Shiver of the Vampires

Old sins refuse to be forgotten in Romola Garai’s gothic horror and hauntingly atmospheric debut feature.

The allure of the serial killer is explored in this deeply unsettling and unforgettable exploration of the impact of extreme violence.

A recently married couple find their lives turning upside down as a result of the husband’s nocturnal behaviour.

Dark and sinister forces invade a couple’s home in this wildly eerie British folk horror, with unflinching performances from Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark.

A widowed doctor has gruesome plans for his new wife in this lush, Hitchcockian Italian gothic horror.

A witchfinder traverses 17th-century England executing those he suspects of witchcraft.

Alain Robbe-Grillet’s serpentine erotic mystery presented as a surreal investigation into a woman with feared sexual powers.

This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant and Marie-France Pisier.

Alain Robbe-Grillet’s sensual fantasy follows a group of students who enter a bizarre sado-masochistic realm after taking a mysterious drug.

René Laloux and Roland Topor’s surreal, psychedelic sci-fi animation imagines a world in which humanoid creatures are kept as pets by a race of giants.

A pair of lovers have a tryst in a vacant tomb, but then find themselves unable to escape from the graves and crypts of the massive cemetery.

Georges Franju’s gorgeous, poetic horror film about a surgeon’s dark obsession with restoring his daughter’s disfigured face.

Laure Calamy stars in this devious, involving French thriller by Sébastien Marnier, playing an outsider tangled in a web of upper-class family malice.

A director struggles to film a difficult sex scene between two actors who happen to hate each other, in Catherine Breillat's witty exploration of intimacy coordination.

Agnes Varda’s classic character study follows a successful pop singer as she wanders around Paris while awaiting the results of serious medical tests.

Jacques Rivette’s biggest commercial hit is an exhilarating combination of theatricality, paranoia and ‘la vie parisienne’, around an entrancing examination of making and watching films.

Jean Rollin’s hauntingly poetic horror about a man trying to solve the riddle of a tormenting childhood memory.

Jean Rollin’s best-known film is the most full-blooded of his vampire tales, teeming with sex and lavishly filmed gore scenes

Two female fugitives hide out in a deserted castle, only to become embroiled in a plot to extend the bloodline of a horde of blood-crazed vampires.

Jean Rollin’s stylish and futuristically surreal horror about patients at a mysterious clinic whose memories are disintegrating.

Jean Rollin’s second vampire film is a mesmerisingly surreal art-horror, short on logic but steeped in gorgeously sensual imagery.

Queer sisterhood and collective power lie at the heart of this arresting Brazilian debut, in which a promising volleyball player faces an unwanted pregnancy.

A young, inexperienced substitute teacher is quickly confronted with the trials and tribulations of his job, in this wry tribute to the teaching profession.

A single mother fights to reclaim her children from foster care, in Delphine Deloget's powerful indictment of the French legal system.

Pierre Salvadori's cult 1995 comedy, starring François Cluzet and Guillaume Depardieu as two young adults searching for love and success.

An heiress returns to her uninhabited family manor to be confronted with the one-eyed caretaker who resides there, in the dreamlike take on La Belle et la Bête.

Part gripping thriller, part psychological study, Delphine Girard's debut feature about consent and modern society's attitudes to sexual violence.