Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends. Things change dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. For most of its running time, the film seems to follow suit: it's a placid, languorous country-house comedy far removed from the realities of the Stalinist te find out more...

Winner of numerous awards including the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. This is the story of a young boy's love affair with the local cinema, where he regularly sneaks into the village priest's weekly preview and censorship session. Years later now a successful film director he returns to his native town. Stunning and beautiful. find out more...

Phyllis Dietrichson is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who inspires in her nothing but contempt, but rather than leave him Phyllis decides to kill him and collect on the insurance policy she's had set up with the help of her lover, and naive partner in crime, insurance salesman Walter Neff. The only flaws in their plan are the company's reluctance to pay out so much, the diligence of Neff's increasingly suspicious colleague, (and his 'little man'), and the exemplary ruthlessness of Ph find out more...

Rivette's own cut of the 4 hour original was highly acclaimed at Cannes in 1991. It is the gripping and moving story of an artist who returns to an unfinished and abandoned canvas when he discovers an electrifying new model. Soon, however the reasons for his initial rejection resurface. Tense! find out more...

A young married man with a baby girl is inexplicably relieved of his freedom one drunken night. Just as inexplicably released fifteen years later he is given some money and a mobile. His family now gone his only contact is the nameless, faceless voice on the other end of the phone that sets him the task of discovering the reason for his incarceration. Taken in by a young woman, love blossoms almost immediately for the two, but as he draws closer to the truth her life becomes increasingly threate find out more...

Tarkovsky's masterpiece - often described as the Russian version of 2001. Madness threatens all those who work on the space station that orbits the mysterious planet Solaris and the newcomer Chris Kelvin is doubly haunted by memories of his dead wife. A great metaphor for inner development. find out more...

19th century Germany: Kaspar arrives like a time traveller, found standing in a sleepy town square, his origins shrouded in mystery. After learning to talk, he tells of being kept in a cellar and never having seen a human being. The learned confront this enigma with the power of their logic, dissection and annotation, but Kaspar shows up the limitations of such rationalism. Not the same dizzy folly as Aguirre, but Herzog's similarly long perspective conjures as powerful a picture of man's aimles find out more...

Erika Kohan teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory and though in her late thirties still lives with her monstrous and repressive mother, with whom she shares a tempestuous relationship. Erika has constructed an aloof and unapproachable aura which enables her to remain emotionally disconnected from those around her, but one of her students is about to introduce her to a world of passion and unleash an explosion of need and desire. 'The Piano Teacher' is an intense story of emotional and sexuall find out more...

Mitchell Stephens, the excellent Ian Holm, arrives as an ambulance chaser in a rural Canadian town in the wake of a tragic school bus accident in which most of the community's children have been killed. Through the judicious use of flashback we observe the origins of his do-good obsession, his tragic relationship with his daughter, and the effect of the accident on the community. Critically acclaimed, subtly structured, nominated for two Oscars and an extremely well made movie. find out more...

Special Jury Prize winner Cannes 1989 and 5 French Cesars in 1990. A superb black comedy in which Depardieu, a well-off BMW sales rep, abandons his exquisitely beautiful wife for his frumpy middle-aged secretary, overturning every stereotype in this very stylish and typically French tale. find out more...