Hayao Miyazaki picked a Dutch animator who had never directed a feature to make Studio Ghibli’s first film outside Japan, and it was Oscar-nominated. It’s almost wordless and dazzling to look at, the story of one man alone with nature and a red turtle that won’t let him go. — A castaway washes up on a beautiful desert island where the only other inhabitants are birds, reptiles and crabs. Every time he tries to escape on a raft, a red turtle stops him. Then the animal turns into a woman, and a feeling neither of them saw coming begins to grow between them. — Nominated for Best Animated Feature | Oscars | 2017 Audience Award | Athens International Film Festival | 2016 Special Mention | Athens International Film Festival | 2016 Special Jury Prize - Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2016

Irresistibly humane and emotionally disarming, hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, this is the film that firmly placed Maren Ade among the elite of world cinema. A cinematic experience that feels like a hearty embrace. — A father who delights in pranks tries to get close to his daughter by sneaking into her life, business meetings and nights out. Annoyed, she asks him to stop, but then Toni Erdmann shows up. Her father's alter ego, a peculiar guy in an ugly suit, a terrible wig and an even worse pair of teeth. Oddly enough, the more eccentric he becomes, the more his daughter seems to respond. — Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2017 FIPRESCI Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2016 FIPRESCI Prize | San Sebastián Film Festival | 2016

An Oscar triumph that will be remembered as one of the most eventful wins in history. A black boy grows up and discovers his sexuality through three decisive stages of his life. Academy Awards for Best Picture and Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali and a watershed moment for American indie cinema. — A timeless story of human connection and reconciliation with oneself, "Moonlight" tells the story of a man's life, beginning in childhood and through adulthood, as he struggles to find his place in the world. A vital portrait of the life of a contemporary African American man and a poetic reflection on identity, family, friendship and love, full of deep compassion and universal truths. — Best Film | Oscars | 2017 Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Mahershala Ali) | Oscars | 2017 Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 2017

What's the flip side of the Disney dream? Next to the dreamy Florida Disneyworld, children build their own dominions and struggle to survive. Little chunks of life, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, in a colorful paradigm of contemporary neorealist cinema. — This is the story of a wild 6-year-old and her fearless friends. Their summer is full of wonders, bewilderment and exciting adventures, while the adults around them have to face a harsh reality. — Nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Willem Dafoe) | Oscars | 2018

The great Andrey Zvyagintsev stages the disappearance of a young boy and gradually and masterfully orchestrates a cinematic requiem about the dissolution of family ties, the absence of love and the deathly apathy of a slowly dying Russia. — A couple splits up and their divorce is full of disappointment, bitterness and insults. Having already found new partners, the ex-spouses cannot wait to turn the page and start their new lives. Even if that means abandoning their 12-year-old son. — Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2018 Jury Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2017 Best Foreign Film | César Awards | 2018 Best Film | London Film Festival | 2017

Romeo and Juliette in Oceania. Τhe first film entirely shot in the Pacific island Vanuatu was awarded in the Venice Film Festival and nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar. A vibrant, wonderful crowd-pleaser from Australia. — Somewhere in the South Pacific, a young girl from one of the last traditional tribes in Tanna falls in love with the leader's grandson. While an interracial war begins and escalates, the couple attempts to escape in order to live in peace. Yet, they must choose between their powerful emotions and the future of their tribes. — Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2017 Special Jury Prize | London Film Festival | 2015 Best Cinematography | Venice Film Festival | 2015 International Critics' Week Award | Venice Film Festival | 2015

Truffaut has never been lighter or funnier than in this next chapter of Antoine Doinel’s life, which is indecently charming and packed with nods to other films. It sings the praises of love affairs, the kind that send you soaring and then smash you to pieces. — Antoine is fresh out of the army in 1968 Paris and finding grown-up life hard going, both at work and in love. He takes a job as a private detective and falls madly for an older woman, the wife of a shoe shop owner. Not that he’s quite let go of Christine, his old girlfriend. — Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 1969

Under the Occupation, every show had to end in time for the audience to catch the last metro before curfew. Truffaut pits artists against the Nazis as Catherine Deneuve keeps her theatre going while its Jewish director hides beneath the stage. The romance is straight out of “Casablanca”. — In Paris in 1942, a theatre in Montmartre casts a young man in the lead of its play, an actor who is also a member of the Resistance. His leading lady is the theatre’s owner, beautiful if not especially likeable, who is hiding her Jewish husband in the cellar beneath the stage. Opening night is a triumph, and then an antisemitic critic sets his sights on the show. — Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 1981 Best Film | César Awards | 1981 Best Cinematography | César Awards | 1981

