Programmers' Picks: Martin Schwartz

Wings of Desire

Everyone's Favorite German Film has images—like Bruno Ganz as a ruffled angel atop a gray building, looking out over no man's land—that have conquered the world, but the closer you look, the more you see. Wim Wenders is a poet of cinema, but he's also a canny, extremely skilled director with an unfailing grasp of the medium.

Familiar

If, like me, you are addicted to Romanian New Wave, BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW. Călin Peter Netzer’s latest nesting-doll creation has layers of irony, deceit, and deadpan humor on the venality of human beings in unfair systems, but it also has post-Communist history and a passion for truth.

Scorched Earth

If you didn’t think Germany could create a proper hard-boiled, red-asphalt neo-noir, think again. The big heist is only half the picture in this gripping psychological thriller about double-crossed thieves on the gritty periphery of Berlin.

Woodland 

A freezing lake, fields of pale gold, trees of all hues, trauma, tenderness, and a lost past; seeking solace in the country was never so immersive and delicate as in this year’s rich and satisfying Austrian pick.

Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film

As a certified film fan and anti-Nazi, I cannot wait to see this bizarro bit of cinema history on the big screen. I’ve been puzzled by the politics in Lifeboat since I first saw it as a boy, and the older I get, the more I care about how ideology plays out in art, in ways we do and don’t attend. Also: Tallulah Bankhead.