Hiroshima, Mon Amour (Criterion Collection)

A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad) is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Amour's Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Woman in the Dunes' Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming mutual fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering. With an innovative flashback structure and an Academy Award-nominated screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras (India Song), Hiroshima mon amour is a moody masterwork that delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish.