Venice's best, year by year.
Venice Film Festival · compiled by Mat on TMDB
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1Movie6.8Port of Marseille, France, recently liberated from the German yoke. Caught as stowaways aboard a ship, Manon, a young woman who was accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and Robert, a freedom fighter who saved her from reprisals, tell the captain about the many challenges they have had to face in order to survive.
1949 · 62 votes
2Movie6.3Elsa Lundenstein is accused of having murdered her lover. The jury discusses the case vividly. All members are somehow prejudiced because of personal life experience and subsequently each member reads something different into the presented facts.
1950 · 22 votes
3Movie8.0Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.
1950 · 2.6K votes
4Movie7.8Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.
1952 · 363 votes
5Movie5.4In Shakespeare's classic play, the Montagues and Capulets, two families of Renaissance Italy, have hated each other for years, but the son of one family and the daughter of the other fall desperately in love and secretly marry.
1954 · 16 votes
6Movie7.9The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father's religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel's wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone's beliefs are put to the test.
1955 · 425 votes
7Movie7.8Apu and his family have moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Benares. As he progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother.
1956 · 299 votes
8Movie7.2A poor rickshaw driver finds himself helping a young woman and her son after the woman's husband dies suddenly.
1958 · 43 votes
9Movie7.5In WWII-Italy, the Gestapo blackmails a con man to impersonate a dead partisan commander in order to extract information from his fellow inmates.
1959 · 152 votes
10Movie8.1Italy, 1916. Oreste Jacovacci and Giovanni Busacca are called, as all the Italian youths, to serve the army in the WWI. They both try in every way to avoid serving the army.
1959 · 374 votes
11Movie6.5Following the defeat of France by Germany during WWII, two French soldiers are taken to a German farm as forced laborers.
1960 · 31 votes
12Movie7.4At a weekend gathering, a man tells a woman that they had spent time there together a year prior. But, the woman has no recollection whatsoever and is convinced that he is simply fabricating the encounter. The more he speaks about their activities the previous year however, the more compelling he becomes. The question remains however – did they meet previously or not?
1961 · 552 votes
13Movie7.0Enrico is a struggling journalist in the Rome of 1945. He receives a phone call informing him that his younger brother Lorenzo has died. Enrico recalls their long and difficult relationship; he was brought up by their poor but warm-hearted grandmother, Lorenzo was raised as a gentleman by a wealthy local aristocrat. Reunited in the Florence of the 1930s, Enrico becomes his spoilt brother's keeper, forever haunted by a sense of guilty responsibility towards a man he both hates and loves.
1962 · 55 votes
14Movie7.8In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.
1962 · 851 votes
15Movie7.4Prior to a city council election, the collapse of a building leaves a land developer and his political backers defending themselves against a scandal.
1963 · 160 votes
16Movie7.3In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.
1964 · 515 votes
17Movie7.0Sandra returns to her hometown to take care of family business, but childhood memories and secrets soon overcome her.
1965 · 82 votes
18Movie7.9Paratrooper commander Colonel Mathieu, a former French Resistance fighter during World War II, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings of the Algerian War. There he faces Ali la Pointe, a former petty criminal who, as the leader of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directs terror strategies against the colonial French government occupation. As each side resorts to ever-increasing brutality, no violent act is too unthinkable.
1966 · 916 votes
19Movie7.3Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.
1967 · 1K votes
20Movie5.8A young circus director ends up going into television after her father, a trapeze performer, dies in a circus accident.
1968 · 21 votes
21Movie6.8In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster and the estranged wife of a pot dealer find themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs and danger.
1980 · 304 votes
22Movie6.9When a young boy's family is killed by the mob, their tough neighbor Gloria becomes his reluctant guardian. In possession of a book that the gangsters want, the pair go on the run in New York.
1980 · 274 votes
23Movie7.0Germany, 1968: The priest's daughters Marianna and Juliane both fight for changes in society, like making abortion legal. However their means are totally different: while Juliane's committed as a reporter, her sister joins a terroristic organization. After she's caught by the police and put into isolation jail, Juliane remains as her last connection to the rest of the world. Although she doesn't accept her sister's arguments and her boyfriend Wolfgang doesn't want her to, Juliane keeps on helping her sister. She begins to question the way her sister is treated.
