Before the Beginning

Mar 14, 2017 — Religious fanaticism and anti-Communist hysteria give way to mass violence in this groundbreaking work of Mexican political cinema.

Mar 7, 2017 — With his unique blend of British realism and romantic fatalism, director Andrew Haigh exposes the quiet desperation at the heart of a long marriage.

Jan 30, 2017 — Film scholar Shonni Enelow reveals the methods of the Mamet style of acting in this examination of Crouse’s subtly feminist lead performance.

Jan 27, 2017 — In a series of tautly constructed marriage dramas, filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has proven himself a remarkable observer of the social, moral, and personal dimensions that shape contemporary Iranian society.

Sep 23, 2016 — Did You See This? To celebrate the beginning of autumn this week, the BFI has published a list of ten films set during the season, including Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, Yasujiro Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon, Wes Anderson’s Rushmore,...

Sep 1, 2016 — Balancing epic scale with lyrical intimacy, Orson Welles inflects the spirit of Shakespeare’s history plays with his own zest for cinematic invention.

Aug 16, 2016 — Stig Björkman’s candid documentary gathers a wealth of material from Ingrid Bergman’s personal archive, revealing the star as a fastidious collector of her own memories.

Jul 12, 2016 — Herk Harvey’s influential, low-budget horror classic Carnival of Souls is an eerie exploration of the mutability of place and the purgatorial state of dreaming.

Jun 21, 2016 — Animated in Czechoslovakia amid a Soviet invasion, the French film Fantastic Planet, the third collaboration between René Laloux and Roland Topor, timelessly renders its surreal sci-fi story of captivity and resistance.

Apr 27, 2016 — In Phoenix, Christian Petzold sets his nuanced melodrama of postwar German-Jewish identity within a starkly realist aesthetic, making newly fascinating use of his enduring interest in the tensions between the real and the artificial.