The Criterion Collection
Sep 29, 2003 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder dedicated his final energies to bringing the lost, gray years of postwar Germany back to life.
Feb 14, 2002 — Robert Bresson’s second feature is fixed in history as one of the movies that heralded an austere, modernistic way of seeing and feeling.
Essays
Oct 15, 2001 — The music in Benjamin Christensen’s classic constantly refers to something deeper, creating a sort of deep pity in preparation for the ending of the film.
Jan 22, 2026 — A deft mixture of family epic, romantic melodrama, landscape cinema, and comedy, Burkinabe director Idrissa Ouédraogo’s landmark film balances the universality of its themes with the fierce individuality of its characters.
Dec 17, 2025 — Amid the disorientation of the COVID-19 era, this rousing film cut through with a life-affirming reminder that community and connection are still possible.
Jun 17, 2025 — Drawing from over a dozen hours of black-and-white footage, Direct Cinema pioneer Charlotte Zwerin created this elliptical and moving portrait of one of American music’s most original artists.
May 27, 2025 — In the singular mid-1980s TV show Eternity’s Pillar, the jazz iconoclast gives viewers a chance to experience the healing powers of her music—and the intense spiritual practice that fuels it.
Mar 25, 2025 — Unfettered by the precepts of bourgeois morality and the nuclear family, the characters in Alan Rudolph’s romantic drama struggle to find happiness as they navigate love’s whims and ambiguities.
Oct 24, 2024 — The director of such classic political docudramas as On the Bowery and Come Back, Africa defied the conventions of nonfiction filmmaking with his innovative approach to collaboration and performance.
Interviews
Jul 18, 2024 — A pioneer of the 1980s downtown New York arts scene, the director of Sleepwalk talks about navigating her creative life in the city and the inspiration she has taken from mythology, fairy tales, and cinéma fantastique.