1981 · 84 votes
24Movie6.4On location in Portugal, a film crew runs out of film while making their own version of Roger Corman's The Day the World Ended (1956). The producer is nowhere to be found and director Munro attempts to find him in hopes of being able to finish the film.
1982 · 85 votes
25Movie6.0A woman involved with a terrorist group becomes dangerously close to the police officer guarding the bank they plan to rob.
1983 · 115 votes
26Movie6.5Shortly after World War II an American soldier (Norman) and a Polish refugee (Emilia) fall in love. Eventually he will return to the U.S. and both expect that she will soon follow him with her mother. Emilia's mother is sick, but will recover with the right medicine. But the mother, and not Emilia, knows that there will only be one ticket...
1984 · 33 votes
27Movie7.4Mona Bergeron is dead, her frozen body found in a ditch in the French countryside. From this, the film flashes back to the weeks leading up to her death. Through these flashbacks, Mona gradually declines as she travels from place to place, taking odd jobs and staying with whomever will offer her a place to sleep. Mona is fiercely independent, craving freedom over comfort, but it is this desire to be free that will eventually lead to her demise.
1985 · 371 votes
28Movie7.5A lonely Parisian woman comes to terms with her isolation and anxieties during a long summer vacation.
1986 · 289 votes
29Movie7.5Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
1987 · 745 votes
30Movie6.6Andreas Kartak, a homeless man living under the bridges of Paris, is lent 200 francs by a stranger as long as he promises to repay it to a local church when he can afford to. Kartak is determined to pay back his debt but circumstances, and his alcoholism, forever intervene.
1988 · 89 votes
31Movie7.5The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror," the Kuomintang government's anti-communist political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people from 1947-1987.
1989 · 158 votes
32Movie6.9Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, minor characters from the play 'Hamlet', find themselves on the road to Elsinore Castle at the behest of the King of Denmark. The duo encounter a band of players before arriving to find that they are needed to try to discern what troubles the prince Hamlet. Meanwhile, they ponder the meaning of their existence.
1991 · 330 votes
33Movie6.7A farmer and his wife live in a rural part of Inner Mongolia with their three children. Chinese population control policies prevent them from having any more. The farmer sets out for the nearest town to obtain birth control. He comes upon a Russian truck driver who has ended up in a lake. The farmer takes the man back to his farm, and after initially being appalled, the Russian becomes enchanted with the peaceful life of the countryside and decides to stay. But his presence presages big changes for the peasants.
1991 · 64 votes
34Movie7.3When her husband is kicked in the groin by the village head, Qiu Ju, a peasant woman, despite her pregnancy, travels to a nearby town, and later a big city to deal with its bureaucrats and find justice.
1992 · 168 votes
35Movie7.2Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.
1993 · 704 votes
36Movie7.6The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
1993 · 1.9K votes
37Movie7.2Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.
1994 · 162 votes
38Movie7.4The circularity of violence seen in a story that circles on itself. In Macedonia, during the war in Bosnia, Christians hunt an ethnic Albanian girl who may have murdered one of their own. A young monk who's taken a vow of silence offers her protection. In London, a photographic editor who's pregnant needs to talk it out with her estranged husband and chooses a toney restaurant.
1994 · 189 votes
39Movie6.9Follows a young cyclo driver on his poverty-driven descent into criminality in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. The boy's struggles to scratch out a living for his two sisters and grandfather in the mean streets of the city lead to petty crime on behalf of a mysterious Madame from whom he rents his cyclo.
1995 · 122 votes
40Movie6.9Michael Collins plays a crucial role in the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s, but becomes vilified by those hoping to create a completely independent Irish republic.
1996 · 532 votes
41Movie7.7Beleaguered police detective Nishi takes desperate measures to try and set things right in a world gone wrong. With his wife suffering from leukemia and his business partner paralyzed from a brutal gangster attack, Nishi borrows from a yakuza loan shark and then robs a bank to clear his debt.
