| Year | Film | Director | Country
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| 1939 | Union Pacific | Cecil B. DeMille | United States
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| 1946 | Torment (Hets) | Alf Sjöberg | Sweden
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| 1946 | The Lost Weekend | Billy Wilder | United States
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| 1946 | Red Meadows (De røde enge) | Bodil Ipsen & Lau Lauritzen | Denmark
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| 1946 | Lowly City (Neecha Nagar) | Chetan Anand | India
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| 1946 | Brief Encounter | David Lean | United Kingdom
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| 1946 | Portrait of Maria (María Candelaria) | Emilio Fernández | Mexico
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| 1946 | The Turning PointTwo films have gone by the name of The Turning Point . The first was the 1946 Soviet film Velikij perelom , a name which translates into English as "The Turning Point. It was directed by Fridrikh Markovitch Ermler and won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Fil (Великий перелом, Veliky perelom) | Fridrikh Markovitch Ermler | Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1
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| 1946 | La symphonie pastorale | Jean Delannoy | France
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| 1946 | The Last Chance (Die Letzte Chance) | Leopold Lintberg | Switzerland
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| 1946 | Men Without Wings (Muži bez krídel) | František Cáp | Czechoslovakia
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| 1946 | Open City (Roma, città aperta) | Roberto Rossellini | Italy
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| 1947 | not awarded | |
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| 1948 | not held | |
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| 1949 | The Third Man | Carol Reed | United Kingdom
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| 1950 | not held | |
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| 1951 | Miss Julie (Fröken Julie) | Alf Sjöberg | Sweden
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| 1951 | Miracle in Milan (Miracolo a Milano) | Vittorio De Sica | Italy
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| 1952 | | Orson Welles | United States
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| 1952 | Two Cents Worth of Hope (Due soldi di speranza) | Renato Castellani | Italy
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| 1953 | The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la peur) | Henri-Georges Clouzot | France
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| 1954 | Gate of Hell (Jigokumon) | Teinosuke Kinugasa | Japan
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| 1955 | Marty | Delbert Mann | United States
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| 1956 | The Silent World (Le monde du silence) | Jacques-Yves Cousteau & Louis Malle | France
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| 1957 | Friendly Persuasion | William Wyler | United States
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| 1958 | The Cranes Are Flying (Летят журавли, Letyat zhuravli) | Mikheil Kalatozishvili | Soviet Union
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| 1959 | Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) | Marcel Camus | France
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| 1960 | La dolce vita | Federico Fellini | Italy
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| 1961 | The Long Absence (Une aussi longue absence) | Henri Colpi | France
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| 1961 | Viridiana | Luis Buñuel | Spain
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| 1962 | Keeper of Promises (O Pagador de Promessas) | Anselmo Duarte | Brazil
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| 1963 | The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) | Luchino Visconti | Italy
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| 1964 | The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) | Jacques Demy | France
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| 1965 | The Knack | Richard Lester | United Kingdom
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| 1966 | A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme) | Claude Lelouch | France
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| 1966 | The Birds, the Bees and the Italians (Signore & signori) | Pietro Germi | Italy
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| 1967 | Blowup | Michelangelo Antonioni | Italy
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| 1968 | canceled | |
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| 1969 | If.... | Lindsay Anderson | United Kingdom
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| 1970 | MASH | Robert Altman | United States
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| 1971 | The Go-Between | Joseph Losey | United Kingdom
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| 1972 | The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La classe operaia va in paradiso) | Elio Petri | Italy
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| 1972 | The Mattei Affair (Il Caso Mattei) | Francesco Rosi | Italy
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| 1973 | The Hireling | Alan Bridges | United Kingdom
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| 1973 | Scarecrow | Jerry Schatzberg | United States
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| 1974 | The Conversation | Francis Ford Coppola | United States
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| 1975 | Chronicle of the Years of Fire (Chronique des années de braise) | Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina | Algeria
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| 1976 | Taxi Driver | Martin Scorsese | United States
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| 1977 | Father and Master (Padre padrone) | Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani | Italy
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| 1978 | The Tree with the Wooden Clogs (L'Albero degli zoccoli) | Ermanno Olmi | Italy
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| 1979 | Apocalypse Now | Francis Ford Coppola | United States
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| 1979 | The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) | Volker Schlöndorff | West Germany
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| 1980 | All That Jazz | Bob Fosse | United States
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| 1980 | Shadow Warrior (Kagemusha) | Akira Kurosawa | Japan
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| 1981 | Man of Iron (Czlowiek z zelaza) | Andrzej Wajda | Poland
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| 1982 | Missing | Costa-Gavras | United States
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| 1982 | The Way (Yol) | Yilmaz Güney | Turkey
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| 1983 | The Ballad of Narayama (Narayama bushiko) | Shohei Imamura | Japan
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| 1984 | Paris, Texas | Wim Wenders | West Germany
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| 1985 | When Father Was Away on Business (Otac na službenom putu) | Emir Kusturica | Yugoslavia
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| 1986 | The Mission | Roland Joffé | United Kingdom
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| 1987 | Under the Sun of Satan (Sous le soleil de Satan) | Maurice Pialat | France
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| 1988 | Pelle the Conqueror (Pelle erobreren) | Bille August | Denmark
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| 1989 | Sex, Lies, and Videotape | Steven Soderbergh | United States
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| 1990 | Wild at Heart | David Lynch | United States
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| 1991 | Barton Fink | Joel Coen & Ethan Coen | United States
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| 1992 | The Best Intentions (Den goda viljan) | Bille August | Denmark
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| 1993 | Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬, Ba wang bie ji) | Kaige Chen | China
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| 1993 | The Piano | Jane Campion | New Zealand
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| 1994 | Pulp Fiction | Quentin Tarantino | United States
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| 1995 | Underground | Emir Kusturica | Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
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| 1996 | Secrets & Lies | Mike Leigh | United Kingdom
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| 1997 | A Taste of Cherry (Ta'm e guilass) | Abbas Kiarostami | Iran
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| 1997 | The Eel (Unagi) | Imamura Shohei | Japan
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| 1998 | Eternity and a Day (Mia aioniotita kai mia mera) | Theo Angelopoulos | Greece
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| 1999 | Rosetta | Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne | Belgium
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| 2000 | Dancer in the Dark | Lars von Trier | Denmark
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| 2001 | The Son's Room (La stanza del figlio) | Nanni Moretti | Italy
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| 2002 | The Pianist | Roman Polanski | France
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| 2003 | Elephant | Gus Van Sant | United States
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| 2004 | Fahrenheit 9/11 | Michael Moore | United States
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