1560, Peru. In a beautiful poetic opening scene the conquistadors cross an Andes pass, situated between the peaks and the valleys, between conquered land and unexplored forests, between 'heaven' and 'earth', shrouded in mists, they make their way down a narrow path. Aguirre's meglomania grows as around him his comrades mutiny and die in his search for the lost city of El Dorado. Herzog's best film, an unforgetable tour de force. Made before the director himself gave in to meglomania on a later t find out more...

Nong Toom has become one of the very best at his particular discipline, the ancient martial art of Muay Thai, but unlike many of his fellow combatants, Nong is in search of more than just fame and fortune. In the perfection of his art Nong hopes to find the financial means by which he can redefine his very sexuality. Based on a true story, Beautiful Boxer is a bone crunching display of its art, though, perhaps, some of the emotional subtleties have been lost in between the stunningly choreograph find out more...

Eight-year-old Zachary has, so far, enjoyed life as his father's favourite son, as the possessor of a gift for healing and as younger sibling to a tearaway, a jock and a bookworm, but this relatively idyllic childhood in Québec is cast under the shadow of his dad's suspicions when he is discovered wearing a dress. Seven years on it's 1975 and Zac is in thrall to Ziggy Stardust and his cousin's boyfriend, a confusing situation for him, made more complicated by a history of trying to satisfy his d find out more...

Critically acclaimed movie with Jesus as the leader of a cast doing a radical humanist rehash of The Passion Play. With lots of comic touches, and particular attention paid to the hypocrisy of the modern church, this is a superb modern day parable. What really makes the film, though, is its ability to surprise, especially in the way that a wide variety of polemic issues are introduced into a classy, clever, thoroughly entertaining format. Even if you're normally scared off by things theological, find out more...

Nafas is an Afghan journalist living in Canada when she gets a message from her sister, still living in the place of their birth, pronouncing that come the next solar eclipse she will commit suicide. Nafas decides to make the perilous journey to her home land and find her sister, returning to the veil she had long left behind on her return to a country ravaged by civil war and still under the iron grip of the Taliban. Kandahar is a stunning piece of film making with some breathtaking images. Sho find out more...

Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes in 2004, Siddiq Barmak's extraordinary 'Osama' was the first feature film to be made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. Visually audacious and emotionally compelling, the film follows a girl who is forced to disguise herself as a boy in order to earn the money to feed her hungry all female family. The lead actress Marina Golbahari was, literally, chosen off the street by the director and gives an outstanding performance whi find out more...

Astonishingly rich and beautiful film, rightly acclaimed as one of the finest examples of Chinese cinema. A young girl becomes the fourth wife of a powerful clan chief and finds that life revolves around the jealousies of her rivals. A poignant study of one woman's fate under feudalism. find out more...

A young boy lives in a small floating temple on a beautiful lake, together with an elderly master who teaches him the ways of the Buddha. Years later the boy, now a young man, experiences his sexual awakening with a girl who has come to the temple to be healed by the master. Returning from a disastrous trip to the outside world the young monk must pay penance and, in the last of four vignettes, he returns to the lake temple to find spiritual enlightenment. find out more...

An artful documentary about the life of Daniel Johnson, singer/songwriter, artist, cartoonist and general artistic genius, but a man sadly afflicted with a severe mental illness that makes him totally self-delusional and an occasional danger to both himself and others. Daniel, raised in a Christian fundamentalist family in deepest West Virginia, amongst many of his fantasies, sees Devils everywhere, and with his overblown self-importance, not helped by his legions of admirers, vying with his low find out more...

1913; a strict Protestant village in northern Germany and the locals are plagued by a series of malevolences; a farmer's wife falls through rotten floorboards, a wire placed at knee-height has brought down the the doctor's horse, a window is opened exposing a newborn baby to the cold of the winter, cabbages are beheaded with a scythe, one of the Baron's sons is discovered bound and lashed by a whip, a barn is set on fire, a farmer hangs himself, a handicapped child is found tied to a tree with a find out more...