A masterpiece of modern cinema, A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS is Peter Greenaway’s beautifully disturbing and darkly humorous take on erotic obsession and death.

Release Year: 1985  Running Time: 115 mins  Color: Color 

Swiss novice Sabine arrives at Antaiji and, after a brief welcome, she begins to learn the monastery rules: how to bow, sit in the meditation hall, carry out movements with chopsticks, etc. There’s more to life there than meditation, farming, and maintenance, however—there are picnics, music, and Wi-Fi. And after the last snow has melted away, the nuns and monks travel to Osaka, where they recite sutras in front of subway entrances as they solicit offerings in their traditional monk’s robes.

Release Year: 2017  Running Time: 104 mins 

A truly independent film of integrity and offhand grace, ZERO BRIDGE tells the deeply affecting tale of a student and small-time criminal in Kashmir who develops a crush on an older, college educated woman.

Release Year: 2008  Running Time: 97 mins  Color: B&W 

A smash hit in Israel and winner of the Best Narrative Feature Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, Zero Motivation is a unique, sharply observed, sometimes dark and often hilarious portrait of everyday life for a unit of young, female soldiers in a remote Israeli desert outpost.

Release Year: 2014  Running Time: 100 mins  Color: Color 

In this playful spoof of the James Bond films, Robin Hawdon stars as Word...James Word, a womanizing secret agent whose investigation of a criminal mastermind leads him to discover a race of beautiful, exotic superwomen. Further inquiry exposes the naked truth, that these women have been abducted and brainwashed by the alien, interdimensional goddess Zeta.

Release Year: 1969  Running Time: 85 mins  Color: Color 

ZIZEK! trails the eminent and intrepid thinker as he crisscrosses the globe—racing from New York City lecture halls, traversing the streets of Buenos Aires, pit-stopping at his home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In transit, Zizek obsessively reveals the invisible workings of ideology through a unique blend of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxism and pop culture critique. He is also unafraid to turn his critical gaze on himself, offering cutting commentary on his personality, private life and growing inter-national celebrity.

ZIZEK! is both an unforgettable lesson in philosophy and a compelling portrait of an intellectual maverick. Possessing the capacity to appeal to the uninitiated in a way no other philosopher before him could, Slavoj Zizek’s combination of high and low culture will fascinate even those who once believed philosophy to be a bore.

Release Year: 2005  Running Time: 71 mins  Color: Color 

Férid Boughedir charmingly pulls off a lighthearted comedic fable about, of all things, the 2011 Arab Spring uprising in Tunisia. This year we’re treating the Friends of the Film Festival to the sweet story of Zizou, a naive and sincere optimist whose crush on a beautiful girl leads him to become the unwitting face of a revolution. With two years of university under his belt, but very little common sense, Zizou leaves his Saharan village and finds work in the big city of Tunis, installing satellite dishes alongside a colorful cast of characters. The job takes him to every part of the city, introducing him to residents ranging from supporters of the regime and underground rebels to a ravishing beauty being held captive by the mafia. When Zizou decides to attempt a rescue of his beloved, he gets much more than he bargained for, and a case of mistaken identity lands him in the forefront of a national rebellion. This delightful movie will win you over with its bewitching story set against the gorgeous backdrop of a colorful Tunisia as it attempts to become the first true democracy in North Africa. - Traverse City Film Festival

Release Year: 2016  Running Time: 101 mins  Color: Color 

When the Russian army unearths the vault of Dracula, they accidentally unleash his undead human slave and the Count’s vampire hellhound Zoltan. But these friends need a new master and head for Los Angeles to find Dracula’s last living descendant, family man Michael Drake.

Release Year: 1977  Running Time: 87 mins  Color: Color 

One of the most bizarre films in the living dead craze of the early 1980s, ZOMBIE LAKE feasts without restraint upon the carcasses of a variety of cinematic genres: the WWII picture, the sexploitation film, gore horror, and even the romantic melodrama.

Release Year: 1980  Running Time: 86 mins  Color: Color 

When barrio leader Henry Reyna and a group of his friends are unjustly convicted  and sent to San Quentin, activist lawyers Alice Bloomfield and George Shearer fight the blatant racially motivated miscarriage of justice to win Henry and his friends their freedom.

Release Year: 1981  Running Time: 103 mins