TSPDT's 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films

In 1960s Hong Kong, two neighbors form an intimate bond after making a discovery about their spouses in this visually stunning tale of unrequited love.

After a car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesic, she and a perky Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.

Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries.

Spirited Away is an Oscar winning Japanese animated film about a ten year old girl who wonders away from her parents along a path that leads to a world ruled by strange and unusual monster-like animals. Her parents have been changed into pigs along with others inside a bathhouse full of these creatures. Will she ever see the world how it once was?

A story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around turn-of-the-century prospector, Daniel Plainview, in the early days of the business.

The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.

On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.

The story centers around a family with three boys in the 1950s. The eldest son witnesses the loss of innocence.

Varda films and interviews gleaners in France in all forms, from those picking fields after the harvest to those scouring the dumpsters of Paris.

The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.

All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.

What would happen if we could erase the worst experiences and relationships from our memory. Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry combined forces to answer this very question.

Hidden is a film by Austrian director Michael Haneke. A suspenseful thriller with bloody elements from French history. A family man receives a video of him and his family yet there is nothing saying who it is from. This continues and it turns out to be someone that has know him for a while.

Dying of kidney disease, a man spends his last, somber days with family, including the ghost of his wife and a forest spirit who used to be his son, on a rural northern Thailand farm.

Amid the sweltering summer heat in northern Argentina, two middle-class families retreat to a crumbling country estate and a modest townhouse, where strained relationships, simmering tensions, and the presence of children and servants quietly expose the fractures of family life. Between idle days, gossip, and unspoken desires, the boundaries of ...

On a dark, rainy night, a historic and regal Taipei cinema sees its final film: 1967 martial arts feature "Dragon Inn". As the film plays, the lives of the theater's various employees and patrons intersect, and two ghostly actors arrive to mourn the passing of an era.

A couple has to make a decision to leave Iran to better the life of their child or to stay and take care of a parent suffering from Alzheimers; however, the couple's marriage may end in divorce.

City of God is one of the most successful Brazilian films of all times. It depicts the raw violence in the ghettos of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970’s that even had young kids carrying guns and joining gangs when they should be playing hide-and-seek.

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in search for her homeland with the aid of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshipper and a drifter named Max.

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.

Two sisters find their relationship challenged as a nearby planet threatens to collide into the Earth.

A young African-American visits his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.

A detailed look at the gradual decline of Shenyang’s industrial Tiexi district, an area that was once a vibrant example of China’s socialist economy. But industry is changing, and the factories of Tiexi are closing. Director Wang Bing introduces us to some of the workers affected by the closures, and to their families.

A rural farmer is forced to confront the mortality of his faithful horse.

Strange events happen in a small village in the north of Germany during the years just before World War I, which seem to be ritual punishment. The abused and suppressed children of the villagers seem to be at the heart of this mystery.

Disguising herself as a human female, an extraterrestrial drives around Scotland and tries to lure unsuspecting men into her van.

Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.

Without a warning a father comes to visit his daughter abroad. He believes that she lost her humor and therefore surprises her with a rampage of jokes.

Director Lars von Trier depicts the vivid moral informative film about the ruthlessness of civil society. Filmed in a minimalist style, that until recently was unrecognized, the Danish filmmaker depicts the quite familiar themes of guilt and forgiveness, good and evil, and the moral chasm of humanity.

We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, ...

After running into something with her car, Vero experiences a particular psychological state. She realizes she might have killed someone.

Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.

In 1950s London, a renowned dressmaker's meticulous lifestyle begins drastically changing as his relationship with his young muse intensifies.

In a place where killers are celebrated as heroes, these filmmakers challenge unrepentant death-squad leaders to dramatize their role in genocide. The result is a surreal, cinematic journey, not only into the memories and imaginations of mass murderers, but also into a frighteningly banal regime of corruption and impunity

David, a robotic boy—the first of his kind programmed to love—is adopted as a test case by a Cybertronics employee and his wife. Though he gradually becomes their child, a series of unexpected circumstances make this life impossible for David.

Pans Labyrinth is the exquisitely produced fantasy film from Mexican director Guillermo del Toro who is actually famous for his works in science-fiction and horror. The film stars a little girl lost in a fantasy world. The film won three Academy Awards in 2007.

A story about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents who were both doctors, and his memories of growing up in a hospital environment.

Based on the novel by Antonio Di Benedetto. Don Diego de Zama, a Spanish officer of the 17th century settled in Asunción, awaits his transfer to Buenos Aires.

The film tells a story of a divorced couple trying to raise their young son. The story follows the boy for twelve years, from first grade at age 6 through 12th grade at age 17-18, and examines his relationship with his parents as he grows.

Director Pedro Almodóvar tells a story of loneliness, intimacy, secrets, infidelity and the difficulty of communication between sexes. Typical of the Spanish director, Almodóvar puts the women are in the middle of the action however it’s a male correlation that arises from the story.

A group of men set out in search of a dead body in the Anatolian steppes.

Elephant is a Gus Van Sant film depicting the story of a high school just before and after a massive shooting. The film is shot in a way that makes the viewer seem like they are there, in the high school, slowly walking around witnessing ever characters story unfold. The film won the Palme d’Or and Best Director at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

A monumental traffic jam serves as the backdrop for the lives of the inhabitants of a Swedish city.

THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU is a black comic tale that follows the title character as he waits for attention in a rundown hospital emergency ward. Lazarescu's trip to the medical unit descends into a nightmare-ish journey of horrendous mistreatment at the hands of the hospital staff.

In 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of humankind.

China's rapid changes from the late-1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

An unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but taking as main focus the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte.

Oldboy is the revenge drama from Director Park Chan-wook. Based on a Manga comic it depicts the suffering path of a man who must deal with the never ending torment of having unknowingly made someone his enemy.

A beleaguered small-business owner gets a harmonium and embarks on a romantic journey with a mysterious woman.

An actress's perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.