Filmfarsi is Ehsan Khoshbakht’s journey through the history of Iranian popular cinema before the 1979 revolution. The term “filmfarsi” refers to the rowdy and melodramatic genre films made in Iran from the early 1950s to 1979. This documentary provides a fascinating archaeology of “the biggest secret in cinema history”

The backstabbing criminals in the shadowy underworld of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le doulos have only one guiding principle: “Lie or die.” Shot and edited with Melville’s trademark cool and featuring masterfully stylized dialogue and performances, Le doulos is one of the filmmaker’s most gripping crime dramas.

Jean-Paul Belmondo delivers a subtly sensual performance in the hot-under-the-collar Léon Morin, Priest, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. A triumph of mood, setting, and innuendo, Léon Morin, Priest is an irreverent pleasure from one of French cinema’s towering virtuosos.

"Moderate and songlike” – a musical tempo, but also an apt descriptor of this moody, deliberate drama co-scripted by Duras from her novel. Theatre giant Peter Brook’s restrained direction casts rare moments of intensity in relief, and Armand Thirard’s crisp cinematography conveys the desolation of life in a windswept town where “summer never comes.”