Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Orfeu Negro relocates the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the hills of Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. French director Marcel Camus transforms the ancient tragedy into a dazzling collision of myth, music and modern city life, where celebration and mortality become inseparable.

The film is inseparable from the birth of bossa nova. Its soundtrack—featuring music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá—became internationally influential, while the film itself introduced many audiences outside Brazil to the rhythms, landscapes and imagery of Rio. At the same time, its perspective has remained contested: admired for its visual exuberance and emotional force, but also criticised for presenting Brazil through an outsider's romantic gaze.

More than sixty years later, Orfeu Negro remains a singular work—at once intoxicating, controversial and unforgettable, suspended between myth and reality, joy and inevitability.

This film is chosen by Andreas

Before everyone was awkward on purpose, there was Submarine. Richard Ayoade's debut follows fifteen-year-old Oliver Tate, who approaches adolescence with the confidence of a philosopher and the emotional intelligence of a damp sponge. Armed with impossible ambitions—to lose his virginity, rescue his parents' marriage and become a literary genius—he discovers that life refuses to follow his carefully constructed narratives.

Visually inventive without showing off, and accompanied by Alex Turner's melancholic soundtrack, Submarine balances deadpan humour with genuine tenderness. Equal parts coming-of-age story and suburban tragicomedy, it remains one of the sharpest portraits of teenage self-importance ever put on screen.

This film is chosen by Maaike

Long overshadowed by more celebrated British films of its era, Babylon is one of the essential portraits of Black Britain. 

Directed by Franco Rosso and starring Brinsley Forde- lead singer of reggae group Aswad- the film follows a young sound system DJ in South London whose daily life is shaped as much by music as by relentless encounters with racism, police harassment and the casual violence of Thatcher-era Britain.

What distinguishes Babylon is its refusal to treat reggae as a backdrop. Sound systems, dubplates and speaker stacks are the film's emotional architecture; music becomes community, resistance and identity. Shot on location in Deptford and Brixton, it captures a London that was rarely afforded such authenticity in British cinema, anticipating the social realism of later filmmakers while remaining deeply rooted in Jamaican sound system culture.

Initially denied a wide release in Britain for its perceived political sensitivity, Babylon gradually acquired cult status before being restored by the BFI decades later. Today it stands not only as a landmark of Black British cinema, but as one of the finest films ever made about the political power of music—where every bassline carries as much weight as the dialogue.

This film is chosen by Judith