Social Issues

Operating in a similarly detached universe as the one of "Dogtooth", Yiorgos Lanthimos adds a bit more pop, to create a mind game with intertextual references and painful truths about dealing with death, and about fortifying oneself behind all sorts of roles.

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A nurse, a paramedic, a gymnastics athlete and her coach have formed a team. They are hired by friends and relatives of dead people, in order to "replace" them. The team is called the Alps and the paramedic is the leader. The members of the group are obliged to operate according to a set of rules that he has created, but the nurse doesn’t cooperate.

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Best Screenplay | Venice Film Festival | 2011
Sydney Film Prize | Sydney Film Festival | 2012
Special Mention | Sofia International Film Festival | 2012

Alps

Normal

Helen is going through a difficult period, and no one seems to understand her. She tries to continue her life as usual, without changing her routine. Her relationship with her daughter brings her comfort. Those around her try to help, but she refuses to listen. One encounter will force her to face her greatest fear. But how do you live when you lose the most important part of your life?

Still Here

A film likely to be remembered for McConaughey’s dramatic weight loss, rather than for the Oscar he was awarded for his spectacular performance. An unforgettable experience, both tragic and funny, about the invincible hope that sometimes survives even the profoundest darkness.

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A Texan electrician and rodeo cowboy lives a life of pleasure without worrying about the next day. When he’s diagnosed with HIV, he’s not willing to bow to the death sentence. He soon discovers a lack of certified medicines and treatments for the virus in the USA and so travels to Mexico, where he meets a fellow HIV-positive transsexual. They set up a club where HIV-positive people have access to drugs via monthly subscription. Ron fights for acceptance, his new friends and the time he has left.

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Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Matthew McConaughey) | Oscars | 2014
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Jared Leto) | Oscars | 2014
Best Film | San Sebastián Film Festival | 2013

Dallas Buyers Club

Six men are playing a game on a yacht. The winner will be declared "the best" of them all. Written by Efthymis Filippou (partially responsible for the inimitable Lanthimos universe), this peculiar dark comedy was indeed the winner at the London Film Festival, where it snagged the Best Film Award.

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A group of men returns from a winter fishing trip on a yacht. When engine trouble keeps them stuck onboard somewhere in the Saronic Gulf, they kill time by playing an impromptu game called Chevalier. Chevalier is both amusing and intensely competitive. No one disembarks until there’s a winner.

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Best Film	| London Film Festival | 2015
Audience Award - Greek Section| Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2015
Special Jury Mention | Sarajevo Film Festival | 2015

Chevalier 

Different worlds intersect here, separated by geographical, ideological, agonizing chasms. Romance can’t survive the monster of racism and kindness is distorted through the lens of daily suffering, in one of the strongest Greek films of recent years.

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Four people unexpectedly meet at Amerikis Square in Athens. Two childhood friends have diametrically opposed personalities. One hates the immigrants in his neighborhood. The second, a rock n’ roll 40-year-old, merely observes the changes until a love story shakes his world. An African singer, indebted to the mob, wants to cover up a tattoo; the chemistry between them is instantaneous. Meanwhile, a desperate Syrian refugee is trying to leave the country with his young daughter.

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FIPRESCI Prize - Greek Section | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 2016

Amerika Square

normal

Ruben Östlund's first feature film showed the first solid signs of the talent of the later double Cannes winner, who defies the rules of traditional film narrative with a pseudo-documentary, hailed by international critics as an "art-house version of Jackass and Candid Camera".

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The everyday life of a group of lonely, unconventional people in modern Sweden: a boy who composes punk songs, a neurotic woman on the verge of self-destruction, men who play with their guns.

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FIPRESCI Prize | Moscow Film Festival | 2005

The Guitar Mongoloid

Role-playing games and amateur children gangs in Gothenburg, in a cold but impressive observation of violent human behavior, which emerged from the director's extensive research into real incidents of organized bullying and his personal interviews with victims and perpetrators.

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In central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of 12 to 14 year old boys committed about 40 robberies against other children between 2006 and 2008. The robbers used an elaborate plan called the "little brother trick", which involved advanced role-playing and gang rhetoric instead of physical violence.

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Official Selection DIrector's Fortnight | Cannes Film Festival | 2011

Play

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

A film about personal fears and inner demons, under the pressure of society. Through five small, separate episodes of everyday disaster, Ruben Östlund's perceptive eye observes the suffocating bonds in a middle class on the brink of change. Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard.

