Close-Up Culture pick our 100 best films you’ve (probably) never heard of – and totally should go out of your way to watch.
1. Güeros (2014) – Alonso Ruizpalacios
Three young men roam Mexico City during a student strike searching for a legendary musician.
2. The Love Witch (2016) – Anna Biller
A glamorous young witch uses spells and seduction in her obsessive search for the perfect man.
3. A Ghost Story (2017) – David Lowery
A dead man remains beneath a sheet in his old home, watching time and everyone he loved move on.
4. Fish Tank (2009) – Andrea Arnold
A rebellious teenage girl becomes fascinated by her mother’s charismatic new boyfriend.
5. The Cremator (1969) – Juraj Herz
A Czech crematorium director becomes increasingly consumed by death, power and Nazi ideology.
6. Raw (2016) – Julia Ducournau
A vegetarian veterinary student develops a horrifying appetite after being forced to eat meat.
7. Columbus (2017) – Kogonada
Two strangers bond while wandering through a small American city filled with remarkable modernist architecture.
8. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) – Ana Lily Amirpour
A mysterious skateboarding vampire prowls the streets of a fictional Iranian ghost town.
9. The Duke of Burgundy (2014) – Peter Strickland
Two women living in an isolated country house explore an elaborate world of erotic role-play.
10. Morvern Callar (2002) – Lynne Ramsay
After finding her boyfriend dead, a young Scottish woman steals his novel and escapes to Spain.
11. The Fits (2015) – Anna Rose Holmer
A lonely girl joins a dance troupe just as its members begin suffering mysterious fits.
12. The Reflecting Skin (1990) – Philip Ridley
A lonely boy in rural America becomes convinced that his mysterious neighbour is a vampire.
13. Personal Shopper (2016) – Olivier Assayas
A young fashion assistant searches for signs that her recently deceased twin brother is still communicating with her.
14. The Lure (2015) – Agnieszka Smoczyńska
Two mermaid sisters join a nightclub band, where one falls dangerously in love with a human.
15. The Station Agent (2003) – Tom McCarthy
A solitary man who inherits an abandoned railway station unexpectedly finds friendship.
16. The Rider (2017) – Chloé Zhao
A young rodeo rider struggles to find a new identity after a brain injury threatens his career.
17. Berberian Sound Studio (2012) – Peter Strickland
A British sound engineer working on an Italian horror film slowly loses his grip on reality.
18. Tropical Malady (2004) – Apichatpong Weerasethakul
A tender romance transforms into a strange jungle tale involving a mysterious tiger spirit.
19. The Souvenir (2019) – Joanna Hogg
A young film student becomes entangled with an older, charismatic and troubled man.
20. The Night House (2020) – David Bruckner
A grieving widow begins uncovering disturbing secrets about the house her dead husband built.
21. The Unknown Girl (2016) – Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
A doctor becomes obsessed with discovering the identity of a young woman who dies after she refuses to answer her surgery door.
22. The Neon Demon (2016) – Nicolas Winding Refn
An aspiring model enters Los Angeles fashion’s seductive world, where beauty becomes increasingly dangerous.
23. Shiva Baby (2020) – Emma Seligman
A bisexual university student runs into her sugar daddy while trapped at a chaotic family funeral gathering.
24. The Headless Woman (2008) – Lucrecia Martel
After a mysterious car accident, a wealthy woman becomes convinced she may have killed someone.
25. Under the Silver Lake (2018) – David Robert Mitchell
A directionless Los Angeles man becomes obsessed with decoding mysterious messages hidden around the city.
26. In Fabric (2018) – Peter Strickland
A cursed red dress passes from owner to owner, leaving surreal misfortune in its wake.
27. God’s Own Country (2017) – Francis Lee
A lonely Yorkshire farmer falls for the Romanian migrant worker hired to help him during lambing season.
28. The Vast of Night (2019) – Andrew Patterson
Two teenagers investigate a mysterious radio signal interrupting the broadcasts of their small-town station.
29. The Watermelon Woman (1996) – Cheryl Dunye
A young Black filmmaker investigates the life of a forgotten Black actress from old Hollywood films.
30. The Handmaiden (2016) – Park Chan-wook
A pickpocket becomes maid to a wealthy heiress as part of an elaborate con that takes unexpected turns.
31. Queen of Earth (2015) – Alex Ross Perry
Two old friends retreat to a lakeside house where years of resentment begin to surface.
32. The Double (2013) – Richard Ayoade
A timid office worker’s life collapses when an identical but charismatic double arrives at his workplace.
33. The Assistant (2019) – Kitty Green
Over one working day, a young film assistant gradually realises the disturbing reality behind her employer’s behaviour.
