398. Rome, Open City
Rome Open City began filming as Auschwitz was liberated and Roberto Rossellini’s film marks a crucial step in the creation of art in the wake of the Holocaust.
Rome Open City began filming as Auschwitz was liberated and Roberto Rossellini’s film marks a crucial step in the creation of art in the wake of the Holocaust.
Like many Fellini films, Amarcord is a contradiction; an account of his youth yet a complete fabrication, a vivid realisation of the past, but also a dream.
The Palme d’Or winner in 1949, Carol Reed’s masterpiece drew on covert sources and unexpected styles and techniques to deliver a melancholic mystery.
Master auteur, Abbas Kiarostami forged his career by defying conventional film grammar to successfully find new ways of presenting the human condition.
Matteo Garrone’s adaptation of Roberto Saviano’s book on the Neapolitan camorra smacks down the innumerable movies that have marketed the Mafia mythology.
Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning divorce drama delivers a story that is specific to a particular time and place yet also manages to resonate on a universal level.
This 60s’ American classic mixes avant-garde with mythology to examine male identity, intimacy, sexuality and trauma.
Cristian Mungiu won the Palme d’Or for his unflinching drama about a single day in the lives of two young women.
Widely regarded as the greatest war picture ever made, Elem Klimov’s Come and See takes its title from The Book of Revelations to deliver a vision of hell.
Alfonso Cuarón has long flirted with the neorealist style. His latest masterpiece, Roma illustrates cinema is not about what you show, but how you show it.
Pather Panchali translates into English as Song of the Road, but the production was so arduous and fortuitous it should be called Song of Miracles.
This drug fuelled tale of two youths and an older woman in search of a mythical beach is really about social connectivity.
The impact of Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece is so great that it extends far beyond cinema and into terrorist organisations, as well as the US Pentagon.
All boring films are alike; every great film is great in its own way. Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk belongs not just to the latter but amongst the greatest ever made.
Adapted from Paolo Lin’s non-fiction novel, director Fernando Meirelles cast non-actors to capture life, death and everything in-between in Rio’s favelas.
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