Cross-dressing club-kid Eddie vies with a rival drag-queen for the favours of drug-dealing cabaret-manager Gonda in this unflinching and often brutal portrayal of Japanese gay subculture. Matsumoto achieves a line between pathos and hilarity that makes Funeral Parade of Roses utterly unique; a feverish collision of avant-garde aesthetics and grind-house shocks (not to mention a direct influence on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange). In addition this psychedelic era film is a gay play on the O find out more...

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A visually striking and powerful exploration of the "Oedipus" myth so loved by Freud, which draws on the director's own experience and the timeless themes of mythology. In pre-war Italy, a young couple have a baby boy. The father, however, is jealous of his son - and the scene moves to antiquity, where the baby is taken into the desert to be killed. He is rescued, given the name Edipo and brought up by the King and Queen of Corinth as their son. One day an oracle informs Edipo that he is destine find out more...

A chillingly effective study of mental breakdown and neurosis. Terrified by everything, but especially sex, a Belgian girl in London murders her boyfriend, and her landlord when they try to break through her barriers and help her. A grim journey into the depths of a deranged mind. Riveting. find out more...

"Josephine Decker has created a new style of thriller that employs allegory, incorporates touches of David Lynch as well as Magritte -esque imagery. Decker's setting of a remote farm feels like a metaphor for what turns out to be hell. The raw and emotional (and yes, sometimes funny) dialog tells a story that can seem familiar at points but really is meant to keep you guessing and off balance. I really enjoyed how the undertones of this film came to life through her very deft contrast of the find out more...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...