Films
Read about the filmsFind a film by title, director, mood or the time you have.
Ramona and Alessandro’s relationship is placed under pressure by dispossession and the racial hierarchy of nineteenth-century California.
Helen Hunt Jackson’s story of love, dispossession, and racial hierarchy in California was expanded into a long silent feature directed by Donald Crisp.
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.
A celebrated woman’s past and a younger man’s idealised love collide in a drama of desire, reputation, and social judgement.
Made in Siam in 1923 with Thai performers, Henry MacRae’s romance opens a question that still shapes its history: what makes a film the first of a nation’s cinema?
A music-hall performer’s affair with a respectable man changes when she discovers the domestic life hidden outside their romance.
A sewer worker protects an abused young woman, and their attic home becomes a promise tested by war and separation.
Backstage life at the Moulin Rouge places performance, desire, and family loyalty under the pressure of Parisian nightlife.
A young woman of mixed heritage leaves a hostile household with the Indigenous man she loves, only to face displacement, poverty, and violence.
An impoverished Viennese prince falls for a working-class woman while family debt and social expectation prepare marriages for both of them.
A poor young woman forms a bond with a disabled war veteran whose isolated farm offers both refuge and a test of independence.
Two lifelong friends love the same woman on the Isle of Man, and a promise made before one man leaves creates a private tragedy on his return.
A young man tending an isolated river property meets a woman bound to an absent lover, and winter turns their encounter into dependence.
A cabaret singer in Morocco is drawn to a Foreign Legion soldier even as a wealthy admirer offers the security he cannot provide.
A young man working in his father’s Marseille bar loves Fanny but cannot silence his longing to leave by sea.
A factory worker leaves her small town for New York, becomes the companion of a wealthy lawyer, and confronts the social limits placed on their relationship.
Two young islanders flee after the woman is declared sacred and forbidden, but colonial money and religious authority follow their escape.
A woman accepts a life kept out of public view as the long-term lover of a wealthy married man.
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.
On a remote rubber plantation, a manager’s attraction to two very different women exposes the emotional and colonial assumptions sustaining his authority.
A young flower seller and her lover struggle to marry while their village punishes her for the stigma attached to her mother.
Before a duel, a concert pianist receives a letter recounting a woman’s lifelong devotion to him—an attachment he repeatedly failed to recognise.
Two friends love the same mercurial woman across years of art, war, marriage, travel, and changing agreements.
Two musicians repeatedly find and lose one another as borders, politics, and temperament change the terms of their love.
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