoe was just five at the time of the plague, but he later called on his own memories, as well as his writing experience, to create this vivid chronicle of the epidemic and its victims. A Journal (1722) follows Defoe’s fictional narrator as he traces the devastating progress of the plague through the streets of London. Here we see a city transformed: some of its streets suspiciously empty, some—with crosses on their doors—overwhelmingly full of the sounds and smells of human suffering. And every living citizen he meets has a horrifying story that demands to be heard.
Author: Thomas Hardy
Date: 1895
Genre:
Country: UK
Jude Fawley’s hopes of a university education are lost when he is trapped into marrying the earthy Arabella, who later abandons him. Moving to the town of Christminster where he finds work as a stonemason, Jude meets and falls in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead, a sensitive, freethinking “New Woman.” Refusing to marry merely for the sake of religious convention, Jude and Sue decide instead to live together, but they are shunned by society and poverty soon threatens to ruin them. Jude the Obscure, Hardy’s last novel, caused a public furor when it was first published, with its fearless and challenging exploration of class and sexual relationships.
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Date: 2015
Genre: Autobiography
Country: USA
It was written by Coates as a letter to his then-teenage son about his perception of what the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States are. Coates recapitulates American history and explains to his son “racist violence that has been woven into American culture.” Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore, detailing his beliefs about the ways in which, to him, institutions like schools, the local police, and even “the streets” discipline, endanger, and threaten to “disembody” black men and women.
Author: Zadie Smith
Date: 2000
Genre: Postcolonial
Country: UK
Focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends—the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones—and their families in London. The novel centres on Britain’s relationship with immigrants from the British Commonwealth.
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Date: 1962
Genre: Magical Realism, Fantasy, Metafiction, Surrealism
Country: UK
Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in modern literature. In his preface, Andre Maurois writes: “Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention, and their tight, almost mathematical style.”
Author: José Saramago
Date: 1995
Genre: Post-apocalyptic
Country: Portugal
A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind. An ophthalmologist tries to diagnose his distinctive white blindness, but is affected before he can read the textbooks.
It becomes a contagion, spreading throughout the city. Trying to stem the epidemic, the authorities herd the afflicted into a mental asylum where the wards are terrorised by blind thugs. And when fire destroys the asylum, the inmates burst forth and the last links with a supposedly civilised society are snapped.
Author: Sappho
Date: c. 630 – c. 570 BCE
Genre: Lyric Poetry
Country: Ancient Greece
These hundred poems and fragments constitute virtually all of Sappho that survives and effectively bring to life the woman whom the Greeks consider to be their greatest lyric poet. Mary Barnard’s translations are lean, incisive, direct–the best ever published. She has rendered the beloved poet’s verses, long the bane of translators, more authentically than anyone else in English.
Author: Voltaire
Date: 1759
Genre: Philosophical Fiction, Satire, Picaresque Novel, Bildungsroman, Tragedy
Country: France
Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in “the best of all possible worlds.” On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. Fast, funny, often outrageous, the French philosopher’s immortal narrative takes Candide around the world to discover that — contrary to the teachings of his distinguished tutor Dr. Pangloss — all is not always for the best. Alive with wit, brilliance, and graceful storytelling, Candide has become Voltaire’s most celebrated work.
Author: Albert Camus
Date: 1947
Genre: Philosophical Novel, Existentialism
Country: France
The book tells a gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of porters, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.
Author: Susanna Clarke
Date: 2020
Genre: Speculative Fiction
Country: UK
The novel is written as a journal from within a seemingly infinite, world-encompassing megastructure called the House.
Original Title: En attendant Godot
Author: Samuel Beckett
Date: 1952
Genre: Play, Tragicomedy, Existentialism
Country: France/UK
“Waiting for Godot” is a play that explores themes of existentialism, despair, and the human condition through the story of two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who wait endlessly for a man named Godot, who never arrives. While they wait, they engage in a variety of discussions and encounter three other characters. The play is characterized by its minimalistic setting and lack of a traditional plot, leaving much to interpretation.
Author: Charles Dickens
Date: 1850
Genre: Bildungsroman
Country: UK
This novel follows the life of its titular protagonist from his childhood to maturity. Born to a young widow, David endures a difficult childhood when his mother remarries a harsh and abusive man. After his mother’s death, he is sent to a boarding school before being forced into child labor. As he grows, David experiences hardship, love, and loss, all the while meeting a colorful array of characters. The novel is a journey of self-discovery and personal growth, showcasing the harsh realities of 19th-century England.
Original Title: Ficciones
Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Date: 1941
Genre: Short Stories
Country: Argentina
“Collected Fiction” is a compilation of stories by a renowned author that takes readers on a journey through a world of philosophical paradoxes, intellectual humor, and fantastical realities. The book features a range of narratives, from complex, multi-layered tales of labyrinths and detective investigations, to metaphysical explorations of infinity and the nature of identity. It offers an immersive and thought-provoking reading experience, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, past and present, and the self and the universe.
Author: Virginia Woolf
Date: 1927
Genre: Modernist
Country: UK
This novel is a pioneering work of modernist literature that explores the Ramsay family’s experiences at their summer home on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. The narrative is divided into three sections, focusing on a day in the family’s life, a description of the house during their absence, and their return after ten years. The book is known for its stream of consciousness narrative technique and its exploration of topics such as the passage of time, the nature of art, and the female experience.
