European cinema is the birthplace of the moving image, beginning in 1895 with the Lumière brothers’ first public screening in Paris and Georges Méliès’ pioneering special effects in A Trip to the Moon (1902). Following the devastation of World War I, European filmmakers weaponised the medium to explore fractured psychological states and national trauma, contrasting sharply with Hollywood’s early focus on escapism.

In the 1920s, German Expressionism used highly stylised, distorted sets and stark shadows in films like Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu to visually represent madness and societal anxiety. Simultaneously, French Impressionism and Surrealism (such as Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou) pushed the boundaries of visual poetry, while Soviet Montage theorists like Sergei Eisenstein revolutionised film editing by proving that the collision of shots could manipulate human emotion and political ideology.

The aftermath of World War II caused a continental cinematic reinvention. In Italy, directors like Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini rejected studio artifice for Italian Neorealism, filming on war-torn streets with non-professional actors to capture the raw, impoverished reality of post-war life, famously exemplified by Bicycle Thieves (1948).

This commitment to authenticity inspired the seismic French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) of the late 1950s and 1960s. Spearheaded by critics-turned-filmmakers like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, this movement shattered traditional narrative rules with jump cuts, handheld camera work, and meta-cinematic style. The revolutionary fervour spread rapidly across Europe, sparking the playful subversions of the Czech New Wave, the poetic introspection of Andrei Tarkovsky in the Soviet Union, the existential psychological dramas of Ingmar Bergman in Sweden, and the radical, taboo-breaking German New Cinema of Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Since then, the constant movements have continued. Such as the return to minimalism in 1995 with the Danish Dogme 95 manifesto, led by Lars von Trier, which stripped filmmaking back to its bare essentials (natural light, location sound, no props). European festivals (Cannes, Berlin and Venice) dominate the global cinema scene.