Alexandria... Why? Director: Youssef Chahine Year Released: 1978 Cast: Ahmed Zaki, Naglaa Fathy, Farid Shawqi For decades, at film festivals, this Egyptian director (1926-2008) was the prime representative of an entire continent, Africa, and a world religion, Islam - this though his family was Christian and his ancestors came from Greece and Lebanon. Both a nationalist and an internationalist, Youssef Chahine loved Hollywood movies (as a young man he studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse) and learned as much from their robust pace as he did from the gritty humanism of Italian neo-realist films and the romantic sweep of Indian cinema in its postwar Golden Age. Chahine's near-masterpiece Alexandria...Why?, the first of his Alexandria quartet of films, is set in Egypt during World War II, when Arab nationalists were killing English soldiers - anything to get the British Empire out of Palestine. But this sprawling epic is mainly the story of a young man, transparently Chahine himself, who loves Shakespeare and American movies. At the end he sails into New York Harbor as Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" plays on the sound track. Below him are some Hassidic Jews; above is the Statue of Liberty, which has morphed into a heavy-set actress he knew back home and is exploding in a ribald laugh. The collision of world cultures was rarely defined with such brio. MORE: The 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium (Thus Far) Next: All About My Mother All About My Mother Sony Pictures Classics / Everett Director: Pedro Almodóvar Year Released: 1999 Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz The Spanish word for life ought to be Almodóvar. Since bursting onto the international film scene in 1980, this irrepressible showman has served up tangy, nourishing stews of bent men and brave women, of comedy and melodrama, passion and grief. His 1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown made him a sensation in the States, but All About My Mother was the true breakthrough, touching a depth his early films only danced around. Its heroine is Manuela (Roth), a Madrid nurse who works in her hospital's organ-transplant unit and has lovingly raised her darling son Esteban (Eloy Azorin). When he is tragically torn from her, she conceives a mission: to grieve heroically and heal the wounds of other desperate souls. Manuela is the ultimate organ donor: now that her heart has been broken, she gives pieces of it to everyone. In Barcelona, by chance or fate, she meets her flock: Sister Rosa (Cruz), a nun who deserves many fretful prayers, and her bitter mom (Rosa Maria Sarda); the stage actress Huma Rojo (Paredes) and her druggie lover Nina (Candela Pena); and Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a transsexual prostitute. Manuela helps all these women fulfill their dreams on their way to transcendence, accommodation or early death. Almodóvar nearly topped himself with the 2002 Talk to Her, another buoyant film about mourning and winner of the Foreign Language Oscar. But Mother remains the most mature and satisfying work in a glittering, consistently surprising career. SEE: The original All-TIME 100 Movies list Next: Avatar