La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)

La Jetée enjoys an unusual status in film history as a 28-minute short that has had a lasting and overt influence over successive generations of features. It concisely relates an experiment by scientists in a post-armageddon world to send a man back in time to before the war, using his own recollections of childhood as a targeting point. This is not science fiction in the usual future dystopia mould: the whole film is composed of black and white stills, there are no attempts at showy special effects and the plot, as much as there is one, is circular. It's a masterpiece in economy of style, creating an entrancing effect through its prose poetry narrative to draw you to dwell on its theme of the inescapability of memory.

8/10