Scandinavian noir beyond the Stieg Larsson franchises
The dread-soaked Nordic landscape that became its own genre. Cold, slow, formally precise. Refn before Hollywood, late Vinterberg, Ulrich Seidl across the border, the Romanian-school cousins.
The Seventh Seal
foreign gemcerebraldread
Persona
Wild Strawberries
Scenes from a Marriage
The Hunt
foreign gemdreadgut punch
Day of Wrath
Autumn Sonata
Ordet
Cries and Whispers
Winter Light
Let Go
The Shadow in My Eye
Land of Mine
Fanny and Alexander
The Virgin Spring
The Phantom Carriage
Through a Glass Darkly
The Kingdom
The Sacrifice
The Promised Land
Another Round
foreign gembittersweettender
Lilya 4-ever
A Man Called Ove
Let the Right One In
foreign gembittersweetslow burn
The New Land
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
foreign gemdreadparanoid
Shame
Oslo, August 31st
The Passion of Anna
The Silence
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
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