Vanity Fair (1915)

LACHESIS

Our “true” life path decisions are heavily influenced by many external factors (known as the imposed choice) such as our environment, our friends/families, and spiritual inclinations. However, this internal compass (known as our independent choice) such as personal passions and feelings that help guide us to our mind’s “true” path.

The Elephant Man

A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man being mistreated by his "owner" as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of great intelligence and sensitivity. Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the film), a severely deformed man in 19th century London.

1984

In a totalitarian future society, a man whose daily work is rewriting history tries to rebel by falling in love.

Hassan and Nayima

A love story similar to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet taking place in the Egyptian Countryside.

A Tale of Two Cities

Set against the conditions leading up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, French doctor Alexandre Manette serves an 18-year imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, followed by his release to live in London with the daughter he has never met.

Is Paris Burning?

Near the end of World War II, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he cannot maintain control of the city. After much contemplation Choltitz decides to ignore his orders, enraging the Germans and giving hope to various resistance factions that the city will be liberated. Choltitz, along with Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling, helps a resistance leader organize his forces.

Above the Lake

Avant-garde homage to pre-revolution Russian silent movies, and to the poet Aleksandr Blok.

Cul-de-sac

On the run and in search of help, two wounded gangsters find refuge in the secluded castle of a feeble man and his wife; however, under the point of a gun, nothing is what it seems.

The World, the Flesh and the Devil

Ralph Burton is a miner who is trapped for several days as a result of a cave-in. When he finally manages to dig himself out, he realizes that all of mankind seems to have been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. He travels to New York City only to find it deserted. Making a life for himself there, he is flabbergasted to eventually find Sarah Crandall, who also managed to survive. Together, they form a close friendship until the arrival of Benson Thacker who has managed to pilot his small boat into the city's harbor. At this point, tensions rise between the three, particularly between Thacker, who is white, and Burton, who is black.

Cairo 30

Mahgoub is a villager who moves to Cairo in search of a better life. When he enlists friend Salem's help to find him a job, Salem not only gets him a job at the ministry where he works but he finds him a bride as well. But the bride is the mistress of Qasem Bek, who will be visiting her once a week.

Ashes and Diamonds

A young academy soldier, Maciek Chelmicki, is ordered to shoot the secretary of the KW PPR. A coincidence causes him to kill someone else. Meeting face to face with his victim, he gets a shock. He faces the necessity of repeating the assassination. He meets Krystyna, a girl working as a barmaid in the restaurant of the "Monopol" hotel. His affection for her makes him even more aware of the senselessness of killing at the end of the war. Loyalty to the oath he took, and thus the obligation to obey the order, tips the scales.

The Beginning and the End

Set in the suburbs of Cairo in the late 1930s, the story follows a middle-class Egyptian family grappling with the hardships of life after the death of their father, their sole breadwinner. The mother and her four children—three brothers and their sister, Nefisah—struggle to avoid slipping into poverty. They all go in different directions which aren't exactly good.

The Miracle Man

A gang of crooks evade the police by moving their operations to a small town. There the gang's leader encounters a faith healer and uses him to scam gullible public of funds for a supposed chapel. But when a real healing takes place, a change comes over the gang. Lost film, only the most famous scene has survived.

Cléo from 5 to 7

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

Ed Wood

The mostly true story of the legendary "worst director of all time", who, with the help of his strange friends, filmed countless B-movies without ever becoming famous or successful.

A Lebanese at the university

A young college man and a girl fall in love, but another girl loves the same man, so she tries to get between them by unjustly informing his father about him.

abn albalad

Fathia marries the wealthy man, Azma Bey, against her will. She suffers from his relationships with women and his constant nights out, so she leaves him and meets a young engineer who succeeds in managing the factories she inherited from her father.

Metropolis

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

Anatomy of a Murder

Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.

Citizen Kane

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Children of the poor

Fouad Pasha refuses to help his brother after his bankruptcy in the stock market, and his son Zaki abandons his cousin Hosnia after he assaulted and raped her, so Fouad is forced to marry her to the farmer Ibrahim, Hosnia gives birth to a baby girl, and Ibrahim doubts her lineage, so he abandons Hosnia. Over the years, Hosnia only finds work as a dancer in a nightclub, and her daughter, who is sick with tuberculosis, works as a singer.

Valley of stars

Adly and Raouf are brothers who love adventures. They end up on one of the islands far from urbanization. They encounter a tribe celebrating by beating drums, and its members surround Zainab tied up, dancing around him as she calls for help in an Egyptian language. Adly is determined to save her. During the return trip, Adly feels a feeling of love for Zainab. He is surprised by a magician who wants to retrieve Zainab.

The secrets of the world

An aristocratic girl volunteers with the Red Crescent, where she meets a young doctor. They fall in love and agree to marry, but cruelty of fate forces the girl to marry a rich sheikh. Life becomes difficult for her, so she agrees to commit suicide. But her mother pushes her back when she reveals to her the dangerous secret that the young doctor is not... Except for her brother.

Rabab

As Rabab escapes from the cruelty of his stepmother and stays with an actress, she meets the young man, Ihsan, who tries to assault her inside his car, which overturns and dies. With his father’s attempt to take revenge on Rabab, she decides to flee again to Cairo to work as a teacher there under the name (Najwa). Then she met a colleague of hers and married him.

