Directed by Béla Tarr • 2000 • Hungary
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Perhaps the finest expression of Béla Tarr’s unique cinematic philosophy, Werckmeister Harmonies is a mysterious and gripping parable of social collapse. Adapted from his own novel The Melanch...

Directed by Jiří Menzel • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
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The film that announced the Czech New Wave to the world, Jiří Menzel’s beloved debut is a humanist comedy of errors and a minor-key ode to rebellion. Adapted from Bohumil Hrabal’s nov...

Directed by Andrzej Wajda • 1981 • Poland

One of many peaks in the long career of the Polish maestro, Man of Iron is a sequel to Wajda’s 1977 drama Man of Marble. Winkel (Marian Opania), a disgruntled radio reporter, is sent to Gdańsk to discredit Tomczyk (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), one of the leader...

Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski • 1988 • Poland
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Expanded from an episode of Kieślowski’s epic television serial Dekalog, A Short Film about Love represents the Polish master at his most sensitive and daring. By day, 19-year-old To...

Directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler • 1978 • Hungary

One of Sándor Reisenbüchler’s most playful and politically pointed shorts, Panic weds his familiar dazzling colour palette and engagingly naive visual style to a parable about the dangers of unchecked technology. An advanced civilisation takes th...

Directed by Márta Mészáros • 1990 • Hungary

The devastating but hopeful conclusion to Márta Mészáros’s autobiographical Diary trilogy, which traces the life story of the orphan Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi) through Hungary’s tumultuous post-war history. Diary for My Father and Mother sees our heroine ...

Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski • 2013 • Poland

Paweł Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning period road movie excavates the sins of Poland’s twentieth-century history. It is 1962, and Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), an orphan given up to a convent during the war, is on the verge of taking her monastic vows. But...

Directed by Jiří Trnka • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
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“The Walt Disney of Eastern Europe”, Jiří Trnka was one of the most influential figures in Czech animation history. This subversive allegorical short, one of his most poignant creation...

Directed by Andrzej Munk • 1958 • Poland

One of only three feature films completed by Andrzej Munk before his tragic early death in a car accident, Eroica is a scathing assault on the false pieties of national pride and a key film in the history of the Polish School. The film is structured as tw...

Directed by Jaromil Jireš • 1969 • Czechoslovakia
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Adapted from the breakout novel by the great Milan Kundera, The Joke is one of Czech cinema’s most piercing political statements. During the Stalinist era, happy-go-lucky student Lu...

Directed by István Szabó • 1980 • Hungary

Arguably the first mature masterpiece from one of Hungary’s greatest auteurs, Confidence is a perfectly controlled study in suspicion and longing. Set in a cowering Budapest in 1944, it follows two strangers forced to pose as a married couple in order t...

Directed by Ester Krumbachová • 1970 • Czechoslovakia
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Ester Krumbachová was the hidden mastermind behind the Czech New Wave, contributing costumes, set design, and screenplays for some of the most celebrated films of the era. This n...

Directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler • 1968 • Hungary

Inspired by Carpathian folklore and based on the epic poem by Ferenc Juhász, this mesmerising animated short by the great Sándor Reisenbüchler imagines a world destroyed and then rebuilt. A fearsome, seven-headed dragon swallows the sun and moon,...

Directed by Ildikó Enyedi • 1989 • Hungary
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Ildikó Enyedi’s award-winning debut is a whimsical, satirical allegory for the moral decay of the past hundred years, and a love letter to the magical early years of cinema itself. Born on th...

Directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler • 1995 • Hungary

Dedicated to the memory of Fritz Lang, this rarely seen late short from Sándor Reisenbüchler offers up an eye-popping ecological vision. Moving from frantic cityscapes bursting with lurid colours and a phantasmagoria of commodities to idyllic pas...

Directed by Damian Kocur • 2022 • Poland

Damian Kocur’s feature debut confirms his reputation as one of Poland’s most promising filmmakers. Talented pianist Tymek (Tymoteusz Bies) returns to his provincial hometown during his vacation from the Warsaw Academy of Music, and quickly falls back in w...

Directed by Agnieszka Holland • 2017 • Poland

Two of Poland’s cultural titans join forces as veteran auteur Agnieszka Holland adapts Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead into a propulsive eco-thriller. Agnieszka Mandat is magnetic as Duszejko, an animal ri...

Directed by István Orosz • 1989 • Hungary

A late socialist take on M. C. Escher from the master of the mathematical and the absurd, István Orosz. Mind the Steps! reimagines a typical apartment block in Budapest from the ever-shifting perspective of a young boy. The architecture and its inhabitan...

Directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler • 1975 • Hungary

One of the finest examples of Sándor Reisenbüchler’s psychedelic take on animation, this cult classic short reimagines science fiction by way of sixties counterculture. Two scientists propose that the moon is in fact an ancient spaceship, and tra...

Directed by Wojciech Has • 1958 • Poland

Also known in English as Lidia Ate the Apple, Wojciech Has’s melancholic adaptation of Stanisław Dygat’s novel evokes the despair pervading Poland in the years before and after the Second World War. In 1939, bourgeois student Pawel (Tadeusz Janczar) rebel...

Directed by István Szőts • 1948 • Hungary

A landmark film in Hungarian cinema history, István Szőts’s penultimate feature was banned for more than 30 years before being rehabilitated as a national treasure. Centring on a Hungarian soldier returning from the First World War who marries a woman he...

Directed by Dóra Keresztes and István Orosz • 1985 • Hungary

Recalling the avant-garde artistry of Chagall and Kandinsky, as well as the folk traditions of the Carpathians, this short from master animators Dóra Keresztes and István Orosz is a fine example of the Hungarian psychedelic school. Dep...

Directed by Miklós Jancsó • 1965 • Hungary

In the final days of the Second World War, a young Hungarian soldier, Jóska, makes his way home through a landscape riddled with debris and destruction. After he is captured by the occupying Red Army, he forms a bond with the Russian soldier Kolya, desp...

Directed by Karel Steklý • 1956 • Czechoslovakia

Of the many screen adaptations of Jaroslav Hašek’s beloved novel, this delightful farce is the most enduringly popular. Written and directed by the redoutable Karel Steklý and with Rudolf Hrušínský excelling in the titular role, The Good Soldier Š...