World Cinema Classics
Discover classics from world cinema that made their mark in Britain and beyond.
-
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...
-
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...
-
Farewell my Concubine
Spanning 50 years and a lifelong relationship amidst the violence and upheaval of national civil unrest, this unflinching epic balances intimate romance and devastating scale to heartbreaking effect. Adapted from the novel by Lilian Lee (author of Rouge), the tale of Dieyi and Xiaolou carries us ...
-
Downfall
Oliver Hirschbiegel's acclaimed drama charts the final, bunker-bound days of Adolf Hitler, as Berlin and the Third Reich crumbles around him. While the film courted some controversy upon release, facing charges of humanising a monster, the film was nevetheless a huge box office success and still ...
-
Tony Takitani
Director Jun Ichikawa brings us his award-winning film adapted from Haruki Murakami’s New Yorker tale of solitude and obsession. When illustrator Tony Takitani meets a client, Eiko, he becomes fascinated with her and imagines a life beyond his loneliness. She, in turn, is infatuated with shopping...
-
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...
-
Carlos
Adapted from a five-and-a-half-hour television miniseries, this three-hour biopic from acclaimed director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Personal Shopper) chronicles 20 years in the life of Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez aka Carlos the Jackal. Édgar Ramírez (The Bourne Ultimatum) star...
-
The Blue Caftan
Mina (Lubna Azabal) and her husband Halim (Saleh Bakri) run a small shop selling traditional, hand-stitched caftans in Salé, Morocco. To help with customer demand, the couple hire young apprentice Youssef (Ayoub Missioui) – but complications arise when Mina notices a deeper connection forming bet...
-
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...
-
Peter von Kant
Early in his career, Ozon paid homage to German great Rainer Werner Fassbinder by adapting his play Water Drops on Burning Rocks. 22 years on, Ozon revisits Fassbinder in this elegant, inventive remake of his 1972 chamber classic The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant – with designer Petra here becom...
-
The Untamed
Part potent social drama, part tentacular science-fiction enigma, Amat Escalante’s idiosyncratic film is as difficult to categorise as it is to describe. The film opens in the opaque Mexican lowlands. Veronica is a dispossessed young woman with a curious addiction. When an injury leads her to the...
-
Elite Squad
Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura), a BOPE (Special Police Operation Battalion) officer, is tasked with clearing the drug gangs in the slums of Rio de Janeiro before a visit from the Pope. Meanwhile, desperate to take on a safer job so that he can be closer to his pregnant wife, he trains up two y...
-
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...
-
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...
-
Baise-moi
This film is a blunt, brash and blood-smeared revenge tale of two sex workers who decide to go on a killing spree through France. Co-directed by French feminist provocateur Despentes, and based on her book, Baise-moi does not care for cinematic slickness, instead using handheld visuals and raw la...
-
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...
-
The Chorus
Unsuccessful in his music career, Clément Mathieu takes up a teaching job at a rehabilitation institution for minor boys, where a ruthless headmaster reigns. Witnessing his students’ defiance deriving from their distrust of adults, Mathieu forms a choir to inspire and connect with them through mu...
-
Éternité
When Valentine (Audrey Tautou), a young woman from a wealthy family, marries Jules (Arnaud Valois), the 19th century is ending. As the years pass, she experiences both the joys of motherhood and the heartbreak of losing loved ones. Her daughter Mathilde (Melanie Laurent) and later her granddaught...
-
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.
-
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 ...
-
Girl Picture
High school best friends Mimmi and Rönkkö work at the smoothie parlour in the local mall, exchanging gossip and taking delight in the puntastic names of the fruit drinks they sell. Both single, Rönkkö is after that elusive spark of instant attraction, whilst the tempestuous Mimmi scoffs there’s n...
-
Girlhood
In the tough suburbs of Paris, sixteen-year-old Marieme decides to reinvent herself when she joins a girl gang. Excluded from school and in fear of her overbearing brother at home, Marieme changes her name and appearance and escapes into a new, liberating world outside of society’s conventions.
-
Stranger by the Lake
Alain Guiraudie’s acclaimed mystery-thriller is set in a gay cruising ground in Southern France. The appearance of a handsome stranger stirs the passions of a young man, whose obsession continues even after the new arrival appears to have committed a violent crime. It’s a fascinating mix of thril...
-
Scarlet Diva
Anna is a popular Italian film actress and aspiring filmmaker, writing their 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 de...