Director: Alex Ross Perry
Stars: Stephen Malkmus, Scott Kannberg, Bob Nastanovich
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA, Germany
’90s indie-rock band Pavement reunites for their sold-out 2022 tour. But as preparations get underway, surreal tributes emerge: an off-Broadway musical adaptation of their songs, a museum devoted entirely to the band’s legacy, and a shamelessly awards-baiting Hollywood biopic.
Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Follows a mysterious herd of ghost elephants in the jungles of Angola.
Director: Mona Fastvold
Stars: Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA, UK
Ann Lee, the founding leader of the Shaker Movement, is proclaimed as the female Christ by her followers. This film depicts her establishment of a utopian society and the Shakers’ worship through song and dance, based on real events.
Director: Jafar Panahi
Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: Iran, France, Luxembourg
An unassuming mechanic is reminded of his time in an Iranian prison when he encounters a man he suspects to be his sadistic jailhouse captor. Panicked, he rounds up a few of his fellow ex-prisoners to confirm the man’s identity.
Director: Joachim Trier
Stars: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Norway, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom
An intimate exploration of family, memories, and the reconciliatory power of art.
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Stars: Robson Andrade, Rubens Santos, Licínio Januário
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Brazil, France, Netherlands, Germany
In 1977, a technology expert flees from a mysterious past and returns to his hometown of Recife in search of peace. He soon realizes that the city is far from being the refuge he seeks.
Director: Chloe Zhao
Stars:
Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Zac Wishart
Genre: Drama, History, Romance
Country: USA, UK
After losing their son Hamnet to plague, Agnes and William Shakespeare grapple with grief in 16th-century England. A healer, Agnes must find strength to care for her surviving children while processing her devastating loss.
Director: Jafar Panahi
Stars: Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaser
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran
Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been barred from leaving the country, arrives at a village on the Iran-Turkey border to supervise a film based on a real-life couple seeking passports to Europe being shot in Turkey, but both his stay and the production run into trouble.
Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: France, Germany
This unique cinematic experience dives deep into an artist’s work and reveals his life path, inspiration, and creative process. It explores his fascination with myth and history. Past and present are interwoven to diffuse the line between film and painting, allowing the audience to be completely immersed in the remarkable world of one of the greatest contemporary artists, Anselm Kiefer. Wim Wenders shot this unique portrait over the course of two years in stunning 3D.
Director: Olivia Peace
Stars: Madeline Grey DeFreece, Rachel Sennott, Daniel Taveras
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA
Two best friends attend the funeral of a Hebrew school classmate who died by suicide and accidentally damage their friendship beyond repair.
Director: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi
Stars: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Masaki Okada
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, still unable, after two years, to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, accepts to direct Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he meets Misaki, an introverted young woman, appointed to drive his car. In between rides, secrets from the past and heartfelt confessions will be unveiled.
Director: Leos Carax
Stars: Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard, Simon Helberg
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, Mexico, Switzerland
The story of Henry, a stand-up comedian with a fierce sense of humour and Ann, a singer of international renown. In the spotlight, they are the perfect couple, healthy, happy, and glamourous. The birth of their first child, Annette, a mysterious girl with an exceptional destiny, will change their lives.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Fran Lebowitz, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Alec Baldwin
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A girl born into an all-female cult led by a man in their compound begins to question his teachings and her own reality.
Director: Laura Citarella
Stars: Laura Paredes, Ezequiel Pierri, Rafael Spregelburd
Genre: Thriller, Drama, Mystery
Country: Argentina, Germany
With the strange disappearance of Laura, two colleagues, her older boyfriend, Rafael, and Ezequiel, learn of their recent discoveries, which may help them locate her. However, the story is bigger and stranger than they could imagine.
Director: Jerzy Skolimowski
Stars: Sandra Drzymalska, Isabelle Huppert, Lorenzo Zurzolo
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Country: Italy, Poland
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.
Director: Colm Bairéad
Stars: Catherine Clinch, Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett
Genre: Drama
Country: Ireland
A quiet, neglected girl is sent away from her dysfunctional family to live with relatives for the summer. She blossoms in their care, but in this house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers one.
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Stars: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Ko Shibasaki, Aimyon
Genre: Animation
Country: Japan
While the Second World War rages, the teenage Mahito, haunted by his mother’s tragic death, is relocated from Tokyo to the serene rural home of his new stepmother Natsuko, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the boy’s mother. As he tries to adjust, this strange new world grows even stranger following the appearance of a persistent gray heron, who perplexes and bedevils Mahito, dubbing him the “long-awaited one.”
Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Nakano, Aoi Yamada
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany, Japan
Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Stars: Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici, Ece Bağcı
Genre: Drama
Country: France, Germany, Sweden, Turkey
A young art teacher hopes to be transferred to Istanbul after completing his mandatory duty in a remote village school in Anatolia. After accusations of inappropriate contact with a student surface, his hopes of escape fade and he descends further into an existential crisis.
Director: Leos Carax
Stars: Leos Carax, Denis Lavant, Nastya Golubeva Carax
Genre: Drama
Country: France
This free-form film is a self-portrait, which revisits more than 40 years of the author’s filmography and questions the major stations of his life, while capturing the political tremors of the time.
