In 1962 Hong Kong, neighbors Su Li-zhen (Mrs. Chan) and Chow Mo-wan (Mr. Chow) discover their spouses are having an affair. As they spend time together, they develop feelings for each other, but their relationship remains chaste and unspoken, reflecting societal constraints and their own moral compass.

A young Japanese singer is encouraged by her agent to quit singing and pursue an acting career, beginning with a role in a murder mystery TV show.

Our 11th October performance of Perfect Blue will be preceded by the European Premiere of brand-new short film, IDOLS.

Idols | South Korea, Japan, UK | 20 min.
Dir. by Matt Halsall

Kim Min-ha (Hojo Shin) has always dreamed of the spotlight. Now, nearing 30, she’s still chasing a K-pop debut while everyone else sees only her uncanny resemblance to superstar Park Hye-mi (Hojo Shin)—the woman she believes is living the life that should have been hers. 

Matt Halsall’s slick, darkly funny short turns that obsession into an increasingly unhinged psychological thriller. 

IDOLS made its world premiere at Fantasia before being selected for Sitges, Beyond Fest and Tokyo’s Yami International Film Festival.

Hatred breeds hatred...

24 hours in the lives of three young men in the French suburbs the day after a violent riot.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s visionary final film unfolds in the hours before a nuclear holocaust. Erland Josephson, in an award-winning role, plays retired actor Alexander who is celebrating his birthday with family and friends when a crackly TV announcement warns of an imminent nuclear catastrophe.

Alexander makes a promise to God that he will sacrifice all he holds dear, if the disaster can be averted. The next day dawns and, as if in a dream, everything is restored to normality. But Alexander must keep his vow.

Among many other awards, The Sacrifice won the Cannes Grand Prix in 1986, the same year that Tarkovsky died of cancer in Paris at the age of 54.

Legendary comedian and TV host turned director Takeshi Kitano writes, directs, and stars in his first and only American co-production. Disgraced yakuza Yamamoto (Kitano) seeks refuge in Los Angeles, reconnecting with his younger half-brother Ken (Claude Maki) after his clan suffered defeat at the hands of a rival gang back in Tokyo. Cool and detached, Brother marries Japanese and American disillusionment in Kitano’s signature violent minimalist style through the growing bonds between Yamamoto and the multinational gang that he cultivates in L.A. 

Brother is featured as part of Gangsters Have Feelings Too, a season exploring the sensitive gangster film. The season is presented with the National Film and Television School’s Film Studies, Programming and Curation MA.

Two teenagers share a profound, magical connection upon discovering they are swapping bodies. Things manage to become even more complicated when the boy and girl decide to meet in person.

Still censored in its own country, In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no corrida), by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, remains one of the most controversial films of all time. A graphic portrayal of insatiable sexual desire, Oshima’s film, set in 1936 and based on a true incident, depicts a man and a woman (Tatsuya Fuji and Eiko Matsuda) consumed by a transcendent, destructive love while living in an era of ever-escalating imperialism and governmental control. Less a work of pornography than of politics, In the Realm of the Senses is a brave, taboo-breaking milestone.

Content Warning: This film contains scenes of graphic sex and violence. Further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com, as well as through general internet searches.

Godzilla is the roaring granddaddy of all monster movies. It’s also a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attack and H-bomb testing in the Pacific. Its rampaging radioactive beast, the poignant embodiment of an entire population’s fears, became a beloved international icon of destruction, spawning almost thirty sequels.

While a married couple (Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg) is having sex, their infant son in a nearby room falls out a window to his death. She becomes distraught and is hospitalized, but her husband, who is a psychiatrist, attempts to treat her. Deciding that she needs to face her fears, he takes her to a cabin in the woods where she spent a previous summer with the boy. Once they are there, she becomes more unhinged and starts perpetrating sexual violence on her husband and herself.

Funeral Parade is proud to present An Actor’s Revenge, Kon Ichikawa’s melodrama about kabuki and vengeance.

