Run Lola Run

In this breathtaking crime drama, director Tom Tykwer keeps his audience on a knife edge as teenager Lola (Franka Potente) tries to raise the money that will save her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) from a homicidal gangster. Tykwer pushes cinema to superhuman limits, presenting three scenarios and conclusions, and utilising a dazzling array of cinematic devices — jump cuts and replays, colour turning to monochrome, action sped to a blur — as Lola takes part in a desperate race against time. This is an awesome achievement from one of Germany's most innovative film-makers.

Exhilarating, speedy thriller which provides three alternative versions of events, depending on tiny incidents which precipitate different consequences; it's a witty demonstration of the vagaries of cause and effect and the unpredictability of life.