A Star Is Born

A young man who has everything loses his face in a car crash, and from then on he can no longer tell his own life from a dream. When it was remade in America a few years later as “Vanilla Sky”, Penélope Cruz stepped back into the very same role. — César is rich, handsome and used to women in Madrid taking an interest in him without his lifting a finger. At his own birthday party he meets Sofía, his best friend’s girlfriend, and for the first time he truly falls in love. An accident is about to change everything. — C.I.C.A.E. Award - Honorable Mention | Berlin International Film Festival | 1998

Sally Rooney’s novel became a pop-culture phenomenon on screen and made stars of Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Connell and Marianne, forever drawn together and pushed apart like magnets. One sentence could put things right between them, and neither can bring themselves to say it. — In a small town in the west of Ireland, Connell is the popular boy who plays football, while Marianne, in his year at school, has no friends and doesn’t seem to want any. When something sparks between them, they agree that nobody at school will ever know. The arrangement survives for years, through Dublin and through other relationships, and in all that time they never quite manage to say what it is.

Truffaut was still a boy when his own father handed him over to the police, and years later that memory became a film. Jean-Pierre Léaud, cast in the lead, never memorised his lines but spoke in his own words. Blow after blow, you feel how cruel childhood can be. — Antoine Doinel makes his first appearance as an unruly boy growing up in a cramped Paris flat with a family that doesn’t understand him. He skips school, steals and suffers under a teacher who has it in for him, until an arrest lands him in a cell overnight with prostitutes and thieves. The court sends him to a reform school, but Antoine escapes, in search of freedom. — Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 1959 Best Director | Cannes Film Festival | 1959 OCIC Award | Cannes Film Festival | 1959

Bertolucci (“Stealing Beauty”) shut Eva Green, in her screen debut, Michael Pitt and Louis Garrel inside a Paris apartment for what is now a cult film. Outside it’s 1968, but they have eyes only for each other and their games of film charades, in a love triangle that’s hard to resist. — In Paris in 1968, police break up a crowd protesting the sacking of Henri Langlois from the Cinémathèque française. Among the protesters are twins Théo and Isabelle and Matthew, an American exchange student who spends every evening in its auditorium. The twins invite him to dinner with their parents and talk him into staying, and when the parents leave for a month, the three of them have the flat to themselves. — Nominated for Best Director | Golden Globes | 2004 Nominated for Best European Film | Goya Awards | 2004 Nominated for EFA People's Choice Award | European Film Awards | 2004

Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux left Cannes in 2013 with a share of the Palme d’Or alongside their director, because for this film the jury changed its own rules. Their love story is one of the most intense of recent years, and it has become a cult film far beyond the LGBTQ+ community. — At fifteen, Adèle longs for romance and is only beginning to discover her sexuality, and a fling with a boy from her class fizzles out before it has really started. Then she meets a girl with blue hair, and her life is turned upside down. Their affair is intense, full of love and erotic passion, and the girl awakens Adèle to desire and pleasure and helps her see who she could become as a woman. — Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 2013 FIPRESCI Prize | San Sebastián International Film Festival | 2013

Mike Nichols won the Best Director Oscar for the film that opened the door to New Hollywood, set to Simon & Garfunkel’s iconic songs. It’s hard to believe Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft were only six years apart, and impossible to forget that final shot. — Benjamin comes home to Pasadena with a degree and no idea what to do next, so he spends his days floating in his parents’ pool. When Mrs Robinson, the wife of his father’s business partner, asks him to drive her home, she ends up keeping him in a hotel room all summer long. Then his parents start pushing him to take her daughter out. — Best Director | Oscars | 1968 Nominated for Best Film | Oscars | 1968 Nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Dustin Hoffman) | Oscars | 1968 Nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Anne Bancroft) | Oscars | 1968 Nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Katharine Ross) | Oscars | 1968 Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 1968 Nominated for Best Cinematography | Oscars | 1968 Best Film - Musical or Comedy | Golden Globes | 1968 Best Director | Golden Globes | 1968 Best Actress - Musical or Comedy (Anne Bancroft) | Golden Globes | 1968