Taking place during Japan’s Edo period, the story follows Yukitaro, a kabuki theatre performer, as he seeks revenge on the three criminals who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier. A renowned onnagata — a male actor who portrays female characters — Yukitaro is as bewitchingly androgynous as he is deadly with a sword. However, his plan to mete out retribution is complicated when he develops feelings for Namiji, the daughter of one of his foes. A stunningly beautiful tragedy with lush widescreen compositions, An Actor’s Revenge is both a classic of 1960s Japanese cinema and landmark example of on-screen gender fluidity.

With intro from curator Sarah Cleary.

23-year-old Amélie is lonely. After an isolating childhood, she moves to Paris and becomes a waitress at the Café des Deux Moulins, a bar restaurant filled with a colourful cast of diners and employees. One night, Amélie happens across a box of treasures hidden in her apartment, left by a little boy in the Fifties, that changes the course of her life. Henceforth, she dedicates herself to giving back to her community, tracking down the owner of these keepsakes, consoling a widowed neighbour and befriending a reclusive artist. When completing these good deeds, she crosses paths with Nino, a photobooth collagist who shares her oddball sensibilities. She quickly falls in love with him.  

Newly restored in 4K, DOGTOOTH follows a controlling, manipulative father who locks his three adult children in a state of perpetual childhood by keeping them prisoner within the sprawling family compound.

On the planet Ygam, the Draags, extremely technologically and spiritually advanced blue humanoids, consider the tiny Oms, human beings descendants of Terra's inhabitants, as ignorant animals. Those who live in slavery are treated as simple pets and used to entertain Draag children; those who live hidden in the hostile wilderness of the planet are periodically hunted and ruthlessly slaughtered as if they were vermin.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami’s _Taste of Cherry_ is an emotionally complex meditation on life and death. Middle-aged Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives through the hilly outskirts of Tehran—searching for someone to rescue or bury him.

Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.

Iconic and game-changing, AKIRA is the definitive anime masterpiece! Katsuhiro Otomo's landmark cyberpunk classic obliterated the boundaries of Japanese animation and forced the world to look into the future. AKIRA's arrival shattered traditional thinking, creating space for future generations of ground-breaking movies.

July, 1988 - World War III breaks loose. Then, in 2019, in megalopolis Tokyo...As the leader of a group of young robust delinquents, Kaneda spent his nights tearing through the urban wastes, racing his motorbike against rival groups. One night while riding with his gang, his friend Tetsuo suddenly encounters a strange boy - the product of human experimentation and is injured in the ensuing crash. Shortly thereafter, a military squadron appears on the scene to take the boy and Tetsuo away to an army research facility. Determined to free Tetsuo from capture, Kaneda sneaks into the army research lab. However, a regimen of extreme experimental procedures has awakened a new power in his friend, and now he is consumed by madness..

Every day, Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) buys a can of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1, symbolizing the day he'll get over his lost love. He's also got his eye on a mysterious woman in a blond wig (Brigitte Lin), oblivious of the fact she's a drug dealer. Cop 663 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) is distraught with heartbreak over a breakup. But when his ex drops a spare set of his keys at a local cafe, a waitress (Faye Wong) lets herself into his apartment and spruces up his life.

Discover the brilliance of this heartwarming coming-of-age classic from the legendary Studio Ghibli, creators of My Neighbour Totoro and the Academy Award®-winning Spirited Away.

A chance encounter with a mysterious cat sends Shizuku, a girl with her head in the clouds, on a quest for her true talent. Together with Seiji, a boy determined to follow his dreams, and enchanted by The Baron, an antique cat figurine who guides her to listen to the whispers of her heart, Shizuku embarks on a life-changing adventure that takes her beyond the boundaries of her imagination. Based on a screenplay and storyboards from Hayao Miyazaki, WHISPER OF THE HEART is a precious gem in the Studio Ghibli catalogue, directed by veteran animator Yoshifumi Kondo.

