New York Times Critics' Picks

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  • The World Before Your Feet

    Directed by Jeremy Workman • Documentary • With Matt Green • 2018 • 95 minutes

    There are 8,000 miles of sidewalks, paths and roads in New York City and for the past six years Matt Green has been walking them all--every street, block, pedestrian overpass and park lane. A five borough journey that...

  • Tales of the Night

    Directed by Michel Ocelot • Animation • With Julien Béramis, Marine Griset, Michel Elias, Olivier Claverie • 2011 • 84 minutes

    Every night, a girl, a boy and an elderly technician meet in a little cinema, sharing tales that capture their fancy. Together, they act out magnificent fables from arou...

  • Transit

    Directed by Christian Petzold • Drama • With Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer • 2019 • 102 minutes

    In Christian Petzold’s brilliant and haunting modern-day adaptation of Anna Seghers’s 1942 novel, Transit Visa, Georg, a German refugee (Franz Rogowski, Happy End), flees to Marseille assuming the identi...

  • Quiet City

    Directed by Aaron Katz • Drama • With Joe Swanberg, Cris Lankenau, Erin Fisher • 2007 • 78 minutes

    Jamie is lost. She’s come to New York to visit her friend Samantha, but Samantha is nowhere to be found, and now Jamie is alone in the city. Charlie just quit his job, and isn’t sure where he’s goi...

  • A New Old Play

    Directed by QIU Jiongjiong • Drama • With Tao Gu, Yi Sicheng • 2022 • 180 minutes

    Jiongjiong Qiu’s visually magnificent new film is a unique hybrid of fiction, historical reminiscence, and experimental theatre. Its overview of China from the 1930s to the 1980s is filtered through Qiu Yu, a Sichu...

  • Under the Sun

    Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2015 • 110 minutes

    After years of negotiation the Russian director Vitaly Mansky was invited by the North Korean government to make a film about one girl and her family, in the year she prepares to join the Children's Union, on the 'Day of the Shining St...

  • My Imaginary Country

    Directed by Patricio Guzmán • Documentary • 2022 • 83 minutes

    One day, without warning, a revolution exploded. It was the event that master documentarian Patricio Guzmán had been waiting for all his life: a million and a half people in the streets of Santiago, Chile, demanding justice, education...

  • Lolita

    Directed by Adrian Lyne • Drama • With Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, Melanie Griffith, Frank Langella • 1997 • 137 minutes

    Humbert, a brilliant professor of French literature in New England, rents a room from a lonely widow, Charlotte, who falls in love with him. She is a giddy and talkative la...

  • Redlegs

    Directed by Brandon Harris • Drama • With Andrew Katz, Evan Louison, Nathan Ramos • 2012 • 67 minutes

    A comedic drama set amongst grieving twenty-something man-boys in the industrial Midwest whose black friend was recently murdered in a historically troubled part of Cincinnati, Ohio.

  • Red Hollywood

    Directed by Thom Andersen & Noel Burch • Documentary • With Billy Woodberry, Paul Jarrico, Alfred Lewis Levitt, Abraham Polonsky, Ayn Rand • 2014 • 118 minutes

    A fascinating documentary by Thom Andersen (director of Los Angeles Plays Itself) and Noel Burch (author of To The Distant Observer), Re...

  • Two Lottery Tickets

    Directed by Paul Negoescu • Drama • With Dorian Boguta, Dragos Bucur, Alexandru Papadopol • 2016 • 86 minutes

    Sile, an underemployed carpenter who spends most afternoons at the pub, convinces his buddy Dinel to play the lottery one hot afternoon. After borrowing a few Euro from Pompiliu, the loc...

  • The Innocents

    Directed by Anne Fontaine • Drama • With Lou de Laâge, Agata Buzek, Agata Kulesza • 2016 • 115 minutes

    Warsaw, December 1945: the second World War is finally over and French Red Cross doctor Mathilde (Lou de Laage) is treating the last of the French survivors of the German camps. When a panicked...

  • El Mar La Mar

    Directed by Joshua Bonnetta & J.P. Sniadecki • Documentary • 2017 • 94 minutes

    An immersive and enthralling journey through the Sonoran Desert on the U.S.-Mexico border, EL MAR LA MAR weaves together harrowing oral histories from the area with hand-processed 16mm images of flora, fauna and items...

  • La Moustache

    Directed by Emmanuel Carrère • Drama • With Vincent Lindon, Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric • 2005 • 86 minutes

    Marc Thiriez (Vincent Lindon) is an architect who's worn a mustache for many years. Now approaching middle age, he decides to shave it off, naturally expecting others to notice. But ...

  • 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...

  • Embrace of the Serpent

    Directed by Ciro Guerra • Drama • With Nilbio Torres, Antonio Bolívar, Jan Bijvoet • 2015 • 125 minutes

    At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, the third feature by Ciro Guerra. Filmed in stunning b...

  • Beanpole

    Directed by Kantemir Balagov • Drama • With Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Vasilisa Perelygina, Andrey Bykov • 2019 • 137 minutes

    In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), intensely bonded after fighting side by side as an...

  • Ham on Rye

    Directed by Tyler Taormina • Drama • With Haley Bodell, Audrey Boos, Danny Tamberelli • 2020 • 85 minutes

    Ham on Rye, a coming-of-age comedy centered on the nervous excitement of youth and the strange horror of entering adulthood uses an expansive ensemble of over one hundred performers, includi...

  • Francine

    Directed by Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky • Drama • With Melissa Leo • 2012 • 74 minutes

    After years of incarceration, a quiet, lonely woman, Francine (Academy Award® winner Melissa Leo), is released to start a new life in a small, rural town. But despite opportunities for warmth and conn...

  • The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

    Directed by David Russo • Drama • With Marshall Allman, Jeanette Maus • 2009 • 97 minutes

    After losing his cubicle job as a data manager in Seattle, spiritually confused Dory feels like his life is going down the drain. He plummets from white collar to brown collar when he is forced to take a jo...

  • The Messenger

    Directed by Oren Moverman • Drama • With Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, Steve Buscemi • 2009 • 113 minutes

    Co-written by Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon, THE MESSENGER is a powerful and tender story about a returned war hero making his first steps toward a normal life. In his f...

  • Billy the Kid

    Directed by Jennifer Venditti • Documentary • With Billy P, Penny Baker, Heather Pelletier • 2007 • 84 minutes

    A provocative coming-of-age story, Jennifer Venditti's debut film, BILLY THE KID (2007), is an acclaimed odyssey into the soul of an American teenager. Venditti follows Billy as he navi...

  • Until the Light Takes Us

    Directed by Aaron Aites & Audrey Ewell • Documentary • With Gylve “Fenriz” Nagell, Varg “Count Grishnackh” Vikernes, Harmony Korine • 2010 • 93 minutes

    Until The Light Takes Us tells the story of black metal. Part music scene and part cultural uprising, black metal rose to worldwide notoriety in...

  • Sun Don't Shine

    Directed by Amy Seimetz • Drama • With Kate Lyn Sheil, Kentucker Audley • 2013 • 80 minutes

    Written and directed by Amy Seimetz, Sun Don't Shine follows Crystal and her boyfriend Leo on a tense and mysterious road trip through hauntingly beautiful landscape of central Florida. The purpose of the...