Spotlight
Wondering which films to watch? Spotlight presents thematically grouped, must see films, hand-picked by Fandor's curators.
Women call "Action!"
These exceptional directors have been shattering barriers, glass ceilings, and boundaries since the first time they called “action!” Their collective filmographies feature some of the most challenging and revolutionary works screening today. They have crafted fresh and contemporary adaptations of famous literary works, they have garnered cult followings, they have won awards, and they have made history. Their work is critically acclaimed. They are living legends, icons, Oscar® contenders, and some of the best the film world has to offer. And yes, they all happen to be women. There are so many amazing women directors out there—these are just some of our very favorites.
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Selected Films
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Teknolust
Academy Award® winner Tilda Swinton plays four roles in this award-winning science fiction film about Rosetta Stone and her three Self-Replicating Automatons which she clones from her own DNA. Though they look human, the SRA cyborgs were bred as intelligent machines and are immortal. In order to...Watch Movie
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Sun Don't Shine
Written and directed by actress/filmmaker Amy Seimetz , SUN DON'T SHINE follows Crystal (Kate Lyn Sheil) and her boyfriend Leo (Kentucker Audley) on a tense and mysterious road trip through the desolate yet hauntingly beautiful landscape of central Florida. From the outset, the purpose of their...Watch Movie
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Wuthering Heights
Andrea Arnold's WUTHERING HEIGHTS is an excitingly fresh and distinct take on the classic novel by Emily Brontë. An epic love story that spans childhood well into the young adult years, the film follows Heathcliff, a boy taken in by a benevolent Yorkshire farmer, Earnshaw....Watch Movie
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35 Shots of Rum
Widely hailed as one of the best films of 2009, the latest from the renowned director of BEAU TRAVAIL, Claire Denis’ sublime 35 SHOTS OF RUM is the moving story of a father and daughter whose close-knit, tender relationship is disrupted by a handsome young suitor. Sumptuously filmed and featuring...Watch Movie
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Love and Anarchy
An epic tragicomedy from director Lina Wertmuller, LOVE AND ANARCHY plumbs the depths of fascist Italy from the perspective of a simple farm boy sent to kill Mussolini. Giancarlo Giannini won the best acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his achingly sensitive...Watch Movie
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Meshes of the Afternoon
One of the most important films in the history of American avant-garde cinema, Maya Deren's MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON is captivating and dream-like, filled with tinges of psychodrama, murder mystery, and film noir. In a seemingly ordinary Los Angeles home, the film's...Watch Movie
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Wreckers
Dawn and David have moved back to the village where David grew up, to start a family. Their relationship seems idyllic, but getting pregnant is proving difficult and adding to the strain of building their perfect home. The couple receive a surprise visit from Nick, David's brother. Nick is a...Watch Movie
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Home
Switzerland's official entry for "Best Foreign Language Film" at the 82nd Academy Awards®, HOME is a mesmerizing fable of modern family life starring internationally renowned actress Isabelle Huppert. Huppert plays Marthe, a happy-go-lucky mother whose family enjoys an idyllic existence in their...Watch Movie
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Meek's Cutoff
Three 1840s' pioneer families become dangerously lost amidst the dust of the Oregon desert in Kelly Reichardt's sensory update of the Western genre, focusing not on typical fare like gun battles, card sharks or dramatic rescues but instead on the long, arduous journey westward. Having hired the...Watch Movie
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The Watermelon Woman
Cheryl Dunye's debut feature is as controversial as it is sexy and funny. Cheryl is a twenty-something black lesbian working as a clerk in a video store while struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, an obscure black actress from the 1930's. Cheryl is surprised to...Watch Movie
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The Beaches of Agnès
Agnès Varda takes a cinematic stroll through her career—and the history of French film—in this jovial first-person documentary that "walks backwards" across the beaches, landscapes, and movie sets of her life and times. For some, turning eighty may mean settling down, but for...Watch Movie
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Ornette: Made in America
ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA captures Ornette Coleman's evolution over three decades. Returning home to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1983 as a famed performer and composer, documentary footage, dramatic scenes and some of the first music video-style segments ever made chronicle his...Watch Movie
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The Bigamist
This is the story of Harry Graham and his wife Eve who want to adopt a child. At the adoption agency they are interviewed by Mr. Jordan, who at first sight believes that they might be a perfect couple but he becomes concerned when Harry appears uneasy at the mention of background checks into...Watch Movie
