Klassiki Picks with Peter Strickland: 26 March – 23 April
Klassiki Picks is our series of curated watchlists personally selected for our subscribers by celebrated filmmakers, writers, and actors.
We’re delighted to welcome Peter Strickland to the hot seat for the latest edition. Peter is an acclaimed director whose work draws on his love of experimental and exploitation cinema and his desire to push at the boundaries of genre filmmaking. After a number of years living in Slovakia and Hungary, he burst onto the international stage in 2009 with his feature debut, the rape revenge drama Katalin Varga. Shot in Transylvania on a tiny, self-financed budget, the film screened in competition in Berlin, where it won a Silver Bear. Peter’s other features are Berberian Sound Studio (2012), a tribute to the Italian giallo film; the sado-masochistic romance The Duke of Burgundy (2014); the supernatural horror In Fabric (2018); and the art-comedy ensemble piece Flux Gourmet (2022). He has also directed the short Blank Narcissus (Passion of the Swamp) (2022) and co-directed the concert film Björk: Biophilia Live with Nick Fenton.
Peter has curated a selection of five titles for Klassiki Picks that reflect his deep engagement with the cinema and history of Central Europe and Ukraine.
Available to Klassiki subscribers from 26 March – 23 April 2026.
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The Organ
Available from 26 March – 23 April
Directed by Štefan Uher • 1965 • CzechoslovakiaŠtefan Uher’s claustrophobic tale of faith and fascism is an uncut gem of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Set in the era of Nazi occupation and collaboration, the film follows a Polish deserter (Alexandr Březina) who f...
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Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Directed by Sergei Parajanov • 1965 • USSR/Ukraine
The first mature masterpiece from one of world cinema’s true poets, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors bursts with imagination. Grounded in the folk traditions, aesthetics, and dialect of the Hutsul people of western Ukraine, Parajanov’s tale of for...
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Two Balls of Wool
Directed by Hermína Týrlová • 1962 • Czechoslovakia
The first of Hermína Týrlová’s “wool pictures”, in which she experimented with the creative potential of humble yarn, this stop motion short captures the director’s reimagination of the domestic as a world of imagination. A box of knitting supp...
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The Knot in the Handkerchief
Directed by Hermína Týrlová • 1958 • Czechoslovakia
One of Hermína Týrlová’s most beloved shorts, this quietly innovative combination of stop motion and live action melds together the worlds of childhood play and fantasy. When a young boy forgets to mend a dripping tap, his handkerchief takes on...
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The Blue Apron
Directed by Hermína Týrlová • 1965 • Czechoslovakia
One of Hermína Týrlová’s most poetic stop motion animations, this short combines the everyday and the surreal to dizzying effect, as an apron on a clothes line takes to the skies with the help of a paper bird. As it flits through uncanny landsc...
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The Outpost
Available from 26 March – 23 April
Directed by Péter Gothár • 1995 • HungaryPéter Gothár’s rarely screened cult classic presents a Kafkaesque odyssey through the squalor and black comedy of late socialist collapse. When middle-aged office worker Gizella (Mari Nagy) receives an unexpected promot...
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Servants
Available from 26 March – 23 April
Directed by Ivan Ostrochovský • 2020 • SlovakiaDrawing on a dark period in his nation’s modern history, Slovak filmmaker Ivan Ostrochovský’s Servants is an icy study of repression and resistance that refuses easy answers. Set in a Bratislava seminary in 1980, ...
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Peter Strickland introduces his Klassiki Picks
Klassiki Picks is our series of curated watchlists personally selected for our subscribers by celebrated filmmakers, writers, and actors. We’re delighted to welcome Peter Strickland to the hot seat for the latest edition. Peter is an acclaimed director whose work draws on his love of experimental...
