1978 • Italy • Directed by Federico Fellini

Made in 1978 for Italian television, Orchestra Rehearsal is possibly Fellini's most satirical and overtly political film. An allegorical pseudo-documentary, the film depicts an Italian television crew's visit to a dilapidated auditorium (a converted 13...

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...

Smash Palace concerns itself with the marriage of former racing driver Al (Bruno Lawrence, The Quiet Earth) and French-born Jacqui (Anna Jemison, Nomads). The pair had met when she nursed him back to health following a career-ending injury. They married, returned to Al's native New Zealand to tak...

Winner of the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, The Legend of the Holy Drinker is another classic from the great Italian director Ermanno Olmi (Il Posto, The Tree of Wooden Clogs).

Adapted from the novella by Joseph Roth, the film tells the story of Andreas Kartak, a ho...

2010 • France • Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche

Saartjie Baartman was taken from her South African home as a 21-year-old and shipped to Georgian London, where she would be caged and exhibited as a freak show. Presented semi-nude, her physique - especially her large buttocks - was the source of m...

The Love of a Woman (L'amour d'une femme) was the final feature of the great French filmmaker Jean Grémillon, concluding a string of classics that included such greats as Remorques, Lumière d'été and Pattes blanches.

Marie, a young doctor, arrives on the island of Ushant to replace its retiring...

The New Testament' follows a holier-than-though physician who is scuppered by his own hypocrisy.

A film imbued with the ideas of Sufism, The Silence tells of Khorshid, a young blind boy from Tajikistan who earns rent money for his family by tuning rare instruments but becomes enraptured by the sonorous music he hears on his way to work each day.

1970 • United Kingdom • Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

An examination of the daily routine at a British auto factory assembly line, set against class-conflict and The Communist Manifesto.

An analysis of the social upheaval of May 1968 made in the immediate wake of the workers' and students' protests. The picture consists of two parts, each with identical image tracks, and differing narration.

2018 • Japan • Directed by Tomu Uchida

Praised by Japanese film critics and much admired by his contemporaries, Tomu Uchida nonetheless remains a little-known in the west. His 1955 masterpiece Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji is an excellent entry point for the newcomer. Set during the Edo period, Blo...

A searing and satirical comic-reportage on the trial of the Chicago Eight, featuring Juliet Berto and Godard and Gorin themselves.

Writer-director Ivan I. Tverdovsky’s prize-winning sophomore feature (Special Prize of the Jury at Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Best Picture at Fantastic Fest) deftly mixes the deadpan humour of Aki Kaurismäki with a poignant examination of social issues including loneliness and aging.

Natasha is...

Le Plaisir takes three of de Maupassant's stories as its source: in Le Masque, a masked dandy conceals a secret; in La Maison Tellier, the girls of a small-town brothel are taken on an outing to attend the communion of the madam's niece; and in La Modèle, a painter falls in love with his model, b...

Japanese maverick director Yasuzo Masumura (Blind Beast) helms a bitingly satirical espionage thriller set in the heart of the Japanese auto industry in his 1962 landmark 'Black Test Car', which launched a series of similarly themed "Black" films. In a bitter, take-no-prisoners corporate war betw...

2015 • Japan • Directed by Kiju Yoshida

Tells the parallel stories of early 20th-century anarchist (and free love advocate) Sakae Osugi and a pair of student activists. Their stories interact and intertwine, resulting in a complex, rewarding work that is arguably Yoshida's masterpiece.

Heroic Purgatory pushes the dazzling cinematic language of Eros + Massacre even further, presenting a bleak but dreamlike investigation into the political discourses taking place in early seventies Japan.

1996 • Iran • Directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Gabbeh tells of an elderly couple who stop by a stream to wash a vividly woven traditional Persian rug ('Gabbeh'). A beautiful woman, depicted in the rug's elaborate design, suddenly appears and tells a heart-rending story of love and loss.