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Inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear and a 16th-century Japanese myth, Ran is Kurosawa's last major cinematic epic, for which he received his only nomination for the Best Director Oscar. It is considered one of the greatest films of all time.

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At the age of seventy, after years of consolidating his empire, the Grand Lord decides to abdicate and divide his realm among his three sons. Taro, the eldest, will rule. Jiro, his second son, and Saburo will take over the command of the Second and Third Castles, but given their obedience and support to their older brother. Saburo breaks his promise of obedience and is exiled.

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Best Costume Design | Oscars | 1986
Nomination for Best Director | Oscars | 1986
Best Foreign Language Film | BAFTA | 1987
OCIC Award for Best Director | San Sebastian Film Festival | 1985

Iconic film noir, a reference point in the history of cinema to this day. Set in post-war Vienna, with an ever-increasing mystery, and featuring Orson Welles in an unforgettable appearance.

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A writer of popular western novels arrives in ruined Vienna after the end of World War II, at the invitation of an old friend, Harry Lime. But when he gets there, an unpleasant surprise awaits him: Lime has already died in a car accident. And as he prepares to fly back to America, he begins to suspect that Harry's death might not have been such an accident after all. Was there a "third man" at the scene of the accident?

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Best Cinematography | Oscars | 1951
Best British Film | BAFTA | 1950
Grand Jury Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 1949

The Third Man

Andrzej Zulawski's great and stormy film, an unforgettable memory from the European cinema of the 70s that gave Romy Schneider the opportunity to face a very demanding role, delivering a sensational performance.

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A photographer meets Nadine, a second-rate actress who stars in cheap soft porn movies. Wanting to help her, he borrows a substantial sum from a loan shark to finance the play "Richard III" in which he will finally give Nadine a role worthy of her talent. The latter is in a dilemma between the photographer she loves very much and her husband who has helped her in the past.

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Best Actress (Romy Schneider) | César Awards | 1976

That Most Important Thing: Love

Can happiness be shared by three? FrancoisTruffault uninhibitedly recounts the anarchist, unconventional relationship of one of the most emblematic love triangles in cinema history, in an archetypal Nouvelle Vague creation starring the magnificent Jeanne Moreau.

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Paris, 1914. Two friends, Jules, a shy Austrian writer and French intellectual Jim meet Catherine, a passionate and beautiful woman, the textbook definition of a "free spirit". In the midst of World War I, a love triangle blossoms between them, simultaneously wonderful and tragic. The triangle will break up and Jules and Catherine will marry and have a daughter. For a while, they will all remain friends; but balance seems unattainable.

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Best Director | Mar del Plata Film Festival | 1962

Jules and Jim

Truffaut's last film pays tribute to the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, which the French director adored. Pairing it with the conventions of film noir, he produces a delightfully cinephile union.

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Based on Charles Williams' "The Long Saturday Night", the film takes place over a few days in a small town in southern France. The manager of a real estate agency is a suspect for the double murder of his wife and her lover. Faced with evidence against him as well as the charge of a third murder, the man escapes. Meanwhile, his secretary, conducting her own research to uncover the truth, gets entangled in difficult situations.

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Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | BAFTA Awards | 1984

Confidentially Yours - Finally Sunday!

The Birkin VS the Varda family, literally. The French director reflects on a taboo subject in an incredibly paradoxical manner and presents her version of what ideal love might be; rather impossible.

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At her daughter's party, a mother meets one of the girl’s 14-year-old classmates; he is drunk and she helps him get sober. The woman and the teenager start looking for opportunities to meet, which initially means going to arcades with his favorite game, Kung Fu Master. Gradually, however, the relationship turns romantic and their encounters more and more careless, until her daughter sees them kissing. Where will all this lead?

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Official Selection | Berlin International Film Festival | 1988

Kung-fu Master!

The eternal youngster of our cinematic memories, our old friend, has turned into an (almost) ordinary adult who doesn’t know exactly how to grow up, and a frothy, occasionally funny, bittersweet melancholy washes over us.

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The fourth Truffaut film with Antoine Doinel ("The 400 Blows" ) as its hero. Married to the wonderful Christine, expecting his first child and still struggling to find stable employment, Antoine starts a relationship with a beautiful Japanese woman that threatens to ruin his marriage.

Bed & Board 

Through glimpses into the past and stories of people who came across her path, Agnes Varda forms the portrait of a life lost, supported by a hauntingly raw performance by Sandrine Bonnaire.

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The film begins with a young woman’s misshapen dead body lying in a ditch. An invisible journalist points his camera at the last men who saw her and the one who found her. In flashbacks, we see her hanging out with homeless people, with a worker from Tunisia, a professor studying trees and a girl who envies her unfettered existence. The woman used to work in an office, but decided to leave her "normal" life behind and become a wanderer.

