It Was Like This

Adams is hoping for a son the same night that "Spider" Barlow plans to make a haul at the Adams house. While Adams smokes in the library, outside "Spider" waits for him to retire. The burglar enters the house. The maid is awakened and corners him in a closet. Adams comes, and explains the need for quiet, leaving the maid on guard with a gun. When Adams goes to send a hurry call for the doctor, "Spider" relieves the maid of the gun, and taking advantage of the opportunity, rifles the house. Acting as self-appointed butler, "Spider" admits the doctor, and removing the gag long enough to give the maid three kisses, departs in the doctor's limousine with the doctor's coat and bag.

The Forecast

Wealthy bachelor Forest Keene lives in a mansion with his nephew Rex Booth and housekeeper Janet. Rex and Janet are in love with each other, but Keene objects to the match threatening disinheritance in the event of a marriage. Gifted with an ancient knife, Keene nods off holding it, falling into a nightmare where he sees the ruination of them all because of his obstinacy. Awakening he realizes the folly of his objections and gives his consent to Rex and Janet’s union.

The Calling of Louis Mona

Louis Mona is left to the care of the monks of the monastery of San Luis, who have brought him up with love and care. Louis, who is devoted to his surroundings, and who knows nothing of the great outside world, and who has no great desire to learn about it in person, desires to join the order, but there is a rule that cannot be overlooked.

The Angelus

The Angelus is a 1922 silent film

Heléne of the North

While waiting for the detained Lord Traverse, the guest of honor at an English society party, the guests play a game wherein each must tell a complete story before a cigarette burns out. Heléne Dearing relates that her proud father John left England after being exposed as a card cheat and became a whiskey runner near a Canadian lumber camp.

The Mountain Eagle

In the Kentucky hills, a schoolteacher becomes caught in a bitter feud between a widower, his crippled son, and a reclusive hermit. Accusations and jealousy drive her into hiding, leading to love and revenge. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this 1926 romantic drama is now considered lost and remains one of the BFI’s most sought-after missing films.

The Divine Decree

Two families, the Darby and Burson families, who reside in a run-down tenement building are both involved in housebreaking as their trade. They consistently work together.

Arabian Love

Nadine Fortier is captured by a band of desert marauders. "The Sheik" wins her in a game of dice but then lets her go - for now.

The Young Painter

A 1922 silent film about the title young man.

A Final Reckoning

12 episode serial of a brother and sister searching Australia for a gold mine that their father had discovered before his death. Episodes: 1. A Treacherous Friend, 2. The Man Trap, 3. Trapped. 4. Face to Face, 5. Ambushed, 6. Unmasked, 7. In Wolf's Clothing, 8. An Attack in the Dark, 9. A Ride for Life, 10. The Blast of Death, 11. The Living Dead, 12. The Reward.

Fighting with Buffalo Bill

10-episode American silent Western film serial chronicling the legendary exploits of frontier scout and showman William F. Cody. Episodes: 1. Westward, 2. The Red Menace, 3. The Blazing Arrow, 4. The Death Trap, 5. The Renegade, 6. The Race for Life, 7. Buried Alive, 8. Desperate Chances, 9. The Shadow of Evil, 10. At the End of the Trail

The Apache

Sonya, a Marseilles Cafe performer involved with a pack of thieves is rescued from her criminal life by a police official who sends her lover and partner in a knife-throwing act to jail and then tries to seduce her. Not submitting to the official's advances, she falls in love with an Apache dancer in Paris and works with him, holding her other admirer at a distance. The official is mysteriously killed, presumably by her lover, it then falls to Sonya to find the real felon.

Viy

The Afterlife Wanderer

Early lost Russian horror film.

In The Wild Blindness Of Desires

A man in love with a married woman plans to kill her husband. By mistake he kills her brother, and is haunted by the ghost of the murdered brother.

Dance of Death

A conductor is haunted by hallucinations during a performance of Camille Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre.

Detective Blinn

The intrepid Detective Blinn investigates a series of baffling jewel thefts targeting wealthy women.

Chicago After Midnight

Gangster Jim Boyd serves a 15-year prison term when Hardy, a rival crook, doublecrosses him. On his release from prison, Boyd seeks out Hardy in Chicago, where he runs a cafe and bootleg operation. He makes the acquaintance of Mona Gale, a dancer in Hardy's cafe who is engaged to marry Jack Waring, the orchestra leader. Unaware that Mona is his daughter, Boyd shoots Hardy in a brawl and leaves behind evidence implicating Waring as the murderer. After Hardy's death, Mona joins Boyd's gang to gather evidence proving her fiancé's innocence. The gang members discover that Mona has dealings with the police, and they begin to torture her. Having learned of Mona's relationship to him at the last minute, Boyd arrives at the gang's hideout in time to save her. He confesses to killing Hardy before he dies from a wound inflicted by one of his own gang, thus freeing Waring to marry Mona.

Coney Island

Tammany Burke, young owner of a giant roller coaster, is fighting heavy odds against a syndicate led by financial baron Hughey Cooper. Assisted by his sweetheart, Joan, and her father, Jingles Wellman, formerly a clown, Burke prepares for a sabotage of his machine by syndicate hirelings. In the midst of a great battle the riot squad arrives to arrest the troublemakers, and Burke and his sweetheart are left in happy possession of their roller coaster.

The Valley of the Moon

When boxer Billy Roberts marries laundress Saxon, he tries to please his spouse by leaving his former profession behind and becoming a teamster driving trucks. However, when their wages are cut, the union calls for a strike. The film is sympathetic toward the strikers, with scenes showing police attacking the teamsters with clubs and patrol wagons being driven over fallen men.

Imagine

A blind teacher breaks the rules to help a female student rediscover the pleasures of life.

Girl in the Box

The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.

Hardball

An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.

The Safety of Objects

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

Hands of Stone

The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.

Adopt a Highway

Russ Millings has just been released from prison after serving 21 years for a 3rd strike conviction for possessing an ounce of marijuana. As he tries to adapt to a world he doesn’t recognize – including trying to learn how to use the internet – he finds an abandoned baby in a dumpster behind the fast food restaurant where he works as a dishwasher. Unsure of what to do, and caught between impulses of kindness and panic, Russ soon realizes this could be his chance at redemption.

Salomé

After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.

Bastard Out of Carolina

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

Goodbye June

Four siblings' lives change drastically when their ailing mother takes a turn for the worse over the holiday season.

The Visit

Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...

The Unforgivable

A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.

Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl

Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.

Ice Castles

Young, beautiful, talented Alexis Winston comes from nowhere to become a figure skating superstar. But her rise to stardom isn’t easy. She has to push herself, reinvent herself, and most painfully of all, leave her hometown boyfriend behind. When a tragic fall leaves her blind, she needs someone to believe in her, to love her; someone to convince her she has the strength to skate and dream again.

Skin

Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.

Wonderstruck

The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.

Dear Zoe

Tess enlists her biological father – a lovable slacker from the wrong side of the tracks – and the charming juvenile delinquent next door to help her come to grips with the death of her little sister.

The Congress

An aging, out-of-work actress accepts one last job, though the consequences of her decision affect her in ways she didn't consider.

Here

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.

The Kindness of Strangers

Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.