Caught by the Tides

The preeminent dramatist of China’s rapid 21st-century growth and social transformation, Jia Zhangke has taken his boldest approach to narrative yet with his marvelous CAUGHT BY THE TIDES. Assembled from footage shot over a span of 23 years—a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary, featuring a cascade of images taken from previous movies, unused scenes, and newly shot dramatic sequences—CAUGHT BY THE TIDES is a free-flowing work of unspoken longing, carried along more by music than dialogue as it looms around the edges of a poignant love story. The film mostly adheres to the perspective of Qiaoqiao (Jia’s immortal muse Zhao Tao) as she wanders an increasingly unrecognizable country in search of long-lost lover Bin (Li Zhubin), who left their home city of Datong seeking new financial prospects. The always captivating Zhao carries the film with her delicate expressiveness, while Jia constantly evokes cinema’s ability to capture the passage of time and the persistence of change: of people, landscapes, cities, politics, ideas.

The Lives of Others

This critically-acclaimed, Oscar®-winning film (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006) is the erotic, emotionally-charged experience Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly) calls "a nail-biter of a thriller!" Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany's population was closely monitored by the State Secret Police (Stasi). Only a few citizens above suspicion, like renowned pro-Socialist playwright Georg Dreyman, were permitted to lead private lives. But when a corrupt government official falls for Georg's stunning actress-girlfriend, Christa, an ambitious Stasi policeman is ordered to bug the writer's apartment to gain incriminating evidence against the rival. Now, what the officer discovers is about to dramatically change their lives - as well as his - in this seductive political thriller Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) proclaims is "the best kind of movie: one you can't get out of your head."

Run Lola Run

This multiple award winner from Tom Tykwer (The Princess And The Warrior) stars Franka Potente as Lola, the orange-haired punk girlfriend of Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), a small-time courier for a big-time gangster. Manni is working a standard pickup/drop-off, and everything is going fine until an unforeseen incident makes Lola late to pick him up. One stroke of bad luck leads to another, and by the time Manni calls Lola, he has a big problem: He is supposed to meet his unforgiving boss in 20 minutes with 100,000 marks that suddenly he does not have. Lola rushes out of her apartment, attempting to get to Manni and somehow pick up 100,000 marks along the way. As the seconds tick down, the tiniest choices become life-altering (or -ending) decisions, and the fine line between fate and fortune begins to blur.

All We Imagine as Light

The light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated by writer/director Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory fiction feature debut. Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital—head nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and recent hire Anu (Divya Prabha)—plus their coworker, cook Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), Kapadia’s film alights on moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment. Prabha, her husband from an arranged marriage living in faraway Germany, is courted by a doctor at her hospital; Anu carries on a romance with a Muslim man, which she must keep a secret from her strict Hindu family; Parvaty finds herself dealing with a sudden eviction from her apartment. Kapadia captures the bustle of the metropolis and the open-air tranquility of a seaside village with equal radiance, articulated by her superb actresses and by the camera with a lyrical naturalism that occasionally drifts into dreamlike incandescence. ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT is a soulful study of the transformative power of friendship and sisterhood, in all its complexities and richness.

Raw

At 16, Justine is a brilliant, promising student and a strict vegetarian. But when she starts veterinary school, she quickly encounters a decadent, merciless and dangerously seductive world. Desperate to fit in during the first week of hazing rituals, she strays from her principles and eats raw meat for the first time and faces the terrible and unexpected consequences of her actions as her true self emerges.

Dogtooth

Graceful, enigmatic, and often frightening, DOGTOOTH is an ingenious dark comedy that won the Prix Un Certain Regard at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, propelling Yorgos Lanthimos to the forefront of contemporary cinema's most ambitious young filmmakers. In an effort to protect their three children from the corrupting influence of the outside world, a Greek couple transforms their home into a gated compound of cultural deprivation and strict rules of behavior. But children cannot remain innocent forever. When the father brings home a young woman to satisfy his son's sexual urges, the family's engineered "reality" begins to crumble, with devastating consequences. Like the haunting, dystopic visions of Michael Haneke and Gaspar Noé, DOGTOOTH punctuates its compelling drama with moments of shocking violence, creating a biting social satire that is as profound as it is provocative.

Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Mars is under siege! Just before Halloween 2071, a terrorist bomb destroys a tanker truck on Highway One, close to a densely populated crater city. There are casualties up to half a mile from the blast. 500 killed or injured by what appears to be a biochemical weapon. The rewards for the bombers capture is massive and there are four humans and a dog who really need the money. Down on their luck as usual, the crew of the Bebop get on the case.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Winner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Once Upon A Time In Anatolia is the new film from the celebrated director of Distant and Climates. In the dead of night, a group of men – among them, a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect – drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can’t remember where he buried the body. As night wears on, details about the murder emerge and the investigators’ own hidden secrets come to light. In the Anatolian steppes, nothing is what it seems; and when the body is found, the real questions begin.

Good Bye, Lenin!

Vermiglio

The lush and breathtaking beauty of the Alps, filmed with painterly grace under natural light from frigid winter to redemptive spring, provides the physical and emotional backdrop for VERMIGLIO, Maura Delpero’s visionary film, which won the Silver Lion at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. This singular portrait of a sprawling family, set in the small, mountainous village of Vermiglio during the waning days of WWII, follows a series of dramatic, consequential events after the arrival of a taciturn Sicilian soldier (Giuseppe De Domenico), who hides out in town after deserting the army. While there, the soldier develops a romance with the family's eldest daughter, Lucia (Martina Scrinzi). VERMIGLIO shows the lives of a provincial family in a remote village suspended in time by the customs of a fading era. Conjuring stories from her own family’s past, Delpero creates a deeply personal and human tale that recalls the great neorealist movement in Italian cinema, but through Lucia’s perspective VERMIGLIO feels distinct and novel.

Playtime

Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in the age of technology reached their creative apex with Playtime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the endearingly clumsy, resolutely old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a bafflingly modernist Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, Playtime is a lasting testament to a modern age tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.

The Beast

The year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely "erase" their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis (George MacKay). Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris, Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent "retribution." Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates? Visually audacious director Bertrand Bonello (SAINT LAURENT, NOCTURAMA) fashions his most accomplished film to date: a sci-fi epic, inspired by Henry James' turn- of-the-century novella, THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, suffused with mounting dread and a haunting sense of mystery. Punctuated by a career-defining, three-role performance by Seydoux, THE BEAST poignantly conveys humanity’s struggle against dissociative identity and emotionless existence.

When Fall Is Coming

Michelle is enjoying a peaceful retirement in a Burgundy village, close to her longtime friend Marie-Claude. When her Parisian daughter Valérie drops off her son Lucas to spend school vacation with his grandma, Michelle, stressed out by her daughter, serves her toxic mushrooms for lunch.

The Conformist

In Mussolini’s Italy, repressed Jean-Louis Trintignant, trying to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode – and murder – joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane (the assassination of his leftist mentor), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium’ and wife Stefania Sandrelli and lover Dominique Sanda dancing the tango in a working class hall. But those are only a few of this political thriller’s anthology pieces, others including Trintignant’s honeymoon coupling with Sandrelli in a train compartment as the sun sets outside their window; a bimbo lolling on the desk of a fascist functionary, glimpsed in the recesses of his cavernous office; a murder victim’s hands leaving bloody streaks on a limousine parked in a wintry forest. Bernardo Bertolucci’s masterpiece, adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel, boasts an authentic Art Deco look created by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, a score by the great Georges Delerue (Contempt, Jules and Jim, and That Man From Rio) and breathtaking color cinematography by Vittoria Storaro, who supervised this director approved restoration.

After Life

If you could choose only one memory to hold on to for eternity, what would it be? That’s the question at the heart of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s revelatory international breakthrough, a bittersweet fantasia in which the recently deceased find themselves in a limbo realm where they must select a single cherished moment from their life to be recreated on film for them to take into the next world. AFTER LIFE’s high-concept premise is grounded in Kore‑eda’s documentary-like approach to the material, which he shaped through interviews with hundreds of Japanese citizens. What emerges is a panoramic vision of the human experience — its ephemeral joys and lingering regrets — and a quietly profound meditation on memory, our interconnectedness, and the amberlike power of cinema to freeze time.

