The Criterion Collection
Essays
Sep 18, 2000 — Drenched in mud and rain, Lars von Trier’s breakthrough film inhabits a true twilight zone, bereft of heroes and integrity.
Jul 22, 2026 — The filmmaker looks back on the experiences that have shaped his creative life, including his time in art school, his work as a graphic designer and music-video director, and his early interest in documentary cinema.
Mar 19, 2026 — To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of VHS, the director and the editor of Videoheaven discuss how this game-changing format shaped their lives and imaginations and left a seismic impact on the film industry.
Nov 13, 2025 — The director of Rat Trap and Monologue was an uncompromising artist who helped establish the Indian state of Kerala as a hub of bold political filmmaking.
Sep 30, 2025 — Made with a formal control unparalleled in modern American cinema, the films of this utterly distinctive auteur seek to contain and understand an uncontainable, unknowable world.
Aug 5, 2025 — From Grosse Pointe Blank to Singles to Trainspotting, some of the decade’s most memorable fusions of music and cinema brought underground culture to new heights of pop consciousness.
Jun 26, 2025 — One of the defining independent films of its era, François Girard’s provocatively splintered portrait of the great pianist finds playful ways of toying with the cultural mythologization of its subject.
May 20, 2025 — Set in the dying days of the 1960s, Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical tale of two unemployed actors is a triumph of screenwriting and a brilliant showcase for then-unknown stars Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann.
Mar 24, 2025 — At the turn of the millennium, a loose collective of filmmakers—including Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg—made a splash with a provocative manifesto and a wave of audacious movies shot on digital video.
Features
Nov 21, 2024 — Dennis Hopper’s bleakly nihilistic drama struggled to find an audience after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980, but time has revealed it to be one of the most hardcore films about disaffected youth ever made.