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Sink or Swim
A contemporary classic and a landmark in autobiographical filmmaking, SINK OR SWIM is an unflinching account of the highly charged relationship between a daughter and her father. Through a series of twenty-six short stories, a young girl chronicles the childhood events that shaped her ideas about...Watch Movie
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It Felt Like Love
In this unflinchingly honest and refreshingly unsentimental coming-of-age story, fourteen-year-old Lila spends a languid South Brooklyn summer playing third wheel to her promiscuous friend Chiara and Chiara's boyfriend Patrick. Eager for her own sexual awakening, Lila gamely...Watch Movie
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Treeless Mountain
When their mother needs to leave in order to find their estranged father, seven year-old Jin and her younger sister Bin are left to live with their Big Aunt for the summer. With only a small piggy bank and their mother's promise to return when it is full, the two young girls...Watch Movie
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Thou Wast Mild and Lovely
Director Josephine Decker's highly-acclaimed second feature unfolds with the lyricism and inexorable sense of tragedy of an ancient Appalachian murder ballad. Indie icon Joe Swanberg delivers a beautifully understated performance as Akin, a soft-spoken farmworker who takes a...Watch Movie
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The Girls
Three actresses prepare to go on the road in a theater production of "Lysistrata," Aristophanes’ classic comic play about women and war. As they re-assess and deal with the problems in their respective private lives, they recognize the parallels with the play and begin to realize that it is...Watch Movie
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The Night of Truth
Fanta Régina Nacro portrays the insanity of modern African history as Shakespearean tragedy in her debut feature film, a theatrical parable in which the ghosts of civil wars past haunt a nation's fledgling peace. Recalling recent conflicts in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the...Watch Movie
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La captive
Chantal Akerman’s insinuating chamber drama distills the romantic pathologies of suspicion and control with remarkable precision. Based on the fifth volume Proust’s IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, LA CAPTIVE treats the novel’s fetishized structures of detail and time as symptoms of a slow spreading...Watch Movie
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Everyone Else
A young couple’s relationship is pushed to the brink while vacationing in the Mediterranean in this smart, sexy drama from acclaimed new filmmaker Maren Ade. On the surface, Chris and Gitti appear blissfully in love while enjoying the sun and sand of Sardinia. But the more time they spend...Watch Movie
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Born in Flames
The movie that rocked the foundations of the early Indie film world, this provocative, thrilling and still-relevant classic is a fantasy of female rebellion set in America ten years after the Second American Revolution. When Adelaide Norris, the black radical founder of the Woman’s Army, is...Watch Movie
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Dirty Like an Angel
Georges Deblache, a despondent middle-aged cop who suspects he has cancer, falls for his partner's wife. Didier, his partner, is only recently married, but beds women he encounters while on the job. Georges takes a keen interest in his partner's unrealistically appreciated...Watch Movie
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Rânia
Sixteen-year-old Rania studies dance and lives with her mother and two brothers in restricted circumstances. With her father, a fisherman, also facing hard times, Rania contemplates following her friend Lizi and becoming a dancer in a grotty nightclub. A wonderful opportunity then presents itself...Watch Movie
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Hannah Arendt
In the award-winning HANNAH ARENDT, the sublime Barbara Sukowa reteams with director Margarethe von Trotta for a brilliant new biopic of the influential German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist. Arendt's reporting on the 1961 trial of ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann in The New Yorker...Watch Movie
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Our Nixon
Throughout Richard Nixon's presidency, three of his top White House aides documented their experiences with Super 8 home movie cameras. Young, idealistic and dedicated, they had no idea that a few years later they'd all be at the center of a history-making impeachment scandal. This unique and...Watch Movie
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The Adventures of Prince Achmed
When THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED premiered in Germany on September 23, 1926 it was hailed as the first full-length animated film. More than seventy-five years later, Lotte Reiniger's enchanting film (made in collaboration with Carl Koch, Reiniger's husband) still stands as...Watch Movie
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Hellion
All hell breaks loose when little Petey Wilson and his two hell-raising brothers are left home alone. But can the boys suffer the consequences of their reckless behavior? HELLION takes us through the eyes of a seven year old dreading the ultimate fear: punishment. The short film that inspired the...Watch Movie