Director: Gary Hustwit
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Visionary musician and artist Brian Eno — known for producing David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, among many others; pioneering the genre of ambient music; and releasing over 40 solo and collaboration albums — reveals his creative processes in this groundbreaking generative documentary: a film that’s different every time it’s shown.
Director: Gints Zilbalodis
Stars: N/A
Genre: Animation
Country: Belgium | France | Latvia
A solitary cat, displaced by a great flood, finds refuge on a boat with various species and must navigate the challenges of adapting to a transformed world together.
Director: Émilie Tronche
Stars: N/A
Genre: Animated
Country: Spain, France
Samuel is 10 years old. He’s keeping a diary, and he has a problem. His problem is that Basile told the tall Julie that Samuel loved her. Which isn’t true, he doesn’t care about Julie. It’s only that, she laughed at one of his jokes once and he thought she was nice to do so.
Director: Eadweard Muybridge
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary, Short, Silent
Country: USA
Muybridge first photographed the human figure in motion on March 4th 1879. However, he did not focus on the human body until his contract at Pennsylvania University began in May 1884, resulting in two volumes of work dedicated to photographs of human subjects. Muybridge’s test footage included cinematic glimpses of naked men and women in motion.
Director: Eadweard Muybridge
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary, Short, Silent
Country: USA
Two women shake hands and kiss. The first ever moving image of a kiss was not filmed, but instead consists of individual photographs shot by Eadweard Muybridge in rapid succession, making a moving picture when using Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope.
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès, Jehanne d’Alcy
Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Short, Silent
Country: France
The film tells the story of an encounter with the Devil and various attendant phantoms. It is intended to evoke amusement and wonder from its audiences, rather than fear.
Director: Étienne-Jules Marey
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary, Short, Silent
Country: France
Directed by Étienne-Jules Marey, a French scientist, this is believed to be the first cat ever filmed in cinematic history. Jules Marey created the chronophotographic gun in 1882, a device which looked like a short barrelled shotgun with a magazine on top. It was capable of taking twelve consecutive frames a second. He used this to study various animals, the most famous study in what was called Marey’s ‘animated zoo’, was the one involving a cat which was dropped from a height of a few feet in order to see if it always landed on its feet.
Director: Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, Giuseppe de Liguoro
Stars: Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, Giuseppe de Liguoro
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Italy
Loosely adapted from Dante’s Divine Comedy and inspired by the illustrations of Gustav Doré the original silent film has been restored and has a new score by Tangerine Dream.
Director: Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart
Stars: Honor Kneafsey, Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Family
Country: Ireland, Luxembourg, France
A young apprentice hunter and her father journey to Ireland to help wipe out the last wolf pack. But everything changes when she befriends a free-spirited girl from a mysterious tribe rumored to transform into wolves by night.
Director: Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed
Stars: Craig Foster, Tom Foster
Genre: Documentary
Country: South Africa
A filmmaker forges an unusual friendship with an octopus living in a South African kelp forest, learning as the animal shares the mysteries of her world.
Director: Spike Lee
Stars: David Byrne, Jacqueline Acevedo, Gustavo Di Dalva, Daniel Freedman
Genre: Documentary, Music, Musical
Country: USA
Spike Lee documents the former Talking Heads frontman’s brilliant, timely 2019 Broadway show, based on his recent album and tour of the same name.
Director: Eskil Vogt
Stars: Rakel Lenora Fløttum, Alva Brynsmo Ramstad, Sam Ashraf, Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, United Kingdom
During the bright Nordic summer, a group of children reveal their dark and mysterious powers when the adults aren’t looking. In this original and gripping supernatural thriller, playtime takes a dangerous turn.
Director: Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Stars: Daniel Karimyar, Fardin Mijdzadeh, Milad Eskandari, Belal Faiz
Genre: Documentary, Animation, Biography
Country: Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States, Finland, Italy, Spain, Estonia, Slovenia
FLEE tells the extraordinary true story of a man, Amin, on the verge of marriage which compels him to reveal his hidden past for the first time.
Director: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Stars: Kotone Furukawa, Ayumu Nakajima, Hyunri, Kiyohiko Shibukawa
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
An unexpected love triangle, a failed seduction trap and an encounter that results from a misunderstanding, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Stars: Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón
Genre: Drama
Country: Spain, France
The story of two mothers who bond in unexpected way after giving birth the same day.
Director: Céline Sciamma
Stars: Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse, Stéphane Varupenne
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France
Nelly has just lost her grandmother and is helping her parents clean out her mother’s childhood home. She explores the house and the surrounding woods. One day she meets a girl her same age building a treehouse.
Director: Questlove
Stars: Dorinda Drake, Barbara Bland-Acosta, Darryl Lewis, Ethel Beatty
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA
Documentary about the legendary 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival which celebrated African-American music and culture and promoted Black pride and unity.
Director: Joel Coen
Stars: Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell, Bertie Carvel
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: United States
A Scottish lord becomes convinced by a trio of witches that he will become the next King of Scotland, and his ambitious wife supports him in his plans of seizing power.
Director: Michael Apted
Stars: Bruce Balden, Jacqueline Bassett, Symon Basterfield
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
Director: Greta Gerwig
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Jo March reflects back and forth on her life, telling the beloved story of the March sisters – four young women, each determined to live life on her own terms.
