Criterion Collection (Firm)

A rambunctious dark comedy. An unbalanced but alluring former mental patient takes a B-movie porn star prisoner in the hopes of convincing her to marry him. A highly unconventional romance that came on the spike heels of Almodovar's international sensation Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, this is a splashy, sexy central work in the career of one of the world₂s most beloved and provocative auteurs.

"With his eighth and most personal film, Alfonso Cuarón recreated the early-1970s Mexico City of his childhood, narrating a tumultuous period in the life of a middle-class family through the experiences of Cleo, the indigenous domestic worker who keeps the household running. Charged with the care of four small children abandoned by their father, Cleo tends to the family even as her own life is shaken by personal and political upheavals"--Container....

A country's bloody history stains the present in the Guatemalan auteur Jayro Bustamante's transfixing fusion of folk horror and searing political commentary, inspired by the real-life indictment of the authoritarian Efraín Ríos Montt for crimes against humanity. A notorious, now aging former military dictator stands trial for atrocities committed against Guatemala's Mayan communities. While battling legal repercussions and the people's demands for...

While attempting to contact her ex-lover Iván, actress Pepa Marcos is enmeshed in a series of unexpected meetings with and revelations involving Iván, his mentally unbalanced ex-wife Lucía, his and Lucía's son Carlos, Carlos's fiancée Marisa, Lucía's lawyer Paulina Morales, and Candela, Pepa's model friend who has unwittingly become involved with Shiite terrorists.

Mayan Indian peasants are tired of being thought of as nothing more than manual laborers. They organize an effort to improve their lot in life, but are discovered by the Guatemalan army. After the army destroys their village and family, Enrique and Rosa, a teenage brother and sister, who barely escaped the massacre, decide they must flee to United States. After receiving clandestine help from friends and humorous advice from a veteran immigrant on...

Shot while General Franco was on his deathbed, the film melds the personal and the political in a portrait of the legacy of fascism and its effects on a middle-class family.

In the North of Spain, Estrella grows up captivated by her father, a doctor with mystical powers, and by the enigma of his youth in the South, a near-mythical region whose secrets seem to haunt him more and more as time goes on. Though Erice's original vision also encompassed a long section set in the South itself, which was never made, it remains an experience of rare perfection and satisfaction.

A man travels from Mexico City to an isolated village to commit suicide; once there, however, he meets a pious elderly woman whose quiet humanity incites a reawakening of his desires.

Both a landmark of radical political cinema and one of the most visually beautiful films ever made, this legendary hymn to revolution shimmers across the screen like a fever dream of rebellion. The result of an extraordinarily ambitious collaboration between the Soviet and Cuban film industries, director Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba unfolds in four explosive vignettes that capture Cuban life on the brink of transformation, as crushing economic exploitation...

After a lavish dinner party in a stately mansion, the guests believe themselves unable to leave the premises. As the days pass, the elaborate facades of their social positions collapse and they are forced to live like animals. Finally discovering they are actually free to leave, they go to church to give thanks, where they are again trapped.