Smiles of a Summer Night

Andrew Bujalski serves up a big-hearted comedy with his day-in-the-life look at Double Whammies – a Hooters-style bar and its tight-knit, all-female staff.

The first man in Poland to receive a full face transplant achieves national notoriety, but struggles with his own identity in this ingenious tragicomedy.

An 18th-century Bavarian community falls apart when the local glassmaker dies, in Werner Herzog's mesmerising drama for which he famously directed his actors under hypnosis.

Ozu's comic pre-war feature about a professor who falls into the clutches of his audacious niece.

Ozu’s long-term collaborator Kogo Noda scripts a subtle shift from light to dark as Hirano’s carefree college life is marred by tragedy.

Graduate Okajima finds his old-fashioned beard makes life difficult in Ozu's comedy exploring the tension between tradition and modernity.

A fixture in the critical canon almost since its premiere, Eisenstein’s film about a 1905 naval mutiny was revolutionary in both form and content.

The first sound-film by one of the greatest of all filmmakers, Carl Theodor Dreyer, is akin to a waking-dream; guiding the viewer on a trance-like journey between reality and the supernatural.

Waterway hi jinks abound in this Buster Keaton classic, in which he plays the reluctant heir to his father's paddle steamer business.

A group of weary travellers arrive at a spooky mansion with a madman on the loose, in this classic horror-comedy from James Whale (Bride of Frankenstein)

Věra Chytilová's 'fictionalised documentary' uses non-actors to portray girls' lives in the cotton mills of Náchod.

Simmering tensions between locals and newcomers in a modern-day Cornish fishing village reach boiling point in this hugely acclaimed British independent film.

Ingmar Bergman’s intriguing directorial debut, in which a young woman is torn between the traditional rural life of her family and the bright lights of the big city.

Victor Sjöström (the great director later cast in Wild Strawberries) plays a conductor overseeing the tempestuous relationship between two violinists under his tutelage, in this early romance from Ingmar Bergman.

Arguably the most acclaimed of Bergman's early films, this charts the unsteady relationship between a girl bruised by her parents’ unhappy marriage and a sailor tired of years at sea.

Koreeda's lyrical fantasy challenges the viewer to reflect on the experiences that most make life worth living.

Koreeda’s first fiction feature is an exquisite meditation on loss, loneliness, uncertainty, and coming to terms with the past.

The on and off-screen character of Toshiro Mifune, Japan’s first international movie star, is explored in this illuminating documentary exploring the life and legacy of this mercurial icon.

Mikhail Kalatozov’s epic about the Cuban Revolution is breathtaking both for its scope and the audacity.

Koreeda’s subtle, moving account of the tensions within a family is his most Ozu-like film.

Koreeda’s drama about four children left to fend for themselves is a heartbreaking study of childhood neglect.