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Stars: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey
Genre: Drama
Country: Mexico
A year in the life of a middle-class family’s maid in Mexico City in the early 1970s.
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Stars: Lily Franky, Sakura Andô, Kirin Kiki
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Japan
A family of small-time crooks take in a child they find outside in the cold.
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Jean-Luc Godard, Dimitri Basil, Jean-Pierre Gos
Genre: Drama
Country: Switzerland | France
Nothing but silence. Nothing but a revolutionary song. A story in five chapters like the five fingers of a hand.
Director: Barry Jenkins
Stars: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A young woman embraces her pregnancy while she and her family set out to prove her childhood friend and lover innocent of a crime he didn’t commit.
Director: JR, Agnès Varda
Stars: Agnès Varda, JR, Jeannine Carpentier
Genre: Documentary
Country: France
Director Agnes Varda and photographer/muralist J.R. journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.
Director: Robin Campillo
Stars: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Arnaud Valois, Adèle Haenel
Genre: Drama
Country: France
Members of the advocacy group ACT UP Paris demand action by the government and pharmaceutical companies to combat the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s.
Director: Raoul Peck
Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King
Genre: Documentary
Country: Switzerland | France | Belgium | USA
Writer James Baldwin tells the story of race in modern America with his unfinished novel, Remember This House.
Director: Chantal Akerman
Stars: Chantal Akerman, Natalia Akerman, Sylvaine Akerman
Genre: Documentary
Country: Belgium | France
Chantal Akerman films her mother, an old woman of Polish origin who is short lifetime, in her apartment in Brussels. For two hours, we will see them eating, chatting and sharing memories, sometimes accompanied by Sylvaine, Chantal’s sister. Also, and to show how small the world has become, Chantal remains in contact with her mother at other times of the year via Skype from lands as far away from Belgium as Oklahoma or New York.
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Stars: Leanne Benjamin, Kausikan Rajeshkumar, Jo Shapcott
Genre: Documentary
Country: France | USA | UK
A documentary that goes inside one of the great museums of the world: The National Gallery in London.
Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
Stars: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh
Genre: Drama, Horror
Country: USA
In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Stars: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland | Denmark | France | UK
A novice nun about to take her vows uncovers a family secret dating back to the German occupation.
Director: Aleksey German
Stars: Leonid Yarmolnik, Aleksandr Chutko, Yuriy Tsurilo
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Russia
In the distant future, a space traveler from Earth breaks a special law and interferes with the history of another, Medieval-like, planet.
Director: Pip Chodorov
Stars: Pip Chodorov, Ken Jacobs, Hans Richter
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: France | USA
What is experimental film, and why is it called that? Artists and poet working in celluloid since before WWI have always found themselves in a no man’s land. Excluded both from the art world and from the film industry, they bodly created a grassroots network for making and showing their films. They also created a profound body of work that continues to influence our culture. I wanted to share a few of the films I love and introduce you some of the free, radicals artists who made them.
Director: Christian Marclay
Stars: Rosanna Arquette, Bette Davis, Leonardo DiCaprio
Genre: Drama
Country: UK
Scenes from various films and TV programs that feature clocks, or some verbal mention of time, combine to make a 24 hour timepiece movie.
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Stars: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, Jean-Claude Carrière
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France | Italy | Belgium | Iran
In Tuscany to promote his latest book, a middle-aged British writer meets a French woman who leads him to the village of Lucignano. While there, a chance question reveals something deeper.
Director: Claire Denis
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Lambert, Isaach De Bankolé
Genre: Drama, War
Country: France | Cameroon
Amidst turmoil and racial conflict in a Francophone African state, a white French woman fights for her coffee crop, her family and ultimately for her life.
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Stars: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyôko Koizumi, Yû Koyanagi
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan | Netherlands | Hong Kong
An ordinary Japanese family slowly disintegrates after its patriarch loses his job at a prominent company.
Director: Agnès Varda, Laura Obiols
Stars: Agnès Varda, André Lubrano, Blaise Fournier
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: France
Agnès Varda explores her memories, mostly chronologically, with photographs, film clips, interviews, reenactments, and droll, playful contemporary scenes of her narrating her story.
Director: Alain Resnais
Stars: Sabine Azéma, Isabelle Carré, Laura Morante
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France | Italy
In Paris, six people all look for love, despite typically having their romantic aspirations dashed at every turn.
Director: Ousmane Sembene
Stars: Fatoumata Coulibaly, Maimouna Hélène Diarra, Salimata Traoré
Genre: Drama
Country: Senegal | Burkina Faso | Morocco | Tunisia | Cameroon | France
When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Stars: Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Börje Ahlstedt
Genre: Drama, Music
Country: Sweden | Denmark | Norway | Italy | Finland | Germany | Austria
Marianne, some thirty years after divorcing Johan, decides to visit her ex-husband at his summer home. She arrives in the middle of a family drama between Johan’s son from another marriage and his granddaughter.
Director: Pelin Esmer
Stars: Mithat Esmer
Genre: Documentary
Country: Turkey
This is a documentary about a passionate collector. A man who has been collecting for 70 years, collecting everything one can imagine. A man who lives in his own house like a guest of his collections. A man who tries to freeze time, as if to hold on to present. In this documentary, you will follow this passionate collector through the vivid streets of Istanbul, among the crowd, in search of new collection items while trying to understand his perception of life and collection.
