French New Wave — Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Rivette, Rohmer
The movement that broke everything open. Godard made Breathless in 1960 with a handheld camera and jump cuts nobody had tried in narrative film. Truffaut turned autobiography into The 400 Blows. Varda was there before both of them — Cléo from 5 to 7 is as formally adventurous as anything Godard did, with more heart. Rivette, Rohmer, Resnais, Chabrol, Demy, Marker. The catalogue runs from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, but the ripples never stopped. The list filters French-language films from the core era, scored 6.5 or above.
Le Trou
neon soakedforeign gemcult
The 400 Blows
foreign gemcultdevastating
Army of Shadows
foreign gemdevastatingcult
Le Samouraï
neon soakedforeign gemcult
Z
foreign gemcultdevastating
Day for Night
foreign gemcozycult
Crooks in Clover
foreign gemcozycult
Vivre Sa Vie
foreign gemcultdevastating
PlayTime
foreign gemcozycult
The Young Girls of Rochefort
foreign gemcultdevastating
My Night at Maud's
foreign gemcozycult
Cléo from 5 to 7
foreign gemcultdevastating
Fantastic Planet
foreign gemcultcozy
Purple Noon
foreign gemcultdevastating
Jules and Jim
cozyforeign gemcult
The Old Gun
devastatingforeign gemcult
Au Hasard Balthazar
foreign gemcultdevastating
Breathless
cozydevastatingforeign gem
Band of Outsiders
foreign gemcozycult
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
surrealweirdfever dream
The Phantom of Liberty
foreign gemcozycult
Last Year at Marienbad
foreign gemcultdevastating
Mon Oncle
foreign gemcozycult
Mouchette
foreign gemcultdevastating
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
foreign gemcultdevastating
Happiness
foreign gemcultdevastating
F for Fake
foreign gemcultatmospheric
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob
foreign gemcozycult
Pierrot le Fou
foreign gemcultdevastating
Oscar
foreign gemcozycult
Altre collezioni canone
Japanese New Wave — the essentials
80s horror everyone has forgotten
Giallo — Italy's blood-red mystery genre
Korean cinema essentials beyond Parasite
Post-Soviet cinema — Russia & Eastern Europe after 1991
The Romanian New Wave
Essential anime that isn't Studio Ghibli
Slow cinema — the long-take canon
70s American paranoia — the post-Watergate canon
First features by directors who later mattered
Documentaries that hold up as cinema
Scandinavian noir beyond the Stieg Larsson franchises
Iranian new wave — Kiarostami, Farhadi, and the rest
Argentine cinema — beyond Wild Tales
British kitchen-sink and what it became
First features directed by cinematographers
German New Wave — Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, Schlöndorff
Hong Kong action — Woo, Lam, Tsui, To
Spaghetti westerns — Leone, Corbucci, Sollima, and the second tier
Mumblecore — the American indie movement nobody named
Czech New Wave — Forman, Chytilová, Menzel, before they fled
Blaxploitation — Shaft, Pam Grier, and the 70s Black cinema boom
Dogme 95 — von Trier, Vinterberg, and the vow of chastity
Australian New Wave — Weir, Miller, Armstrong, Campion
African cinema — Sembène, Sissako, Mambéty, and beyond
Italian neorealism — the rubble and the real
Commedia all'italiana — Italy laughing at itself
German expressionism — shadows, angles, madness
Taiwanese New Cinema — Hou, Yang, Tsai, and the island's quiet revolution
New Queer Cinema — Haynes, Araki, Van Sant, and the 90s insurgency
Wuxia and martial arts — flying swords, hidden masters