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A coach driver on his customary rest stop, discovers that someone has damaged the curtain in the coach's toilet, and decides that no passenger will leave until the culprit decides to confess. 30-year-old Leif and his friends pull a prank that for some seems to cross all limits. Two teenage girls pose in front of their camera. A boy's parents arrange to set off fireworks for his birthday. When a firework doesn't go off properly, the host gets injured, but doesn't tell anyone for fear of spoiling the fun. When a teacher learns that a colleague hit a student, she uses a classroom psychological experiment to uncover the truth. What connects all these faces and all these stories? The pressure of society as a whole, against personal fears.

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Official Selection Un Certain Regard | Cannes Film Festival | 2008
Audience Award | Stockholm Film Festival | 2008
FIPRESCI Prize | Palm Springs Film Festival | 2010
Best Director Award | Geneva Film Festival | 2008

Involuntary

A romantic comedy unlike any other you’ve ever seen. The great Claire Denis directs Juliette Binoche in a one-woman-show, in the role of a divorced artist decisively looking for true love.

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A divorced Parisian artist hasn’t given up on the idea of finding true love. Even though the gap between what she wants and the actual men who show up in her life keeps growing, they all have something unique, even if it's not what she's looking for. Hope, expectations and disappointment come and go, but despite various misfortunes, her efforts continue.

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SACD Prize- Directors' Fortnight | Cannes Film Festival | 2017

Let the Sunshine in

This is the kind of film everyone needs to watch, urgently. Francois Ozon’s detailed story, seen through a perceptive, sober lens, handles true information about pedophilia in the Catholic Church and raises questions of faith and morality.

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A man lives in Lyon with his wife and children. One day he learns by chance that the priest who molested him when he was a boy still works with children. He decides to take action, along with two other victims of the priest. The three of them unite to "lift the veil of silence" around their suffering, but the consequences will be grave for everyone.

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Grand Jury Prize | Berlin International Film Festival | 2019
FIPRESCI Prize | Stockholm Film Festival | 2019

By the Grace of God

Haneke, the constant provocateur, has some fun with the demise of the traditional upper-class family as we know it, using murder as the only point of connection in the unbridgeable generation gap, in a perversely ironic best-of that winks at the whole of his oeuvre.

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There’s nothing "happy" about the life of this family. The eldest daughter has taken over the family business from her father because of his advanced age. She has to deal with the potentially catastrophic consequences of a work accident at one of the company's construction sites. At the same time, her brother takes custody of his teenage daughter after the mysterious poisoning of his ex-wife. He too is hiding secrets, which could endanger his second marriage.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2017

Happy End

In this hard-hitting, fiercely anti-Nazi film by Fatih Akin, Diane Kruger stars (and wins big at Cannes) as a woman who loses everything, is betrayed by the system and decides to take revenge. Akin also casts, in a surprising role, the acclaimed director Yannis Economides!

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A woman's life collapses when her Kurdish-born husband and their young son are killed in a bombing. With the help of friends and relatives, she barely manages to endure, but the search for the culprits and the motives behind the tragedy keeps her up at night. Her husband's lawyer and best friend represents her in the trial against two suspects: a young couple in neo-Nazi circles. The court's ruling will drive her over the edge.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2017
Best Actress (Diane Kruger) | Cannes Film Festival | 2017
Best Foreign Language Picture | Golden Globes | | 2018

In the Fade

Aki Kaurismaki at his best and more political than ever. He left Cannes loaded with awards (and a few beers). Always a minimalist, always a sentimentalist, with a surefire weapon to conquer his melancholia: his unwavering tenderness towards people.

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A bohemian middle-aged guy who once aspired to be a writer in Paris now lives in the port city of Havre. His life is divided between his work as a shoe-shiner, his frequent visits to his favourite bar and the care of his gravely ill wife. A chance encounter with an underage immigrant from Africa, hunted by the police, will bring out our hero’s innate optimism and his trust in the kindness of strangers. He will try to help the boy, even if he has to suffer the consequences.

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FIPRESCI Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2011
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury - Special Mention | Cannes Film Festival | 2011

Le Havre

Roy Andersson's masterpiece, awarded with a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, takes us into the Swedish director's unique world, on an existential journey of life and death while showing us the humorous and simultaneously tragic nature of our own existence.