34. The Wailing (2016) – Na Hong-jin
A rural policeman investigates mysterious illnesses and murders following the arrival of a strange outsider.
35. The Green Fog (2017) – Guy Maddin
Hundreds of fragments from films about San Francisco are transformed into a hypnotic cinematic portrait of the city.
36. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) – Eliza Hittman
A teenager travels to New York with her cousin to obtain an abortion.
37. The Wolf House (2018) – Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña
A young woman escaping a cult hides in a house where the physical world constantly transforms around her.
38. The Art of Self-Defense (2019) – Riley Stearns
A timid accountant joins a karate dojo and becomes seduced by its increasingly sinister philosophy.
39. Daisies (1966) – Věra Chytilová
Two young women decide the world is rotten and respond by creating as much anarchic chaos as possible.
40. The Souvenir Part II (2021) – Joanna Hogg
Following a devastating relationship, a young filmmaker turns her grief into her first feature film.
41. On Body and Soul (2017) – Ildikó Enyedi
Two shy slaughterhouse workers discover that they share the same dreams every night.
42. The Double Life of Véronique (1991) – Krzysztof Kieślowski
Two identical women living in different countries seem mysteriously connected despite never meeting.
43. Petite Maman (2021) – Céline Sciamma
A young girl visiting her grandmother’s house meets a child who looks remarkably like her mother.
44. The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015) – Oz Perkins
Two girls stranded at a Catholic boarding school become caught in a sinister supernatural mystery.
45. The Five Devils (2022) – Léa Mysius
A young girl with an extraordinary sense of smell discovers a way into her mother’s past.
46. Falcon Lake (2022) – Charlotte Le Bon
A teenage boy spending summer at a lakeside cabin becomes fascinated by an older girl and a local ghost story.
47. Listen Up Philip (2014) – Alex Ross Perry
An arrogant young novelist’s life unravels after he falls under the influence of an older literary hero.
50. Emily the Criminal (2022) – John Patton Ford
A woman struggling with debt enters the world of credit-card fraud and finds herself increasingly trapped in it.
51. The Ornithologist (2016) – João Pedro Rodrigues
A birdwatcher lost in the Portuguese wilderness encounters strange people and undergoes a surreal transformation.
52. November (2017) – Rainer Sarnet
In a surreal Estonian village, peasants battle spirits, demons and each other through a strange winter.
53. The Guilty (2018) – Gustav Möller
A suspended emergency dispatcher tries to rescue a kidnapped woman using nothing but a telephone.
54. Mysterious Skin (2004) – Gregg Araki
Two young men confront the radically different ways childhood trauma has shaped their adult lives.
55. Evolution (2015) – Lucile Hadžihalilović
A boy on a mysterious island begins questioning the disturbing medical rituals performed on local children.
56. First Cow (2019) – Kelly Reichardt
Two unlikely friends in 19th-century Oregon secretly steal milk from the settlement’s first cow to make cakes.
57. Thoroughbreds (2017) – Cory Finley
Two privileged teenage girls reconnect and begin plotting the murder of one girl’s stepfather.
58. The Nightingale (2018) – Jennifer Kent
A young Irish convict pursues the British officer responsible for destroying her family in colonial Tasmania.
59. Burning (2018) – Lee Chang-dong
A young writer reconnects with a childhood acquaintance whose wealthy new friend may be hiding something sinister.
60. Sweetie (1989) – Jane Campion
A young Australian woman struggles with her volatile sister and the dysfunctional family surrounding them.
61. The Empty Man (2020) – David Prior
A former detective investigating a missing girl encounters a mysterious cult and an ancient supernatural presence.
62. Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) – Chloé Zhao
A teenage girl on a Native American reservation considers leaving home as her brother struggles with his future.
63. The Ear (1970) – Karel Kachyňa
A Czech government official suspects he and his wife are being watched as paranoia takes over their night.
64. The Innocents (2021) – Eskil Vogt
A group of children discover strange supernatural abilities during an apparently ordinary summer.
65. Phoenix (2014) – Christian Petzold
A concentration-camp survivor returns to postwar Berlin with a reconstructed face and tests whether her husband recognises her.
66. The Lodge (2019) – Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala
A woman spending Christmas with her boyfriend’s children in an isolated cabin becomes trapped in a psychological nightmare.
67. Monos (2019) – Alejandro Landes
Teenage guerrillas guarding a hostage in a remote jungle lose control as their military order collapses.
68. Atlantics (2019) – Mati Diop
After young Senegalese construction workers disappear at sea, the women they leave behind experience strange supernatural events.
69. The Endless (2017) – Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead
Two brothers return to the UFO cult they escaped years earlier and discover that its beliefs may be true.
