Films
Read about the filmsFind a film by title, director, mood or the time you have.
A vast silent city of the future, still staggering.
A shadow crosses the wall, and horror cinema finds its shape.
One stolen bike, a father and son. Devastating.
A boy slips through the cracks. Tender, true.
Cool, restless — the moment cinema broke its rules.
Three friends move through the day after a riot while anger, police pressure, and boredom keep narrowing their options.
A silent-film star meets a rising performer just as recorded sound changes what cinema asks of both of them.
Episodes from the life and Passion of Christ are arranged as a succession of brief, carefully staged tableaux.
A rocket in the Moon’s eye: a voyage built from stage illusion.
The life of Christ unfolds through an extended series of theatrical scenes, from the Nativity to the Passion and Resurrection.
The capture of Rome is condensed into staged military action and a patriotic reconstruction of 20 September 1870.
A spinner’s legend is presented as a compact piece of visual folklore in an early film by Louis Feuillade.
An early French drama by Louis Feuillade, made before the crime serials that would define his international reputation.
The Roman legend of the abduction of the Sabine women is staged as an early Italian historical spectacle.
Bébé develops an infatuation in a compact French comedy built around childhood imitation and adult social behaviour.
A migrant worker enters a mining community where hunger, dangerous labour, and collective anger lead towards a strike.
Louis Feuillade turns the figure of a hermit into the centre of a brief French silent comedy.
A Roman officer’s love for a Christian woman unfolds amid Nero’s court, persecution, and the spectacle of imperial power.
Rebecca is a French silent film directed by Henri Andréani in 1913.
The revolt led by Spartacus becomes a large-scale conflict between enslaved people and Roman authority.
Love, jealousy, religion, and enslavement intersect in Pompeii as Vesuvius turns private intrigue into collective catastrophe.
A Roman nobleman and his strong companion try to rescue a child abducted during war and marked for sacrifice in ancient Carthage.
Sherlock Holmes investigates a family curse, a threatening hound, and danger surrounding the heir to Baskerville Hall.
A mysterious avenger intervenes in the affairs of a corrupt banker across twelve episodes of disguise, pursuit, and shifting allegiance.
Don José abandons duty for Carmen, whose refusal to surrender her independence turns his desire into destructive jealousy.
In turn-of-the-century Turin, a student’s romance with a seamstress is damaged when he is drawn towards a more sophisticated older woman.
Italia Almirante Manzini leads an Italian silent drama centred on Olimpia and the social pressures surrounding marriage.
Conspiracy, false accusation, and criminal organisation unfold across Louis Feuillade’s long-form thriller serial.
A shy heir tries to avoid marriage by choosing a lifelike mechanical doll, unaware that the doll-maker’s daughter has taken its place.
A fairground prediction becomes a question of who controls the outcome.
Hamlet investigates a father’s death and a corrupt court in an adaptation built around a radical account of the prince’s identity.
A celebrated woman’s past and a younger man’s idealised love collide in a drama of desire, reputation, and social judgement.
A student convinced of his exceptional right to act commits murder and discovers that an idea cannot contain the consequences.
Objects, bodies, city views, a cannon, a funeral procession, and cinematic tricks collide in a playful refusal of ordinary narrative logic.
An ageing hotel doorman loses his prestigious uniform and tries to hide the demotion from neighbours who measure him by it.
A poet invents stories for three wax figures, moving from exotic adventure to historical nightmare and a final pursuit through distorted space.
In inflation-stricken Vienna, two neighbouring women face hunger, exploitation, and sharply unequal chances of escape.
Explorers encounter the mysterious ruler known as She in a British-German adaptation of H. Rider Haggard’s imperial fantasy.
Working-class lives in Berlin are shaped by unemployment, crowded housing, crime, and the fragile effort to remain a family.
An orphaned girl enters the life of a travelling showman and a new rural community in Jean Renoir’s early feature.
Carmen’s independence and Don José’s obsession unfold across carefully designed locations in Jacques Feyder’s adaptation of Mérimée.
A wager over one man’s soul expands into plague, desire, flight, and tragedy under skies that seem built from shadow.
A performer’s social ascent and destructive relationships expose the appetites and hypocrisy of the men who try to possess her.
A man terrified by a sudden impulse to stab his wife seeks psychoanalytic treatment, leading the film into dreams, symbols, and buried jealousy.
Abel Gance follows Napoleon from embattled schoolboy to military commander in a torrent of movement, montage, and monumental ambition.
Casanova moves through romance, disguise, danger, and courtly spectacle across an expansive eighteenth-century adventure.
A scientist creates a woman through an experiment shaped by a mandrake legend, then attempts to control the life he treats as proof of his theory.
A master criminal, a government agent, and a conflicted operative move through a modern network of surveillance and deception.
A poor girl selling matches on a winter street escapes hunger and cold through visions that grow increasingly elaborate.
A face, a trial, and nowhere for the truth to hide.
Beaumarchais’s Figaro moves through a late-silent adaptation drawing on The Marriage of Figaro and material from the surrounding plays.
Lulu moves through desire, scandal, and social punishment with a presence the film cannot contain.
Edmond Dantès’s imprisonment, escape, reinvention, and revenge unfold across an unusually expansive silent adaptation of Dumas.
Sixteen minutes of dream logic sever cause from effect and make familiar objects suddenly unsafe.
Jean Durand’s Détresse was filmed in 1929 and released in France on 23 May 1930.
A strict schoolteacher follows his pupils into a nightclub and becomes obsessed with the performer he intended to discipline them for watching.
After an underground disaster, German miners cross the border to rescue French workers despite the political divisions above them.
A boy robbed on his journey to Berlin recruits a fast-growing group of city children to follow the thief and recover the money.
Five men from different backgrounds shelter between the front lines of the First World War; only one understands all their languages.
A child-killer hunted by the whole underworld. Electric.
Still deciding? Ask Momo.
Read a film closely
Character companions, film comparisons and a closer look at particular scenes.
- Seven Samurai
Who are the seven samurai?
Names, actors and roles to keep the seven apart.
- The Wages of Fear
The original, Sorcerer, or the remake?
Three films compared before you choose.
- Breathless
What disappears in a jump cut?
A diagram of the time Godard leaves out.
- Wild Strawberries
What do the dreams mean?
Trace the clocks, mirror and final scene.
After watching · Spoilers - Persona
Why hear the same speech twice?
Follow who speaks and whose face fills the frame.
After watching · Spoilers - Bicycle Thieves
What happens at the end?
The final encounter, seen through father and son.
After watching · Spoilers