All Recommendations
Au Hasard Balthazar
The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.
The Trial of Joan of Arc
Rouen, Normandy, 1431, during the Hundred Years' War. After being captured by French soldiers from an opposing faction, Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans, is unjustly tried by an ecclesiastical court overseen by her English enemies.
A Man Escaped
A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.
Conflict
The heroes of the film: ordinary matches. A quarrel that breaks out over nothing turns into a real battle in which both warring sides are burned.
Sullivan's Banks
Emigholz presents the buildings of the great American architect Louis Sullivan (1856–1924). “In everything that men do they leave an indelible imprint of their minds. If this suggestion be followed out, it will become surprisingly clear how each and every building reveals itself naked to the eye; how its every aspect, to the smallest detail, to the lightest move of the hand, reveals the workings of the mind of the man who made it, and who is responsible to us for it.”
Rose Hobart
Cornell employs clips from 1931's jungle melodrama East of Borneo – more specifically, clips of its lead actress, Rose Hobart – to disquieting effect. Through Cornell's collage editing, Hobart becomes a singular object of desire and dread, trapped in an exotic paradise.
Die Stunde des Wolfes
Rebecca Thalberg escapes from a psychiatric ward to finally clear up the dark history of her husband Henry's family in the Ore Mountains. The locals turn out to be secretive and hostile. However, the local forester immediately falls in love with the beautiful stranger and tells her about the legends surrounding the explosion of Thalberg's glassworks and the death of the patriarch. Thanks to Rebecca, mother-in-law Eleanor finally faces up to an old debt.
Viva Algeria
This movie portrays three women living in today's Algeria between modern society and Islamic fundamentalism, self-determination and dependence. Goucem, a young woman who works for a photographer and mistress of a rich doctor, her mother Papicha, a former cabaret star, and her best friend Fifi, a prostitute, all live in a hotel in the city center of Algiers. Their difficult personal situation and the growing influence of Islam lead to dramatic consequences...
South of the Border
A road trip across five countries to explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media's misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents.
This Sporting Life
In Northern England in the early 1960s, Frank Machin is mean, tough and ambitious enough to become an immediate star in the rugby league team run by local employer Weaver.
Bride of the Monster
Dr. Eric Vornoff, with the help of his mute assistant Lobo, captures twelve men for a grisly experiment; His goal to turn them into supermen using atomic energy. Reporter Janet Lawton, fiancée of the local lieutenant, vows to investigate Vornoff's supposedly haunted house.
While the City Sleeps
Newspaper men compete against each other to find a serial killer dubbed "The Lipstick Killer".
The Staggering Girl
Francesca, an Italian-American writer who lives in New York, must return to Rome to retrieve her aging mother. There, the ghosts of her childhood will come to her through her mother's art.
Harlan County U.S.A.
This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.
Placido
In a small Spanish town, during the Christmas holidays, a group of rich old ladies organize a peculiar event that consists of inviting a homeless person to sit down to dinner at their wealthy table. Plácido, a humble worker, is hired by the organizers to participate in a parade with his three-wheeled vehicle, a seemingly simple mission that will not be easy for him to accomplish.
Bully
This year, over 5 million American kids will be bullied at school, online, on the bus, at home, through their cell phones and on the streets of their towns, making it the most common form of violence young people in this country experience. The Bully Project is the first feature documentary film to show how we've all been affected by bullying, whether we've been victims, perpetrators or stood silent witness. The world we inhabit as adults begins on the playground. The Bully Project opens on the first day of school. For the more than 5 million kids who'll be bullied this year in the United States, it's a day filled with more anxiety and foreboding than excitement. As the sun rises and school busses across the country overflow with backpacks, brass instruments and the rambunctious sounds of raging hormones, this is a ride into the unknown.
Hard to Be a God
A group of scientists is sent to the planet Arkanar to help the local civilization, which is in the Medieval phase of its own history, to find the right path to progress. Their task is a difficult one: they cannot interfere violently and in no case can they kill. The scientist Rumata tries to save the local intellectuals from their punishment and cannot avoid taking a position.
Viva Zapata!
The story of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who led a rebellion against the corrupt, oppressive dictatorship of president Porfirio Díaz in the early 20th century.
Europe '51
A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.
Terrorizers
An uncompromising look into urban life from the eyes of a voyeuristic photographer, a rebellious teenager, and a married couple teetering on the edge of adultery.