10 Arthouse Films for Beginners

Arthouse cinema is a very broad category. Generally, it refers to films that aren’t mainstream. Ones that are so subject-oriented or artistically shot that they find a place outside of traditional studio systems. These intimate, moving, and often unconventional movies pay more attention to creativity and freedom of expression rather than mass appeal. Some of the most influential arthouse directors are known for experimenting with editing, camerawork, and narrative in order to stand out from the rest.

One of the earliest masters of the arthouse style was seen in European cinema, whose moody black and white filming technique brought the idea of existentialism to life. The deliberate pacing, the lingering focus on an individual’s psyche, as well as the presence of a subtle playfulness is what makes arthouse films so cool and celebrated.

While arthouse may seem inaccessible, there are several films that reward open-minded beginners by being deeply moving and remarkable. Even the directors working today reference the boundary-pushing innovators that came before them and adopt their techniques of non-linear storytelling and multi-protagonist structures in order to venture beyond what’s considered safe and conventional.

10 Citizen Kane (1941)

Citizen Kane

Release Date

April 17, 1941

Director

Orson Welles

Cast

Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, Ray Collins

Rating

NONE

Main Genre

Drama

An American film drama that churned a lot of controversy, Citizen Kane tells the story of Charles Foster Kane, a wealthy newspaper publisher and business tycoon who rose from being a nobody to one of the most influential men in the country. The film takes a nonlinear approach toward storytelling by recounting his life in flashbacks, and centering all the focus on finding the meaning behind the one mysterious word he uttered before dying, Rosebud.

Why It Makes the List

Orson Welles’ film gave birth to the notion that film could also mean art. That visual storytelling was an aspect of media, and not media itself. The film’s main strength is in its cinematography. Welles uses light and shadow quite innovatively and incorporates meticulous set designs to fully immerse the audience in Kane’s world. Moreover, the concept of flashbacks within flashbacks really unlocked cinema’s potential for telling one subject’s story and revolving an entire generation around it.

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9 Dogtooth (2009)

Dogtooth

Release Date

June 1, 2009

Director

Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast

Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Hristos Passalis, Anna Kalaitzidou

Rating

NONE

Main Genre

Drama

Set in an isolated fenced-in compound, Dogtooth follows a couple living in isolation with their three adult children – one son and two daughters. The couple has raised their children with a bizarre belief system that denies reality outside their ways. The children have never left the property, and aren’t allowed to. Instead, they build their endurance through tests designed as “games,” and are punished when they fail to obey rules.

Why It Makes the List

Director Yorgos Lanthimos has created works that have always left the audience unsettled and provoked. Dogtooth is the director’s third feature film, and it strips its narrative down the barest bones to deliver a story that is simply unforgettable. Through its disoriented concept of vocabulary and denying children an individuality, the movie gets under your skin and makes you question the nature of familial bonds and what it means to conform.

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8 Paris, Texas (1984)

Travis Henderson has been traveling aimlessly across the desert for as long as he can remember. Having lost all connection to his past and retaining no memory, it is impossible for him to belong to one place. After a kind man finds him, Travis awkwardly reconnects with his younger brother Walt, his family, as well as his own wife, Jane, and young son, Hunter. Though fragments of his memory return, the years lost in the vast nothingness of the American West seem to have disappeared.

Why It Makes the List

Paris, Texas is directed by Wim Wenders, who crafts a poetic picture of a man who is displaced from his own life because of his lack of memories. Robby Müller, the cinematographer, realizes just how much character there is in the southwestern landscape and uses the backdrop in every which way. To perfectly portray the endless inner void of Travis, Harry Dean Stanton delivers a layered and allusive performance and redefines arthouse cinema.

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7 Fanny and Alexander (1982)

During the turn of the century in Sweden, Emilie and Oscar Ekdahl happily bring up their large brood and run a profitable theater. The dramatic and colorful life of young Alexander and his sister Fanny plays out without many complications, but a shadow is cast upon them when their father passes away. Their widowed mother marries the bishop Edvard Vergérus, and that is when dysfunction enters the household. When Edvard banishes Alexander’s imagination and forbids them from having any fun, battles ensue.

Why It Makes the List

At over three hours long yet never seeming long-enough, Ingmar Bergman weaves his most lavish semi-autobiographical tale of all time. Basing the film upon people from his real-life and characters that affected his childhood allowed him to get into the wonders and magics of familiar drama. The luxurious production design and the grim lens of harboring demons within a little heart is how Bergman brought arthouse into millions of homes.

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6 Chungking Express (1994)

Blending elements of romance and crime, this comedic drama is one of Wong Kar-wai's most beloved films of all time. It takes you to Chungking, Hong Kong, right before the city was to be handed over to China, and tells the story of two heartbroken policemen who dwell on their lost loves. While one of them falls in love with a server at a restaurant, the other reads a mysterious encounter as more than just that.

