The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 26, 2018 — The legendary filmmaker possessed the greatest speaking voice in American cinema, and The Magnificent Ambersons represents the summit of his work as a vocal actor.
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.
Aug 23, 2022 — Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut, a western depicting Black cowboy heroes, allowed two of the industry’s most significant Black stars to reorient themselves as artists.
Aug 10, 2017 — We are thrilled to announce the December 5 release of 100 Years of Olympic Films, a landmark box set that documents the history of the Olympic Games through the lenses of an international array of filmmakers.
Apr 17, 2013 — Four of the great Japanese director’s lesser-known, early films show the coming into being of a political artist.
May 13, 2025 — In this masterpiece of lived-in ethical complexity and high spiritual stakes, Abbas Kiarostami explores the tensions between provinciality and modernity, and between artists and their subjects.
The Daily
Jan 17, 2025 — Featured this week are Frank Capra, Michael Roemer, John Ford, Djibril Diop Mambéty, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Oct 29, 2024 — From Kaneto Shindo to Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the masters of the genre over the past half-century have tapped into a deep well of cultural anxiety, exploring everything from the sins of their nation’s feudal past to the dangers of new technologies.
Sep 9, 2020 — Performances In the mid-1960s, the Bengali director Mrinal Sen reportedly accused his contemporary Satyajit Ray of selling out. “Mrinal said—now he has sunk to the level of using a matinee idol!” Ray would later laugh to his biographer, Andrew Robinson....
Essays
Jun 24, 2018 — During a period when studios gave him carte blanche, Josef von Sternberg created a sublime cinematic language that shrugged off one orthodoxy after another.