25 Best Movies You’ve Probably Never Seen

Burt Lancaster stars as Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker in this sordid blend of biting satire and noirish drama. Hoping to break up his sister’s engagement, Hunsecker enlists the help of sleazy press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis). Poorly received upon its theatrical release, the film is now considered an outright classic from Hollywood’s golden era.

A shy and voyeuristic postal worker forges a unique relationship with his promiscuous neighbor in this Polish romantic drama. It expands upon the sixth installment of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s acclaimed ten-part TV series “Dekalog.”

Condensed from a six-part miniseries, this masterful Swedish drama chronicles the breakdown of a bourgeois marriage. Director Ingmar Bergman based some of the material on personal experience and cast former partner (and recurring muse) Liv Ullmann in a lead role. HBO recently aired a modern-day American remake of the original series.

Fassbinder’s award-winning drama takes place in West Germany not long after Palestinian terrorists enacted the Munich massacre. At its center is the controversial romance between a lonely widow and a younger Arab man. Considered one of the director’s best efforts, it’s also heralded as a peak example of German New Wave cinema.

The second installment of director Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed Apu Trilogy follows its young protagonist from childhood into adolescence. “It’s a masterpiece for which terms like ‘simplicity’ and ‘profundity’ seem inadequate,” wrote critic Jonathan Rosenbaum for the Chicago Reader.

The story of a family-run noodle shop gives way to various food-themed vignettes in this eccentric Japanese comedy. Once promoted as the first “ramen western,” it uses culinary culture as a gateway to clever sociological insight.

This French dramedy chronicles the friendship between two impoverished children against the harsh backdrop of WWII. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and later took home an honorary out-of-competition award at the Oscars.

Bergman’s Oscar-winning psychological drama is the first in an unofficial trilogy about the loss of faith. It takes place over the course of 24 hours and tells the story of a young woman (Harriet Andersson), who loses her grip on reality during a family getaway.

No stranger to Shakespeare, director Akira Kurosawa drew loose inspiration from “Hamlet” when crafting this Japanese noir. After positioning himself within a corrupt corporation, a man (Toshiro Mifune) enacts vengeance upon those responsible for his father’s death. It was one among a handful of Kurosawa films to pit a lone hero against evil authoritarian forces.

This uncompromising drama takes viewers deep into France’s underground resistance during WWII. It was released at a time of great political unrest and critically lambasted over its perceived stance on controversial leader Charles de Gaulle. Later reappraised as a masterpiece, it first became available to American audiences in 2006.

This French period drama based on a novel by Marcel Pagnol, which takes place after WWI, weaves a tale of provincial greed and subterfuge. On the outskirts of a small village, two corrupt farmers scheme for a plot of land. It makes up the first half of a two-part saga (“Manon des Sources” is the second part) which was collectively France’s most expensive production of its time.

From the director of “Bicycle Thieves” comes this similarly-themed slice of Italian neorealism. It centers on the title character (Carlo Battisti), an elderly man who struggles to survive on his government pension.

Tarkovsky’s directorial feature debut culled from the scraps of a previously abandoned film project. It takes place during WWII and tells the story of an orphaned child turned Soviet spy. Writing for the Independent, critic Geoffrey Macnab noted that Tarkovsky “pays full attention to the squalor and pity of war but never loses his sense of poetry.”

Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami kicked off an unofficial trilogy with this understated drama about childhood innocence. In possession of his friend’s notebook, a young boy seeks to return it in the neighboring village.

Youthful romance is disrupted by the horrors of WWII in this award-winning Soviet drama. It features groundbreaking handheld camerawork from cinematographer Sergey Urusevskiy, who learned the technique as a military cameraman during the actual war.

A police inspector (Volonté) kills his mistress and then manipulates the investigation in this Italian crime satire. Time Out critic David Fear called it a “paranoid police procedural” and a “perverse parable about the corrupting elements of power” in his five-star review. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

This historical drama takes a non-traditional approach to the samurai sub-genre by examining the domestic life of its protagonist. It takes place during the final days of the feudal era and presents a low-ranking warrior with family issues and a budding romance. At the Japan Academy Film Prize (essentially the country’s Oscars), it won a record-breaking 12 awards.

The debut feature from animator Don Hertzfeldt combines three award-winning short films into a collective story. Delivered in a boldly experimental style, it chronicles the psychological breakdown of a young man named Bill. Hertzfeldt spent years bringing the project to life and captured everything in-camera on a vintage 35mm animation stand from the 1940s.

Minimalist master Robert Bresson drew from the memoir of a WWII French Resistance fighter when creating this gripping drama. Shot in the same prison where the actual event took place, it follows a POW (Francois Leterrier) as he plots to break out.

Apurba Roy is a 23-year-old adult with a meager income and artistic ambitions in the final installment of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy. “Humanist film-making at its best,” wrote critic Alan Morrison for Empire Magazine.

This sweeping crime drama takes place in the early 1960s and culls from director Edward Yang’s own experiences growing up in Taipei. While grappling with poor grades and first love, a young boy (Chang Chen) ends up in the middle of a gang war. A pillar of the Taiwanese New Wave, the film is also considered one of the most underrated masterpieces of the 1990s.

Clocking in at just over six hours, this Italian epic follows two brothers through four decades of personal and political upheaval. It was developed as a miniseries but released theatrically in two separate installments.

Director Emir Kusturica injects coming-of-age themes and a touch of magical realism into this Serbian crime dramedy. It tells the story of a Romani teenager with telekinetic powers who takes up with a gang of local thieves.

A traveling entomologist (Eiji Okada) is lured into a prison of sand in this Japanese New Wave masterpiece. With no means of escape, he and a young woman (Kyōko Kishida) perform hard labor on behalf of local villagers. Dream-like visuals and creative camerawork turn absurdist drama into modern myth.

Director Kenji Mizoguchi’s tragic drama takes place in medieval Japan and spins a merciless tale of survival. Separated from their parents and sold into slavery, two children embark on a quest for reunification. “Every cut threatens to swallow a galaxy,” wrote critic Jaime N. Christley for the Village Voice.