Director: Zacharias Kunuk
Stars: Natar Ungalaaq, Sylvia Ivalu, Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada
The telling of an Inuit legend of an evil spirit causing strife in the community and one warrior’s endurance and battle of its menace.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Martin Scorsese
Genre: Documentary
Country: Italy | USA
World-renowned director Martin Scorsese narrates this journey through his favorites in Italian cinema.
Director: Anand Tucker
Stars: Emily Watson, Rachel Griffiths, James Frain
Genre: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: UK
The tragic story of world renowned classic cellist Jacqueline du Pré, as told from the point of view of her sister, flautist Hilary du Pré-Finzi.
Director: Éric Rohmer
Stars: Melvil Poupaud, Amanda Langlet, Gwenaëlle Simon
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: France
A shy maths graduate takes a holiday in Dinard before starting his first job. He hopes his sort-of girlfriend will join him, but soon strikes up a friendship with another girl working in town. She in turn introduces him to a further young lady who fancies him. Thus the quiet young lad finds he is having to do some tricky juggling in territory new to him.
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Stars: Makiko Esumi, Takashi Naitô, Tadanobu Asano
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
A young woman’s husband apparently commits suicide without warning or reason, leaving behind his wife and infant.
Director: Matthew Barney
Stars: Matthew Barney, Dave Molyneux, Graham Molyneux
Genre: Short, Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA | France | UK
An experimental short film from the Cremaster series which alludes to the position of the reproductive organs during the embryonic development process.
Director: Boaz Yakin
Stars: Pernilla August, Max von Sydow, Merzak Allouache
Genre: Documentary
Country: France | Denmark | Spain | Sweden
40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière brothers.
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Stars: Shûichirô Moriyama, Tokiko Katô, Bunshi Katsura Vi
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
Country: Japan
In 1930s Italy, a veteran World War I pilot is cursed to look like an anthropomorphic pig.
Director: Bille August
Stars: Samuel Fröler, Pernilla August, Max von Sydow
Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: Sweden | Denmark | Finland | France | Germany | UK | Italy | Norway | Iceland
In 1909, poor theology student Henrik falls in love with Anna, the intelligent daughter of a rich family in Uppsala. After marrying Henrik becomes a priest in northern Sweden. Urbane Anna hates living in the county, growing restless.
Director: Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, Stuart Samuels
Stars: Conrad L. Hall, John Bailey, Vilmos Zsigmond
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: Japan | USA
Cameramen and women discuss the craft and art of cinematography and of the “DP” (the director of photography), illustrating their points with clips from 100 films, from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing. Themes: the DP tells people where to look; changes in movies (the arrival of sound, color, and wide screens) required creative responses from DPs; and, these artisans constantly invent new equipment and try new things, with wonderful results. The narration takes us through the identifiable studio styles of the 30s, the emergence of noir, the New York look, and the impact of Europeans. Citizen Kane, The Conformist, and Gordon Willis get special attention.
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: Agnieszka Holland
Stars: Solomon Perel, Marco Hofschneider, René Hofschneider
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: Germany | France | Poland
A boy in Nazi Germany, trying to conceal that he is Jewish, joins the Hitler Youth.
Director: Alejandro Agresti, Gábor Altorjay, José Luis Guerín, Clemens Klopfenstein, Tato Kotetishvili, William Mbaye Ousmane, Eagle Pennell, Dirk Rijneke, Mrinal Sen, Mildred Van Leeuwaarden, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Carlos Reichenbach, Béla Tarr
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Country: Argentina | Netherlands
A kaleidoscopic panorama of the world. A visual anthology of twelve short stories by twelve innovative directors from all over the world.
Director: Brian Gibson
Stars: Ben Kingsley, Renée Soutendijk, Craig T. Nelson
Genre: Biography, Drama, War
Country: UK | West Germany | Hungary | USA
A biographical portrayal of Simon Wiesenthal, famous Nazi Hunter. From his imprisonment in a Nazi Concentration Camp, the film follows his liberation and his rise to become one of the leading Nazi hunters in the world, bringing such criminals to justice as Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie.
Director: Claude Chabrol
Stars: Isabelle Huppert, François Cluzet, Marie Trintignant
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France
A housewife in Nazi-occupied France struggles to make ends meet when her husband returns home after being wounded in the war.
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Stars: Grazyna Szapolowska, Olaf Lubaszenko, Stefania Iwinska
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Poland
An innocent virgin spies on his frontal neighbor and falls in love with her, thus starts using tricks on her which he hopes will lead to them meeting.
Director: Richard Linklater
Stars: Richard Linklater, James Goodwin, Dan Kratochvil
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A nameless young character goes into travels to the country, meeting some acquaintances and strangers as well, having banal conversations, dedicating his existence into daily mundane activities. Richard Linklater presents an unconventional narrative, barely composed of dialogue and consisting in observing life and actions.
Director: Laurie Anderson
Stars: Laurie Anderson, Joy Askew, Adrian Belew
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA | Canada
Concert film of Laurie Anderson performing songs from her first three albums, selections from her four-night epic “United States Live,” and several new songs, which incorporate a unique blend of film, animation, dance, and electronics.
