A carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the Fascist period, Federico Fellini's most personal film satirizes his youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political subterfuge, all set to Nina Rota's gorgeous, nostalgia-tinged score.

Filmmaker-philosopher Terrence Malick has created some of the most visually stunning films of the twentieth century, and Days of Heaven is no exception. Set to the picturesque backdrop of the American west at the turn of the century, the film's brilliant cinematography—as shot in Alberta—is enough to earn it the title of "one of the most beautiful films ever made."

Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice in 1989, Hou's panoramic tale takes in the four tumultuous years from 1945, when Japan surrendered Taiwan to China at the end of World War II, to 1949, when Chiang Kai Shek established his Nationalist government on the island after fall of the mainland to the Communists.