Two Cineasts Presents: Western European Films Ranked (Germany, France etc.)

Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's crimes are so disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, they send him into attempt to escape justice.

Claude Lanzmann directed this 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust without using a single frame of archive footage. He interviews survivors, witnesses, and ex-Nazis (whom he had to film secretly since they only agreed to be interviewed by audio). His style of interviewing by asking for the most minute details is effective at adding up these details to give a horrifying portrait of the events of Nazi genocide. He also shows, or rather lets some of his subjects themselves show, that the anti-Semitism that caused 6 million Jews to die in the Holocaust is still alive and well in many people who still live in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere.

One of the most intense thrillers ever made. In this story, a four-man team is paid to drive two trucks loaded with nitroglycerin through the jungle to the oil field. Meanwhile, a tense rivalry emerges between the drivers, and the slightest mistake could be fatal. A classic masterpiece of cinema that will keep you involved from start to finish, biting your nails with so much suspense!

Somewhere in the future there is a computer project called Simulacron one of which is able to simulate a full featured reality, when suddenly project leader Henry Vollmer dies. His successor Dr. Fred Stiller experiences odd phenomena. A good friend, Guenther Lause, disappears in the middle of a conversation and a week later nobody has ever heard of him. And those fits of dizzyness - Stiller cannot believe himself to be fool. There has to be an explanation for all this. Could Simulacron have something to do with it?

Join Klaus Kinski in a mesmerizing portrayal of the ruthless Don Aguirre as he leads a Spanish expedition down the Amazon River in pursuit of El Dorado's gold in Werner Herzog's hypnotic epic. With a minimalist yet lush approach, Herzog explores themes of madness and greed in the unforgiving Amazon rainforest, all set to the ethereal soundtrack by Popol Vuh.

Gerd Wiesler is an officer in the Stasi, the East German secret police. Wiesler believes that Georg Dreyman, a playwright, needs surveillance. The Minister of Culture agrees with him, but then Wiesler learns that he sees Dreyman as a rival and that the latter lusts after Dreyman's partner, Christa-Maria. The more he watches them, the more he worries about them and the more he meddles in their lives. This is a riveting political thriller that never fails to challenge its protagonist.

"The Boat" is the story of the crew of one of the hundreds of U-boats deployed by the Germans in World War II. Subject to countless hours of claustrophobic confinement and unending assault by enemy ships, the crew struggles for survival.

When 22-year-old Rainer Werner Fassbinder stormed the stage of the small, progressive Antiteater in Munich in 1967 and unceremoniously usurped the production, no one present suspected that this brash guy would one day become one of Germany's most important post-war filmmakers. The engaging and demanding man quickly gathers numerous actresses, self-promoters and lovers around him. Despite early setbacks, he makes one film after the next, many of which cause sensations at the festivals in Berlin and Cannes. The young director polarizes: professionally as well as privately. His radical views and self-exploitation, as well as his longing for love, have made him one of the most fascinating film directors of this time. But the work mania, the physical self-exploitation of all involved and the unchecked drug consumption soon claim their first victims.

The wildly prolific German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid homage to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk with this update of that filmmaker's All That Heaven Allows (1955). A lonely widow (Brigitte Mira) meets a much younger Moroccan worker (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love, to their own surprise-and to the outright shock of their families, colleagues, and drinking buddies. In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Fassbinder expertly wields the emotional power of classic Hollywood melodrama to expose the racial tensions underlying contemporary German culture.

Luis Buñuel's film weaves a love story against a backdrop of political unrest in Spain and France. Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina portray Conchita, captivating Fernando Rey's Mathieu, in a tale of desire and frustration. Buñuel's direction balances humor and emotion, with dual actresses symbolizing desire's complexity. The film explores human connections within a charged context, inviting reflection on intricate emotions. A masterpiece of artistry and psychology which offers a profound experience for those valuing nuanced storytelling.

A boy makes friends with a seemingly sentient red balloon, and it begins to follow him. It follows him to the bus stop, to school, and to church. They play together in the streets of Paris and try to elude a gang of boys that wants to steal it.

James Miller has just written a book on the value of a copy versus the original work of art. At a book reading, a woman gives him her address, and the next day they meet and take a country-side drive to a local Italian village. Here, they discuss various works of art found in the town, and also the nature of their relationship - which gets both more revealed and concealed as the day progresses.

Christina Delassalle suffers greatly at the hands of her brutish husband Michel. She inherited the boys' boarding school they run but it's clearly Michel who is in charge. She and Nicole Horner, one of the teachers and Michel's former lover, decide to kill him. Christina, who has a serious condition, is terrified when, by chance, she meets a retired police inspector who decides to look into the case.

In this captivating silent film that begins the Dr. Mabuse series by the extraordinary Fritz Lang, we delve into the cunning machinations of a criminal mastermind. Dr. Mabuse, an expert in disguise and manipulation, embodies villainy in every sense using hypnotism and a network of henchmen as he orchestrates a series of schemes involving gambling and murder, to gain riches and the cynical pleasure of playing with the lives of others.

In the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war, humanity faces imminent extinction in Paris. Through time travel and a series of still images, one man's voice unfolds as he embarks on a desperate mission to gather resources and save civilization. Along the way, he confronts the memories of a lonely woman, echoes of the past on an airport pier, and the thin line between life and death in this iconic experimental film by Chris Maker.

This movie follows the life of a young German woman, married to a soldier in the waning days of WWII. Fassbinder has tried to show the gritty life after the end of WWII and the turmoil of the people trapped in its wake.