In one of the most touching and emotionally rich films of the decade, time goes back and forth, mixing passion, misfortunes, love at first sight and unbearable sorrow, under the rousing sounds of bluegrass music. — Elise and Didier have shared 7 loving years, yet they miss their passionate beginnings, their early marriage and the happy days when Mabel first came into their lives. A complete cycle of happiness ends when Mabel is diagnosed with a serious illness. The sadness and fear for their young daughter inevitably takes them towards different directions. — Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2014 Audience Award | Panorama Berlin International Film Festival | 2013 Lux Prize | European Audience Awards | 2013 Best Screenplay | Tribeca Film Festival | 2013

Jep Gambardella turns sixty-five on a terrace overlooking the Colosseum, where the wild partying keeps running into an existential void. Sorrentino’s most Felliniesque tribute to Rome won him the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it’s all painful revelry and, well, great beauty. — In summertime Rome, Jep Gambardella is sixty-five and still the most wanted guest at every dinner and party in town, and the best of them are the ones he throws himself on his terrace overlooking the Colosseum. Back when he was a young journalist, he wrote one novel, which won a prize and earned him a name as an artist. He hasn’t written a word since. — Oscar Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2014

Doubly awarded at the Oscars for Best Screenplay and Best Actor (a brilliant Casey Affleck), "Manchester by the sea" is one of the most unforgettable family dramas of the last decade. Michelle Williams is also superb, in a heart-wrenching and soulful part. — A man returns to his small hometown. His brother has died and he has been awarded custody of his orphaned teenage nephew, something he is not sure he can handle. There, he will have to encounter his ex-wife after many years and relive the trauma of the horrifying events of his past. — Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Casey Affleck) | Oscars | 2017 Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 2017

You have forty-five days to find a partner, or you’ll be turned into the animal of your choice. It’s the first English-language film from Yórgos Lánthimos (“Poor Things”), Greece’s king of dark surrealism, with Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. Falling in love under those rules is asking for trouble. — In the near future, the City arrests anyone who is divorced, widowed or single and sends them to the Hotel, where they have 45 days to find a partner. Whoever runs out of time is turned into an animal of their own choosing and released into the Woods. One man escapes to the place where the Loners live, only to fall in love there, which the Loners forbid as well. — Nominated for Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 2017 Jury Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2015 Queer Palm - Special Mention | Cannes Film Festival | 2015

Paralysed for thirty years, Ramón Sampedro fought for decades for the right to die, and Javier Bardem plays him in a tour de force performed entirely from one bed. This true story won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and though it breaks your heart, it stays on the side of life to the end. — For thirty years the writer Ramón Sampedro has been paralysed, and the window of his room is his only view of the world. Gazing out of it, he pictures the sea he swam in before an accident left him unable to move. Now he wants a dignified death, and he takes his case to court with a lawyer fighting at his side. — Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2005 Grand Jury Prize | Venice Film Festival | 2004 Best Actor (Javier Bardem) | Venice Film Festival | 2004

Asghar Farhadi became famous around the world with this winner of the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, in which a divorce turns into a fight for self-determination in authoritarian, fundamentalist Iran. Rarely does a personal drama reveal this much about an entire country. — Simin wants to take the family out of Iran, but Nader won’t go because his father has Alzheimer’s, so she files for divorce and moves out, leaving their daughter Termeh with him. To look after the old man, Nader takes on Razieh, who is pregnant and has accepted the work without telling her husband. A single afternoon in the flat ends in disaster, and both families wind up in court. — Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2012 Golden Bear | Berlin International Film Festival | 2011 Prize of the Ecumenical Jury | Berlin International Film Festival | 2011 Best Actress | Berlin International Film Festival | 2011 Best Actor | Berlin International Film Festival | 2011

2019's documentary, a surprisingly photographed ode to Mother Nature and a way of life that's centuries old and gradually disappearing. It stood out among the other entries in its genre, being the only documentary to be nominated for an Oscar for Best International Film in history. — In a secluded mountainous region deep within the Balkans, Hatidze Muratova lives with her elderly mother, in a village without roads, electricity or running water. Last in a series of generations of beekeepers of wild honey, Hatidze produces small batches of pure product, which she sells to the nearest town, a four-hour walk away. — Nominated for Best Documentary | Oscars | 2020 Nominated for Best International Feature Film | Oscars | 2020 Best Documentary | Athens International Film Festival | 2019 Grand Jury Prize | Sundance Film Festival | 2019 Cinematography Award | Sundance Film Festival | 2019

Taking their deeply humane and political movies one step further, the Dardenne brothers cooperate with Marion Cotillard in this shocking travelogue of a woman who is trying to maintain her job and especially her dignity in the years of the economic crisis. — A young wife and mother works in a factory in a small Belgian town. In her absence, her colleagues realize that they can cover her shift with small overtimes and monetary bonuses. Her fate lies in the hands of 16 workers, whom she must convince to refuse monetary bonuses in order to keep her job. She enters a battle to save her seat, two days and one night, before the final vote. — Nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Marion Cotillard) | Oscars | 2015 Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2014 Best Film | Sydney Film Festival | 2014

