Staff Picks

Staff Picks

Newly updated! Favorites from the staff at OVID.

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Staff Picks
  • The Devil's Bride

    Movie

    In the early 1970s, behind the Iron Curtain, Lithuanian director Arūnas Žebriūnas created one of the wildest rock operas of the decade. A mash-up of TOMMY, JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and THE WICKER MAN filled with ecstatic hippie orgies in heaven, legions of female demons on hors...

  • Agatha's Almanac

    Movie

    Directed by Amalie Atkins • Documentary • 2025 • 86 minutes

    Fiercely independent 90-year-old Agatha Bock lives alone on her ancestral farm. Despite health challenges, she defiantly tends to her land, cultivating heirloom seeds passed down through generations. Employing antiquated techniques, Aga...

  • State of Weightlessness

    Directed by Maciej J. Drygas • Documentary • 1994 • 60 minutes

    State of Weightlessness is a documentary that uses long-duration Soviet space missions as a lens through which to examine the psychological and historical dislocation of the late Cold War period. Drawing on rare audio recordings from...

  • A Man Vanishes

    Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1967 • 130 minutes

    One of the most important and complex works by two-time Palme d'Or winning director Shohei Imamura, A MAN VANISHES begins as an investigation into one of the thousands of missing persons cases that occur in Japan each year.

    The film ...

  • Other People's Children

    Movie

    When dedicated high school teacher Rachel (Virginie Efira) falls in love with Ali (Roschdy Zem), it’s not long before she also falls for his 4-year-old daughter Leila. The adolescent giddiness of Rachel and Ali’s late night rendezvous and secret sleepovers evolves into the familiar warmth of fami...

  • The Cruise (Bennett Miller)

    Directed by Bennett Miller • Documentary • With Timothy "Speed" Levitch • 1998 • 76 minutes

    Sailing the streets of Manhattan atop a double-decker bus, Timothy "Speed" Levitch waxes philosophical as the city's most eccentric tour guide. Speed's bombastic and psychedelic poetry is captured in the ...

  • 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 ...

  • In the Aisles (w/ Franz Rogowski & Sandra Huller)

    Directed by Thomas Stuber • Drama • With Franz Rogowski, Sandra Huller • 2018 • 125 minutes

    When the reclusive Christian (Franz Rogowski, TRANSIT) takes a job working the night shift at a big box store, his new manager, Bruno from the Beverage Department (Peter Kurth, BABYLON BERLIN), teaches hi...

  • Bright Future (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

    Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Drama • With Joe Odagiri, Tatsuya Fuji, Tadanobu Asano • 2003 • 115 minutes

    "Casts its spell by drawing out the horror of everyday existence bit by bit, and then tossing in some otherworldly weirdness that makes the hair on the back of your neck try to run for cove...

  • 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 ...

  • Terrorists in Retirement (Mosco Boucault)

    Movie + 1 extra

    Directed by Mosco Boucault • Documentary • 1983 • 71 minutes

    Too controversial to be shown on French TV when first released – after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, in 1983 – TERRORISTS IN RETIREMENT is the story of men and women from Armenia, Poland, and Romania, mostly Jews, who fough...

  • The 317th Platoon

    Directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer • Drama • With Jacques Perrin, Bruno Cremer, Pierre Fabre • 1965 • 95 minutes

    1954. The dying days of the French war in Indochina. As the battle of Diên Biên Phu rages, the 317th platoon of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps are ordered to destroy their bas...

  • White Balls on Walls

    Directed by Sarah Vos • Documentary • 2023 • 90 minutes

    The slogan “Meet the Icons of Modern Art” needs to be scraped off the glass wall of the Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s Museum of Modern Art. Because precisely who these icons of modern art are is very much the question.

    Who gets to decide? And who...

  • Who By Fire

    Movie

    A getaway at a secluded log cabin in the forest becomes the site of escalating, multigenerational tensions and anxieties in this disquieting, impeccably mounted coming-of-age drama from Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage. Ostensibly a merry reunion between well-known film director Blake Cadieux ...

  • Fire Will Come (Oliver Laxe)

    Directed by Oliver Laxe • Drama • With Amador Arias • 2019 • 85 minutes

    Following Mimosas, Oliver Laxe's third feature brings us to his ancestral home of Galicia. Here, in this remote Spanish region, where the grandeur of nature is both beautiful and terrifying, Laxe unfolds a story of the uncon...

  • Flipside

    Directed by Chris Wilcha • Documentary • With Chris Wilcha, Ira Glass, Herman Leonard, David Milch, Judd Apatow • 2024 • 96 minutes

    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 y...

  • Beautiful Losers

    Directed by Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard • Documentary • With Thomas Campbell, Harmony Korine, Shepard Fairy, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Mike Mills, Steve Espo Powers • 2009 • 90 minutes

    BEAUTIFUL LOSERS celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural moments of a generation. In...

  • Charlotte and Her Boyfriend

    Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • Drama • 1958 • 13 minutes

    “Let me finish,” Jules (Jean-Paul Belmondo, voiced by Jean-Luc Godard) repeatedly tells his ex Charlotte (Anne Colette) without ever pausing long enough for her to actually say anything. When Charlotte appears in his apartment eating an ice...

  • I am Secretly an Important Man

    Directed by Peter Sillen • Documentary • With Jesse Bernstein • 2012 • 89 minutes

    'I Am Secretly an Important Man' is a portrait of writer and poet Steven J. Bernstein (aka Jesse Bernstein), one of Seattle's most celebrated and troubled voices. His angry, surprisingly fresh and lyrical writings ...

  • Dark Days

    Directed by Marc Singer • Documentary • 2000 • 82 minutes

    For years, a homeless community took root in a train tunnel beneath New York City, braving dangerous conditions and perpetual night. DARK DAYS explores this surprisingly domestic subterranean world, unearthing a way of life unimaginable t...

  • The Children of 209 Saint-Maur Street

    Directed by Ruth Zylberman • Documentary • 2020 • 100 minutes

    209 rue St. Maur is a classic Parisian apartment building in the 10th arrondissement: Stone, built around a courtyard, shops on the bottom floor. In the first decades of the 20th century, it was home to some 300 working class people, ...

  • Please Baby Please

    Directed by Amanda Kramer • Drama • With Andrea Riseborough, Harry Melling, Demi Moore • 2022 • 95 minutes

    Suze (Andrea Riseborough) and Arthur (Harry Melling) live an outwardly traditional lifestyle as the Lower East Side’s most bohemian Eisenhower-era couple. The pair’s cage is rattled when th...

  • 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...

  • The Village House

    Directed by Achal Mishra • Drama • With Soniya Jha, Mira Jha, Abhinav Jha • 2019 • 91 minutes

    The astonishing debut feature from 23-year old writer/director Achal Mishra. THE VILLAGE HOUSE is a lovely, luminous and gentle portrait of a large extended Indian family over several decades.