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Three encounters with death: a man dies of a heart attack while trying to open a bottle of wine. An elderly woman holds a bag full of jewels on her deathbed. A traveler lies dead in the ferry's café after just paying for his meal. At the same time, like the modern Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, a pair of hapless novelty salesmen trading unusual "toys", take us on a kaleidoscopic wanderlust of human destiny.

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Golden Lion | Venice Film Festival | 2014

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

The Oscar nomination for Best International Film and the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2022 are just two of the multiple awards won by the second film by Belgian Lukas Dhont, who, after "Girl", composes a fragile, sensitive and sublimely moving ode to loss and diversity.

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The very strong friendship of two thirteen-year-old boys is abruptly interrupted when they become the object of ridicule from their classmates. After a tragic event that will shock everyone, healing the wounds will become a slow and painful process towards acceptance.

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Nomination for Best International Film | Oscars | 2023
Grand Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2022
Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film | Golden Globes | 2023

Close

At first, he didn't bother anyone... The director of "The Women of the 6th Floor" delivers an exemplary thriller of chilling social implications, with the riveting François Clouzet ("The Untouchables") opposite Jeremy Renier and Berenice Bejo.

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Simon and Hélène decide to sell a basement in the building where they live. A former history professor with a troubled past buys it and moves in without notice. Little by little, his presence will upset the couple's life.

The Man in the Basement

Abdellatif Kechiche’s Palme d’Or winning magnum opus portrays the love story of two girls and is an ambitious emotional journey to desire, co-dependence, loss and growth. It’s a valuable life lesson, both heartrending and tender.

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15-year-old Adele dreams of romance and starts exploring her sexuality. Her relationship with a boy in her class is over before it even begins, not having produced the allure and erotic tension she craves. Her life turns upside down when she meets a girl with blue hair. Together they experience an intense relationship, full of erotic passion and love. She helps Adele discover sexual desire and pleasure and also figure out who she is as an adult woman.

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Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 2013
FIPRESCI Prize | San Sebastián International Film Festival | 2013

Blue is the Warmest Color

A perfect example of entertaining and, at the same time, political cinema, that highlights issues of solidarity and activism, in the footsteps of "The Full Monty", a proud example of the proverbial ability of the British to manage bittersweet stories.

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A group of London activists made up of gay men and women arrives in a small Welsh town where they will be joined by a handful of striking miners and their families, who stubbornly resist the neoliberal Thatcher policy of that time.

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Queer Palm | Cannes Film Festival | 2014
Nominated for Golden Globe | Golden Globes | 2015
Outstanding British Film | BAFTA Awards | 2015

Pride

Faithful to his deeply political and human-centered cinema, Ken Loach captures, with his characteristic moral clarity, a world struggling to rediscover the meaning of solidarity.

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In a declining British town, where the mines have fallen silent and hope has run dry, a local pub remains as the last refuge - a gathering place, a lingering trace of community. When refugees from Syria arrive, the already wounded town is tested by fear, poverty, and suspicion.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2023
Nominated for Outstanding British Film of the Year | BAFTA Awards | 2024

The Old Oak

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.

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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.

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Best Film | Oscars | 2017
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Mahershala Ali) | Oscars | 2017
Best Adapted Screenplay | Oscars | 2017

Moonlight

A tender and sweeping story about people's roots, one of the most visually beautiful family dramas in recent American cinema. Nominated for 6 Oscars and winning Best Supporting Actress for the incredible "grandmother" Youn Yu-jung.

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A Korean-American family moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home is completely changed after the arrival of a sly, delightfully brash, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, the heroes will discover what resilience means and how the concept of family is truly defined.

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Best Supporting Actress (Youn Yuh-jung) | Oscars | 2021
Best Supporting Actress (Youn Yuh-jung) | BAFTA | 2021
Best Foreign Language Film | Golden Globes | 2021
Audience Award | Sundance Film Festival | 2020
Jury Prize | Sundance Film Festival |2020

Minari

A social comedy full of wit, emotion, and timely reflections from the directing duo behind the global hit The Intouchables. Set against a backdrop of social inequality and the power of human connection, the film blends humor and heartfelt emotion in a deeply disarming way.

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Two small-time con artists, Albert and Bruno, are drowning in debt. While seeking help from community workers to get their lives back on track, they stumble upon a group of young climate activists fighting for the planet. Tempted more by the free beer and snacks than by the cause itself, the two men join the movement for entirely selfish reasons. What’s the worst that could happen?

A Difficult Year

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

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