August's Top 30 Films
Check out the top 30 films most watched and well-liked on OVID last month!
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Flipside
Movie
When filmmaker Chris Wilcha revisits the record store he worked at as a teenager in New Jersey, he finds the once-thriving bastion of music and weirdness from his youth slowly falling apart and out of touch with the times. FLIPSIDE documents his tragicomic attempt to revive the store while revisi...
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Universal Language
Movie
In a mysterious and surreal interzone somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg, the lives of multiple characters interweave with each other in surprising and mysterious ways. Gradeschoolers Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen in the winter ice and try to claim it. Meanwhile, Massoud leads a ...
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Peacock
Movie
At MyCompanion, the cultured and confident Matthias is available - for a reasonable fee - to fill any social role you desire, from 'the perfect son' to the 'enlightened boyfriend', or even 'pilot dad' to impress your classmates at Bring Your Parent to School Day. But while Matthias is at the top ...
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Lost Country
Movie
Set in Serbia during the 1996 protests against Slobodan Milošević’s regime, 'Lost Country' is a deeply personal coming-of-age drama by Vladimir Perišić, inspired by his own experiences. Fifteen-year-old Stefan (Jovan Ginić, winner of the Rising Star Award at Cannes Critics’ Week) faces a profound...
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Pol Pot Dancing
Directed by Enrique Sánchez Lansch • Documentary • 2024 • 101 minutes
Chea Samy was a renowned soloist in Cambodia’s royal dance ensemble in the 1930s—and Pol Pot’s foster mother. After marrying his older brother, she raised him as her own until he vanished into the underground. In 1975, like mi...
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Kedi
Directed by Ceyda Torun • Documentary • With Sari, Bengü, Aslan Parçasi • 2016 • 80 minutes
Hundreds of thousands of cats roam the metropolis of Istanbul freely. For thousands of years they’ve wandered in and out of people’s lives, becoming an essential part of the communities that make the city...
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Maborosi (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda • Drama • With Makiko Esumi, Tadanobu Asano • 1995 • 110 minutes
One of the finest films of Japanese cinema, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first feature film Maborosi is a story of love, loss, and ultimately, regeneration.
Haunted by the mysterious loss of her grandmother m...
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Diciannove
Movie
The highs and lows of a restless youth collide headlong into the concrete realities of adulthood when Leonardo, a teenager from Palermo leaves home for the first time. His studies land him in Siena, by way of London, where he clashes with his instructor, the curriculum, and most chaotically, with...
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Save Our Souls
Movie
Directed by Jean-Baptiste Bonnet • Documentary • 2025 • 92 minutes
Filmed on the Ocean Viking, a ship chartered by the humanitarian organization SOS Méditerranée, SAVE OUR SOULS places viewers alongside sailors and medics as they face the perilous mission of rescuing migrants from overcrowded bo...
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Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
Directed by Lili Horvát • Drama • With Natasa Stork, Viktor Bodó • 2021 • 94 minutes
After 20 years in the United States, a Hungarian neurosurgeon returns to Budapest for a romantic rendezvous with a fellow doctor she met at a conference. When the love of her life is nowhere to be seen, she trac...
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Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
Directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller • Documentary • With Matt Damon • 2010 • 78 minutes
This acclaimed film looks at the amazing life of the renowned historian, activist and author. Following his early days as a shipyard labor organizer and bombardier in World War II, Howard Zinn became an a...
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Nowhere in the World
Movie
Directed by Vanina Lappa • Documentary • 2024 • 86 minutes
Transhumance was added to the UNESCO world heritage list in 2019. It has been practised on the Cilento mountain Cervati for millennia, and yet institutions seem to obstruct the work of shepherds who have been taking their livestock for t...
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Frantz
Directed by Francois Ozon • Drama • With Pierre Niney, Paula Beer • 2017 • 114 minutes
Set in Germany and France in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, (1914-1918), Frantz recalls the mourning period that follows great national tragedies as seen through the eyes of the war’s “lost ge...
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Golden Years
Directed by Barbara Kulcsar • Drama • With Esther Gemsch, Stefan Kurt • 2024 • 92 minutes
Alice and Peter are celebrating their retirement – and with it, a new phase in their lives. However, shortly after the couple’s retirement party, a sudden tragedy befalls Alice’s best friend Magalie. Peter,...
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Joyland
Directed by Saim Sadiq • Drama • With Alina Khan, Ali Junejo • 2023 • 127 minutes
The debut feature from writer-director Saim Sadiq, JOYLAND explores the many sides of love and desire in a patriarchal society. Gentle and timid, Haider (Ali Junejo) lives with his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq), his f...
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The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang)
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang • Drama • With Lee Kang-Sheng; Yang Kuei-Mei • 1998 • 89 minutes
Set just prior to the start of the 21st century, this vaguely futuristic story follows two residents of a quickly crumbling building who refuse to leave their homes in spite of a virus that has forced th...
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The Unknown Man Of Shandigor
Movie
Crazed scientist Herbert Von Krantz has invented a device to sterilize all nuclear weapons -- and a mad herd of rival spies are desperate to get their hands on the device, including legendary French singer Serge Gainsbourg as the leader of a sect of bald, turtleneck-wearing assassins, and Jess Fr...
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The Soul of the Bossales
Directed by François Perlier • Documentary • 2024 • 81 minutes
The “Bossales” were the African slaves who won the Haitian war of independence. This term now qualifies as a rebellious person, like the protagonists of the film. Charlotte, a human rights defender, Foukifoura, a satirical columnist,...
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The Cinema Within
Directed by Chad Freidrichs • Documentary • 2025 • 93 minutes
From the director of The Pruitt-Igoe Myth comes a documentary about the psychology of film editing.
Why do film cuts work? Why do people around the world – even children – so effortlessly understand them? In real life we don't instan...
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The March to War: Iran, Israel and the USA (A three-part series)
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Directed by Ilan Ziv • Documentary • 183 minutes • 2026 • Icarus Films
As the first American and Israeli missiles hit Iran on February 28, 2026, U.S. government officials argued that this was not the start of war. Instead, it was just the next stage in a conflict that started with the 1979 Islam...
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Under the Flags, the Sun
Movie
In 1989, the fall of Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship in Paraguay marked the end of one of the world’s longest authoritarian regimes, but also the abandonment of the audiovisual archives that had cemented its power. This footage, crafted to shape a national identity and celebrate the reg...
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Alumination
Directed by Eric Bricker • Documentary • With Patrick Dempsey, Kate Pierson • 2021 • 86 minutes
For nearly a century, the image of the Airstream travel trailer, with sunlight gleaming off the aluminum of its sleek silver-bullet body, has evoked the romance of escape and the mystique of a world w...
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Far From Vietnam
Movie
Initiated and edited by Chris Marker, FAR FROM VIETNAM is an epic 1967 collaboration between cinema greats Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch and Alain Resnais in protest of American military involvement in Vietnam--made, per Marker's narration, "to affirm, by the exercis...
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Hello I Must Be Going
Directed by Todd Louiso • Drama • With Melanie Lynskey, Blythe Danner, Christopher Abbott • 2012 • 94 minutes
HELLO I MUST BE GOING features acclaimed actress Melanie Lynskey (UP IN THE AIR, TWO AND A HALF MEN) in her breakout role as Amy, a recent divorcée who seeks refuge in the suburban Conne...