Part 1 of Wajda's trilogy of wartime films, the hopeful one, is set in Wola, a working-class area of Warsaw in 1942, and deals with the graduation of a bunch of semi-delinquent street kids, through individual acts of defiance and courage, into a youth resistance group. The heroism is not simple, neither loyalties nor self-sacrifice are assured, but united they will be. find out more...

Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, 1997, this charming Czechoslovakian comedy-drama features the most edibly adorable child star ever in Andrej Chaliman as five year old Kolya. Abandoned after his love-struck mother flees to Germany, Kolya is left at the mercy of confirmed bachelor and child-phobic cellist Louka, who's foolishly entwined himself in a marriage of convenience with the kid's mum. The political background, while necessary, never becomes too bogged-down, and indeed provides t find out more...

Alan Clarke's work is renowned for it's starkly realistic and often disturbing portrayal of British society, and this is no exception. Tim Roth is outstanding as the snarling anarchistic skinhead car-thief who has no wish to be "saved" by his concerned social worker. Black, bleak and brilliant. find out more...

Bernardo Bertolucci paints another ravishing (if slightly too lush) portrait of adolescent awakenings and youthful exuberance. Set in Paris, 1968, amid the social turmoil and student protests, the film charts the relationship of three characters: Isabelle and Theo (sister and brother) and American student Matthew. Their mutual obsession for film of all forms and periods brings them together, and a lot of the films pleasure (for movie fans, anyway) derives from find out more...