A young Helena Bonham Carter and Daniel Day-Lewis take on surprisingly romantic roles in Merchant and Ivory’s much-loved costume drama, which won three Oscars. Its upper-class social circles of the early twentieth century reach from sunny Tuscany all the way to cloudy England. — Lucy Honeychurch is a young Englishwoman on her first trip abroad, and in early twentieth-century Florence she meets George Emerson, a quiet, slightly strange young man who is travelling with his father. Once she’s home in England, Lucy gets engaged to the eminently respectable Cecil Vyse. Florence, though, won’t let her forget it. — Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 1987 Best Art Direction | Oscars | 1987 Best Costume Design | Oscars | 1987 Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 1986

Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle and Ewen Bremner play a gang of junkies you’d cross the street to avoid in Danny Boyle’s take on Irvine Welsh’s novel, a cult postcard from addiction with a legendary Britpop and techno soundtrack. It’s a blast, right up until you land in the worst toilet in Scotland. — Mark Renton is twenty-six, out of work and hooked on heroin, and in Leith, a district of Edinburgh, Sick Boy and Spud are using too, while Begbie prefers vodka and brawling. When a friend spells out for Renton how this is going to end, he decides to get clean. He buys two opium suppositories from his dealer to soften the comedown, and only then finds out what real craving is. — Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 1997 Best Film | BAFTA | 1997 Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Ewan McGregor) | BAFTA | 1997 Best Adapted Screenplay | BAFTA | 1996 Audience Award | Warsaw International Film Festival | 1996

Both Nicolas Winding Refn (“Drive”) and Mads Mikkelsen made their debuts with this independent crime film, the first of a famous trilogy, and Mikkelsen plays the kind of friend nobody would want. It all happens in one grim week in Copenhagen, with heroin and a huge debt that needs paying off fast. — Frank deals heroin in Copenhagen and talks a lot about himself. When a Swede orders more than he can afford, his supplier Milo lets him have the drugs on credit. But the police turn up at the handover, Frank throws the lot into a lake, and he walks out of the station owing a gargantuan sum. — Nominated for Best Restored Film | Venice Film Festival | 2024

Almodóvar turns darker here, opening in a Madrid under a state of emergency with a woman giving birth on a bus. From that moment chance ties five people together, and two of them are played by a young Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. — On a bus in Madrid at Christmas 1970, with the city under a state of emergency, a young prostitute gives birth to Víctor. Twenty years later he goes looking for Elena, a girl he once spent the night with, and he’s in her flat when two policemen walk in. One of them will leave in a wheelchair. — Nominated for Best Film Not in the English Language | BAFTA Awards | 1999 Nominated for Best Foreign Independent Film | British Independent Film Awards | 1998

Jane Campion became the first woman ever to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and eleven-year-old Anna Paquin won an Oscar for the same film. Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel circle each other in a damp New Zealand colony, where she won’t give an inch and he can’t look away. — In the mid-nineteenth century Ada, who hasn’t spoken since she was six, is sent from Scotland to New Zealand to join a husband she has never met, taking her daughter and her piano with her. Her husband leaves the piano on the beach with no intention of going back for it. A neighbour trades him a plot of land for it, then offers Ada a deal: she can win it back, one key at a time. — Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 1993 Best Actress (Holly Hunter) | Cannes Film Festival | 1993 Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Holly Hunter) | Oscars | 1994 Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Anna Paquin) | Oscars | 1994 Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 1994 Nominated for Best Film | Oscars | 1994 Nominated for Best Editing | Oscars | 1994 Nominated for Best Director | Oscars | 1994 Nominated for Best Cinematography | Oscars | 1994 Nominated for Best Costume Design | Oscars | 1994 Best Actress - Drama (Holly Hunter) | Golden Globes | 1994

Amélie Poulain is a lonely Montmartre waitress who notices everything about the people around her and quietly sets about mending strangers’ lives. Paris looks even lovelier than the real thing, Yann Tiersen’s score is one many people still know by heart, and you’ll walk out with a lighter heart. — Amélie Poulain is a shy, kind-hearted waitress in Montmartre. Behind a loose tile in her bathroom she finds a box of treasures a little boy hid there years ago, so she tracks down its owner and gives it back without letting him know who she is. Soon she’s secretly making everyone around her happier, and nobody suspects a thing. Her own life is another matter: she hasn’t even started on that. — Nomination for Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 2002 Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2002 Nomination for Best Cinematography | Oscars | 2002 Nomination for Best Sound | Oscars | 2002 Nomination for Best Art Direction | Oscars | 2002 Best Original Screenplay | BAFTA Awards | 2002 Best Film | César Awards | 2002 Best Director | César Awards | 2002 Best Music | César Awards | 2002 Best European Film | European Film Awards | 2001