Jean de Florette

Based on a novel by the legendary Marcel Pagnol, JEAN DE FLORETTE is (alongside MANON OF THE SPRING) the first installment in a rich, engrossing epic of greed and deception set amid the bucolic splendor of the Provence countryside. Gerard Depardieu gives one of his great performances as the hunchbacked city slicker Jean, who is determined to make a success of the farm he has inherited—unaware that his new neighbor César (Yves Montand) and his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) have launched a ruthless scheme to take control of the land for themselves.

Persepolis

The coming-of-age story of a precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl that begins during the Islamic Revolution. We meet nine-year-old Marjane when the fundamentalists first take power, forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. The story then follows her as she cleverly outsmarts the "social guardians" and discovers punk, ABBA and Iron Maiden, while living with the terror of government persecution and the Iran/Iraq war. Then Marjane's journey moves on to Austria where, as a teenager, her parents send her to school in fear for her safety and she has to combat being equated with the religious fundamentalism and extremism she fled her country to escape. Marjane eventually gains acceptance in Europe, but finds herself alone and horribly homesick, and returns to Iran to be with her family, though it means putting on the veil and living in a tyrannical society. After a difficult period of adjustment, she enters art school and marries, continuing to speak out against the hypocrisy she witnesses. At age twenty-four, she realizes that while she is deeply Iranian, she cannot live in Iran. She then makes the heartbreaking decision to leave her homeland for France, optimistic about her future, shaped indelibly by her past.

Summertime

Sensual and elegant, Catherine Corsini’s SUMMERTIME follows Carole and Delphine as they fall in love against the backdrop of early feminist activism in 1971 France. After living in the city, Delphine is called home to help with her family farm in the countryside and is forced to choose between her responsibility to them and the life of love she had in Paris with Carole. An enlightening tale about the infatuation of first love and its universal themes.

Pierrot Le Fou

Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeois world behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: the tenth feature in six years by genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard is a stylish mash-up of anticonsumerist satire, au courant politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, "the last romantic couple." With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, PIERROT LE FOU is one of the high points of the French New Wave, and was Godard’s last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.

Manon of the Spring

The second installment in Claude Berri’s sprawling rural tragedy that began with JEAN DE FLORETTE, MANON OF THE SPRING follows a beautiful but shy shepherdess (Emmanuelle Béart) as she plots vengeance on the men whose greedy conspiracy to acquire her father’s land caused his death years earlier. Taken together, these masterful adaptations of the novel by Marcel Pagnol stand as high-water marks of the French cinema, recapturing the rich humanist tradition of its classical era.

Quinceanera

As Magdalena's (Emily Rios) 15th birthday approaches, her working class family prepares for the all-important QUINCEAÑERA - a lavish coming-of-age celebration. To help with expenses, Magdalena is forced to wear a hand-me-down party dress and abandon her dream of arriving in a Hummer limousine. But when her father discovers she's pregnant and refuses to believe the incredible truth - she's actually still a virgin - Magdalena moves in with her elderly Uncle Tomas (Chalo Gonzalez) and black sheep cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia). Her newfound family is soon put to the test, however, when an unexpected crisis threatens to tear them apart, and Magdalena learns what it truly means to come of age.

The Sacrifice

As a wealthy Swedish family celebrates the birthday of their patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson, Cries and Whispers), news of the outbreak of World War III reaches their remote Baltic island — and the happy mood turns to horror. The family descends into a state of psychological devastation, brilliantly evoked by Tarkovsky's arresting palette of luminous greys washing over the bleak landscape around their home. (The film's masterful cinematography is by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's longtime collaborator).

The Goldman Case

In 1975, Pierre Goldman, a fiery and controversial figure of revolutionary left-wing activism, was put on trial in France. Accused of multiple crimes including two murders, Goldman proclaims his innocence. The Goldman trial reflects the political, ideological and racial tensions that marked the 1970s in France and Europe. Considered to be the trial of the century, it divided an entire country and widened the gap between the conservative right and left-wing intellectuals.

