The Official Story

Apr 30, 2009 — The concept of “obscenity” is tested when we dare to look at something that we desire to see but have forbidden ourselves to look at. When we feel that everything has been revealed, “obscenity” disappears and there is a certain...

Apr 27, 2009 — Stephen Frears’s gangland drama subverts its genre by removing its villains to an alternate mythic universe, that of the western, as its protagonists traverse the roads that snake through Spain’s arid hills and plains.

Nov 19, 2007 — Akira Kurosawa explores criminal machismo in his seventh film, which he felt was his official breakthrough in Japanese cinema.

Jul 9, 2007 — Set almost entirely in a single house, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s eloquent collaboration with writer Kobo Abe shows both his powerful staging and his love of fine, almost microscopic, detail.

May 22, 2006 — Luis Buñuel’s merciless satire concerns the smallness of our vision of progress and our narrow attempts to achieve it through rational or moralistic planning.

Dec 5, 2005 — René Clément’s masterpiece is dedicated to the radical Freudian proposal that living matter seeks the comfort of oblivion.

Mar 26, 1998 — In The Lady Vanishes, Alfred Hitchcock pushes the romantic comedy-thriller form to perfection. Endlessly imitated, the film remains unique, even in Hitchcock’s canon. In no other movie but North by Northwest was he able to blend these two genres so...

Jun 3, 2026 — This year’s lineup features lots of music, another De Niro and Scorsese reunion, and an AI-generated feature.

Apr 14, 2026 — New films from Radu Jude, Clio Barnard, Lisandro Alonso, and Alain Cavalier are headed to Cannes.

Nov 3, 2025 — Beginning on November 24, the Criterion Channel will exclusively premiere the long-awaited television series from visionary director Wong Kar Wai.