Why It Makes the List

Hong Kong has never looked more hazy and dreamy before. With Chungking Express, Wong Kar-wai experiments several filmmaking notions. There is use of shadows and neon for the city to take on a romance of its own. The non-linear storytelling makes every dialogue and action seem like poetry. As for the pacing and style, it is mesmerizing enough to fully absorb you and fill you with a strange longing. Overall, the film proves that arthouse can be playful and profound at the same time.

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5 Mulholland Drive (2001)

Mulholland Drive

Release Date

June 6, 2001

Director

David Lynch

Cast

Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya, Justin Theroux, Brent Briscoe

Rating

R

Main Genre

Crime

In Mulholland Drive, a car crash puts an aspiring actress’ dreams of Hollywood on hold and aligns her life with an amnesiac woman trying to keep her reality intact. Laura Harring’s character meets her mysterious savior, played by Naomi Watts, and together, the two women embark on a journey to unravel the former’s true identity. The contrast between Rita and Betty is so apparent, yet the film’s shadowy narrative creates a layered dark mystery as their investigation moves forward.

Why It Makes the List

David Lynch’s classic noir fashions a dreamworld where familiar Hollywood landmarks become sinister and real. Beneath all the glitz and glamor, he finds dysfunction, grainy reality, and a haunting beauty. Almost too fearless in its attempt at subverting expectations, Lynch shifts between dimly lit scenes and technicolor sequences to bring in a new wave of filmmaking technique that focuses more on meaning and less on simplicity.

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4 Tokyo Story (1953)

Japanese cinema has often been associated with gripping samurai tales and historical romances. But when it comes to jarring family dramas, perhaps few films are as phenomenal as Tokyo Story. In post-war Tokyo, an elderly couple visit their children, now grown and living in the city. However, they soon realize that their busy lives have little time for aged parents. They’re shuffled between relatives and sent to live in a resort as a reminder to not overstay their welcome.

Why It Makes the List

The idea of a generational gap and the discussions around it seeping into filmmaking isn’t novel. Director Yasujiro Ozu strips down the concept to its essence with minimalism yet profound emotion. The story very subtly portrays growing up, becoming parents, having children, drifting apart, and watching the same cycle continue over and over again. Its portrait of loneliness is loaded with subtext but light on drama, which is basically what high art signifies.

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3 Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

An outstanding film that became definitive of the French New Wave cinema, Cléo from 5 to 7 centers around the titular pop singer awaiting test results that will either confirm or dismiss her fears of having a terminal illness. During the two ours in which her fate will be known, she wanders around the streets of Paris and encounters colorful characters, including a soldier who urges her to contemplate her morality.

Why It Makes the List

Female characters in film are often used as props rather than trailblazers. Agnès Varda overthrows this practice by taking a heroine that is riveting but does not demand your sympathy. Instead, she inhabits the kind of iconic femininity, fragility, and fire that makes her journey stylish, playful, and subjectively cinematic. Over the course of one afternoon, Cléo realizes that she has been drifting through life half-alive, and that’s a feeling that remains fresh as ever.

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2 Ikiru (1952)

Ikiru is another arthouse masterpiece that simply tells a moving tale about life. The central character is a Tokyo bureaucrat, Kanji Watanabe, who has just found out that he has terminal cancer. Having lived a mundane life filled with career and paperwork, he’s suddenly determined to achieve a greater purpose and make at least one positive impact in a city he’s walked in for decades. So Kanji throws himself into building a children’s playground.

Why It Makes the List

Existentialism acts as an interesting concept to play with. The notion that every individual has a purpose, that we’re supposed to grow old and look back on life with no regrets, that we’re to leave this world not in titles but in goodness done, is something several filmmakers have fed on. Akira Kurosawa imbues this drama with beautiful humanism and crafts an intimate portrait of one man’s sudden awareness that life’s true meaning lies in redeeming small joys. Ikuru, this, celebrates the transformative power of life itself.

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1 A Clockwork Orange (1971)

A Clockwork Orange

Release Date

December 19, 1971

Director

Stanley Kubrick

Cast

Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke, John Clive, Adrienne Corri

Rating

R

Main Genre

Crime

Set in a dystopian near-future, A Clockwork Orange introduces us to a charming young delinquent, Alex. Along with his “droogs,” he often engages in ultra-violence, vandalism, and sexual assault for fun. When Alex is imprisoned, he agrees to undergo an experimental rehabilitation program that uses controversial methods of altering one’s psychology in order to cure someone of their violent tendencies. But the process goes askew, turning Alex into a victim.

Why It Makes the List

Despite having been made decades ago, A Clockwork Orange still counts as a futuristic film. Perhaps it is director Stanley Kubricks’s dazzling visual intelligence or Malcolm McDowell’s daring performance that helps retain its cinematic appeal. Whatever the reason, Kubrick ends up wielding the film just as deftly as Alex does violence, and in the process, he makes piercing commentary on unchecked social control, changes in human nature, free will, ethics, and overall cerebral depth of a person’s actions.

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