Pasquale Squitieri (The Climber) directs this stunning period piece which won the David di Donatello award for best film and features spaghetti western icon Giuliano Gemma brilliantly playing against type as the titular hero. Based on the true story of the Iron Prefect, Cesare Mori, who was sent to Sicily for an Eliot Ness-in-The Untouchables style clean up of the mafia. Mori approaches organised crime on the island with uncompromising force even in the face of mass murders designed to scare him off. 1977.

A Moment of Romance is a classic of Hong Kong cinema that has been much imitated but rarely bettered. With a breakneck pace and violence reminiscent of To and Takashi Miike and the beautiful and emotive sensibility of Wong Kar-wai, the film features stunning performances from Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs), and Jacklyn Chien-Lien Wu in her debut work. Small-time hood Wah Dee (Lau) is enlisted by Triad boss Trumpet (Tommy Wong, The Killer) as a getaway driver for a daring heist that goes wrong. Thinking fast Dee takes Jo Jo (Wu) hostage to save his skin, but the bosses order her to be killed. They escape and begin a forbidden relationship while being chased by both sides of the law.

Featuring the iconic Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood), Yakuza Graveyard finds gritty action filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) at the peak of his powers. Things begin to spiral out of control for detective Kuroiwa (Tetsuya Watari, Graveyard of Honour) when he falls for the beautiful wife of the jailed boss of the Nishida gang. In a world where the line between police and organised crime is vague, he finds himself on the wrong side of a yakuza war when his superiors favour Nishida’s rivals, the Yamashiro gang.

Ismael (Karra Elejalde, Timecrimes) breaks into the house of a fine art restorer and shoots the homeowner dead, leaving her daughter orphaned and traumatized for life. Years later Ismael is working in a bar where he sees the daughter again. Paranoid that she has recognised him and will report him, he kidnaps her and holds her hostage, demanding that her hospital pay a ransom for her release. A gothic thriller with pitch-black humour that recalls the Coen brothers, Juanma Bajo Ulloa's sophomore feature won a host of prestigious international awards and was a precursor to the Spanish genre explosion.

An odious architect is beaten to death and a high society wife (Jacqueline Bisset, Day for Night) and her friend (Jean-Louis Trintignant, The Conformist) are the key suspects, with a discarded letter implicating them in the crime. Commissioner Santamaria (Marcello Mastroianni, Fellini's 8 ½) is assigned to the case and tries to uncover the murder suspect in upper-class Turin in this murder mystery narrative worthy of Agatha Christie.

The Maeda family hide behind their modest façade. One by one those affected by their schemes show up at their door. But each of these visitors has their own duplicitous agendas. Director Yuzo Kawashima, mentor of Shohei Imamura and a major influence on the Japanese New Wave, makes magnificent widescreen use of the single apartment setting to deliver a ferocious satire on Japan’s post-war economic miracle. Adapted by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba) from his own stage play.

An atmospheric tale of gangland intrigue written by Kazuo Kasahara (Battles Without Honour and Humanity) and starring Tomisaburo Wakayama, (Lone Wolf and Cub, The Bounty Hunter Trilogy) and genre legend Koji Tsuruta, Big Time Gambling Boss is one of the all-time classics of the yakuza genre. Paul Schrader called it the richest and most complex film of its type, while novelist Yukio Mishima hailed it as a masterpiece.

A man wakes in an asylum with no memory. Dr Wakabayashi helps him to recall his past in which he killed his bride on their wedding day. Part of his memory becomes linked to another doctor, Dr Masaki, and a manuscript, Dogra Magra. The final feature film by Toshio Matsumoto (Funeral Parade of Roses) is an adaptation of the celebrated novel by Kyusaku Yumeno, a period set gothic tale with a sense of dreamy dread that recalls Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure and the locked room mystery of Shutter Island. A stunningly shot phantasmagoria by Tatsuo Suzuki, Dogra Magra is presented by Radiance films for the first time outside of Japan.

Retrieving the diamonds he stashed before his arrest, thief Miyamoto hopes to help his old partner Mihara, crippled during the heist. Their former boss, crime lord Oyane, offers to mediate with a foreign buyer, but secretly wants the stones for himself. The deal goes awry when gunmen appear on the scene. Mihara swallows the diamonds but dies in the chase, leaving a valuable corpse in the police morgue. Miyamoto forms an uneasy alliance with Mihara's wildcat sister Akiko to keep the gems away from gangsters, cops and even Akiko's greedy boyfriend. This wildly inventive early noir sees Seijun Suzuki infectiously playing with genre rules and gender stereotypes.

Director Damiano Damiani (A Bullet for the General) wields expert tension in this gripping espionage thriller, twisting and turning its tight plot to its sensational finale. Featuring a supporting cast including Claudia Cardinale (Fitzcarraldo) and John Steiner (Tenebrae), Goodbye & Amen is one of the great 1970s Italian action thrill rides set to a haunting score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis. John Dannahay, a CIA agent stationed in Rome, is planning to overthrow an African government. But his plan goes wrong when a corrupt colleague starts shooting people from the roof of a hotel, taking an innocent couple hostage.

Ralph, a mourning detective, discovers an unwelcome lump and an equally unwelcome partner, Xavier. The investigator contends with Xavier's exuberance as they navigate a partnership between unlikely cases, themselves and a lump.