All Recommendations
White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Steven Okazaki presents a deeply moving look at the painful legacy of the first -- and hopefully last -- uses of nuclear weapons in war. Featuring interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors - many who have never spoken publicly before - and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, White Light/Black Rain provides a detailed exploration of the bombings and their aftermath.
Mahalaya
Since its inception in 1931, Mahishasuramardini has been one of the most popular programmes in Bengali radio, and is currently the longest running radio programme in India, narrated by Birendra Krishna Bhadra. This film is a truthful account of what unfolded in 1976, after Aakashvani decided to replace Birendra Krishna with eminent actor Uttam Kumar in a revamped programme.
The Eroticist
Senator Pupis feels a strong and uncontrollable urge to grab women's bottoms, a habit than can lead to embarrassment, especially if the woman in question is head of another state and the occasion a state visit. In his desperation Pupis turns to the clergy for spiritual and psychological help.
The Poor Mouth
An animated adaptation of Flann O’ Brien’s acclaimed 1941 novel in Irish. A biting satire on the highly popular Gaeltacht autobiographies of the time and widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish-language novels of the 20th century.
The Holly and the Ivy
An English clergyman's neglect of his grown children, in his zeal to tend to his parishioners, comes to the surface at a Christmas family gathering.
Memories of Underdevelopment
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs incident, Sergio chooses to stay behind in Cuba while his wife and family escape to neighboring Miami. Alone in a brave new world, Sergio observes the constant threat of foreign invasion while chasing young women all over Havana. He finally meets Elena, a young girl he seeks to mould into the image of his ex-wife, but at what cost to himself?
Terror by Night
Holmes and Watson board a passenger train bound from London to Edinburgh, to guard the Star of Rhodesia, an enormous diamond worth a fortune belonging to an elderly woman of wealth; but within the first hour of the trip, the woman's son is murdered and the diamond stolen and any of the passengers in their car could be the killer thief.
Illumination
Krzysztof Zanussi's groundbreaking film chronicles a decade in the life of a young physics student whose absolute faith in the primacy of rationality and science is shaken by tragedy and affairs of the heart.
Hobson's Choice
Henry Hobson owns and tyrannically runs a successful Victorian boot maker’s shop in Salford, England. A stingy widower with a weakness for overindulging in the local Moonraker Public House, he exploits his three daughters as cheap labour. When he declares that there will be ‘no marriages’ to avoid the expense of marriage settlements at £500 each, his eldest daughter Maggie rebels.
Ten Years
Five shorts reveal a fictional Hong Kong in 2025, depicting a dystopian city where residents and activists face crackdowns under iron-fisted rule.
The Collector
Freddie is an inept bank clerk with no future. His only hobby is collecting butterflies, which gives him a feeling of power and control that is otherwise totally missing from his life. He comes into a large sum of money and buys himself a country house. Still unable to make himself at ease socially, he starts to plan on acquiring a girlfriend - in the same manner as he collects butterflies. He prepares the cellar of the house to be a collecting jar and stalks his victim over several days.
Paradise Now
Two childhood friends are recruited for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
Gaslight
A newlywed fears she's going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion.
13 Thirteen
Sebastian, a young man, has decided to follow instructions intended for someone else, without knowing where they will take him. Something else he does not know is that Gerard Dorez, a cop on a knife-edge, is tailing him. When he reaches his destination, Sebastian falls into a degenerate, clandestine world of mental chaos behind closed doors in which men gamble on the lives of others men.
Leave Her to Heaven
A socialite marries a prominent novelist, which spurs a violent, obsessive, and dangerous jealousy in her.
Bunraku
In a world with no guns, a mysterious drifter, a bartender and a young samurai plot revenge against a ruthless leader and his army of thugs, headed by nine diverse and deadly assassins.
Letter from an Unknown Woman
A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember. As she tells the story of her lifelong love for him, he is forced to reinterpret his own past.
Shoeshine
At a track near Rome, shoeshine boys are watching horses run. Two of the boys Pasquale, an orphan, and Giuseppe, his younger friend are riding. The pair have been saving to buy a horse of their own to ride...
Dorothy Mills
When a gloomy, God-fearing island community is rocked by the assault of an infant, a psychiatrist is called in to examine Dorothy Mills, the teenager accused of the crime. Despite the villagers' hostility to her inquiry, she soon comes to suspect that Dorothy suffers from multiple personality disorder...
The Shop on Main Street
In a small town in Nazi-occupied Slovakia during World War II, decent but timid carpenter Tono is named "Aryan comptroller" of a button store owned by an old Jewish widow, Rozalie. Since the post comes with a salary and standing in the town's corrupt hierarchy, Tono wrestles with greed and guilt as he and Rozalie gradually befriend each other. When the authorities order all Jews in town to be rounded up, Tono faces a moral dilemma unlike any he's known before.