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Official Selection | Venice Film Festival | 1985
FIPRESCI Prize | Venice Film Festival | 1985 
OCIC Award | Venice Film Festival | 1985

Vagabond

Truffaut created a film that wasn’t just a breakthrough in the context of the Nouvelle Vague, but a real milestone in the history of cinema. It explores the cruelty of youth and administers “blows” of pure cinema exhilaration that leave you wanting more.

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We meet Antoine Doinel for the first time, an unruly boy growing up in Paris in 1950, playing truant and stealing. His teacher torments him and his family doesn’t understand him. After getting arrested, he spends a night in a cell. The court decides to send him to a juvenile reformatory, where a psychologist assesses the reasons why he is unhappy. One day, during football practice, Antoine escapes by jumping over the fence; he runs to the ocean, a place he always wanted to visit.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 1959
Best Director | Cannes Film Festival | 1959
OCIC Award | Cannes Film Festival | 1959

The 400 Blows

"Stolen Kisses" is one of Antoine Doinel's chapters in adultness. Unbelievably charming, full of inspired cinematic references, tender and funny, this movie is a hymn to the love affairs that elate and destroy us.

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1968. Antoine has been discharged from the army and lives in Paris. He tries to get used to adulthood but is not managing very well, neither in his professional life nor in his romantic relationships. He is hired as a private detective. He attempts to reconnect with his former girlfriend Christine, yet at the same time falls in love with the older wife of a shoe dealer.

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Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 1969

Stolen Kisses

Varda insisted she had only seen a handful of films before making her first movie, but both the film critics and her future peers were stunned when they watched one of the most mature and sophisticated debuts in French film history.

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A man arrives at a train station to meet his wife. After 4 years of marriage, the couple has problems, but they decide they belong together. When they return to Paris, she is armed with a better understanding of her husband after having visited the area where he grew up. It’s a place of poor and proud people. Fishermen gather shellfish from a bacteria-laden lagoon. A toddler dies from an unidentified disease. A young man is allowed to flirt with a neighbor's daughter after winning a tournament.

La Pointe Courte

A directorial triumph, each scene carefully thought out and crafted with Hitchcockian meticulousness. Truffaut proves (yet again) his artistic inventiveness in this strong erotic drama.

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A well-known writer and literary magazine contributor is on a plane to Portugal, where he encounters a beautiful air hostess. When they coincidentally meet again at the hotel they are staying at, an amorous relationship begins, even though he is married. The couple meets secretly as often as possible, but the author's wife suspects something is amiss.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 1964

The Soft Skin

Is happiness cumulative? Shortly before the May ‘68 riots, Agnes Varda -in a masterpiece replete with colors, movement, glances and the looming presence of death- explores the possibilities of romantic threesomes.

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A young carpenter lives a comfortable, tranquil life, married to a lovely wife with whom he shares two wonderful children. Although their marriage is a happy one, he initiates an extramarital affair with a woman he meets on a business trip. When his wife observes that he is unusually joyful, he, unable to lie to her, reveals his infidelity, but says that nothing has changed between them.

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Special Prize of the Jury | Berlin International Film Festival | 1965

Le Bonheur

With a blend of harsh realism and aching humanity, Héctor Babenco’s fully restored by Film Foundation "Pixote" offers an electrifying look at youth fighting to survive on the bottom rung of Brazilian society in the 80s.

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The life of a boy on the streets of Sao Paulo who, after escaping a nightmarish reformatory, will resort to a life of violent crime, even as he forms a makeshift family with some fellow outcasts.

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Special Jury Prize | Locarno Film Festival | 1981
Honourable Mention | San Sebastian Film Festival | 1981
Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film | Golden Globes | 1982

Pixote

"Like opening a door to another dimension". This is how Sergei Parajanov's legendary film was described by Martin Scorsese, whose Film Foundation oversaw the restoration of this unique cinematic treasure, which almost magically transforms the poetry of words into a poetry of images.

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The life of the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova, from childhood to death. His spiritual journey, artistic endeavors, and inner conflicts within the cultural and historical context of 18th century Armenia.

The Color of Pomegranates

Golden Palm winner in Cannes in 1975 for an epic and meticulous account of the Algerian war starring our own Yorgo Voyagis, presented here restored with the conrtibution of Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation.

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A meticulous chronicle of the development of the Algerian nationalist movement from 1939 until the start of the revolution on 1 November 1954. Ahmed gradually awakens to political consciousness against colonization, under the gaze of his son, symbol of the new Algeria.

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Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 1975

Chronicle of the Years of Fire

Valuable both cinematically and culturally, the Film Foundation's restored print of this landmark African cinema film is a must-watch, a haunting yet liberatingly decolonized look at the oppression of black people.

