Staff Picks

Staff Picks

Newly updated! Favorites from the staff at OVID.

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Staff Picks
  • The Bomb

    Directed by Kevin Ford, Smriti Keshari, Eric Schlosser • Documentary • 2016 • 61 minutes

    Over seven decades have passed since a city was destroyed by a nuclear weapon. But the danger never went away. We are now confronted with a world in which nine nations possess about 15,000 nuclear weapons. M...

  • 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 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 ...

  • 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...

  • Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi & Abbas Kiarostami)

    Directed by Jafar Panahi • Written by Abbas Kiarostami * Drama • With Hossain Emadeddin • 2003 • 95 minutes

    Two master filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami (A Taste of Cherry) and Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Taxi) team up as writer and director, respectively, on Crimson Gold, a subtle tragedy on class con...

  • 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...

  • Borgman

    Directed by Alex van Warmerdam • Drama • With Jan Bijvoet • 2013 • 113 minutes

    A dark suburban fable exploring the nature of evil in unexpected places, BORGMAN follows an enigmatic vagrant who enters the lives of an upper-class family and quickly unravels their carefully curated lifestyle. Charm...

  • Fool's Mate (Le Coup du Berger)

    Directed by Jacques Rivette • Drama • With Virginie Vitry, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze • 1957 • 27 minutes

    An early film from the six-decade career of hugely influential French director and critic Jacques Rivette.

    Claire (Virginie Vitry) is given a gorgeous fur coat by her lover...

  • Mimosas (Oliver Laxe)

    Directed by Oliver Laxe • Drama • With Ahmed Hammoud, Shakib Ben Omar, Said Aagli • 2016 • 93 minutes

    Winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Oliver Laxe’s stunning new film, Mimosas, is a breathtakingly shot Western that follows a mysterious caravan carrying a dying...

  • From What Is Before (Lav Diaz)

    Directed by Lav Diaz • Drama • With Perry Dizon, Roeder Camanag, Hazel Orencio • 2014 • 338 minutes

    Winner of five prizes at the Locarno Film Festival, including the Golden Leopard for Best Film, Lav Diaz’s follow up to his acclaimed Norte, The End of History is an extraordinary five-and-a-half-...

  • Battaglia

    Directed by Daniela Zanzotto • Documentary • 2002 • 58 minutes

    At almost 40 years old, Sicilian photographer Letizia Battaglia decided that being a mother and wife, the thing that she was meant to do according to the society she lived in, just wasn’t enough anymore. With great inner strength, sh...

  • World War III (Houman Seyedi, w/ Mohsen Tanabandeh)

    Directed by Houman Seyedi • Drama • With Mohsen Tanabandeh, Mahsa Hejazi • 2022 • 107 minutes

    Winner of the Orizzonti Awards for Best Film and Actor at the Venice Film Festival 2022, director Houman Seyedi's mysterious thriller/drama focuses on an anonymous day laborer (Mohsen Tanabandeh) who is...

  • The Woodmans

    Directed by C. Scott Willis • Documentary • With Betty Woodman, Francesca Woodman, Charles Woodman George Woodman • 2010 • 83 minutes

    The Woodmans are a family of well-known artists bonded in their belief of art-making as the highest form of expression. But for their daughter Francesca — one of ...

  • 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 ...

  • 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...

  • Peel (Jane Campion)

    Directed by Jane Campion • Drama • 1982 • 9 minutes

    On a hot Australian summer's day, a recalcitrant, freckled, red-headed family of three go on a Sunday drive in the country. Their outing results in an intrigue of awesome belligerence.

    Cannes, Golden Palm for Best Short Film

  • Terrorists in Retirement

    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...

  • 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...

  • Spare Keys

    Directed by Jeanne Aslan and Paul Saintillan • Drama • With Céleste Brunnquell, Quentin Dolmaire • 2023 • 108 minutes

    In Nancy, situated in eastern France, 15-year-old Sophie (Céleste Brunnquell) yearns to break free from her dysfunctional family. After one argument too many, she seizes an oppor...

  • Before Summer Ends

    Directed by Maryam Goormaghtigh • Documentary • 2017 • 80 minutes

    After five years of studying in Paris, Arash is fed up with France. Haunted by feelings of unhappiness and despair, the sensitive Iranian student firmly believes that the French are a breed of their own. His friends Hossein and As...

  • 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...

  • The Wolf House

    Directed by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña • Animation • 2018 • 72 minutes

    Maria, a young woman finds refuge in a house in the south of Chile after escaping from a sect of German religious fanatics. She is welcomed into the home by two pigs, the only inhabitants of the place. Like in a dream,...

  • Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune

    Directed by Kenneth Bowser • Documentary • With Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Tom Hayden, Christopher Hitchens, Sean Penn, Pete Seeger, Peter Yarrow • 2010 • 97 minutes

    As our country continues to embroil itself in foreign wars, PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE is a timely and relevant tribute to an u...

  • Harvard Beats Yale 29-29

    Directed by Kevin Rafferty • Documentary • With Vic Gatto, Brian Dowling , Tommy Lee Jones
    • 2008 • 105 minutes

    An incredible true story that unfolds like "a ripping good yarn... with an uproarious, impossible Hollywood ending" (Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com), Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 is filmmaker...