Controversial Classics

Delve in, if you dare, to this collection of once forbidden fruits; causes célèbre and succès de scandale to incite, provoke and arouse.

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  • Once Were Warriors

    An unemployed Māori living in Auckland’s slums, heavy-drinking Jake has a violent temper that he takes out on his family and strangers alike - especially his wife, Beth. Their eldest son, Nig, has joined a gang; Boogie has been placed in foster care; and Grace retreats into her journal. The unres...

  • Scarlet Diva

    Anna is a popular Italian film actress and aspiring filmmaker, writing her first screenplay, the semi-autobiographical project Scarlet Diva. Hurtling across Europe and America in a blur of hedonism and despair, she seeks artistic recognition while struggling against exploitation. A whirlwind desc...

  • Inferno of Torture

    In debt, Yumi takes up an offer to serve as a geisha with a promise of freedom once the money is repaid. But this is less a house of geishas than an extremely cruel brothel specialising in supplying western visitors with desirable tattooed playthings. Yumi’s body becomes a battleground as two riv...

  • Je t'aime, moi non plus

    Two men are driving a refuse truck to a dump site and stop for a hamburger. Krassky (Dallesandro), one of the two, strikes an acquaintance with Johnny (Birkin) the girl who works in the restaurant. They swiftly become lovers. However, Krassky's fellow truck-driver, Padovan (Quester), is also his ...

  • Horrors of Malformed Men

    Medical student Hirosuke Hitomi slips out of the asylum in which he has been wrongfully confined and stealthily assumes the identity of a recently deceased nobleman. But as long-repressed memories begin to surface, he finds himself drawn to a remote isle where he’s confronted by a mad scientist a...

  • Soldier Blue

    After surviving an ambush by the Cheyenne, a naïve cavalry officer (Peter Strauss) and a defiant young woman (Candice Bergen) must trek through hostile terrain to make it back home. En route they witness a horrific bloodbath as the U.S. Cavalry takes revenge upon their enemy, in a battle that bec...

  • The Pillow Book

    As a child in Kyoto in the 1970s, Nagiko's (Wu) calligrapher father used her body to write a birthday message in paint. Now grown up and living in Hong Kong, she seeks a lover who will use her whole body as a blank canvas. English translator Jerome (Ewan McGregor) reverses roles and becomes the s...

  • The Animals Film

    This world renowned, explosive feature-documentary, which first shocked British cinema and television audiences in 1982, has been digitally remastered by the BFI, here presented in its 2008 directors’ cut, featuring a new and energising conclusion.

  • 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...

  • Skinflicker

    Presented as found footage à la The Blair Witch Project, this chilling and provocative fake home movie presents the story of three dissidents and their plan to commit a revolutionary act on film. Will Knightley (father of Keira) plays one of the guerrillas who kidnap and torture a cabinet minister.

  • Blind Beast

    Blind Beast is a masterpiece of erotic horror that explores the all-encompassing and overwhelming relationship between the artist and his art and the obsessive closed world that the artist inhabits, with maestro director Yasuzo Masumura (Giants and Toys, Irezumi) conjuring up a hallucinogenic dre...

  • Orgies of Edo

    Legendary Toei director Ishii’s politically incorrect moral lessons paint a trio of tales of tragic heroines caught up in violence, sadomasochism, incest and torture. Told in anthology style by an impassive physician (Teruo Yoshida), the first story follows Oito (Masumi Tachibana), an innocent yo...

  • Under the Skin

    Sexy, dark and ultimately uplifting, Carine Adler's stylish debut gave Samantha Morton her first major feature film role in 1997. In this intimate exploration of a young woman's relationship with her mother and sister, things are going badly for Iris (Samantha Morton); her mother (Rita Tushingham...

  • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

    Luis Buñuel's Oscar-winning black comedy follows a group of wealthy friends who, for increasingly absurd and fanciful reasons, cannot manage to have a meal.

  • 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...

  • 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,...