1997

Funny Games (1997)

There is a perverse ritualism to the torture that two young strangers exact on one helpless family in Funny Games, and yet in Michael Haneke’s disturbing piece of horror metafiction they are simply the storytellers serving the gratuitous tastes of us, their audience, who guiltily respond to their sadistic manipulation of narrative conventions with fear, shock, and awe.

Xiao Wu (1997)

Taking rich inspiration from the Italian neorealists who preceded him by roughly fifty years, Jia Zhangke turns his camera to the streets of a provincial Chinese town during a particularly harsh crackdown on crime, tracking pickpocket Xiao Wu through a shifting culture that he no longer recognises.

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