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Stars: Mayumi Tanaka, Keiko Yokozawa, Kotoe Hatsui
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Drama
Country: Japan
A young boy and a girl with a magic crystal must race against pirates and foreign agents in a search for a legendary floating castle.
Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Werner Herzog, Reinhold Messner, Lotte Eisner
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: West Germany
A self portrait documentary by Werner Herzog.
Director: Jimmy T. Murakami
Stars: Peggy Ashcroft, John Mills, Robin Houston
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
A naive elderly British rural couple survive the initial onslaught of a nuclear war.
Director: Terry Hughes, Ian MacNaughton
Stars: John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle
Genre: Documentary, Comedy, Musical
Country: UK
The Monty Python troupe perform a combination of classic sketches and new material at the Hollywood Bowl.
Director: John Carpenter
Stars: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: Horror, Thriller
An unearthly fog rolls into a small coastal town exactly 100 years after a ship mysteriously sank in its waters.
Director: John Huston
Stars: Brad Dourif, John Huston, Dan Shor
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
A Southerner–young, poor, ambitious but uneducated–determines to become something in the world. He decides that the best way to do that is to become a preacher and start up his own church.
Director: Carlos Saura
Stars: Ana Torrent, Conchita Pérez, Mayte Sanchez
Genre: Drama
Country: Spain
In the twilight of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, an eight-year-old orphan and her two sisters find shelter in the house of their stern aunt, trying their best to acclimatise to a new reality. Will they summon up the courage to grow up?
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Stars: Hugh Griffith, Laura Betti, Ninetto Davoli
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Italy | France
Pasolini’s artistic, sometimes violent, always vividly cinematic retelling of some of Chaucer’s most erotic tales.
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Stars: Lou Castel, Eddie Constantine, Marquard Bohm
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: West Germany | Italy
On a film set there are two things missing, the film material and the director. So the actors and actresses as well as the crew try to make the best out of the situation. When the director arrives the material is still missing and so they still wait and try to make the best out of the situation.
Director: Joseph Losey
Stars: Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Dominic Guard
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: UK
A tale of torrid and forbidden love between a couple in the English countryside.
Director: Federico Fellini
Stars: Riccardo Billi, Federico Fellini, Gigi Reder
Genre: Documentary, Comedy
Country: Italy | France | West Germany
A ragout of real memories and mockumentary, as Fellini explores a childhood obsession: circus clowns.
Director: Claude Chabrol
Stars: Stéphane Audran, Jean Yanne, Antonio Passalia
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: France | Italy
An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.
Director: Elio Petri
Stars: Gian Maria Volontè, Florinda Bolkan, Gianni Santuccio
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Italy
A chief of detectives, homicide section, kills his mistress and deliberately leaves clues to prove his own responsibility for the crime.
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Stars: Tatsuya Nakadai, Mikijirô Hira, Kyôko Kishida
Genre: Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
Country: Japan
A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.
Director: Sergio Leone
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volontè
Genre: Western
Country: Italy | Spain | West Germany
Two bounty hunters with the same intentions team up to track down a Western outlaw.
Director: Stuart Burge
Stars: Laurence Olivier, Frank Finlay, Robert Lang
Genre: Drama
Country: UK
General Othello’s marriage is destroyed when vengeful Ensign Iago convinces him that his new wife has been unfaithful.
Director: Ján Kadár, Elmar Klos
Stars: Ida Kaminska, Jozef Kroner, Frantisek Zvarík
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Czechoslovakia
A carpenter in the Fascist Slovak State is appointed “Aryan controller” of a Jewish widow’s store.
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Bernard Noël, Macha Méril, Philippe Leroy
Genre: Drama
Country: France
A superficial woman finds conflict choosing between her abusive husband and her vain lover.
Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Stars: Ryô Ikebe, Mariko Kaga, Takashi Fujiki
Genre: Action, Crime
Country: Japan
A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.
Director: Don Siegel
Stars: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: USA
Surprised that their contract victim didn’t try to run away from them, two professional hit men try to find out who hired them and why.
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Patrice Moullet, Marino Masé, Geneviève Galéa
Genre: Comedy, Drama, War
Country: France | Italy
During a war in an imaginary country, unscrupulous soldiers recruit poor farmers with promises of an easy and happy life. Two of these farmers write to their wives of their exploits.
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Anna Karina, Michel Subor, Henri-Jacques Huet
Genre: War, Drama
Country: France
During the Algerian War, a man and woman from opposing sides fall in love with one another.
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Stars: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani, Jean Desailly
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Country: France | Italy
A burglar betraying other criminals, prepares for a big heist with a trusted friend that might be as untrustworthy as he.
Director: Éric Rohmer
Stars: Barbet Schroeder, Claudine Soubrier, Michèle Girardon
Genre: Drama, Short
Country: France | Algeria
A law student regularly visits a Paris bakery to flirt with a brunette employee.
Director: Louis Malle
Stars: Catherine Demongeot, Philippe Noiret, Hubert Deschamps
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Country: France
With her mother away for the weekend, a brash and precocious ten-year-old country-girl sets out to explore Paris during a Métro strike, under her uncle’s not-so-watchful eye. Can a little girl cause so much chaos in the heart of the city?
