Criterion in September 2026: THE SECRET AGENT, Richard Linklater's NOUVELLE VAGUE, THREE FILMS BY LEOS CARAX

The Academy Award-nominated The Secret Agent sparked considerable discussion when it was released last fall, including a review by our own Olga Artemyeva, in which she noted that the film is "much smarter than it might pretend to be at certain moments," adding that it plays out "in a way that sticks with you long after the allocated 158 minutes are over." Thus, The Secret Agent is our top pick from the Criterion Collection's just-announced release slate for September 2026.

The 4K/Blu-ray two-disc edition includes the director's Pictures of Ghosts, a new making-of documentary, new interviews, a new video essay, and more.

Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague was another 2025 release, a loving yet biting movie about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's seminal Breathless. Blake Simons reviewed the film out of Cannes last year: "Godard would roll in his grave at the notion that the biopic of his first feature's construction would thrive on being cinephilic fan-service fluff, but if its accessibility inspires a new generation of cinephiles, does that not extend the Cahiers du Cinema project?"

The film will be available in a 4K/Blu-ray two-disc edition, featuring a new audio commentary by Richard Linklater, along with other new, rather enticing special features.

Olga Artemyeva also reviewed another top-notch film that released in the U.S. last year, Sergei Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors: "Certain moments almost play out as a situational comedy in Two Prosecutors, which only serves to increase the terror it generally evokes.

"There are different types of hell, and not all of them come equipped with fire pits and torture devices, not from the beginning, at least. Some actually start in office spaces and involve copious amounts of paperwork." The film will be available on separate Blu-ray and DVD editions.

As usual, Criterion also has a lovely selection of not-so-recent films. The most notable is a set collecting three early films by Leos Carax, who began his career in the 1980s. All three are available on a 4K/Blu-ray two-disc edition, including Boy Meets Girl (1984), Mauvais Sang (1986) and The Lovers on the Bridge (1991), along with a number of new special features.

Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest (1970) "deconstructs the masculine ego and India's fraught class divisions with elegant complexity," according to Criterion's official verbiage. It will be available on a 4K/Blu-ray two-disc edition.

Claude Lanzmann's epic, nine-hour documentary Shoah (1985) will be available in separate Blu-ray and DVD editions, all the better to sit and soak in the realities of the Holocaust, as told in an usual manner, per Criterion: "Using no archival footage, Lanzmann instead focuses on first-person testimonies (of survivors and former Nazis, as well as other witnesses), employing a circular, free-associative method in assembling them."

Finally, Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957) is a stirring courtroom drama in which 12 ordinary citizens debate significant issues of truth and justice. The new edition will be available in a 4K/Blu-ray two-disc edition, and will include the original television production from 1954, with extensive special features.

Visit the official Criterion Collection site for more information and to place pre-orders.