An assassin goes through obstacles as he attempts to escape his violent lifestyle despite the opposition of his partner, who is secretly attracted to him.

Dae-Su is an obnoxious drunk bailed from the police station yet again by a friend. However, he's abducted from the street and wakes up in a cell, where he remains for the next 15 years, drugged unconscious when human contact is unavoidable, otherwise with only the television as company. And then, suddenly released, he is invited to track down his jailor with a denouement that is simply stunning.

This widely acclaimed film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a stunning, senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko, in one of the screen’s most searing depictions of anguish since Renée Falconetti’s Joan of Arc) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camerawork and expressionistic sound design. Nearly suppressed by Soviet censors who took eight years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.

In a corrupt, greed-fueled world, a powerful alchemist leads a messianic character and seven materialistic figures to the Holy Mountain, where they hope to achieve enlightenment.

In an underwater city, a young girl takes care of a large egg she holds carefully in her arms. A boy with a gun arrives in search of a bird he saw in his dream. At first, it seems as if feelings of sympathy are developing between the two.

Forty years after the film’s original release, Anime Limited is proud to present an all-new 4K restoration of the film, supervised by director Mamoru Oshii, in cinemas nationwide for the very first time.

The film is a creative collaboration between acclaimed director Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), who wrote and directed the feature, and revered artist Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy, Vampire Hunter D). The film beautifully intertwines Oshii’s thematic reflections on philosophy and theology with Amano’s distinctive ink painting style, culminating in an arrestingly beautiful hand-drawn allegorical fantasy.

Directed by visionary science-fiction animator René Laloux (Fantastic Planet) and designed by the legendary Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Mœbius) The Time Masters is a visually fantastic foray into existentialist space adventure. After his parents are killed on the dangerous planet Perdide, young Piel (voiced by Frédéric Legros) survives by maintaining radio contact with Jaffar (Jean Valmont), a pilot transporting the exiled Prince Matton (Yves-Marie Maurin) and Princess Belle (Monique Thierry) from their former kingdom. Jaffar seeks the help of Silbad (Michel Elias), a cheerful old-timer who knows how to circumvent Perdide’s hazards, including brain-devouring insects and watery graves. Along the way, Jaffar and company encounter a pair of impish homunculi stowaways, identity-less angels controlled by an amorphous hive mind, and the Masters of Time, mysterious beings who can bend reality and perhaps reveal to the heroes their secret origins and destinies.

Restored in 4K in 2023 at the initiative of CITE FILMS in collaboration with the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and with the support of the CNC

EVANGELION: DEATH (TRUE)²: A recap of the first 24 episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Fifteen years after the Second Impact, apathetic teen Shinji joins his father's group NERV to fight the Angels. But the truth may destroy them all.

THE END OF EVANGELION: Concurrent theatrical ending of the TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995). Seele orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can trigger Third Impact and Instrumentality under his control.

A winner of awards across the world including Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, 5 BAFTA Awards including Best Actor, Original Screenplay and Score, the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and many more.

Giuseppe Tornatore's loving homage to the cinema tells the story of Salvatore, a successful film director, returning home for the funeral of Alfredo, his old friend who was the projectionist at the local cinema throughout his childhood. Soon memories of his first love affair with the beautiful Elena and all the highs and lows that shaped his life come flooding back, as Salvatore reconnects with the community he left 30 years earlier.

With an arresting mix of eroticism and horror, Oshima plunges the viewer into a nightmarish tale of guilt and retribution in Empire of Passion (Ai no borei). Set in a Japanese village at the end of the nineteenth century, the film details the emotional and physical downfall of a married woman and her younger lover following their decision to murder her husband and dump his body in a well. Empire of Passion was Oshima's only true kaidan (Japanese ghost story), and the film, a savage, unrelenting experience, earned him the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

The story of a teenage boy named Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an "up-skirt" photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with the guilt that's a legacy of his Catholic upbringing.

