A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming mutual fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering. With an innovative flashback structure and an Academy Award–nominated screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour is a moody masterwork that delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish and despair.
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film directed, produced and co-written by Francis Ford Coppola. In Vietnam in 1970, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) takes a perilous and increasingly hallucinatory journey upriver to find and terminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once-promising officer who has reportedly gone completely mad. In the company of a Navy patrol boat filled with street-smart kids, a surfing-obsessed Air Cavalry officer (Robert Duvall), and a crazed freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), Willard travels further and further into the heart of darkness.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Italian: Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma), titled Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom on English-language prints[2]and commonly referred to as simply Salò, is a 1975 Italian-French horror art film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It is based on the book The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. The film focuses on four wealthy, corrupt Italian libertines, during the time of the fascist Republic of Salò (1943-1945). The libertines kidnap eighteen teenagers and subject them to four months of extreme violence, sadism, and sexual and mental torture. The film explores the themes of political corruption, abuse of power, sadism, perversion, sexuality and fascism.
Stalker is a 1979 Soviet science fiction art film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. In an unnamed country at an unspecified time, there is a fiercely protected post-apocalyptic wasteland known as The Zone. An illegal guide (Aleksandr Kajdanovsky), whose mutant child suggests unspeakable horrors within The Zone, leads a writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn) and a scientist (Nikolay Grinko) into the heart of the devastation in search of a mythical place known only as The Room. Anyone who enters The Room will supposedly have any of his earthly desires immediately fulfilled.
Caché titled Hidden in the UK and Ireland, is a 2005 French psychological thriller written and directed by Michael Haneke. Without warning, happy, successful Parisian couple Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne Laurent (Juliette Binoche) receive anonymous videos suggesting that they are being stalked. The tapes are followed by disturbingly violent, if childish, drawings. Georges, a well-known literary talk show host, shrugs off the mysterious messages, but Anne grows increasingly distressed and fearful for their teenage son. She grows to suspect that an incident in Georges' past is behind the increasing torment.
Amores perros is a 2000 Mexican drama thriller film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga. It is a bold, intensely emotional, and ambitious story of lives that collide in a Mexico City car crash. Inventively structured as a triptych of overlapping and intersecting narratives, "Amores Perros" explores the lives of disparate characters who are catapulted into unforeseen dramatic situations instigated by the seemingly inconsequential destiny of a dog named Cofi.
The Killing Fields is a 1984 British biographical drama film about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. It was directed by Roland Joffé. New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) is on assignment covering the Cambodian Civil War, with the help of local interpreter Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor) and American photojournalist Al Rockoff (John Malkovich). When the U.S. Army pulls out amid escalating violence, Schanberg makes exit arrangements for Pran and his family. Pran, however, tells Schanberg he intends to stay in Cambodia to help cover the unfolding story -- a decision he may regret as the Khmer Rouge rebels move in.
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 American epic war drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steelworkers whose lives are changed forever after they fight in the Vietnam War. In 1968, Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage), lifelong friends from a working-class Pennsylvania steel town, prepare to ship out overseas following Steven's elaborate wedding and one final group hunting trip. In Vietnam, their dreams of military honor are quickly shattered by the inhumanities of war; even those who survive are haunted by the experience, as is Nick's hometown sweetheart, Linda (Meryl Streep).
Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish: El laberinto del fauno, lit. 'The Labyrinth of the Faun') is a 2006 dark fantasy film written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. In 1944 Spain young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her ailing mother (Ariadna Gil) arrive at the post of her mother's new husband (Sergi López), a sadistic army officer who is trying to quell a guerrilla uprising. While exploring an ancient maze, Ofelia encounters the faun Pan, who tells her that she is a legendary lost princess and must complete three dangerous tasks in order to claim immortality.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is a 1983 British-Japanese drama film directed by Nagisa Oshima. During World War II, British soldier Jack Celliers (David Bowie) is captured by Japanese forces and held in a prison camp by the honor-bound Capt. Yanoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto). Yanoi and gruff Sgt. Hara (Takeshi) become intrigued with Celliers' open defiance in the face of their staunchly old-world ideas about cowardice and shame. Meanwhile, a translator, Lt. Col. John Lawrence (Tom Conti), attempts to find common ground between British and Japanese beliefs.
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