Alexandre Aja defined a new breed of horror by bringing the American slasher format into French cinema.

Irreversible is perhaps one of the cruelest films ever made. Marcus (Vincent Cassel) and Pierre (Albert Dupontel) set off on a blind rage of revenge after the former’s girlfriend Alex (Monica Bellucci) is raped. The twist is that their revenge spools out in reverse. Noé structured his notorious s...

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...

The Boy Who Turned Yellow is the splendidly eccentric final collaboration from the eminent filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. London schoolboy John Saunders turns a bright yellow after losing his pet mouse on a school trip. Is the mysterious colour change the result of an alien...

Michael Powell’s earliest existing film is a twisty thriller crafted with a bold visual style that is unmistakeably influenced by Fritz Lang.

Dadaist Hans Richter attempts to bring the European avant-garde to the masses, with this story about a man who discovers he has the power to create dreams, and sets up a business selling them to others.

Much criticised at the time of its release, Michael Powell’s psychological study of a shy camera technician who films for his home movies the death throes of the women he kills is now widely regarded as a dark classic. Less a straightforward serial-killer thriller than a Freudian meditation on ho...

Legendary Hollywood director Sidney Lumet’s final film is as blistering as any young director’s. In desperate need of money, brothers Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke rob a ‘mom and pop’ jewelry store – only it belongs to their own mom and pop. Murder and time-tripping editing ensue; and Al...

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.

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...

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'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...

In the 17th-century medieval court of Cosimo de Medici III, a group of players perform a production outlining an apparent virgin birth in the French town of Mâcon and the people who exploit this ‘miracle’ for their own gain. What follows is a damning indictment of corruption in all strata of...

David Cronenberg's multi-award-winning psychological thriller exploring the bizarre lives of identical twins Elliot and Beverly, both played by Jeremy Irons. Both world-renowned gynaecologists, the twins share everything from their clinic to their women, until they meet Claire (Geneviève Bujold)....

The Boys From Brazil is a terrifying film about the perpetuation of a new race of Hitlers, based on Ira Levin's thrilling book of the same title. In the setting of 1970s South America, a notorious Nazi War criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck), gathers a group of former Nazis to work on a co...

Obeying the first rule – 'write what you know' - former youth worker turned filmmaker Henry Blake turns in an original, stylish debut feature which premiered at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival.

It exposes the urban-to-rural drugs system of the title, a network which exploits children to use as...

A French couple vacationing in an idyllic country house in Bucharest are targeted by mysterious assailants who lure them into a sadistic game of survival. One of the key films of the 'New French Extremity' movement of the early 00s, David Moreau and Xavier Palud's nerve-wracking shocker was appar...