Evil Does Not Exist

In the rural alpine hamlet of Mizubiki, not far from Tokyo, Takumi and his daughter, Hana, lead a modest life gathering water, wood, and wild wasabi for the local udon restaurant. Increasingly, the townsfolk become aware of a talent agency’s plan to build an opulent glamping site nearby, offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to the snowy wilderness. When two company representatives arrive and ask for local guidance, Takumi becomes conflicted in his involvement, as it becomes clear that the project will have a pernicious impact on the community. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow up to his Academy Award®-winning DRIVE MY CAR is a foreboding fable on humanity's mysterious, mystical relationship with nature. As sinister gunshots echo from the forest, both the locals and representatives confront their life choices and the haunting consequences they have.

Fires on the Plain

An agonizing portrait of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded in a strange land during World War II, Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain is a compelling descent into psychological and physical oblivion. Denied hospital treatment for tuberculosis and cast off into the unknown, Private Tamura treks across an unfamiliar Philippine landscape, encountering an increasingly debased cross section of Imperial Army soldiers, who eventually give in to the most terrifying craving of all. Grisly yet poetic, Fires on the Plain is one of the most powerful works from one of Japanese cinema’s most versatile filmmakers.

The Green Ray

Eric Rohmer captures the ache of summertime sadness with exquisite poignancy in this luminous tale of self-exploration. The Jules Verne novel of the same name provides the loose inspiration for the story of Delphine (Marie Rivière), a dreamy, introverted young secretary who, reeling from a breakup with her boyfriend, faces the anxiety-inducing prospect of spending her summer vacation alone. As she bounces from a getaway in Cherbourg to the tourist-choked Alps to the sunny beaches of Biarritz, Delphine passes through a whirl of social activity—but through it all remains profoundly alone, searching for the true human connection that seems to perpetually elude her. As honest a portrait of loneliness, depression, and the longing for understanding as has ever been committed to film, THE GREEN RAY stands as one of the most piercingly perceptive works by the French cinema’s keenest observer of human relationships.

Nine Queens

Small-time swindler Marcos (Ricardo Darín) observes Juan (Gastón Pauls) pulling off a scam on a cashier, and then getting caught as he attempts the same trick again. Claiming to be a policeman, Marcos drags Juan out of the store, then reveals himself to be a fellow grifter with a higher stakes game in mind, and invites Juan to be his partner. When an old time con-man enlists them to sell a forged set of extremely valuable rare stamps,"The Nine Queens," the tricky negotiations that ensue introduce a cast of suspicious characters including Marcos' beautiful sister Valeria (Leticia Brédice) and their innocent younger brother Federico (Tomás Fonzi). As the deceptions and duplicity mount, a slew of thieves and con artists make it difficult to figure out who is conning whom.

Last Summer

With her first film in a decade, the fearless 75-year-old French auteur Catherine Breillat (FAT GIRL, THE LAST MISTRESS) proves she’s as provocative as ever with her Cannes-stirring film, which drives down the dark road of uncontrollable passion. A remarkably nuanced, radiant Léa Drucker plays Anne, an attorney who has plateaued in her marriage to Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), a distracted businessman. His son, troubled seventeen-year-old, Theo (Samuel Kircher), from a previous marriage, has recently returned to Pierre’s ineffectual and despondent care. When Pierre leaves town for a business trip, Anne and Théo—confined under the same roof for the first time—find themselves in the throes of an unexpected and dangerously lustful affair, threatening the stability of the household. Music by Kim Gordon heightens the erotic tension of LAST SUMMER, a film that boldly surveys power dynamics, female desire, and fulfillment.

