In the wake of its sequel Before Sunset, this – the original film in which Céline and Jesse first meet – has taken on a life of its own way beyond anything it generated first time round.

This is one of the best films about love and relationships you’ll ever see – and the two protagonists barely touch. Linklater’s films are often accused of being far too ‘talky’, and there’s talk, talk, talk in Before Sunrise. But the director trusts his actors to express, through gesture and body language, the unspoken things revealed in the course of the talking, and this is what makes his film so engaging. His camera remorselessly follows their arbitrary trail through the city, capturing every nuance of expression in their faces and including the viewer as a third, silent, companion.

Winner of the Golden Lion for Best Film at last year’s Venice Film Festival, Imelda Staunton also took the best actress award for her portrayal of Vera, a hard-working, generally cheerful and inspiring cleaning lady living in 1950s Britain. To her neighbours and friends Vera is nothing remarkable, but she leads a secret secondary life as an illegal back-street abortionist, helping girls who “got themselves into trouble”.

Set in the days before the Abortion Act, indeed in the days before the subject was even mentioned, Leigh gives a pitiless portrayal of the hypocrisy and harshness that characterised life in the Britain of the immediate post-war period.

Peter Bradshaw writing in the Guardian said: “I have seen nothing as compelling since Dennis Potter’s Pennies From Heaven…. Clarity of dramatic language and superb, humane performances are the bedrock of this outstanding film”.

Don’t expect anything like a conventional feature film. This is a comic series of short vignettes shot over a period of 17 years by New York’s Jim Jarmusch, with the connecting theme of the pleasures of coffee and cigarettes.

While fairly inconsequential as individual snippets, the effect is cumulative, rather like that of cigarettes themselves. The pleasure for us is in seeing unlikely combinations of characters in conversation; Bill Murray with the Wu-Tang clan; Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan; Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, as well as the conversations themselves, covering topics as diverse as caffeine popsicles, Paris in the twenties, and nicotine as an insecticide.

This approach goes a long way to disprove the commonly held notion that cinema can only be exciting when people shoot each other or drive too fast.

In this wonderful life-affirming comedy a sleepy French village is awoken by the arrival of the annual fair, where the well-meaning but accident-prone village postman is inspired by a newsreel about the US Postal Service.

Impelled to upgrade his rural round after the new-fangled American manner, his innocent determination overcomes everything that mischievous fate places in his path. In an utterly inspired performance Tati executes absurd acrobatics with astonishing finesse and grace, coaxing the utmost of comic effect from the barest of means and establishing the enduring comic persona that was to feature in many of his subsequent films.

A delightful odd couple-ish road movie in which wine-fancier Miles and his about-tobe-wed buddy Jack head out for a final taste of the wild life before Jack gets hitched. Jack – brazen, pushy and rather crude – and Miles – withdrawn, unprepossesing and irritable – are like chalk and cheese but have long learned how to put up with each other’s foibles. However, Jack’s outrageous behaviour with vintner Stephanie finally proves too much for Miles, who is timidly courting waitress Maya, and things come to a head. Beautifully scripted and performed, this is one of the best films of the year.

Touching and hilarious by turns, this is a quirky Norwegian take on the struggle to achieve independence while learning to fit into a community following release from a mental institution. Elling and his mate Kjell Bjarne are deemed fit to be discharged from their hospital to live on their own in a shared apartment. They are encouraged to go out into the world and make friends. Initially, the simple act of going around the corner for groceries is a challenge, but through a friendship born of desperate dependence the skittish Elling and the boisterous Kjell find they can thrive. As their courage grows, the two find oddball ways to cope with society, striking up the most peculiar friendships in the most unlikely places…

A revealing and beautifully-photographed documentary on the migratory patterns of birds, shot over the course of three years on all seven continents. Astonishing footage made possible by working with birds from birth, so that they were entirely accustomed to the presence of cameras and crew. Some of the sequences have a dramatic contrivance to them, such as one particular scene in which a goose gets stuck in industrial sludge. This was deliberately staged by the producers, but the bird was immediately freed after filming.

Another involving a wounded Tern beset by crabs was not a staged scene, and the bird was rescued by the crew at the last moment after shooting the action. The film features by far the most intimate and breath-taking footage of birds on the wing ever photographed, and represents something of a landmark of its type.

Amongst the most striking and evocative portrayals of the English countryside – actually the Welsh Borders – ever committed to film, this powerful Hardy-esque account of the hardships and joys of rural life is based on Bruce Chatwin’s novel of the same name.

Covering 80 years in the lives of Amos Jones, a stubbly and splenetic son of the soil, and his twin sons, the film enjoyed the active support and involvement of the community it depicted – Chatwin’s novel was already popular with the people of Hay-on-Wye, the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains.

Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s photography impressively captures the bleak (‘Black’) higher land and the harshness of living on it and from it, but also highlights its beauty.

This will stay with you long after the lights have come up.

A picturesque road movie that charts Brazil’s renaissance in a little boy’s search for his father and an old woman’s emotional reawakening. The curmudgeonly Dora works at Rio de Janeiro Central Station, writing letters for customers, whom she despises.

Sometimes she bothers to mail the letters – more often she does not. Josue, a 9-year old boy who has never met his father, is receiving letters from his mother through Dora. When the mother dies in a road accident Dora reluctantly takes Josue in. After an abortive attempt to sell the boy for a new TV, Dora finds herself reluctantly propelled into an odyssey through the hinterlands of Brazil’s Sertäo, where she and her sidekick find unexpected faith and family.

Montenegro was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, and Central Station was in the running for Best Foreign Language Film.

An Academy Award-winning biopic of Ray Charles, developed over 13 years by its director, and starring Jamie Foxx in an uncannily reminiscent portrayal of the revolutionary singer who fused gospel music with ’60s R’n’ B, soul, country and jazz. Born in a poor town in Georgia, Ray Charles went blind at the age of seven shortly after witnessing his younger brother’s accidental death. Inspired by a fiercely independent mother who insisted he make his own way in the world, Charles found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard. As he revolutionized the way people appreciated music, he simultaneously fought segregation in the very clubs that launched him and championed artists’ rights within the corporate music business. Ray provides an unflinching portrait of Charles’ musical genius as he overcomes drug addiction to become one of the most revered performers in America.