Cinema Paradiso

Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso won the Jury Prize at Cannes 1989 (after recutting from a less-loved 173-minute original to a 124-minute international cut), and the following year took the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film became the most successful Italian export of its decade, with Ennio Morricone's main theme (written with his son Andrea) entering the small canon of universally recognisable film music.

A celebrated middle-aged film director, Salvatore (Jacques Perrin), receives news that the projectionist of his Sicilian village cinema has died, and the film flashes back to his childhood friendship with Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), the gruff, illiterate man who taught him both the mechanics of cinema and a more painful lesson about leaving home. Salvatore Cascio, as the small boy Toto, gives one of the great child performances of the 1980s. Tornatore's original 173-minute Italian cut had been poorly received on its first release; the trimmed 124-minute international version was the one that swept Cannes and the Oscars, and it is the cut by which the film entered the global consciousness.

Critics divide on whether the film's emotional architecture is earned or sentimental, a debate that has persisted for thirty years. What's not in question is its place in the international consciousness as the film about loving cinema; few works have so completely captured the experience of growing up inside a single small movie theatre.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: The film about loving films, made when the medium was still shared and communal. A reminder of what cinemas were for, and a benchmark for any work that tries to honour that.