Fireworks, visual and literal: Juliette Binoche waterskis down the Seine beside Denis Lavant, who breathes fire for small change. When Leos Carax (“Holy Motors”) lost his permit to shoot on the Pont-Neuf, he built his own in a field and set a tangled love affair on it. — In Paris in 1989 the Pont-Neuf is closed for repairs, and Alex, a street fire-eater who drinks whatever he can get his hands on, has made it his home. Michèle, who is losing her sight, turns up with a sketchbook, hiding from a man, and draws Alex as he sleeps in the cold. From then on the bridge belongs to them alone, and they have no intention of ever leaving. — Nominated for Best Film Not in the English Language | BAFTA | 1993 Best European Actress of the Year (Juliette Binoche) | European Film Awards | 1992 Best European Cinematographer of the Year | European Film Awards | 1992 Best European Editor of the Year | European Film Awards | 1992 Nominated for Best European Actor of the Year (Denis Lavant) | European Film Awards | 1992 Nominated for Best European Film of the Year | European Film Awards | 1992

Wes Anderson (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) shows the first signs of his style in this debut, co-written with Owen Wilson at the start of a long partnership. One guy is fresh out of a psychiatric hospital, another has a car, and the third has a plan that begins with a practice robbery. — Anthony is just walking out of a psychiatric hospital when he finds Dignan waiting at the gate with a plan for the two of them, broken down into stages. Stage one is a practice robbery, which calls for a car, and the only person they know who has one is their neighbour Bob. They’ve still got to track down a real criminal, too.

Toni Collette (“Hereditary”) carries a film about the strength of friendship that Australians still quote line for line. It starts out as a comedy about Muriel, the girl everyone laughs at, who escapes into ABBA songs and dreams of a wedding. But her happiness isn’t waiting at the altar. — Muriel Heslop has no job, no prospects and a single dream: her wedding day. Her friends have just told her she embarrasses them. When her mother gives her money to buy stock for selling cosmetics, Muriel blows the lot on a holiday at the very resort where those same girls are staying. There she meets Rhonda, and the two hit it off at once. Together they head for Sydney, where Muriel gives herself a new name. — Nominated for Best Actress - Musical or Comedy (Toni Collette) | Golden Globes | 1996 Nominated for Best Original Screenplay | BAFTA | 1996 Official Selection - Directors' Fortnight | Cannes Film Festival | 1994

Richard Kelly shot the film in 28 days, the same time its hero is given before the world ends. It opened just after 9/11, and with a jet engine crashing into the bedroom of a teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal), hardly anyone went to see it, until DVD audiences found it and it refused to be forgotten. — Sleepwalking out of the house one night in October 1988, a few weeks before the presidential election, Donnie Darko meets a giant rabbit called Frank in his Virginia suburb, and Frank tells him the world will end in twenty-eight days. When Donnie gets back, a jet engine has smashed through the roof into his bedroom, and no airline has reported one missing. — Official Selection | Sundance Film Festival | 2001

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet (who later directed “The Brutalist”) are extraordinary in Gregg Araki’s unflinching story of childhood abuse. Araki told his young actors they were in a different film and used tricks to shield them from the scenes’ sexual side, and it feels painfully real. — In the summer of 1981, eight-year-old Neil believes that what his coach is doing to him is a sign of love. One rainy day Brian, from the same team, loses five hours and wakes up in a basement with a nosebleed he can’t explain, and as a teenager he decides he was abducted by aliens. Ten years on, Brian is obsessed with UFOs and Neil is selling himself in bars, until Brian comes across an old team photo and recognises the boy from his dreams. — Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 2004 Nominated for Best Director | Film Independent Spirit Awards | 2006