Lost Illusions

Xavier Giannoli’s sumptuous adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s epic novel, Lost Illusions is a ravishing vision of the birth of modern media. Lucien de Rubempré (Benjamin Voisin) is an ambitious and unknown aspiring poet in 19th century France. He leaves his provincial town, arriving in Paris on the arm of his admirer, Louise de Bargeton (Cécile de France). Outmatched in elite circles, Lucien’s naive etiquette prompts Louise to retreat back to her husband, leaving the young poet to forge a new path. Lucien makes a new friend in another young writer, Etienne Lousteau (Vincent Lacoste), who introduces him to the business of journalism where a salon of wordsmiths and wunderkinds make or break the reputations of actors and artists with insouciant impunity. Lucien agrees to write rave reviews for bribes, achieving material success at the expense of his conscience and soon discovers that the written word can be an instrument of both beauty and deceit.

La Femme Nikita

From director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) comes this thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud, Jeanne Moreau and Jean Reno. Rescued from death row by a top-secret agency, Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is slowly transformed from a cop-killing junkie into a cold-blooded bombshell with a license to kill. But when she begins the deadliest mission of her career only to fall for a man who knows nothing of her true identity Nikita discovers that in the dark and ruthless world of espionage, the greatest casualty of all...is true love.

November

November is set in a pagan Estonian village where werewolves, the plague, and spirits roam. Rainer Sarnet’s third feature film is a bold, twisted fairy tale about unrequited love. In November, the villagers’ main problem is how to survive the cold, dark winter. And, to that aim, nothing is taboo. People steal from each other, from their German manor lords, from spirits, the devil, and from Christ. They are willing to give away their souls to thieving creatures made of wood and metal called kratts, who help their masters, whose soul they purchased, steal even more. A young farmgirl Liina (Rea Lest) is hopelessly in love with Hans (Jörgen Liik), a nearby farmhand, whose heart she loses to the daughter of the German manor lord. In order to regain his love, Liina turns to any means necessary, even if that means tapping into the black magic that is circling around the village. Estonian pagan legends and Christian mythologies come to a spell-binding intersection in November.

Bienvenue chez les Cht'is (Welcome to the Sticks)

Philippe Abrams is the director of the Salon-de-Provence post office. He's married to Julie, whose depressed state makes life impossible. To make her happy, Philippe plots to get transferred to the Côte d’Azur. But it backfires, and he is transferred to Bergues, a small town in northern France, instead.

A Touch of Zen

“Visionary” barely begins to describe this masterpiece of Chinese cinema and martial arts moviemaking. A Touch of Zen by King Hu depicts the journey of Yang (Hsu Feng), a fugitive noblewoman who seeks refuge in a remote, and allegedly haunted, village. The sanctuary she finds with a shy scholar and two aides in disguise is shattered when a nefarious swordsman uncovers her identity, pitting the four against legions of blade-wielding opponents. At once a wuxia film, the tale of a spiritual quest, and a study in human nature, A Touch of Zen is an unparalleled work in Hu’s formidable career and an epic of the highest order, characterized by breathtaking action choreography, stunning widescreen landscapes, and innovative editing.

The Lure

In this bold, genre-defying horror-musical mashup — the playful and confident debut of Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska — a pair of carnivorous mermaid sisters are drawn ashore in an alternate '80s Poland to explore the wonders and temptations of life on land. Their tantalizing siren songs and otherworldly aura make them overnight sensations as nightclub singers in the half-glam, half-decrepit fantasy world of Smoczynska's imagining. In a visceral twist on Hans Christian Andersen's original Little Mermaid tale, one sister falls for a human, and as the bonds of sisterhood are tested, the lines between love and survival get blurred. A savage coming-of-age fairytale with a catchy new-wave soundtrack, lavishly grimy sets, and outrageous musical numbers, The Lure explores its themes of sexuality, exploitation, and the compromises of adulthood with energy and originality.

Winter Sleep

Aydin, a former actor, runs a small hotel in central Anatolia with his young wife Nihal with whom he has a stormy relationship and his sister Necla who is suffering from her recent divorce. In winter as the snow begins to fall, the hotel turns into a shelter but also an inescapable place that fuels their animosities.