Breathless

A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.

The Apartment

Bud Baxter is a minor clerk in a huge New York insurance company, until he discovers a quick way to climb the corporate ladder. He lends out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. Although he often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits, one night he's left with a major problem to solve.

High Noon

Will Kane, the sheriff of a small town in New Mexico, learns a notorious outlaw he put in jail has been freed, and will be arriving on the noon train. Knowing the outlaw and his gang are coming to kill him, Kane is determined to stand his ground, so he attempts to gather a posse from among the local townspeople.

Casablanca

In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

Seven Samurai

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.

People on Sunday

A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.

12 Angry Men

The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.

Freaks

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

All Quiet on the Western Front

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

Wings of Desire

Two angels glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed, but never interacting with them. When one falls in love with lonely trapeze artist, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world and finds that it might be possible for him to take human form.

The 400 Blows

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

The Innocent

Mohsen is a wealthy, romantic young man who lives in his grandfather's palace. One day, he decides to shelter a number of homeless children in order to reform them. This turns his family against him, expelling him from the palace and filing a quarantine lawsuit against him.

Hanan

(Hassan), the simple contractor, lives a happy life with his wife (Amina) and his daughter (Laila). He succeeds in his work, becomes a wealthy contractor, and meets (Murad) Bey and they start a company. (Nima), (Murad's) playful sister, tries to lure (Hassan) into... She falls into her trap, and succeeds in doing so in order to cover up the suspicious actions of her brother (Murad). Hassan leaves his wife (Amina) and divorces her. His daughter, Laila, and her fiancé, Aziz, try to expose Naama and Murad and reunite the family.

The invisibility cap

Teacher Abbas Samkari dreams of getting rich. He finds an invisibility cap and uses it to pay off his debts and follow everyone around him without anyone seeing him. However, the cap falls into the hands of thieves, who misuse it.

Layla in the dark

Hussein and Laila are children who pledge to love. Circumstances separate them and they meet after they grow up and their feelings are renewed, but Laila is exposed to an accident that loses her sight, so she decides to sacrifice her love so that Hussein can avoid life with a co-wife.

The Journalist

A successful young journalist goes to a small industrial city in order to understand the written complaints of a certain girl. When he met the author of the letters and the girl whom she had slandered, he didn't immediately understand the complexity of the situation and the measure of responsibility to those whom he was obliged to protect...

Robin Hood

Robin Hood and his followers aid the poor and oppressed from their hideout in Sherwood Forest, pursued by the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Sabotage

Karl Anton Verloc and his wife own a small cinema in a quiet London suburb where they live seemingly happily. But Mrs. Verloc does not know that her husband has a secret that will affect their relationship and threaten her teenage brother's life.

For Men Only

(Elham and Salwa) two chemical engineers, have been appointed to the Oil Company (Cairo) but are seeking to work in the desert to explore new oil wells, but the company only sends men there. The desert, having progressed to work as two men because of the company's system of accepting only men's travel on these missions, recognizes their colleagues in the desert and lives with them as two men

Bloody Land

Film set in three different times. In the beginning, Miti is killed while defending his land. Then, the film focuses on his son Gjergji who fights against the Italian forces. In the end, the land is redistributed by the agrarian reform.

They Were Four

Four partisans are tasked with delivering a song to the Congress of Përmet.

Cloaks over Barbed Wire

A film about the Italian troops leaving Vlora and Albanian partisans finally entering the enemy camp.

Pather Panchali

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. His wife, Sarbojaya, looks after their rebellious daughter, Durga, and young son, Apu. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life.

Practise Makes

A ballet dancer moves and shifts in a space unknown.

Band of Outsiders

Cinephile slackers Franz and Arthur spend their days mimicking the antiheroes of Hollywood noirs and Westerns while pursuing the lovely Odile. The misfit trio upends convention at every turn, be it through choreographed dances in cafés or frolicsome romps through the Louvre. Eventually, their romantic view of outlaws pushes them to plan their own heist, but their inexperience may send them out in a blaze of glory -- which could be just what they want.

Castle of Wind and Clouds

A samurai returns to his homeland after a three year absence and finds his fiance is now one of the prince's concubines.

The Fools Alley

Khadiga lives in a poor neighborhood with her parents. She tries to save up money so she could marry her sweetheart Taha. Taha buys a lottery ticket in hope of winning a lot of money, but it ends up in Khadiga's religious father's hands who throws it away. The ticket gets picked up by the town's fool, who gets lucky and wins, driving the town into chaos.

The Conscience

Kujtim works as a car mechanic. He makes a mistake and does not fix the brakes of a truck properly, which leads to a deadly accident. He feels guilty, but is unable to admit his mistake.

Bear

Bear (10 minutes, 35 seconds) was Steve McQueen's first major film. Although not an overtly political work, for many viewers it raises sensitive issues about race, homoeroticism and violence. It depicts two naked men – one of whom is the artist – tussling and teasing one another in an encounter which shifts between tenderness and aggression. The film is silent but a series of stares, glances and winks between the protagonists creates an optical language of flirtation and threat.

La Haine

After a chaotic night of rioting in a marginal suburb of Paris, three young friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, wander around unoccupied waiting for news about the state of health of a mutual friend who has been seriously injured when confronting the police.

8½

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

Schindler's List

The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.