Belle de Jour dramatises the collision between depravity and elegance, one of the favourite themes of director Luis Buñuel. Catherine Deneuve stars as a wealthy but bored newlywed, eager to taste life to the fullest. She seemingly gets her wish early in the film when she is kidnapped, tied to a tree and whipped. It turns out that this is only a daydream, but her subsequent visits to a neighbouring brothel, where she offers her services, certainly seem to be real. This illusion/reality dichotomy extends to the final scenes, in which we are offered two possible endings.

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite, until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past decade of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career.

In the Ottoman province of Hijaz during World War I, a young Bedouin boy experiences a greatly hastened coming-of-age as he embarks on a perilous desert journey to guide a British officer to his secret destination. The first movie from Jordan to be nominated for a foreign-language Oscar.

Based on several short stories from Alice Munro’s book Runaway, this drama is directed by Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar. When recently widowed Julieta (Emma Suárez) discovers that her 18-year-old daughter Antía (Blanca Parés) has run away, she vows to put aside her grief for her late husband and do everything she can to find her daughter. The more she searches, however, the more Julieta realises she doesn’t know Antía very well at all.

In this military drama, Galoup (Denis Lavant) is an officer at a French Foreign Legion outpost in the Gulf of Dijbouti, where he enjoys a close relationship with the Commanding Officer (Michel Subor) and works with a team of fit young men who work hard all day and play hard all night. When a new recruit, Sentain (Gregoire Colin), joins the troops, Galoup believes that he upsets the delicate balance between the CO and the other men. Sentain is well-liked by his comrades for his good humour and selfless nature, and his virtues make him the CO’s new favourite. Galoup is jealous of the attention Sentain receives, and he devises a plan to discredit Sentain in the eyes of the other men and have him drummed out of the service. Loosely based on Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville and featuring music from Benjamin Britten’s opera.

Space alien Thomas Jerome Newton (Bowie) crash lands on Earth, seeking help for his drought-stricken planet. By securing patents to advanced technology, he becomes a fabulously wealthy industrialist. However, money and its attendant decadence ultimately exert a stronger gravitational pull. Bowie seemed perfectly cast as the space traveller, and the film further cemented director Roeg’s status as one of the most unique filmmakers of the 1970’s. Originally cut by 20 minutes on its 1976 US release, we present the 40th anniversary complete version.

Aisholpan, a 13-year-old girl, trains to become the first female in twelve generations of her Kazakh family to become an eagle hunter in the tradition that has been handed down from father to son for centuries. Set against the breath-taking expanse of the Mongolian steppe, The Eagle Huntress features some of the most awe-inspiring cinematography ever captured in a documentary. While there are many old Kazakh eagle hunters who vehemently reject the idea of any female taking part in their ancient tradition, Aisholpan’s father believes that a girl can do anything a boy can, as long as she’s determined.

A ten year old boy (Ahlo) who is believed to bring bad luck, is blamed for a string of disasters. When his family loses their home and are forced to move, Ahlo meets the spirited orphan Kia and her eccentric uncle Purple; an ex-soldier with a purple suit, a rice wine habit and a fetish for James Brown. Struggling to keep his father’s trust, Ahlo leads his family through a land scarred by war in search of a new home. In a last plea to try and prove he is not cursed, Ahlo builds a giant rocket to enter the most lucrative but dangerous competition of the year – the Rocket Festival.

A portrait of the Iranian capital. Forbidden from filming by the government in 2010, director Jafar Panahi poses as a Tehran taxi driver. His fares, who sit in the passenger seat, candidly confide about their lives to the inexperienced driver. They include men and women, young and old, rich and poor, traditionalists and modernists, pirate video vendors and advocates of freedom. The passengers are played by non-professional actors, whose identities remain anonymous. Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh also appears in the film in a powerful and uplifting performance.

Estranged brothers Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) reunite for a train trip across India. The siblings have not spoken in over a year since their father passed away. Francis is recovering from a motorcycle accident, Peter cannot cope with his wife’s pregnancy and Jack cannot get over his ex-lover. The brothers fall into old patterns of behaviour as Francis reveals the real reason for the reunion: to visit their mother in a Himalayan convent.