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Diouana is a young Senegalese woman living in a poor village near Dakar hoping to find a job. Soon, she starts working for a French family who suggests she join them in Antibes to look after their children. But Diouana soon realizes that her boss has brought her only to serve them, without any respite.

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Best French Film | Jean Vigo Prize | 1966

Black Girl

The Film Foundation sends us on a journey into the depths of Kerala, restoring the mystical film by Aravindan Govindan, who glorified the local tradition of India's southern region, but remained largely unknown outside of his homeland.

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A magician called Kummatty comes to entertain a group of village children with dancing, singing and magic tricks. In one such game, he changes the children into animals. One boy, changed into a dog, is chased away and misses the moment when the magician breaks the spell restoring the children to their human form. The dog-boy has to wait until Kummatty returns.

Kummatty

This is where Roy Anderson's cinematic universe is born. In his 1970 debut, the surrealist auteur, influenced by the Czech New Wave, tells the love story of two teenagers and the reaction of the people around them. Multi-award-winning and a must-see for any fan of the director.

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Two teenagers meet and reluctantly fall in love in a beautiful setting during an idyllic Swedish summer. Ignoring social confines, they innocently create their own environment in contrast to the distorted relationships, frustration and fatigue of adult life around them.

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Interfilm Award | Berlin Film Festival | 1970
Journalists' Award | Berlin Film Festival | 1970

A Swedish Love Story

A prominent moment in Mike Leigh's filmography, who records daily life with unique sensitivity, as defined by the invisible camera and his original characters that are searching for the truth of life through secrets and lies. Awarded in Cannes,1996, with Palme d'Or and two more awards.

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After the death of her wealthy adoptive parents, a young black ophthalmologist searches for and finds her natural mother, a poor white worker from east London, setting off a series of confessions.

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Best Actress (Brenda Blethyn) | Cannes Film Festival | 1996
Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 1996
Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture (Brenda Blethyn) | Golden Globes | 1997
Nominated for Best Picture | Oscars | 1997
Nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Brenda Blethyn) | Oscars | 1997
Nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) | Oscars | 1997
Nominated for Best Director | Oscars | 1997
Nominated for Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 1997
Nominated for Best Motion Picture - Drama | Golden Globes | 1997
Nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) | Golden Globes | 1997

Secrets & Lies

An absurdist comedy with intertwining story lines played out over several time frames, all linked by an 18th century chinaware set and a 19th century portrait. Iosselliani, one of the most criminally overlooked filmmakers nowadays, has constructed an intricate and surreal episodic Rubik's cube.

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Jewelry, porcelain, paintings... all lovingly created, then sold, given as gifts, destroyed, stolen, resold. Both good and bad deeds pass them from hand to hand; others link people together. The objects fly about and feelings do too.

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Grand Jury Prize | Venice Film Festival | 1984
OCIC Award | Venice Film Festival | 1984

Favourites of the Moon

An example of passion at its fullest as we know it in the French cinema, through an emotional torrent that was awarded with the Film Director Award at Cannes for Andre Techine and turned Juliette Binoche into a star overnight.

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A young girl arrives in Paris determined to become an actress and experience love. Her path in life and art will be stormy and completely different from what she imagined at the beginning.

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Best Director | Cannes Film Festival | 1985

Rendez-vous

Somewhere between mainstream and Festival-awarded cinema, the ever-unexpected Olivier Assayas ("Personal Shopper") directs Maggie Cheung as a fictional version of herself, in a delightful satire of French cinematography and a bold mix of genres that resists every convention and categorization.

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Director Rene Vidal's career is already in decline when he decides to shoot a remake of "Les Vampires". For the lead role of Irma Veep (which is an anagram of the word “vampire”) he hires the Hong Kong based actress Maggie Cheung who does not speak French at all. In the chaotic set, Maggie, who wears a latex suit similar to Katwoman's, is faced with conspiracy, supernatural egos and erotic downfalls. The project is one step away from complete chaos.

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KNF Award | Rotterdam International Film Festival | 1997

Irma Vep

The great Claire Denis's first feature film remains the best cinematic capture of the vastness and warmth of the African continent, reflected through the end of colonialism and the fragmentation of memory.

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A French woman returns to her ancestral home in Cameroon, the first colonial plantation, and there she remembers her childhood, with an emphasis on her unexpected relationship with a black servant.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 1988

Chocolate

The great David Lynch's first feature film, a black and white legend that has rightly remained for decades an enigmatic cinematic nightmare that happily eludes any logical explanation.

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A man in a post-apocalyptic industrial city. His perpetually angry girlfriend. Their horribly deformed baby who keeps screaming. The insanity within a black and white nightmarish space begins.