[Rec] 2

The highly anticipated sequel to one of the scariest films of all time, [REC] 2 picks up 15 minutes from where we left off, taking us back into the quarantined apartment building where a terrifying virus has run rampant, turning the occupants into mindlessly violent, raging beasts. A heavily armed SWAT team and a mysterious government official are sent in to assess and attempt to neutralize the situation. What they find inside lies beyond the scope of medical science—a demonic nightmare of biblical proportions more terrifying than they could have possibly imagined. Above all it must be contained, before it escapes to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting world outside.

The Brand New Testament

God exists! Sadly, he is a real scoundrel. A misanthropic family man living in Brussels, he is a petty and tyrannical force in the lives of the masses. From a computer in his apartment's private office, God (Benoît Poelvoorde) invents new laws of the universe to toy with humanity (Law no. 2127: "The required amount of sleep is always 10 more minutes"). He is no better with his put-upon wife and rebellious 10-year-old daughter Ea, his lesser-known offspring. Disgusted by her father's antics, Ea hacks into his computer, leaking the predestined death dates of everyone in the world and embarking on a quest to draft a new testament with a modern band of apostles. Now freed from the uncertainty of death, the values and priorities of mankind begin to shift in this hilarious and visionary romp from director Jaco Van Dormael.

Conversation Piece

Luchino Visconti's award-winning classic examines the solitary life of a retired American professor (Burt Lancaster) who lives alone in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. When he is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa and her companions - her lover, her daughter and the daugther's boyfriend - he is forced to rent them an apartment on the upper floor of his palazzo. Before long his quiet routine is turned upside down and the introverted professor becomes entangled in his tenants' machinations. In the midst of this chaos each of the new neighbors' lives - including that of the professor himself - takes an unexpected but inevitable turn.

Summer Night

Mariangela Melato (Swept Away) stars as Signora Bolk, a self-made tycoon interested in ecological preservation. She is fed up with the terrorists who poach Italy's rich beauty, and as part of a crazy retaliation scheme she hires a former CIA agent to abduct the number one violator, Giuseppe 'Beppe' Catania. Catania is taken to her villa on a private island where he insists that as a man, he cannot go without sex. She relents and hires two prostitutes to pleasure him. Blindfolded and chained, Beppe realizes that the third woman is none other than the woman who kidnapped him and agrees to pay the $100 million but only with a twist.

Cairo Station

Youssef Chahine established his international reputation with this masterpiece, which, though initially a commercial failure in Egypt, would become one of the most influential and celebrated works in all of Arab cinema. The director himself stars as Kenawi, a disabled newspaper hawker whose obsession with a sultry drink seller (Hind Rostom, known as the "Marilyn Monroe of Arabia") leads to tragedy of operatic proportions on the streets of Cairo. Blending elements of neorealism with provocative noir-melodrama, CAIRO STATION is a work of raw populist poetry that explores the individual’s search for a place in Egypt’s new postrevolutionary political order.

All About My Mother

Pedro Almodovar is at the top of his game with "All About My Mother," a poignant, at times comedic examination of women in intimate relationships. "All About My Mother" visits themes of female vulnerability and solidarity, but in a new and profoundly mature way. Cecilia Roth plays strong-willed hospital worker Manuela, whose 18-year-old son's accidental death transforms her life. Reading her son's journals, grief-stricken Manuela realizes that he longed to hear about the father he never knew. Forsaking Madrid for Barcelona, she embarks on a search for the man she left almost 20 years before.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

From acclaimed Korean writer/director Kim Ki-Duk comes this exquisitely beautiful and award-winning human drama set on a tree-lined lake where a tiny Buddhist monastery floats on a raft. Under the vigilant eye of Old Monk (Yeong-su Oh), Child Monk learns a hard lesson about the nature of sorrow when some of his childish games turn cruel. In the intensity and lushness of summer, the monk, now a young man (Young-min Kim), experiences the power of lust, a desire that will ultimately lead him to dark deeds. With winter, the man atones for his past actions, and spring starts the cycle anew. With an extraordinary attention to visual detail, Kim has crafted an original yet universal story about the human spirit, moving from innocence, through love and evil, to enlightenment and finally rebirth.

