This August, The Criterion Collection is putting an emphasis on classic foreign language pictures, many of which are either deep catalogue picks from acclaimed filmmakers or portraits of cultures often underrepresented in the medium’s past. Either way, there’s a lot to unpack with each release, including films from Edward Yang, Kon Ichikawa, and Vittorio De Sica. Here’s everything coming to The Criterion Collection in August 2025:
The Burmese Harp (directed by Kon Ichikawa)
From The Criterion Collection: An Imperial Japanese Army regiment surrenders to British forces in Burma at the close of World War II and finds harmony through song. A private, thought to be dead, disguises himself as a Buddhist monk and stumbles upon spiritual enlightenment. Magnificently shot in hushed black and white, Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp is an eloquent meditation on beauty coexisting with death and remains one of Japanese cinema’s most overwhelming antiwar sentiments, both tender and brutal in its grappling with Japan’s wartime legacy.
The 4k edition of The Burmese Harp releases August 5, 2025 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
Fires on the Plain (directed by Kon Ichikawa)
From The Criterion Collection: An agonizing portrait of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded in a strange land during World War II, Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain is a compelling descent into psychological and physical oblivion. Denied hospital treatment for tuberculosis and cast off into the unknown, Private Tamura treks across an unfamiliar Philippine landscape, encountering an increasingly debased cross section of Imperial Army soldiers, who eventually give in to the most terrifying craving of all. Grisly yet poetic, Fires on the Plain is one of the most powerful works from one of Japanese cinema’s most versatile filmmakers.
The 4k edition of Fires on the Plain releases August 5, 2025 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
Cairo Station (directed by Youssef Chahine)
From The Criterion Collection: Youssef Chahine established his international reputation with this masterpiece, which, though initially a commercial failure in Egypt, would become one of the most influential and celebrated works in all of Arab cinema. The director himself stars as Kenawi, a disabled newspaper hawker whose obsession with a sultry drink seller (Hind Rostom, known as the “Marilyn Monroe of Arabia”) leads to tragedy of operatic proportions on the streets of Cairo. Blending elements of neorealism with provocative noir-melodrama, Cairo Station is a work of raw populist poetry that explores the individual’s search for a place in Egypt’s new postrevolutionary political order.
The Blu-ray edition of Cairo Station releases August 12, 2025 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
A Confucian Confusion / Mahjong: Two Films by Edward Yang
From The Criterion Collection: In this pair of sharp, sprawling satires, one of Taiwan’s most celebrated filmmakers, Edward Yang, captures the anything-can-happen mood of Taipei at the end of the twentieth century. Made in between his epic dramas A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi, A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong find Yang applying a lighter but no less masterly touch to his explorations of human relationships in an increasingly globalized, hypercapitalistic world. These intricately constructed ensemble comedies—one set in a cutthroat corporate milieu, the other in a shady criminal underworld—reveal the absurdity and cynicism at the heart of modern urban life.
The Blu-ray editions of A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong release August 19, 2025 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
Shoeshine (directed by Vittorio De Sica)
From The Criterion Collection: An international breakthrough for neorealism, Vittorio De Sica’s Academy Award–winning film is an indelible fable of innocence lost amid the hardscrabble reality of 1940s Italy. On the streets of Rome, two boys—best friends Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi)—set out to raise the money to buy a horse by shining shoes. When they are inadvertently caught up in a robbery and sent to a brutal juvenile detention center, their loyalty to each other is severely tested. A devastating portrait of economic struggle made all the more haunting by its child’s-eye perspective, Shoeshine stands as one of the defining achievements of postwar Italian filmmaking.
The 4k edition of Shoeshine releases August 19, 2025 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
Saving Face (directed by Alice Wu)
From The Criterion Collection: A queer romantic comedy set in vibrant, multicultural New York City, Alice Wu’s irresistible feature debut breathed fresh life into the genre by combining snappy dialogue and a swooning love story with a poignant narrative about a mother and daughter coming to terms with each other. Just as Wil (Michelle Krusiec), a harried young surgical resident, begins a promising romance with the flirtatious dancer Vivian (Lynn Chen), her life is turned upside down when her more traditional Chinese mother (Joan Chen)—unwed and unexpectedly pregnant—moves in with her, forcing both women to confront the generational and cultural barriers that have long troubled their relationship. Both embracing and cleverly subverting rom-com conventions, Wu delivers a bighearted ode to the Chinese American diaspora, and the liberating joy of living one’s truth.
The Blu-ray edition of Saving Face releases August 26, 2025 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
Compensation (directed by Zeinabu irene Davis)
From The Criterion Collection: A poignant portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love at both ends of the twentieth century, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film is a groundbreaking story of inclusion and visibility. In dual performances, Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks play an educated dressmaker and an illiterate migrant in 1910s Chicago, and a resilient graphic artist and an endearing librarian living in the same city eight decades later. Employing archival photography, an original score blending ragtime and African percussion, and lyrical editing, Davis deftly intertwines the two couple’s stories, in ways both tender and tragic. Compensation is a landmark of American independent cinema that confronts the social forces and prejudices that hinder love.
The Blu-ray edition of Compensation releases August 26, 2025 from The Criterion Collection and can be pre-ordered here.
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