A boy sent to a Swedish village in the 1950s compares himself to Laika; Hallstrom's breakthrough.
Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander; the Swedish Millennium film before Fincher's.
A corporate recruiter who steals art picks the wrong target; Jo Nesbo's thriller on screen.
A son accuses his father at a 60th birthday dinner; the first Dogme 95 film.
Bjork as a factory worker going blind, singing musical numbers in her head; von Trier's Palme d'Or.
Parents keep their adult children inside a walled garden with a false language; Lanthimos' breakout.
A vegetarian vet student develops a taste for flesh; Ducournau's coming-of-age horror.
A quadriplegic aristocrat and his carer from the banlieue; France's biggest comedy hit.
A butcher's apartment block in a post-apocalyptic France; Jeunet and Caro's bedspring rhythm.
Tati at a Brittany seaside hotel, a tennis serve and a squeaking door.
A Resistance prisoner plans his escape from Montluc in real detail; Bresson's truest film.
The life of a donkey passed between owners; Bresson's saint.
Bardot, a screenwriter and Fritz Lang in Capri; Godard's CinemaScope about a marriage ending.
Catherine Deneuve as a doctor's wife working afternoons in a brothel; Bunuel's dream logic.
Dinner guests who cannot leave the room, for weeks; Bunuel in Mexico.
A novice nun's charity turns into a beggars' Last Supper; banned in Spain, Palme d'Or in Cannes.
A girl in a Castilian village after the Civil War believes Frankenstein's monster is real.
Gazpacho with sleeping pills and a Madrid penthouse; the film that made Almodovar international.
Penelope Cruz, her dead mother returned and a body in the freezer; Almodovar's La Mancha.
Two men caring for two comatose women; Almodovar's Oscar for the screenplay.
Sorrentino's Naples teenage years, the family and the arrival of Maradona.
Five stories of the Camorra in the Naples suburbs, shot like a documentary.
An American at a German ballet school run by witches; Argento in primary colours to Goblin.
A pensioner and his dog on the edge of eviction in Rome; De Sica's bleakest neorealism.
A southern family moves to Milan and the brothers destroy each other; Visconti's epic.
A divorcing couple's son goes missing while they argue; Zvyagintsev's coldest film.
A mechanic fights the mayor for his house on the Barents Sea; whale bones and vodka.
Tarkovsky's own memories, his mother and a burning barn; the film with no plot people watch most.
A 12-year-old scout on the Eastern Front; Tarkovsky's first film and the dream sequences.
A woman waits for a soldier who will not return; the Soviet film that won the Palme d'Or.
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