Contains very strong bloody violence and sex references
 

Sergei Parajanov's celebrated masterpiece paints an astonishing portrait of the 18th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, the 'King of Song'. Parajanov's aim was not a conventional biography but a cinematic expression of his work, resulting in an extraordinary visual poem. Key moments in his subject's life are illustrated through a series of exquisitely orchestrated tableaux filled with rich colour and stunning iconography, each scene a celluloid painting alive with stylised movement.

Tom and Evelyn (Lewis Fiander and Prunella Ransome), a young couple from England, plan an idyllic getaway to a remote Spanish island, in anticipation of the birth of their third child.

When they arrive, they find their destination almost entirely deserted, with the exception of a number of children, all of whom are acting strangely.  When the couple begin to find evidence of a number of atrocities on the island, they quickly find themselves embroiled in a terrifying battle for survival, as well as being forced to confront a previously unthinkable question…

Directed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (El televisor, The House That Screamed), the legendary master of horror dubbed the ‘Spanish Hitchcock’, Who Can Kill A Child? is his undisputed masterpiece, an extreme and unbearably tense work that remains deeply shocking in its disregard for societal taboos. With a cult reputation that has continued to grow among genre aficionados since its release in 1976, Who Can Kill A Child? is now considered not just as a landmark work of Euro-horror, but as one of the greatest horror films ever made (Slant Magazine).

Content warning: Please be aware that this version of the film contains a restored eight-minute documentary prologue composed of real archival footage of children suffering in global conflicts including The Holocaust, The Vietnam War and the Nigerian Civil War. The filmmakers included it to underline how adults have historically used and harmed children as helpless victims of conflict, but the use of real-life tragedies has proved controversial and disturbing for audiences.

Presented from a brand-new 4K restoration of the film courtesy of Radiance Films.

After realizing that all world is spoiled, Marie and Marie are committed to be spoiled themselves. They rip off older men, feast in lavish meals and do all kinds of mischief. But what is all this leading to?

An entire civilisation must confront its destiny in alternative-animation pioneer René Laloux's final feature, a cult classic of mind-bending science fiction. In a distant world, a merciless army of automata attacks Gandahar, turning its peace-loving people to stone. Hoping to discover the source of these Men of Metal, a council of matriarchs enlists the brave yet inexperienced warrior Sylvain (Pierre-Marie Escourro), who, while journeying through his planet's outer regions, teams up with the Deformed, a race cast out from Gandahar after failed science experiments rendered them mutants. Soon, Sylvain learns that a gargantuan brain called Metamorphis (Georges Wilson) is responsible for his utopian society's strife and—together with the beautiful Airelle (Catherine Chevallier)—travels through time to defeat him, in the process risking their lives and Gandahar's very existence. Featuring stunningly surreal creatures and wondrously bizarre environments designed by renowned comic-book artist Caza, Gandahar is a visceral, visionary head-trip in which animation opens a gateway to the furthest reaches of the imagination.

From the creators of Spirited Away and Ponyo, and Academy Award®-nominated director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, comes a gorgeous and adventure-filled adaptation of The Borrowers, one of the most beloved children’s books of all time.
 
In a secret world hidden beneath the floorboards, tiny people called Borrowers live out of sight of humans. But when brave Arrietty is out gathering supplies, she is discovered by Shawn, a human boy, and they begin to form a friendship that blossoms into a heartwarming adventure.

A detective starts spiraling out of control when a wave of gruesome murders with seemingly similar bizarre circumstances are sweeping Tokyo.

Mr. Watanabe suddenly finds that he has terminal cancer. He vows to make his final days meaningful. His attempts to communicate his anguish to his son and daughter-in-law lead only to heartbreak. Finally, inspired by an unselfish co-worker, he turns his efforts to bringing happiness to others by building a playground in a dreary slum neighborhood. When the park is finally completed, he is able to face death with peaceful acceptance.

