Post-Soviet cinema — Russia & Eastern Europe after 1991
Tarkovsky and Klimov are pre-1991. After that, an unsettled cinema: Zvyagintsev's cold landscapes, Sokurov's long takes, Loznitsa's documentaries that look like funerals.
Flow
weirdforeign gematmospheric
Tangerines
foreign gemdevastating
Sniper: The White Raven
foreign gemdevastating
The Old Man and the Sea
foreign gemcultcozy
U Are the Universe
foreign gemcozymindfuck
Mira
foreign gemcozydevastating
Balkan Line
foreign gemdevastating
Leviathan
cozyforeign gemautumnal
Loveless
foreign gemdevastating
The Return
foreign gemcultdevastating
Russian Ark
foreign gemcultatmospheric
T-34
devastatingslow burnforeign gem
Mavka: The Forest Song
atmosphericcozyforeign gem
Salyut-7
foreign gemlate night
The Barber of Siberia
cultslow burnforeign gem
Flight Crew
foreign gem
Invasion
foreign gem
Three Seconds
slow burnforeign gem
Upon the Magic Roads
atmosphericforeign gem
Cargo 200
dreadforeign gem
The Master and Margarita
slow burnatmosphericforeign gem
Metro
dreadforeign gem
Attraction
neon soakedforeign gemcozy
Major Grom: Plague Doctor
foreign gem
Mother and Son
foreign gem
Atlantis
foreign gem
Hard to Be a God
neon soakedslow burnforeign gem
The Blackout
neon soaked
Major Grom
neon soakedlate night
Coma
Other canon collections
Japanese New Wave — the essentials
80s horror everyone has forgotten
Giallo — Italy's blood-red mystery genre
Korean cinema essentials beyond Parasite
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
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