Meryl Streep wins the 20th (!) Oscar nomination for the role of the discordant soprano singer, Florence Foster Jenkins, in a feelgood biographical comedy by the film director of “High Fidelity”, “The Queen” and “Dangerous Liaisons”. Starring with her, Hugh Grant. — The cosmic New Yorker Florence Foster Jenkins thinks she's the nightingale of the opera, when in fact she cannot sing at all. Her husband and agent, St. Claire Bayfield, a fallen English aristocrat and actor, sustains this illusion. When Florence decides to give a concert to the legendary Carnegie Hall in 1944, St. Claire realizes that he has to face the greatest challenge of his life. — Nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Meryl Streep) | Oscars | 2017 Nominated for Best Achievement in Costume Design | Oscars | 2017

Poetry in motion; the triumph of choreographed kinesiology that shaped the anarchic rules of the silent cinema in the best and purest full-length comedy of Chaplin's silent period. — An adventurer embarks on the great journey to Alaska, where he hopes to discover gold. There he will end up fighting for survival, getting involved in hilarious adventures and falling in love. — Nominated for Best Sound Recording | Oscars | 1943 Nominated for Best Music | Oscars | 1943

Chaplin had kept silent on screen for years, and the voice he finally found in 1940 was aimed squarely at Hitler. He made the most humane film of his career as a satire of a world with five more tragic years still ahead, and it ends by reminding us that we think too much and feel too little. — Adenoid Hynkel rules Tomania and means to rule a great deal more. A Jewish barber, meanwhile, comes back to the ghetto after twenty years in a military hospital, unaware that anything has changed, and when he reopens his shop he gets in the way of stormtroopers who have come to smash its window. Chaplin wrote, directed and plays both men, because the dictator and the barber have exactly the same face. — Nominated for Best Picture | Oscars | 1941 Nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Charles Chaplin) | Oscars | 1941 Nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jack Oakie) | Oscars | 1941 Nominated for Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 1941 Nominated for Best Original Score | Oscars | 1941

Charlie Chaplin plays an old clown trying to convince a young dancer that life is worth living, and for the only time he shares the screen with Buster Keaton. The film brought him his only competitive Oscar, though he had to wait twenty years for it. — Calvero was once the biggest comic in the English music hall, but by 1914 he’s a drunk nobody in London will hire. One evening he comes home to find his neighbour unconscious after trying to take her own life. Terry is a dancer, convinced that her legs are paralysed and her career is over, and getting her back on her feet gives Calvero back something he had lost as well: his sense of his own worth. — Best Original Music | Oscars | 1973

Innocence’s epilogue was brought upon by the war and the transformation of the once funny jester into a delightfully cynical figure was something that the world was not yet ready to digest. Although unfavourably acclaimed in its time, it’s now regarded, not unfairly, as his black masterpiece. — Inspired by notorious French serial killer Landru, Henri Verdoux lures wealthy women by promising them sweet happy-everafters. After the wedding bells chime, however, he murders them for their fortunes. In this particularly dark comedy, Chaplin questions our perception of evil: isn’t this refined criminal a mere amateur compared to weapons suppliers and dictators? We stand ready to condemn a murderer, but when war victims are counted in millions, we celebrate a hero! — Nominated for Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 1948

Delirium made at a time when silent cinema was perfected, just before its inglorious finale foreseen by Chaplin, who honors the genre along with all the kinds of physical comedy that had entertained generations of audiences and were about to give way to something new. — The Little Tramp is hired by a circus and soon becomes the main attraction when his comedic blunders drive the crowd wild. Having fallen in love with the ringmaster’s daughter, he doesn’t even realize he is the show’s main feature. In this high-flying comedy, we are quickly caught up in Chaplin’s whirlwind of gags, where even the acrobats and clowns watch his show-stopping stunts from the sidelines. — Honorary Award | Oscars | 1929

Another honest drama from the talented director Asghar Farhadi, awarded by the Academy with the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. A story so powerful that it touches your soul. — A couple is forced to leave their Tehran apartment, which is falling to pieces, and move into another one. While working together on the production of the play "Death of a Salesman", their relationship begins to change. — Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 2017 Best Actor (Shahab Hosseini) | Cannes Film Festival | 2016 Best Screenplay | Cannes Film Festival | 2016

Allison Janney won an Oscar as the mother of Tonya Harding, the skater America turned into a punchline, and Margot Robbie lands the triple axel. Everyone remembers Tonya’s controversial career differently, and they all tell their version straight to camera. — In Portland, Oregon, LaVona puts her little daughter, Tonya Harding, on the ice and drives her through gruelling training. Tonya grows into one of the best skaters in America, but the judges mark her down because of her image. Her husband regularly hits her, and she keeps going back to him. She becomes the first American woman to land a triple axel in competition, and a few years later a friend of her husband’s comes up with an idea about what to do with her rival. — Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Allison Janney) | Oscars | 2018 Nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Margot Robbie) | Oscars | 2018