German tourist Jasmin (Marianne Sägebrecht) and her husband fight while driving across the desert. She storms out of the car and makes her way to an isolated café, which is run by tough-as-nails Brenda (CCH Pounder), whose own husband is soon to leave as well. The café is visited by an assortment of colourful characters, including ex-Hollywood set-painter (Jack Palance) and a glamorous tattoo artist. With an ability to quietly empathise with everyone she meets at the café, helped by a passion for cleaning and performing magic tricks, Jasmin gradually transforms the café and all the people in it.

At the peak of his creative powers the 29-year-old Bernardo Bertolucci eschewed the influence of his mentor, Jean-Luc Godard, and partnered famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro to develop his own style for one of the most visually dazzling and intriguing films of all time. Told in a non-linear structure, the story begins in Rome in 1938 where Jean-Louis Trintignant is a young fascist who takes on the job of assassinating his former professor who has fled to Paris. An adaptation of Alberto Moravia’s novel which has influenced film-makers such as Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Mann and remains one of the triumphs of world cinema.

Amidst the terrors of the post-revolution, war torn Tehran of the 1980s, Shideh elects to stay in the city with her daughter Dorsa despite the protests of her husband Iraj, a doctor working for the military who has been assigned to an area of heavy fighting.  As the shelling of the city intensifies, a missile strikes their building leading to the death of an upstairs neighbour. Dorsa’s behaviour worsens, desperately hunting for her lost doll and, believing there is a presence in the house, Shideh becomes convinced a Djinn has attached itself to the family.  The astonishing directorial debut of Babak Anvari, the film was selected as the British entry for the Best Foreign-Language Film at the 2017 Academy Awards.

A private detective, Jake Gittes, hired to investigate an adultery case, stumbles on the plot of a murder involving incest and the privatisation of water through state and municipal corruption, land use and real estate. If he doesn’t drop the case at once he faces threats of legal action, but he pursues it anyway, slowly uncovering a vast conspiracy. As bruised and cynical as the decade that produced it, this noir classic benefits from Robert Towne’s brilliant screenplay, director Roman Polanski’s steady hand, and wonderful performances from Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.

Filmed entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum using a single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot, and featuring a cast of over 2,000, this historical drama film took four attempts to get a perfect, continuous, unbroken shot. An unnamed narrator wanders through the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various periods in the city’s 300-year history – including Catherine the Great and Tsar Nicholas II. He is accompanied by “the European”, who represents the Marquis de Custine, a 19th-century French traveller. Russian Ark uses the fourth wall device extensively, but it is repeatedly broken and re-erected. At times the narrator and the European interact with the other performers, while at other times they pass unnoticed. With a lush score conducted by Valery Gergiev.

A glossy Technicolor musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, decked out with million-watt star power and a Cole Porter score. Set amongst the rich and famous in Newport, Rhode Island, the story involves the wedding plans of socialite Tracy Lord (Grace Kelly) who is set to marry stuffy George Kittridge (John Lund), while magazine writer Mike Connor (Frank Sinatra) and photographer Liz Imbrie (Celeste Holm) intend to cover the ceremony. Meanwhile, Tracy’s ex-husband C.K. Dexter-Haven (Bing Crosby) also comes calling, ostensibly to the attend the annual Newport Jazz Festival, but actually for the purpose of winning Tracy back. In the course of events, Mike falls in love with Tracy, and she with him. The Jazz Festival subplot allows scriptwriter John Patrick to bring Louis Armstrong into the proceedings, much to the delight of anyone who cares anything about music.