Films
Read about the filmsFind a film by title, director, mood or the time you have.
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.
A mysterious avenger intervenes in the affairs of a corrupt banker across twelve episodes of disguise, pursuit, and shifting allegiance.
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.
Objects, bodies, city views, a cannon, a funeral procession, and cinematic tricks collide in a playful refusal of ordinary narrative logic.
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 performer’s social ascent and destructive relationships expose the appetites and hypocrisy of the men who try to possess her.
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 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.
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.
After an underground disaster, German miners cross the border to rescue French workers despite the political divisions above them.
A young man working in his father’s Marseille bar loves Fanny but cannot silence his longing to leave by sea.
Fanny faces pregnancy and an uncertain future after Marius leaves Marseille for the sea, while the people around the harbour debate love, duty, and security.
A criminal mastermind confined to an asylum appears to direct a new empire of terror through written instructions.
Four boys return to a boarding school whose petty rules soon invite an uprising.
A newly married couple drifts between a cramped barge and the promise of Paris.
Prisoners and captors discover that class, nationality, and friendship do not divide along the same lines.
A country-house farce that quietly indicts everyone.
A drifter begins an affair with an innkeeper’s wife, and their desire turns escape into a crime neither can leave behind.
On a crowded theatrical boulevard, love becomes performance and performance becomes fate.
A society woman turns her former lover's next romance into an instrument of revenge.
Resistance, family life, and occupation collide across streets that feel dangerously close to the present.
A familiar fairy tale enters a castle where arms hold candles and statues breathe.
An elderly pensioner facing eviction tries to preserve his dignity and his bond with his small dog in postwar Rome.
Monsieur Hulot arrives at a seaside hotel and gently disrupts the routines by which everyone else is trying to enjoy a proper holiday.
A pair of earrings passes through sale, gift, concealment, and return as an aristocratic marriage gives way to forbidden love.
Four men, two trucks, and a road where every bump can end the film.
A travelling strongman buys the service of a poor young woman whose openness meets his cruelty on the road.
An adulterous couple leave a cyclist dying after a collision, then discover that guilt and class privilege produce different kinds of fear.
A carefully planned murder leaves behind one impossible problem: the body will not stay where it belongs.
Four thieves prepare a silent heist whose precision cannot protect what follows.
A prisoner prepares an escape one sound, tool, and repeated gesture at a time.
A restless married woman finds a new attraction that unsettles both her domestic life and an existing affair.
A brief affair in Hiroshima opens a difficult passage between public catastrophe and private memory.
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