The extraordinary, internationally embraced Yi Yi (A One and a Two . . .), directed by the late Taiwanese master Edward Yang, follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Whether chronicling middle-age father NJ’s tentative flirtations with an old flame or precocious young son Yang-Yang’s attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera, the filmmaker deftly imbues every gorgeous frame with a compassionate clarity. Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the new century.

4K digital restoration carried out by Pony Canyon Inc., with analog and digital processes provided by Imagica Entertainment Media Services, Inc.

Art versus commerce, friendship versus status, independence versus conformity—values clash and collide in Edward Yang's study of an increasingly Westernized country heading into the twenty-first century without moral guideposts. Moving from breakout hit A Brighter Summer Day's investigation of the past to a critical survey of the present, A Confucian Confusion charts the tangled web of emotional and professional manipulations among a group of young urbanites. At its center is Molly (Ni Shu-chun), director of a floundering public-relations firm. Alienated by the childish fiancé (Bosen Wang) who bankrolls her enterprise—and frustrated by the demands of an assistant, Qiqi (Chen Shiang-chyi), and her own fiancé, Ming (Wang Wei-ming)—Molly lashes out at everyone in her path and threatens to dismantle the company altogether. Meanwhile (amid several other subplots), Molly's talk-show-host sister (Chen Li-mei) attempts to dissuade her separated husband from continuing to write a dark novel about the return of Confucius to a jaded modern society. Injecting comedic elements into his patented brand of earnest soul-searching, Yang finds humor as well as pathos in the desperate behavior of a lost and lonely generation.

Satsuki and Mei's mother has taken ill. In order to be closer to her while she recovers in a rural convalescent hospital, their father moves the two sisters from their home in a city to the countryside. The house they move into is a ramshackle old place in the shadow of an ancient camphor tree, and Satsuki and Mei embark on adventures with the wondrous forest spirits who live nearby.

On the verge of turning thirty, Julie is faced with a series of choices that force her to pursue new perspectives on her life in contemporary Oslo. Over the course of four years, she navigates love affairs and existential uncertainty as she starts deciding who she wants to become.

Wong Kar Wai’s loose sequel to In the Mood for Love combines that film’s languorous air of romantic longing with a dizzying time-hopping structure and avant-sci-fi twist. Tony Leung Chiu Wai reprises his role as writer Chow Mo-Wan, whose numerous failed relationships with women who drift in and out of his life (and the one who goes in and out of room 2046, down the hall from his apartment) inspire the delirious futuristic love story he pens. 2046’s dazzling fantasy sequences give Wong and two of his key collaborators—cinematographer Christopher Doyle and editor/costume designer/production designer William Chang Suk Ping—license to let their imaginations run wild, propelling the sumptuous visuals and operatic emotions skyward toward the sublime.

An angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through the lilting songs of the great composer Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time.

Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.

After finishing up the school term in a remote outback town, teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) looks forward to spending his holiday with his girlfriend in Sydney. But John gets waylaid in a mining town where a gambling spree leaves him completely broke. He quickly falls in with the hard-drinking locals, who constantly ply him with alcohol and force him to participate in a gruesome kangaroo hunt. Disgusted, John tries to hitchhike out of town and, when that fails, begins to contemplate suicide.

Felicie and Charles have a whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.

Two angels, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander), glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds--with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk (playing himself) -- that it might be possible for him to take human form.

In this Japanese animation, cyborg federal agent Maj. Motoko Kusanagi (Mimi Woods) trails "The Puppet Master" (Abe Lasser), who illegally hacks into the computerized minds of cyborg-human hybrids. Her pursuit of a man who can modify the identity of strangers leaves Motoko pondering her own makeup and what life might be like if she had more human traits. With her partner (Richard George), she corners the hacker, but her curiosity about her identity sends the case in an unforeseen direction.