1997 · 799 votes
42Movie6.8Studying to become a teacher in 1950s Northern Italy, Sicilian immigrant Pietro is joined by his big brother Giovanni. Pietro shows considerable promise in his field, prompting illiterate Giovanni to take on even the toughest jobs in order to support his sibling's academic pursuits.
1998 · 42 votes
43Movie7.5Set in the People's Republic of China during the 1990s, the film centers on a 13-year-old substitute teacher, Wei Minzhi, in the Chinese countryside. Called in to substitute for a village teacher for one month, Wei is told not to lose any students.
1999 · 200 votes
44Movie7.0Various women struggle to function in the oppressively sexist society of contemporary Iran.
2000 · 105 votes
45Movie6.8A stressed father, a bride-to-be with a secret, a smitten event planner, and relatives from around the world create much ado about the preparations for an arranged marriage in India.
2001 · 225 votes
46Movie7.4Three young Irish women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of a Magdalene Sisters Asylum.
2002 · 484 votes
47Movie7.3Two young brothers in contemporary Russia are reunited with a father they know only from an old photograph after his sudden return from a long absence. With their mother’s reluctant consent, they set out on a remote trip that quickly becomes an uneasy test of authority, trust, and masculinity. As the journey moves deeper into the wilderness, the fragile bonds between father and sons are pushed to their limits.
2003 · 718 votes
48Movie7.2Abortionist Vera Drake finds her beliefs and practices clash with the mores of 1950s Britain – a conflict that leads to tragedy for her family.
2004 · 420 votes
49Movie7.8In 1960s Wyoming, two men develop a strong emotional and sexual relationship that endures as a lifelong connection complicating their lives as they get married and start families of their own.
2005 · 7.7K votes
50Movie7.2A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
2006 · 175 votes
51Movie7.3During World War II, a secret agent must seduce, then assassinate an official who works for the Japanese puppet government in Shanghai. Her mission becomes clouded when she finds herself falling in love with the man she is assigned to kill.
2007 · 836 votes
52Movie7.5Aging wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson is long past his prime but still ready and rarin' to go on the pro-wrestling circuit. After a particularly brutal beating, however, Randy hangs up his tights, pursues a serious relationship with a long-in-the-tooth stripper, and tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter. But he can't resist the lure of the ring and readies himself for a comeback.
2008 · 4.1K votes
53Movie6.6During the First Lebanon War in 1982, a lone tank and a paratroopers platoon are dispatched to search a hostile town.
2009 · 243 votes
54Movie6.1After withdrawing to the Chateau Marmont, a passionless Hollywood actor reexamines his life when his eleven-year-old daughter surprises him with a visit.
2010 · 830 votes
55Movie6.6A doctor in early 19th-century Germany becomes infatuated with the sister of a man he unintentionally killed and bargains with the Devil incarnate to conjure their union in exchange for his soul.
2011 · 212 votes
56Movie7.0A loan shark is forced to reconsider his violent lifestyle after the arrival of a mysterious woman claiming to be his long-lost mother.
2012 · 430 votes
57Movie5.9After the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the killers of drugtrade, Gianfranco Rosi has decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road—the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA—to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of the winding zone: a nobleman from the Piemonte region and his college student daughter sharing a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA.
2013 · 75 votes
58Movie6.8An absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy, which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man.
2014 · 503 votes
59Movie6.1Armando, a 50 year man, seeks young men in Caracas and pays them just for company. One day he meets Elder, a 17 years boy that is the leader of a criminal gang, and that meeting changes their lives forever.
2015 · 138 votes
60Movie6.9After three decades' wrongful incarceration for murder, a woman discovers that her friend and fellow inmate committed the murder of which she was accused. This leads to her release and subsequent discovery of the man who framed her — her ruling class ex-lover.
2016 · 68 votes
61Movie7.2An other-worldly story, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962, where a mute janitor working at a lab falls in love with an amphibious man being held captive there and devises a plan to help him escape.
2017 · 13K votes
62Movie7.6In 1970s Mexico City, two domestic workers help a mother of four while her husband is away for an extended period of time.
2018 · 4.2K votes