A family in Taiwan between the Japanese surrender and the 1947 massacre; Hou's Golden Lion.
An actress's life and her film roles blur across Japanese history; Kon's tenderest film.
A grandmother with early Alzheimer's takes a poetry class as her grandson's crime surfaces.
A pensioner and his dog on the edge of eviction in Rome; De Sica's bleakest neorealism.
A mechanic fights the mayor for his house on the Barents Sea; whale bones and vodka.
A man who impersonated a film director is tried, with everyone playing themselves; Kiarostami's docu-fiction.
A fourth wife in a 1920s compound competing for the lantern; Zhang Yimou and Gong Li.
A writer in a Hong Kong hotel and a science-fiction train to 2046; the sequel to In the Mood for Love.
An estranged film-director father offers his actress daughter a role in a house full of memories; Joachim Trier.
A man drives around Tehran looking for someone to bury him after his suicide; the Palme d'Or of 1997.
A mechanic recognises the man who tortured him in prison; Jafar Panahi's Palme d'Or.
A 12-year-old sues his parents for being born, in the slums of Beirut; Nadine Labaki.
A master chef and his three daughters over Sunday dinners in Taipei; Ang Lee before Hollywood.
Kinski hauls a steamship over a mountain in the Amazon, for real; Herzog's madness on film.
A 60-year-old cleaner marries a Moroccan worker in Munich; Fassbinder's Sirk melodrama.
A Saudi girl saves for a bicycle she is not supposed to ride; the first film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia.
Four children abandoned in a Tokyo flat, based on a true case; the boy won Best Actor at Cannes at 14.
Two men from Hong Kong falling apart in Buenos Aires; Wong Kar-wai and the Iguazu falls.
Two friends from Nablus with 48 hours before a suicide bombing; Hany Abu-Assad.
One day at a family reunion for a dead son; Kore-eda's Ozu film.
A woman vanishes on a beach weekend and every lie surfaces; Farhadi before A Separation.
Three homeless people find a baby on Christmas Eve in Tokyo; Kon's warm one.
A baker who climbs the wall to see his girlfriend is turned informant; Palestine's thriller.
A 12-year-old scout on the Eastern Front; Tarkovsky's first film and the dream sequences.
Leslie Cheung as a playboy in 1960 Hong Kong; the first of Wong Kar-wai's loose trilogy.
A hitman, his agent and a mute who breaks into shops at night; Chungking Express after dark.
A woman rebuilds herself through the German economic miracle; Fassbinder's biggest hit.
Three engineering students against a pressure-cooker college; the most watched Indian film of its time.
A boy tries to return a classmate's notebook across two villages; Kiarostami's simplest film.
Aamir Khan trains his daughters as wrestlers in Haryana; the true story and the biggest Indian film in China.
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