TOP 250

A 1971 experimental Canadian film directed by Michael Snow. Shot in the Canadian mountains over a period of 24 hours using a robotic arm.

A poor farmer tries to get by, but fails. Blood is shed, not out of malice, but simple desperation. A raw exposé on human degradation and deprivation. A work of Zola-esque violence and grandeur, shown here in its ultra-rare, 5h+ original version. The greatest Finnish film ever. Peter von Bagh was always joking that Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation should handle the restoration of this Zola-esque monument, as it was obviously made in a Third World country. And true, it's difficult to imagine that the down-trodden, poverty-stricken, backwoods hole we see here is situated somewhere in 1960s Finland. The real-life story on which Eight Deadly Shots is informally based happened in 1969. In a moment of sheer hopelessness, a certain Tauno Veikko Pasanen shoots four police officers. Tauno is called Pasi here and played by scenario-writer Niskanen himself. Pasi ekes out a meagre living for himself and his family. Times grow increasingly harder. One thing slowly leads to another. In the end, there's blood. A raw, grim, uncompromising, unrelenting, unforgiving and non-consoling masterpiece which will be shown in its five-hour-plus original version. A very, very rare opportunity!

1962 film by Mikio Naruse

1967 film directed by Luis Buñuel

1982 film by Ingmar Bergman

1939 film by Jean Renoir

Clumsy Monsieur Hulot finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris. He attempts to meet with a business contact but soon becomes lost. His roundabout journey parallels that of an American tourist, and as they weave through the inventive urban environment, they intermittently meet, developing an interest in one another. They eventually get together at a chaotic restaurant, along with several other quirky characters.

A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.

1946 film by Howard Hawks

The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.

During the 18th century, German noblewoman Sophia Frederica, who would later become Catherine the Great, travels to Moscow to marry the dimwitted Grand Duke Peter, the heir to the Russian throne. Their arranged marriage proves to be loveless, and Catherine takes many lovers, including the handsome Count Alexei, and bears a son. When the unstable Peter eventually ascends to the throne, Catherine plots to oust him from power.

In 1940s New York, a white widow who dreams of being on Broadway has a chance encounter with a black single mother, who becomes her maid.

A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a disabled man, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.

1989 film by Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Crotchety retired doctor Isak Borg travels from Stockholm to Lund, Sweden, with his pregnant and unhappy daughter-in-law, Marianne, in order to receive an honorary degree from his alma mater. Along the way, they encounter a series of hitchhikers, each of whom causes the elderly doctor to muse upon the pleasures and failures of his own life. These include the vivacious young Sara, a dead ringer for the doctor's own first love.

1953 film by Mikio Naruse

In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage's warning against seeking to profit from warfare. Genjuro's pursuit of both riches and the mysterious Lady Wakasa, as well as Tobei's desire to become a samurai, run the risk of destroying both themselves and their wives, Miyagi and Ohama.

2001 Filipino film

Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s, comes down with a debilitating illness with no clear diagnosis.

As an awkward idealistic high school teacher begins her first job in the city, things turn out to be much tougher than she had imagined.