The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements.

The foundation of the collection is the work of such masters of cinema as Renoir, Godard, Kurosawa, Cocteau, Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Fuller, Lean, Kubrick, Lang, Sturges, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Ozu, Sirk, Bunuel, Powell and Pressburger. Each film in the collection is presented uncut, in its original aspect ratio, as its maker intended it to be seen. Our supplements enable viewers to appreciate Criterion films in context, through audio commentaries by filmmakers and scholars, restored director's cuts, deleted scenes, shooting scripts, early shorts, storyboards. To date, more than 35 filmmakers have made our Director Approved library of laserdiscs and DVDs the most significant archive of contemporary filmmaking available to the home viewer.

Longtime Criterion collectors, to whom we owe our thanks, have come to trust the Criterion banner as a symbol of technical excellence, groundbreaking supplements, and only the very best in film. Our first priority is never to disappoint that trust.

Criterion's mission statement.