Set in feudal Japan, this film presents an intriguing tale of violent crime in the woods, told from the perspective of four different characters -- a bandit, a woman, her husband and a woodcutter. Only two things about the incident seem to be clear -- the woman was raped and her husband is now dead. However, the other elements radically differ as the four participants and/or witnesses relate their own stories (with the dead man, eerily enough, speaking through a medium). As each account is revealed, what seemed black-and-white turns to various hues of gray, leading to surprising -- and confounding -- revelations.

Celebrating its 35th Anniversary. Raise the Red Lantern is about nineteen-year-old Songlian, a promising student whose family has been destroyed by her father’s death, is forced to abandon her studies and marry into wealth, becoming the fourth and newest concubine of the aging, unseen Master Chen. Inside his walled estate, she discovers a household ruled by a merciless ritual: each night, red lanterns are lit outside the chambers of whichever wife the master chooses to visit, granting her privilege and status while the others are cast into cold irrelevance. Songlian is drawn into the orbit of her rivals, each shaped by years of fighting for the same scraps of attention. Determined at first to rise above the games, Songlian is gradually worn down by isolation and humiliation until she strikes back, trading secrets and favours to secure her place in Master Chen’s hierarchy. As petty cruelty turns even more dire, Songlian is forced to confront what these desperate measures will cost her soul.

“As visually striking as it is dramatically effective,” Zhang Yimou’s Academy Award-nominated and BAFTA-winning Raise the Red Lantern sumptuously captures 1920s China while “subtly exploring the politics of power and control” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times). One of international cinema’s greatest stars of the era, Gong Li is “nuanced and understated” (Chicago Reader) as the stifled young woman forced into a repressive world of concubinage. Newly restored, the film stands as one of the defining works of Fifth Generation Chinese cinema and international film of the 1990s.

The 4K restoration of Raise the Red Lantern was carried out by the Udine Far East Film Festival on the occasion of its 26th edition. The original image and sound negatives were used under the supervision of Director Zhang Yimou. The vintage positive copy, presented at the 1991 Venice International Film Festival and preserved at the Venice Biennale’s Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts, was used for colour reference. The restoration was made in 2024 at L’Immagine Ritrovata (Hong Kong – Bologna)

While the Civil War rages on between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hitman, and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold.

A bedridden patient in a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles befriends a fellow patient, and shares a fantastic tale of heroes, myths, and villains on a desert island with the little girl.

This smash road comedy from Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón is that rare movie to combine raunchy subject matter and emotional warmth. Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna shot to international stardom as a pair of horny Mexico City teenagers from different classes who, after their girlfriends jet off to Italy for the summer, are bewitched by a gorgeous older Spanish woman (Maribel Verdú) they meet at a wedding. When she agrees to accompany them on a trip to a faraway beach, the three form an increasingly intense and sensual alliance that ultimately strips them both physically and emotionally bare. Shot with elegance and dexterity by the great Emmanuel Lubezki, Y tu mamá también is a funny and moving look at human desire.

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.

An entomologist misses the last bus home and spends the night sharing a young widow’s desert shack, only to find the next morning that he’s unable to leave. He soon becomes psychologically and erotically entangled in her strange existence, which includes a daily ritual of shovelling away endlessly drifting sand. 

Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964 and nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Director, the film combines an extremely erotic drama with a terrifically gripping thriller. Adapted from Kobe Abe’s novel by acclaimed director Hiroshi Teshigahara, the film also features startling high-contrast black and white photography from Hiroshi Segawa and a superb minimalist score by Toru Takemitsu.

The lives of three people in Mexico City become fatefully interlinked, creating a patchwork of violence at all levels: A lad from the roughest part of town becomes an amateur dog-fighter to make money, a supermodel is seriously injured, leaving her career in the balance, and a homeless assassin finally questions his client's intentions, as they all struggle to find love when their lives are transformed by one devastating car crash that has endless repercussions.