Director: Fritz Lang
Stars: Dawn Addams, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Country: West Germany | France | Italy
In 1960s Germany, criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse uses hypnotized victims and the surveillance equipment of a Nazi-era bugged hotel to steal nuclear technology from a visiting American industrialist.
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Stars: Keiji Sada, Yoshiko Kuga, Chishû Ryû
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family
Country: Japan
Two boys begin a silence strike to press their parents into buying them a television set.
Director: Stanley Donen
Stars: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Cecil Parker
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: UK
An actress who has given up on love meets a suave banker and begins a flirtation with him…even though he’s already married.
Director: Louis Malle
Stars: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: France
A self-assured businessman murders his employer, the husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Stars: Toshirô Mifune, Misa Uehara, Minoru Chiaki
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Country: Japan
Lured by gold, two greedy peasants unknowingly escort a princess and her general across enemy lines.
Director: Alain Resnais
Stars: Jacques Dumesnil
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: France
This documentary explores the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, its priceless treasures and how humanity remembers itself.
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Stars: Chikage Awashima, Ryô Ikebe, Teiji Takahashi
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
A young man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital romance.
Director: Jacques Tati
Stars: Jacques Tati, Guy Decomble, Paul Frankeur
Genre: Comedy
Country: France
Once a year the fair comes for one day to the little town ‘Sainte-Severe-sur-Indre’. All inhabitants are scoffing at Francois, the postman, what he seems not to recognize. The rising of the flagstaff under his direction nearly leads into a catastrophy – but everybody tells him, how important his work is.
Director: Alain Resnais
Stars: Claude Dauphin
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: France
The biography of Dutch artist Van Gogh, illustrated only with images of his paintings and drawings, or details of those, and according dramatic musical score.
Director: Laurence Olivier
Stars: Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, John Laurie
Genre: Drama
Country: UK
Prince Hamlet struggles over whether or not he should kill his uncle, whom he suspects has murdered his father, the former king.
Director: Henry Koster
Stars: Cary Grant, Loretta Young, David Niven
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
An angel in human form enters the life of a bishop in order to help him build a new cathedral and repair his fractured marriage.
Director: Maya Deren
Stars: John Cage, Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid
Genre: Short
Country: USA
Silently, a woman wakes on a beach as the tides go in reverse. Her dreamscape unfolds as she tries to locate a chess piece traveling from the beach to a party to a country road and then back.
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Stars: Emilio Cigoli, Luciano De Ambrosis, Isa Pola
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy
A four-year old boy, Pricò, becomes the subject of emotional folly by his fluctuant parents and inattentive relatives.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Stars: Denjirô Ôkôchi, Susumu Fujita, Yukiko Todoroki
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
Country: Japan
Sugata, a young man, struggles to learn the nuance and meaning of judo, and in doing so comes to learn something of the meaning of life.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings, Otto Kruger
Genre: Thriller, War
Country: USA
An aircraft factory worker goes on the run after being wrongly accused of starting a fire that killed his best friend.
Director: Sam Wood
Stars: Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, James Craig
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A hard-working, white-collar girl from a middle-class family meets and falls in love with a young socialite, but she soon clashes with his family.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall
Genre: Action, Romance, Thriller
Country: USA
On the eve of World War II, a young American reporter tries to expose enemy agents in London.
Director: George Stevens
Stars: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Victor McLaglen
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, War
Country: USA
In 19th century India, three British soldiers and a native waterbearer must stop a secret mass revival of the murderous Thuggee cult before it can rampage across the land.
Director: George Stevens
Stars: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore
Genre: Comedy, Musical, Romance
Country: USA
A performer and gambler travels to New York City to raise the $25,000 he needs to marry his fiancée, only to become entangled with a beautiful aspiring dancer.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, Desmond Tester
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Country: UK
A Scotland Yard undercover detective is on the trail of a saboteur who is part of a plot to set off a bomb in London. But when the detective’s cover is blown, the plot begins to unravel.
Director: Frank Capra
Stars: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A simple, small town man inherits a massive fortune, making him the target for scammers and publicity-seekers. Overwhelmed by the turn his life has taken, and awoken to another use for his new-found fortune, he makes a momentous decision.
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Stars: Takeshi Sakamoto, Chôko Iida, Kôji Mitsui
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
A kabuki actor’s mistress hatches a jealous plot to bring down her lover’s son.
Director: Edmund Goulding
Stars: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A group of very different individuals staying at a luxurious hotel in Berlin deal with each of their respective dramas.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Glenda Farrell
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
A small-time criminal moves to a big city to seek bigger fortune.
Director: King Vidor
Stars: Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich
Genre: Drama, Sport
Country: USA
An alcoholic ex-boxer struggles to provide a good living for his son.
Director: F.W. Murnau
Stars: Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Rochus Gliese, Curt Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Germany
Two men and two women enjoy a pleasant Sunday at the beach amid the unending toil of the working week.
Director: F.W. Murnau
Stars: Charles Farrell, Mary Duncan, David Torrence
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A Chicago waitress falls in love with a Minnesota farmer, and decides to face a life in the country.
Director: G.W. Pabst
Stars: Louise Brooks, Josef Rovenský, Fritz Rasp
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany
After falling pregnant to a pharmacist and refusing to marry, a young woman is thrown from her home and sent to a strict girls’ reform school.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Anny Ondra, John Longden, Sara Allgood
Genre: Crime, Film Noir, Thriller
Country: UK
After killing a man in self-defense, a young woman is blackmailed by a witness to the killing.
