Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve | 98 mins | 2007
Mia Hansen-Løve was only twenty-five when she directed one of the most striking and auspicious first features in 21st century French cinema, which finds the brisk economy of expression, nuanced characterization, and formal daring of her future films (...

Directed by Susan Sontag | 105 mins | 1969
In the late ’60s, a Swedish studio invited essayist, novelist, critic, cinephile, and all-around intellectual dynamo Susan Sontag to make her directorial debut in Stockholm. The resulting film, revolving around the quadrangular relationship between an a...

Directed by India Donaldson | 90 mins | 2024
A standout of Sundance 2024, Donaldson’s piercing debut drama stars astonishing newcomer Lily Collias as 17-year-old Sam, forced to play mediator between her father (James Le Gros) and his oldest friend (Danny McCarthy) when their gently contentious ba...

Directed by Claire Simon | 121 mins | 2016
The Competition begins, significantly, with the image of a locked gate—that of La Fémis, one of the most prestigious film schools in the world, offering hands-on training from working professionals and accepting only 40 students per year from hundreds o...

Directed by Nietzchka Keene | 78 mins | 1990
A young Björk makes her captivating screen debut in this stark, windswept fable, freely adapted from a Brothers Grimm story, about two sisters, one endowed with witchy gifts, who set out in search of a new home after their mother is murdered. Setting ...

Directed by Lucrecia Martel | 115 mins | 2017
A scruffy bureaucrat for the Spanish crown hopelessly angles for ways to get ahead in this audacious vision of 18th-century colonial empire, adapted from Antonio de Benedetto’s 1956 novel of the same name. Don Diego’s anti-epic progress in a far-flung...

Directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili | 134 mins | 2024
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Venice, Kulumbegashvili’s follow-up to her acclaimed debut feature "Beginning" is anchored by Ia Sukhitashvili’s powerhouse performance as Nina, an obstetrician in rural Georgia whose history of discreetly provi...

Directed by Alexandra Simpson | 93 mins | 2024
The threat of an impending hurricane has sent most of the residents of and visiting tourists to the coastal Florida town of Atlantic Beach scurrying for cover—but Simpson’s ravishing mood piece lingers behind with a handful of holdouts ignoring the ...

Directed by Cate Shortland | 106 mins | 2004
Shortland’s visually arresting debut feature, a standout at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival recently restored in 4K, follows 16-year-old Heidi (Abbie Cornish), in flight from a catastrophic fall out with her mother, as she posts up in the frigid Australi...

Directed by Cate Shortland | 109 mins | 2012
Cate Shortland followed her moody and startling feature debut, "Somersault" (2004), with another bruising story of a teen girl expelled from home—in this case, by history in the making. Abandoned by her high-level Nazi parents in the wake of Hitler’s d...

Directed by Maren Ade | 123 mins | 2009
Years before the crossover success of "Toni Erdmann", Maren Ade established herself as an uncommonly intelligent and bracingly honest voice in modern cinema with "Everyone Else", which earned the Berlin Film Festival's Silver Bear prize. Her second film beg...

Directed by Laura Bispuri | 88 mins | 2015
This adaptation of Elvira Dones’s acclaimed novel fully mines the psychological dimensions of the “sworn virgin”—Albanian women who follow an obscure law whereby, upon taking a vow of virginity, they may escape imposed domestic life and live as a man. Ma...

Directed by Sandhya Suri | 120 mins | 2024
Trained to take the place of her police constable husband who was killed on the job, young housewife Santosh (Shahana Goswami) is dropped into the harsh realities of rural Northern India and paired with a savvy, charismatic inspector, Sharma (Sunita Rajw...