Persona (1966) - "Bergman at his most brilliant as he explores the symbiotic relationship that evolves between an actress suffering a breakdown in which she refuses to speak, and the nurse in charge as she recuperates in a country cottage. To comment is to betray the film's extraordinary complexity, but basically it returns to two favourite Bergman themes: the difficulty of true communication between human beings, and the essentially egocentric nature of art. Here the actress (named Vogler after the charlatan/artist in The Magician) dries up in the middle of a performance, thereafter refusing to exercise her art. We aren't told why, but from the context it's a fair guess that she withdraws from a feeling of inadequacy in face of the horrors of the modern world; and in her withdrawal, she watches with detached tolerance as humanity (the nurse chattering on about her troubled sex life) reveals its petty woes. Then comes the weird moment of communion in which the two women merge as one: charlatan or not, the artist can still be understood, and can therefore still understand. Not an easy film, but an infinitely rewarding one.
Blue - Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Blue," the Polish director's French film,which is one of my favourite movies of all time is about Julie (Juliette Binoche), a grieving widow and mother whose husband, "one of the most important composers of our time," and young daughter are killed in the car accident she survives."Blue" is a lyrically studied, solemn, sometimes almost abstract consideration of Julie's attempt to liberate herself from her sorrowful love and to establish a new life. But love, which is a contradiction of liberty, cannot be easily fooled.
3. Wings of Desire - Wim Wender (1987) is a remarkable modern fairy tale about the nature of being alive. The angels witness the gamut of human emotions, and they experience the luxury of simple pleasures (even a cup of coffee and a cigarette) as ones who've never known them. From the angels' viewpoint, Berlin is seen in gorgeous black-and-white -- strikingly beautiful but unreal; when they join the humans, the image shifts to rough but natural-looking color, and the waltz-like grace of the angels' drift through the city changes to a harsher rhythm.
4 . Baran (2001) - Iranian director Majid Majidi's very touching love story between a Iranian boy and a destitute young Afghan girl, told in gestures and glances, skillfully binds together the broad social theme of refugees with Majidi's vision of the spiritual purity that is attainable through selfless love.
5. Citizen Kane - Orson Welles (1941)
6. The Solaris (1972) - Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris is a visually hypnotic, deeply affecting story of conscience, love, and reconciliation.Solaris deals with self-confrontation. In Solaris, a tenuous communication is established with the planet and, having faced up to his demons, the hero attains a degree of peace with himself.Solaris is an unsettling portrait of man's inequitable, often destructive interaction with his environment. Inherent in the tenets of the Solaris mission is a preconceived theoretical filter that accepts only those phenomena that can be logically explained or physically proven. Some scientists have hypothesized that the Solaris ocean is a thinking substance, a primordial brain, capable of realizing thought. However, lacking concrete evidence, Berton's deposition to the Solaristics board is met with skepticism and calls for the immediate termination of the program. A mission scientist, Dr. Messinger, eventually succeeds in dissuading the board from canceling the project by exposing their innate fears, which lead them to impose artificial barriers to conceal Truth, and proposing that the strange phenomenon, itself, is cause for further study, and not an excuse for an apprehensive retreat. In reality, it is not the failure of technology that impedes the attainment of Truth, but humanity's own inertia and myopic vision.
7) Dogville (2003) - Lars Von Trier -Dogville, an austere Brechtian critique of an unjust society, via a self-reflexive bit of wisdom.
Link of a critic of Dogville
8) Mar Adentros 2002 (Alejandro Amenabar) - The real-life story of Spaniard Ramon Sampedro, who fought a 30 year campaign in favor of euthanasia and his own right to die.(Spanish)
9) 12 Angry Men (1957) - is a courtroom drama. In purpose, it's a crash course in those passages of the Constitution that promise defendants a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. It has a kind of stark simplicity: Apart from a brief setup and a briefer epilogue, the entire film takes place within a small New York City jury room, on "the hottest day of the year," as 12 men debate the fate of a young defendant charged with murdering his father.
10) Akira Kurosawa Ikiru (Living/To Live) (1952) It tells the story of Mr Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a senior public servant who finds out he has terminal cancer and only a short time left to live. Mr Watanabe comes to the realisation that he has become trapped in his life, and seeks to give meaning to his last few months. What differentiates this film from thousands of Hollywood telemovies on the same subject is Kurosawa's non-linear use of time, and the utilisation of different character perspectives. The title of the film comes from the Japanese word for living.
11) Au Hasard, Balthazar (1966) - Robert Bresson - This Bresson creation, the donkey Balthazar, is one of the most intriguing and powerful in all cinema. Balthazar, whilst not the protagonist, is certainly the film's central character, and Bresson refuses to anthropomorphise him (except in a deep sense). The film's main structural idea is facile and effective - Balthazar gets passed from owner to owner, experiencing (and bearing witness to) all kinds of human love and hate.Balthazar is a parable of sin and suffering, but barely a religious one. The Biblical echoes in it in fact seem referential (not reverential), more of a cue been taken from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. In that novel (which Bresson obviously plundered for Pickpocket and L'Argent), there is a harrowing scene where a workhorse is beaten and beaten till it crumples to the ground. It is hard not to be moved by the scene, and the same applies to Bresson's film. Like Dostoyevsky, Bresson is acutely realist, and only unconventionally spiritualist.
12) A Short Film About Killing (1988) - Krzysztof Kieslowski - This film is so potent that it is partially credited with the Polish government abolishing the death penalty.A Short Film About Killing shows the destruction brought on by a brutal murder committed by Jacek, a troubled young Polish punk. Jacek is disassociated from society. He meanders about Warsaw stewing in his emotional distress. Across town, cabdriver Waldemar Rekowski, a belligerent and horrible man, makes his way through his day. Finally, there is Piotr who, after winning his life's dream of becoming a barrister, must face the reality of being a part of the legal system. The three lives collide in a devastating story that will bring into question the meaning of violence, murder and capital punishment.
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