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World Cinema Classics

Discover classics from world cinema that made their mark in Britain and beyond.

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  • Water Drops on Burning Rocks

    Fassbinder wrote the script for his first full-length play when he was 19, the same age as Franz (Malik Zidi) when he is picked up by the worldly Léopold (Bernard Giraudeau), and seduced into a relationship that soon sours. As Franz’s naïve fiancée Anna and Léo’s former lover Véra turn up at thei...

  • 5x2

    Five milestone scenes from a couple’s life – from that giddy first meeting through to marriage, birth, infidelity and annulment – are painfully played out in reverse chronological order in François Ozon’s keen examination of the theatrical nature of relationships. With the benefit of hindsight, t...

  • Ran

    Akira Kurosawa’s visually spectacular epic transplants Shakespeare’s King Lear from Celtic Britain to feudal Japan. In its epic scope and expert execution, Ran can be seen as a culmination of the great Japanese director’s filmmaking career; a late triumph which he planned and refined over several...

  • Show Me Love

    Elin is beautiful, brash and popular, but desperate for excitement. Agnes is friendless and depressed, and secretly in love with Elin. Despite a few – truly lame – parties, their achingly-boring, provincial hometown crushes both their spirits, and we root for romance to blossom. Show Me Love is a...

  • Le Mépris

    Based on Moravia’s novel, Jean-Luc Godard’s sardonic look at the world of filmmaking boasts superb performances by Michel Piccoli as a compromised writer, Brigitte Bardot as his bored wife, Jack Palance as a manipulative producer and Fritz Lang as himself, about to film Homer’s Odyssey in Cinecit...

  • Max mon amour

    When British diplomat Peter Jones (Anthony Higgins) suspects his wife (Charlotte Rampling, playing it totally straight) of infidelity, he is stunned to discover that the ‘other man’ is a chimpanzee. On a whim, he invites his hairy rival to move into the luxurious family home – more out of curiosi...

  • My Father, the Hero

    Eager to reconnect with his teenage daughter, André (Depardieu) takes her on holiday to the tropics. But when a local boy catches her eye, Véronique attempts to pass off her father as her lover in a misguided effort to impress. André gamely cooperates in the charade, but the lies – and gossip – s...

  • Merci la vie

    When naïve teenager Camille (Charlotte Gainsbourg in one of her earliest roles) comes across Joëlle (Anouk Grinberg), a young woman who has just been unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend, the two soon form a fast friendship. Guiding her new friend through the darker side of sex and men, Joëlle...

  • Sitcom

    When the father of a stereotypical middle-class French family brings home a pet rat, he triggers a surge of orgies, incest and murder within his prim and polished suburban home. François Ozon (Swimming Pool) displays hints of Luis Buñuel and John Waters in his anarchic takedown of the middle-clas...

  • Lilya-4-Ever

    Lilya is 16, and lives in a dismal suburb in a nameless town somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Abandoned by her mother, and bullied by a wicked aunt, her only comfort comes from Volodya, a good-hearted younger boy who she befriends. Hope arrives when Lilya meets and falls in love with Andrei,...

  • L'enfer (aka Torment)

    A husband's jealousy and suspicion of his wife drive him to appalling extremes in Claude Charbrol’s unsettling psychological thriller.

  • Holy Motors

    Traveling the Parisian streets by limousine, Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) is kept to a strict schedule of appointments by his driver (Edith Scob). Altering his physical appearance and identity as easily as another man might change his socks, Oscar makes contact with strangers, family members, bu...

  • Stroszek

    Werner Herzog's second film with lead actor Bruno S. (following The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser) was written specifically as a vehicle for the unusual performers rough-edged naivety. Having reneged on a promise to cast Bruno in the film Woyzeck (for which he was replaced by Klaus Kinski), Herzog wrot...

  • Fitzcarraldo

    One of Werner Herzog's most acclaimed and audacious films, Fitzcarraldo tells the incredible story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (played by Herzog regular Klaus Kinski), an opera-loving fortune hunter who dreams of bringing opera (specifically Caruso) to a remote trading post on the heart of the Pe...

  • Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer

    In this compelling new film, Werner Herzog’s extraordinary life and work are brought into focus through clips from his finest films and interviews with those who know him best. This fascinating and insightful documentary explores the career of the auteur director, writer and poet, whose adventu...

  • Aguirre, Wrath of God

    This early masterpiece from legendary German director Werner Herzog stars Klaus Kinski as a power-crazed explorer in sixteenth-century South America who leads a band of conquistadors through the Amazon in search of El Dorado.

  • Amores perros

    Gael Garcí­a Bernal stars in the savagely brilliant debut feature from double-Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Inárritu (Birdman, The Revenant). Intertwining three intense storylines on the theme of animalistic desires, it follows the respective fates of a young man caught up in the worl...

  • Battle Royale

    In a world where teenagers have no respect and adults are losing control there can be only one solution: Battle Royale! Now, see what happens when you let a high school class loose on an island, arm them and then give them a simple choice... Kill your friends or have them kill you; with poison, c...

  • Suite Francaise

    France 1940. As Hitler's armies take control of Paris and bring total occupation to France, Lucille (Michelle Williams) in living with her overbearing mother-in-law, Madame Angellier (Kristin Scott Thomas) in the small rural village of Bussey. As they wait for news of Lucille's husband who is bei...

  • Open Your Eyes

    Alejandro Amenabar weaves together a complex sci-fi romance with this audacious drama. Cesar (Eduardo Noriega) is a handsome and successful man, but feels completely different once he meets Sofia (Penelope Cruz), who captivates him with her beauty and sensibility. However, just at the beginning o...

  • My Sole Desire

    This erotic drama stars Louise Chevillotte as Manon, the newcomer to a Parisian strip club where Mia (Zita Hanrot) also works. The two become friends then something more, as director and co-writer Lucie Borleteau (Fidelio - Alice's Story) explores female kinship and desire. Her drama goes more th...

  • A Call Girl

    Having grown up in small-town Slovenia, 23-year-old English student Alexandra moves to the capital, embracing all the excitement and anonymity the big city has to offer. She styles herself into a mid-level call girl, selling her soul in exchange for a view from above. But as her new life inside h...

  • A White, White Day

    As time passes and seasons change in a remote Icelandic town, off-duty police chief Ingimundur (Ingvar Sigurosson) doggedly works at renovating a new home and starting over, following his wife's death in a car accident. Debilitated by grief, Ingimundur still has a warm and devoted relationship wi...

  • Playground

    The original title, meaning 'a world', suggests that a school is a self-enclosed universe with its own customs and abuses - and a microcosm of the injustices outside. Nora (mesmerising newcomer Maya Vanderbeque) arrives in a new school, nervous about leaving her dad and yearning for the protectio...