Director: F.W. Murnau
Stars: Janet Gaynor, Mary Duncan, Charles Morton
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Four orphans, raised by an aging clown, becomes a high wire act in a circus.
*Note: this title is currently a “lost film.”
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: June Tripp, Ivor Novello, Marie Ault
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: UK
A landlady suspects her new lodger is the madman killing women in London.
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa
Stars: Masuo Inoue, Ayako Iijima, Yoshie Nakagawa
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: Japan
A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife.
Director: Hans Richter
Stars: Stella F. Simon
Genre: Short, Art Film, Experimental
Country: Germany
Entertaining Dadaist experimental short, similar to Man Ray’s work, full of shifting geometric shapes, stock footage of seagulls, flying eyeballs, and glaring floating heads.
Director: Marcel Duchamp
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short, Art Film, Experimental
Country: France
A spiral design spins dizzily. It’s replaced by a spinning disk. These two continue in perfect alternation until the end: a spiral design, a disk. Each disk is labelled and can be read as it rotates. The messages, in French, feature puns and whimsical rhymes and alliteration. The final message comments on the spiral motif itself.
Director: Lotte Reiniger, Carl Koch
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Family
Country: Germany
A handsome prince rides a flying horse to faraway lands and embarks on magical adventures, which include befriending a witch, meeting Aladdin, battling demons and falling in love with a princess.
Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin
Stars: Vera Baranovskaya, Nikolay Batalov, Aleksandr Chistyakov
Genre: Drama
Country: Soviet Union
The Film Version Of Gorki’s Great Story Of The 1905 Revolution
Director: Rupert Julian, Lon Chaney, Ernst Laemmle, Edward Sedgwick
Stars: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry
Genre: Horror
Country: USA
A mad, disfigured composer seeks love with a lovely young opera singer.
Director: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
Stars: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Brooks Benedict
Genre: Comedy, Family, Romance
Country: USA
A nerdy college student will do anything to become popular on campus.
Director: Raoul Walsh
Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Julanne Johnston, Snitz Edwards
Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Country: USA
The sudden fortune won from a lottery fans such destructive greed that it ruins the lives of the three people involved.
Director: Fred C. Newmeyer (as Fred Neymeyer), Sam Taylor
Stars: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother
Genre: Action, Comedy, Thriller
Country: USA
A boy leaves his small country town and heads to the big city to get a job. As soon as he makes it big his sweetheart will join him and marry him. His enthusiasm to get ahead leads to some interesting adventures.
Director: D.W. Griffith
Stars: Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut
Genre: Drama, History, Romance
Country: USA
Two orphaned sisters are caught up in the turmoil of the French Revolution, encountering misery and love along the way.
Director: Victor Sjöström
Stars: Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: Sweden
On New Year’s Eve, the driver of a ghostly carriage forces a drunken man to reflect on his selfish, wasted life.
Director: D.W. Griffith
Stars: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Mrs. David Landau
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A naive country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Stars: Helge Nissen, Halvard Hoff, Jacob Texiere
Genre: Drama
Country: Denmark
In 4 episodic tales of human suffering; the temptation of Jesus, the Spanish Inquisition, the French Revolution and the Russo-Finnish war of 1918, Satan attempts to win God’s favor.
Director: Carl Boese, Paul Wegener
Stars: Paul Wegener, Albert Steinrück, Ernst Deutsch
Genre: Fantasy, Horror
Country: Germany
In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem – a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.
Director: W.W. Young
Stars: Viola Savoy, Herbert Rice, Harry Marks
Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Country: USA
Alice goes with her sister to a picnic and then she falls asleep and starts dreaming about a wonderland full of talking animals and walking playing cards.
Director: Louis Feuillade
Stars: René Navarre, Edmund Breon, Georges Melchior, Renée Carl
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: France
Inspector Juve is tasked to investigate and capture an infamous criminal Fantomas.
Director: Segundo de Chomón
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short, Comedy, Fantasy
Country: France | Spain
Three friends go on a trip and decided to rest at an abandoned house. Everything seems pretty normal until really weird things start to happen.
Director: Cecil M. Hepworth, Percy Stow
Stars: May Clark, Cecil M. Hepworth
Genre: Short, Family, Fantasy, Silent
Country: UK
Alice dozes in a garden, awakened by a dithering white rabbit in waistcoat with pocket watch. She follows him down a hole and finds herself in a hall of many doors. A key opens a small door: eventually, she’s through into a garden where a dog awaits. Later, in the rabbit’s home, her size is again a problem. She tries to help a nanny with a howling baby, then a Cheshire cat directs her to a tea party where the Mad Hatter and March Hare dunk a dormouse. Expelled from the party, Alice happens on a royal processional: all the cards in the deck precede the Queen of Hearts, who welcomes then turns on Alice and calls on the royal executioner. Alice must run for her life.
Director: Edwin S. Porter (uncredited)
Stars: Gilbert M. ‘Broncho Billy’ Anderson, A.C. Abadie, George Barnes
Genre: Crime, Short, Action, Silent
Country: USA
A group of bandits stage a brazen train hold-up, only to find a determined posse hot on their heels.