1560, Peru. In a beautiful poetic opening scene the conquistadors cross an Andes pass, situated between the peaks and the valleys, between conquered land and unexplored forests, between 'heaven' and 'earth', shrouded in mists, they make their way down a narrow path. Aguirre's meglomania grows as around him his comrades mutiny and die in his search for the lost city of El Dorado. Herzog's best film, an unforgetable tour de force. Made before the director himself gave in to meglomania on a later t find out more...

At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal is to take find out more...

Herzog's epic movie about a man's obsessive attempt to bring opera to the Indians living deep in the Peruvian jungle. To do this he must take a steamship/tub way up the Amazon river system, a monumental task, at one point involving transporting it over a not unconsiderable hill, with the help of a system of pulleys and massed Indian labour. A surreal comment on madness, power and vision. There is also a documentary, Burden of Dreams, about the notoriously fraught making of the film. find out more...

Polanski's first, and arguably his finest, feature film is an economically brilliant exercise in tension. Sparse of cast and props, the atmosphere grows painfully taut as a young couple on a yachting trip and the hitcher they've picked up engage in ever more dangerous emotional games. find out more...

The story of three people traumatised by their pasts, a fisherman, a nightclub singer and her depressed, embittered daughter, who find themselves cast adrift on an island off the Alaskan coastline. The film is as much about the central characters facing their own hang-ups as it is about forboding outside influences. A thought-provoking and haunting film. find out more...

A young boy lives in a small floating temple on a beautiful lake, together with an elderly master who teaches him the ways of the Buddha. Years later the boy, now a young man, experiences his sexual awakening with a girl who has come to the temple to be healed by the master. Returning from a disastrous trip to the outside world the young monk must pay penance and, in the last of four vignettes, he returns to the lake temple to find spiritual enlightenment. find out more...

In the first and third acts of "Still Life" we follow labourer Han, who is searching for his runaway wife and daughter, and in the middle section we follow middle-class Hong as she looks for her lost husband. Set in the old village of Fengjie, a small town on the Yangtze River slowly being destroyed to make way for the Three Gorges Dam project, the film portrays the lot of ordinary people, predominantly migrant labourers, lost in an ever changing world. Superb use of photography helps make dir find out more...

Our narrator is an unseen local videographer, who tells the story of star-crossed lovers Mardar and Moudan. Mardar is a motorcycle courier in Shanghai who meets and falls in love with Moudan, but when he becomes involved in a plot to kidnap and hold her for ransom, Moudan is heartbroken. Devastated by his betrayal she throws herself into the Suzhou River, apparently to her death, threatening only to come back and haunt him. Mardar vows to find her and soon becomes obsessed with a nightclub dance find out more...

The world's most thrilling new sport is diving without breathing aids - free diving. This is the story of two men dedicated both to the sport and to transcending human limitations. Each wants to go deeper and deeper and discover a new inner self. An adventure, a love story and a wonderfully shot epic. Watch. find out more...

An old man and a beautiful young girl live on a boat, which they never leave. Groups of men come out to fish, have their fortune told, in an extraordinary manner involving the bow of the title, and mutter about the pair's relationship. This is an art movie, beautifully made and very surreal. find out more...