German New Wave — Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, Schlöndorff
The New German Cinema of the late 1960s and 1970s was a collective refusal. Fassbinder made melodramas that felt like autopsies — Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Marriage of Maria Braun. Herzog sent Kinski up rivers and mountains and into the desert and let the camera watch. Wenders stared at roads and rock music and Germany's unresolved past. Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta worked the political novel form. Kluge, Syberberg, Achternbusch at the margins. The list below filters for German-language films from the movement's core decade, scored 6.5 or above.
Das Boot
foreign gemdreadraw
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
foreign gemtenderbittersweet
Alice in the Cities
foreign gembittersweetslow burn
Fitzcarraldo
foreign gemepicoutsider
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
foreign gemsurrealdread
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
foreign gembittersweetsexy
Kings of the Road
foreign gembittersweetoutsider
The Marriage of Maria Braun
foreign gembittersweetoutsider
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
foreign gembittersweetcerebral
Stroszek
foreign gembittersweetoutsider
Christiane F.
foreign gemdreadgut punch
Nosferatu the Vampyre
foreign gembittersweetdread
From the Life of the Marionettes
foreign gemcerebraldread
Veronika Voss
foreign gemdreadneon soaked
Fox and His Friends
foreign gembittersweetgut punch
The American Friend
bittersweetoutsiderparanoid
Hitler: A Film from Germany
cerebraldreadsurreal
The Tin Drum
body horrormindfuckoutsider
Woyzeck
gut punchrawslow burn
In a Year with 13 Moons
bittersweetdreadoutsider
Weitere Kanon-Sammlungen
Comfort-cult — the ones you rewatch forever
Deep-cut rewatchables — off the beaten path, on endless repeat
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
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
French New Wave — Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Rivette, Rohmer
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