Before “Ida”, Paweł Pawlikowski shot this film in Yorkshire during the hottest summer in fifty years, a holiday in which something grows between two girls with a great deal keeping them apart. It’s Emily Blunt’s breakthrough role, and it’s hard to take your eyes off her. — The Yorkshire summer is long and scorching. Mona comes from a working-class family, while Tamsin is back at her wealthy family home for the holidays, and the two are drawn to each other from the start. They discover that, underneath it all, they come from very similar broken families, and neither of them wants the summer ever to end. — Best British Film | BAFTA Awards | 2005 Official Selection | Berlin International Film Festival | 2005 Best European Film | Polish Film Awards | 2006

This is the modern classic from Luca Guadagnino (“Challengers”) that made Timothée Chalamet a star: a summer in northern Italy, an American student and weeks of a romance as sweet as a peach. James Ivory was 89 when he won the Oscar for its screenplay, and it’s a film you’ll keep coming back to. — Seventeen-year-old Elio is spending the summer at his family’s villa in northern Italy, reading, swimming and waiting. Every year his father, a professor, invites a student to help with his work, and this summer it’s Oliver, a twenty-four-year-old American. Elio watches him as peach juice runs down his wrist. — Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 2018 Nominated for Best Film | Oscars | 2018 Nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Timothée Chalamet) | Oscars | 2018 Nominated for Best Original Song | Oscars | 2018 Nominated for Best Film | Golden Globes | 2018 Nominated for Best Actor - Drama (Timothée Chalamet) | Golden Globes | 2018 People's Choice Award | European Film Awards | 2018 Best Male Lead (Timothée Chalamet) | Film Independent Spirit Awards | 2018 Official Selection | Berlin International Film Festival | 2017

This is the role that made the world notice Jennifer Lawrence, in a Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner with four Oscar nominations. A seventeen-year-old searches the Ozark Mountains for a father nobody will talk about, and the world is cruel, but she proves stronger and tougher than anyone expects. — Seventeen-year-old Ree is bringing up her younger brother and sister on her own through a Missouri winter in the Ozarks. Their father has put the house on the line and vanished, and if he doesn’t turn up in court, they’ll lose their home. The people of the valley would rather she didn’t ask where he is, and Ree asks anyway. — Grand Jury Prize | Sundance Film Festival | 2010 Nomination for Best Picture | Oscars | 2011 Nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Jennifer Lawrence) | Oscars | 2011 Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 2011 Nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (John Hawkes) | Oscars | 2011 Nomination for Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence) | Golden Globes | 2011

Joel and Ethan Coen made their first film with Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”), who was making her first film too. This Texas neo-noir really is simple, but the Coens’ wit and playfulness are already there in a tight, funny comedy of errors where everything that can go wrong does. — Marty runs a roadside bar in Texas, and the private detective he hired brings bad news: his wife is sleeping with one of the bartenders who work for him. The detective even has photos from the motel. So Marty offers him ten thousand dollars to kill them both. — Grand Jury Prize | Sundance Film Festival | 1985 Best Director | Film Independent Spirit Awards | 1986 Best Male Lead (M. Emmet Walsh) | Film Independent Spirit Awards | 1986

This is the cult film of the 1990s that everyone should know, and Mathieu Kassovitz began writing it on the day a seventeen-year-old was shot during a police interrogation in Paris. Three friends, energy that bursts off the screen, and Vincent Cassel waving a gun around. — The morning after a night of rioting in the Paris suburbs finds Vinz, Hubert and Saïd with nothing to do and nowhere to go. A friend of theirs is lying in hospital in a coma after the police beat him the night before. It’s going to be a long day, and the three of them will make the most of every hour. — Best Director | Cannes Film Festival | 1995 Best Film | César Awards | 1996 Best European Film | European Film Awards | 1996

Godard shot it in twenty-three days, writing each morning’s dialogue in a notebook nobody was allowed to read, while his cameraman filmed the streets from inside a postal cart with a hole cut for the lens. Cinema had rules before it, and possibilities after. Belmondo, Seberg and anarchy on film. — After killing a policeman on a country road, Michel heads for Paris, where he looks up Patricia, an American who sells newspapers on the Champs-Élysées, and tries to persuade her to go to Italy with him. Patricia can’t make up her mind. Meanwhile, the police are closing in. — Best Director | Berlin International Film Festival | 1960 Nomination for Best Foreign Actress (Jean Seberg) | BAFTA Awards | 1960