Pather Panchali (1955)

Ray builds an entire childhood out of rain, hunger, and the sound of trains passing somewhere beyond the trees. Nothing happens in the way Hollywood means it — a boy watches his sister, an old woman sits in a doorway, a family slowly runs out of money. But everything happens in the way life means it. The pacing is the point. You either surrender to the rhythm of rural Bengal in the 1920s or you don't, and if you do, the ending hits like a collapsing roof.