70. The Long Day Closes (1992) – Terence Davies
A sensitive boy grows up in 1950s Liverpool surrounded by family, cinema, music and childhood memories.
71. The Girl Without Hands (2016) – Sébastien Laudenbach
A young woman escapes an abusive father and embarks on a strange journey towards independence.
72. The Wild Pear Tree (2018) – Nuri Bilge Ceylan
A young writer returns to rural Turkey and clashes with his father, his ambitions and his hometown.
73. Goodnight Mommy (2014) – Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala
Twin boys suspect that the woman returning home after surgery isn’t really their mother.
74. The Beach House (2019) – Jeffrey A. Brown
A young couple’s romantic getaway becomes a nightmare when a mysterious ecological phenomenon infects the coastline.
75. I Saw the TV Glow (2024) – Jane Schoenbrun
Two lonely teenagers become obsessed with a mysterious TV show that seems increasingly connected to their own lives.
76. The Clovehitch Killer (2018) – Duncan Skiles
A teenager begins suspecting that his seemingly ordinary father may secretly be a serial killer.
77. Support the Girls (2018) – Andrew Bujalski
A compassionate manager tries to protect her staff during one extraordinarily difficult day at a sports bar.
78. Computer Chess (2013) – Andrew Bujalski
Awkward programmers gather at a strange 1980s conference to compete in an early computer chess tournament.
79. The Lovers on the Bridge (1991) – Leos Carax
Two homeless artists fall in love while living rough on the streets and bridges of Paris.
80. The Platform (2019) – Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Prisoners in a vertical facility fight over food as a platform descends through hundreds of increasingly desperate levels.
81. The Congress (2013) – Ari Folman
An ageing actress agrees to have her digital identity scanned and enters a surreal animated future.
82. The Forbidden Room (2015) – Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson
A feverish collage of imaginary lost films unfolds through submarines, vampires, doomed lovers and bizarre adventures.
83. The Killing of Two Lovers (2020) – Robert Machoian
A separated father struggles to hold his family together while his wife begins a new relationship.
84. The Death of Dick Long (2019) – Daniel Scheinert
Two incompetent friends desperately try to hide the bizarre circumstances surrounding their bandmate’s death.
85. The Humans (2021) – Stephen Karam
An ordinary Thanksgiving dinner gradually exposes years of family resentment, fear and disappointment.
85. Thelma (2017) – Joachim Trier
A sheltered university student discovers that her emerging sexuality is connected to terrifying supernatural powers.
86. Starry Eyes (2014) – Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer
An aspiring actress lands a mysterious film role and discovers that success comes with a horrifying price.
87. The Green Knight (2021) – David Lowery
A reckless young knight accepts a supernatural challenge that sends him on a strange journey towards adulthood and death.
88. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) – Joe Talbot
A young Black man tries to reclaim a beautiful Victorian house built by his grandfather in a rapidly changing city.
89. Sun Don’t Shine (2012) – Amy Seimetz
A young couple drive through Florida trying to dispose of a body while their relationship begins to unravel.
90. Mustang (2015) – Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Five sisters in rural Turkey rebel against the increasingly restrictive rules imposed on them by their conservative family.
91. Wild Tales (2014) – Damián Szifron
Six darkly comic stories explore the explosive moment when ordinary people finally snap.
92. Rust and Bone (2012) – Jacques Audiard
A struggling fighter and a killer-whale trainer form an unlikely relationship after a devastating accident changes her life.
93. The Second Mother (2015) – Anna Muylaert
A live-in housekeeper’s carefully maintained relationship with the wealthy family she serves is disrupted when her estranged daughter arrives.
94. The Daughter (2015) – Simon Stone
A man returns to his rural Australian hometown for his father’s wedding, where a long-buried family secret begins to unravel.
95. The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012) – Felix van Groeningen
A passionate couple’s relationship is tested by tragedy after their young daughter becomes seriously ill.
96. Our Little Sister (2015) – Hirokazu Kore-eda
Three sisters invite their teenage half-sister to live with them after their estranged father’s death.
97. Rams (2015) – Grímur Hákonarson
Two estranged Icelandic brothers must overcome decades of resentment when a disease threatens their beloved sheep.
98. Lilya 4-Ever (2002) – Lukas Moodysson
An abandoned teenage girl forms a friendship with a younger boy while desperately searching for a way out of her bleak circumstances.
99. Green Room (2015) – Jeremy Saulnier
A punk band trapped in a remote venue after witnessing a murder must fight their way out against a gang of neo-Nazis.
100. The One I Love (2014) – Charlie McDowell
A struggling couple retreat to a secluded country house for a weekend away, only to discover something deeply strange about the other guests.
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