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 Tomás Gómez Bustillo | 84 mins | 2023
Can you scam your way into sainthood? This question underpins the first section of Tomás Gómez Bustillo’s wry but warming debut feature, wherein Rita, a devout Catholic with a competitive streak, contrives to convince the residents of her Argentin...

Directed by Augusto Sandino | 77 mins | 2021
For Colombia’s Indigenous Muisca people, Sumapaz Páramo, a tropical plateau located high up in the Andes, was a sacred realm. It is here that Augusto Sandino sets his haunting, mystical debut—the first film to have ever been shot in this now-endangered...

Leaving November 1

Directed by Lee Chang-dong | 130 mins | 1999
Opening on a shocking scene of implied suicide, Lee’s sophomore feature proceeds to move backward in time, its reverse chronology following its protagonist’s unhappiness to its source, following him from the end of the ’70s to th...

Directed by Shunji Iwai | 146 mins | 2001
Incredibly prescient in its understanding of how a still-young internet would fundamentally alter youth culture, Shunji’s film introduces Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara) in an ice field, the landscape gradually obscured by accreting chat room messages. Alienated...

Directed by Jack Hazan | 106 mins | 1973
Jack Hazan’s intimate and innovative film about English-born, often California-based artist David Hockney and his work honors its subject through creative risk-taking. The improvisatory narrative-nonfiction hybrid features Hockney—a wary participant—as we...

Directed by Ira Sachs | 102 mins | 2012
A phone sex hotline encounter between a documentary filmmaker and a closeted literary agent gives rise to a decade-long relationship riven by addiction in this closely observed, semi-autobiographical work by Ira Sachs. While his latest film, Cannes competit...

Directed by Derek Jarman | 90 mins | 1991
Jarman’s lusciously Brechtian adaptation of the Christopher Marlowe play, its regal production design furnished by his biggest budget yet, leans all the way into the queer subtext of its source material. Tilda Swinton radiates as Queen Isabella, resentful...

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 Hou Hsiao-hsien | 107 mins | 2001
A seductive submersion into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei, Hou’s much-misunderstood marvel follows an aimless bar hostess drifting away from her blowhard boyfriend and towards a suave, sensitive gangster. A transfixing trance-out of a mo...

Directed by Éric Rohmer | 106 mins | 1981
The inaugural film of Éric Rohmer’s “Comedies and Proverbs” cycle, The Aviator’s Wife is a fleecy farce of romantic overanalysis that finds the director exploring the possibilities of handheld camerawork in following a narrative expression of the opening...

Directed by Levan Akin | 113 mins | 2020
Met with high praise at 2019’s Cannes Film Festival and violent homophobic protests in Georgia, where the film takes place, Levan Akin’s breakout is a finely wrought tale of a forbidden love between two male dancers, Merab and Irakli, who are both competin...

Directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong | 68 mins | 2021
The construction of the so-called “Death Railway” connecting Thailand and Myanmar, a Japanese initiative during World War II, was marked by perilous, inhumane conditions and an extraordinary casualty rate. Following four young actors on a trip ...

Leaving October 1

Directed by Hong Sangsoo | 115 mins | 2010
Two friends in a bar trade stories about their romantic exploits at a beach, which we come to realize involve the same people (including a restaurant owner played by Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung). Through adroit layering, Hong brings ...

Directed by Andrzej Zulawski | 124 mins | 1981
Banned upon its original release in 1981, Andrzej Żuławski’s stunningly choreographed nightmare of a marriage unraveling is an experience unlike any other. Professional spy Mark (Sam Neill) returns to his West Berlin home to find his wife Anna (Isab...

Leaving November 1

Directed by Lee Chang-dong | 133 mins | 2002
Jong-du (Sul Kyung-gu), just out of prison, very little reformed, and shunned by his family, finds an unlikely soulmate in the person of Gong-ju (Moon So-ri), a woman with severe cerebral palsy—and the daughter of the victim of t...

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 Travis Fine | 98 mins | 2012
A stellar Alan Cumming is the linchpin of this late ’70s-set weepie: he plays Rudy, a struggling musician and drag queen in West Hollywood. When he meets closeted district attorney Paul at the nightclub where he works, a romance is kindled—one partially fu...