Warm and witty crime caper set amongst the fading grandeur of a seaside resort. Ageing crook Lou has a Walter Mitty memory, boasting of a life spent working for the likes of Al Capone, but his fertile imagination is tested when he meets a young hippy in trouble with the mob. A modern classic. find out more...

In a Catholic boarding school during the Nazi occupation of France, Julien Quietin, played by Gaspard Manesse as the character based around Malle, is no ordinary student, he is intelligent and different from the others. A new student arrives at the school one day and becomes a sort of intellectual rival to Julien, but, after some early hostilities, the boys begin to connect and eventually become good friends. Malle does not rely on overly dramatic sequences where not necessary as a way to build find out more...

An Oscar nominee and Golden Lion winner, this three part film starts with a monk escorting an Albanian girl through a gorgeous Macedonian setting, then moves to London, where an exile lives, and finally returns to a divided Balkan village where gun touting Macedonian and Albanian ethnics fan their mutual hatred. The human tragedy of war contrasts with a stunning landscape. Beautiful, moving, superb. find out more...

Gena Rowlands, winning an Oscar nomination, is typically superb as the tough talking New York moll - half-whore, half-mother - reluctantly lumbered with a child the Mafia want dead. Tired of running, Gloria decides to confront the gangsters head on... A superb noirish thriller. find out more...

China in the turmoil of Japanese occupation is the evocative setting for this unusual and visually stunning tale. Recruited before she is truly aware of her purpose, a young woman is groomed to become an irresistible siren, an icon of contemporary eroticism to ensnare a collaborator who has wreaked havoc amongst her people. Ang Lee's stunning follow up to "Broke Back Mountain" is in essence a thriller but as with all his films it is the richness and depth of the characters that really drive the find out more...

A thirteen-year-old girl is drafted in as a substitute teacher in a small, isolated mountain village in rural China. When one of her poverty stricken pupils elopes to the city to try and earn some much needed readies she is determined to follow him and bring him back. Shot in verite style using real people, not actors, this heart-warming audience pleaser won the prestigious 1999 Golden Lion at the Venice film festival. find out more...

Altman's highly acclaimed and superbly directed mish-mash of Raymond Carver's short stories. We flit between numerous characters and their strange, confusing, moving and emotive daily lives. The range of emotions, and the incredibly cynical humorous touches brilliantly deconstruct American life. find out more...

In the first and third acts of "Still Life" we follow labourer Han, who is searching for his runaway wife and daughter, and in the middle section we follow middle-class Hong as she looks for her lost husband. Set in the old village of Fengjie, a small town on the Yangtze River slowly being destroyed to make way for the Three Gorges Dam project, the film portrays the lot of ordinary people, predominantly migrant labourers, lost in an ever changing world. Superb use of photography helps make dir find out more...

A highly acclaimed and influential account of Algeria's turbulent past made in psuedo-documentary style. The tense plot surrounds the rise of nationalist organisations in '54 and the French government's attempts to quell them. This film was the prototype for most political thrillers of the 1970s. find out more...

The Magdalene Laundries are a peculiarly twisted Irish Catholic institution; run by nuns they provide a form of incarceration for fallen young women, whose heinous crimes range from being raped to flirting with boys. Margaret, Bernadette and Rose are three new inmates about to experience first hand woman's inhumanity to woman as they are humiliated, degraded, abused and worked to the bone, but despite the grimness of their world the three girls find solace and even humour in the company of each find out more...