The Turin Horse

On January 3, 1889 in Turin, Italy, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, a cab driver is having trouble with a stubborn horse. The horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. After this, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan, until he loses consciousness and his mind. Somewhere in the countryside, the driver of the cab lives with his daughter and the horse. Outside, a windstorm rages. Immaculately photographed in Tarr’s renowned long takes, The Turin Horse is the final statement from a master filmmaker.

Floating Weeds

One of six sublime color masterworks that Yasujiro Ozu produced late in his career, the director’s second filming of his own 1934 silent triumph A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS represents the mature flowering of his style. Harnessing the full expressive potential of color, sound, music, and his exquisite compositional sense, he brings new depths of bittersweet feeling—tinged with an aging artist’s melancholic nostalgia—as well as a new air of expansiveness, to a story with enduring resonance.

Where Is the Friend’s House?

The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing KOKER TRILOGY takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns, aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of rural Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Sensitive and profound, WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? is shot through with all the beauty, tension, and wonder a single day can contain.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (Director's Cut)

The year is 1912. A 136 million-year old pterodactyl egg, housed on a shelf in the Natural History Museum, has mysteriously hatched, unleashing a prehistoric monster onto the Parisian streets. But nothing fazes Adèle, when she finds a connection with the ancient bird and reveals many more extraordinary surprises. . .

Secrets & Lies

An expert observer of unembellished humanity, writer-director Mike Leigh reached new levels of expressive power and intricacy with this exploration of the deceptions, small and large, that shape our relationships. When Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a Black optometrist who was adopted as a child, begins the search for her birth mother, she doesn’t expect that it will lead her to Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn, winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s best actress award), a lonely white factory worker whose tentative embrace of her long-lost daughter sends shock waves through the rest of her already fragile family. Born from a painstaking process of rehearsal and improvisation with a powerhouse ensemble cast, SECRETS & LIES is a Palme d’Or–winning tour de force of sustained tension and catharsis that lays bare the emotional fault lines running beneath everyday lives.

Stolen Kisses

Jean-Pierre Léaud returns in the delightful STOLEN KISSES, the third installment in the Antoine Doinel series. It is now 1968, and the mischievous and perpetually lovestruck Doinel has been dishonorably discharged from the army and released onto the streets of Paris, where he stumbles into the unlikely profession of private detective and embarks on a series of misadventures. Whimsical, nostalgic, and irrepressibly romantic, STOLEN KISSES is François Truffaut’s timeless ode to the passion and impetuosity of youth.

A Coffee in Berlin

Niko is having a tough morning. He’s broken up with his girlfriend, been cut off from his monthly allowance, and was just declared “emotionally unstable” by a court-appointed psychologist. If only he could find a decent cup of coffee. Painting an eventful day-in-the-life of a twenty-something law school dropout, A Coffee In Berlin follows Niko as he drifts through a series of absurd, funny and, ultimately, life-changing encounters with the people and city around him. Photographed in timeless black and white and enriched by a snappy jazz soundtrack, Jan Ole Gerster’s vibrant and charming debut, which swept the German Film Awards in 2013, is a slacker comedy with a poignant center, and a love-letter to the city of Berlin and Generation Y.

Miranda

Presented for the 1st time in a superb, wide screen, anamorphic version, showcasing Brass’ luscious photography and carefully choreographed set-pieces and showing off the spectacular, titanically proportioned, Serena Grandi, whose completely uninhibited, gleeful naturalness perfectly embodies the Miranda character, and permitted Brass to push explicit eroticism to the doors of hardcore. Based on the Carlo Goldoni play, Serena Grandi is Miranda the landlady of a “taverna” who must choose between the many men who wish to conquer and tame her.. She lustfully juggles her lovers: a rich politician, a local gigolo and an American GI, while taking malicious pleasure in tormenting her own innkeeper … until her search for love is rewarded – and so is the chosen man!

Goodbye To Language

Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Goodbye to Language is a triumphant masterpiece from Jean-Luc Godard. The film follows a couple whose relationship breaks down along with the images, which in its second half takes a dog’s-eye view ofthe world. It is a meditation on history and illusion, figures merging and weaving across the screen along with the film’s ideas about romantic love and being-in-the-world. It has the feeling of a final statement, but knowing Godard’s penchant for re-invention, hopefully it is yet another beginning to an extraordinary career.

