Directed by Henry Jaglom | 90 mins | 1983
The fleet, dryly funny fourth feature from independent cinema stalwart Henry Jaglom stars a riveting Karen Black—who also composed music for the film—as Zee, a middle-aged Upper West Sider, who, reeling after being abandoned by her husband, pursues an am...

Directed by Éric Rohmer | 103 mins | 1987
Rohmer uses the amorous misadventures of two girlfriends in the Paris suburbs to test the old proverb “les amis de mes amis sont mes amis” (“the friends of my friends are my friends”) in the final episode of his “Comedies and Proverbs” series. Taking an ...

Directed by the Quay Brothers | 101 mins | 2004
“Absolutely entrancing!!!” Guy Maddin closed his "Film Comment" review of the Quay Brothers’s second feature with a tripled exclamation—a testament to the rare and painstaking artistry they bring to their signature blend of stop-motion and live act...

Directed by Wei Shujun | 102 mins | 2023
After a woman’s body is discovered on a river bank in rural southern China, police investigator Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) finds that it’s only the first layer of a deepening mystery, bound up in the hidden life of the nearby community. Based on Yu Hua’s short n...

Directed by Ang Lee | 105 mins | 1991
Tensions brew and language becomes a barrier when widowed tai chi master Mr. Chu (Lung Sihung) swaps Beijing for a new life in New York City, where he joins the household of his Americanized son and white daughter-in-law. Ang Lee’s directorial debut evidence...

Directed by Jafar Panahi | 97 mins | 2003
This early film by the Iranian master—a thriller in reverse, opening with the climactic jewelry store heist before flashing back to its inciting events—is lesser-known but among his best. In the central role, Hossein Emadeddin: like his character, a ment...

Leaving June 1

Directed by Claire Denis | 100 mins | 2008
“It’s the best father-daughter movie I can think of. And it’s one of the greatest romances, too… The dance sequence to 'Night Shift' by the Commodores is not able to be described. We are witness to the most magical thing that can happe...

Leaving June 1

Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi | 119 mins | 2018
Between the international breakthrough of 2015’s "Happy Hour" and the sensation that was 2021’s "Drive My Car," Hamaguchi produced this beguiling romance, concerning a young woman and her affairs with, first, a self-dramatizing yo...

Directed by Jafar Panahi | 91 mins | 2000
Interweaving the travails of a handful of women in Tehran who, over the course of a single day, find themselves encroached upon in ways both subtle and pronounced by the nation’s patriarchal mores—with attention given to the difficulties of buying a bus ...

Leaving June 1

Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho | 131 mins | 2012
Mendonça Filho’s entrancing debut feature tunes into the anxious frequencies of middle-class residents on a quiet seaside street in sunny Recife, Brazil, where a private security firm has been hired to go on patrol. The commun...

Leaving June 1

Directed by Tsai Ming-liang | 89 mins | 1999
It’s the close of the millennium and Taipei has emptied out with the onset of a mysterious virus, but Lee Kang-sheng and Yang Kuei-mei lag behind among the ruins, where maybe a last chance at communication lies through a breach betwe...

Directed by Nina Menkes | 77 mins | 1991
Set in a drab, grimly coruscating Las Vegas, "Queen of Diamonds" again situates Tinka Menkes, the filmmaker’s sister, as an icon of womankind’s profound estrangement under patriarchy. Her character, Firdaus—the name borrowed from the unrepentant murderess...

Directed by Klára Tasovská | 90 mins | 2024
Oft referred to as the Nan Goldin of Czechoslovakia, Libuše Jarcovjáková chronicled after-dark Prague in the 1970s and ’80s, her photographs of let-it-all-hang-out gay clubs, factory hands working the third shift, and clandestine parties giving a pictu...

Directed by Jafar Panahi | 106 mins | 2013
Panahi’s follow-up to 2011’s "This Is Not a Film", also a meta-cinematic chamber piece made in defiance of the filmmaking ban imposed on him in 2010, finds the ever resourceful auteur, typically indefatigable, in a melancholic funk. "Closed Curtain" beg...

Directed by Lucrecia Martel | 89 mins | 2008
Martel’s haunting study of self-deception follows Veronica, a beloved but remote mother, after her car hits something in the road—or was it a person? As the stylish “Vero” (the late, great Maria Onetto) drifts in a daze among family and friends, the u...