Eat the Night

Pablo, a small-time drug dealer, and his teenage sister Apolline have forged an unbreakable bond through their shared obsession with the online video game Darknoon. When Pablo falls for the mysterious Night, he gets swept up in their liaison, abandoning his sister to deal with the impending shutdown of their digital haven alone. As Pablo’s reckless choices provoke the wrath of a dangerous rival gang, the end of their virtual life draws near, upending their reality. The newest vision from Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel ('Jessica Forever') is a bittersweet apocalyptic love story with a modern MMORPG twist.

Tai Chi Zero

In legendary Chen Village, everyone is a martial arts master, using their powerful Chen Style Tai Chi in all aspects of their lives. Lu Chan has arrived to train, but the villagers are forbidden to teach Chen Style to outsiders, and do their best to discourage him by challenging him to a series of fights. Everyone, from strong men to young children, defeats him using their Tai Chi moves. But when a man from the village’s past returns with a frightening steam-powered machine and plans to build a railroad through the village at any costs, the villagers realize they may have no choice but to put their faith in Lu Chan… who has a secret power of his own.

Tale of Cinema

Tale of Cinema uses the trope of a film within a film to tell two stories, that of a depressive young man (Ki-woo Lee) who forms a suicide pact with a friend (Ji-won Uhm); and the tale of a filmmaker (Kim Sangkyung) who sees a film that he believes was based on his life, and who meets the actress from the film with view to turning their onscreen relationship into reality.

Heavier Trip

Death metal band Impaled Rektum escapes prison to perform at Wacken, Germany’s iconic music festival. Their wild and perilous adventure into the metal music scene challenges the band’s integrity in the sequel to cult classic HEAVY TRIP.

Hawaii (2013)

Sexual tension spills off the screen in this sweaty, titillating bromance from award-winning director Marco Berger (Absent, Plan B, Sexual Tension: Volatile). Hawaii follows Martín and Eugenio (Manuel Vignau and Mateo Chiarino), two former childhood friends who reunite during a hot summer in the Argentinean countryside. As they work together to restore Eugenio’s summer home, a game of power and desire ensues–forcing the two buddies to grapple with their sexual attraction and reconsider their relationship. With gorgeous cinematography, a lush setting and compelling lead performances, Hawaii is an intimate character study that pushes past social boundaries.

Fasten Your Seatbelt (Allacciate le cinture)

Elena and Antonio are not made for one another. Their personalities and life choices are too different. They see the world differently, they relate differently to others, they think and live differently. They’re polar opposites. What's more they're both very much taken. Yet despite all this they are swept away by a mutual attraction they struggle to fight. This gorgeous Italian drama follows Elena as she balances the demands and rewards of intimacy vs responsibility over thirteen years of passion, friendship, and heartache.

Norwegian Dream

Robert, a Polish immigrant working at a fish factory in Norway, has come to earn money to pay off his mother's debts. Robert realizes he has feelings for his colleague Ivar. For fear of losing his position within a group of Poles at the factory, he hides his feelings, especially when it turns out that Ivar is doing vogue and is an aspiring drag queen.

Another Round

Four friends, all teachers at various stages of middle age, are stuck in a rut. Unable to share their passions either at school or at home, they embark on an audacious experiment from an obscure philosopher: to see if a constant level of alcohol in their blood will help them find greater freedom and happiness. At first they each find a new- found zest, but as the gang pushes their experiment further, issues that have been simmering for years come to a head and the men are faced with a choice: reckon with their behavior or continue on the same course. Underscored by delicate and affecting camerawork, director Thomas Vinterberg's spry script, co-written with regular collaborator Tobias Lindholm, uses this bold premise to explore the euphoria and pain of an unbridled life. Playing a once brilliant but now world-weary shell of a man, the ever surprising Mads Mikkelsen delivers a fierce and touching performance.

Dark Habits

A nightclub singer seeks refuge with gay nuns on dope in a Madrid convent.