| Lyudi na bolote | Viktor Turov | Soviet Union |
| Little Ida | Laila Mikkelsen | Norway, Sweden |
| A Change of Seasons | Noel Black, Richard Lang | United States |
| Brubaker | Bob Rafelson, Stuart Rosenberg | United States |
| Mad Dog Morgan | Philippe Mora | Australia |
| Bilibid Boys | Ishmael Bernal | Philippines |
| Raging Bull | Martin Scorsese | United States |
| Legend of Tianyun Mountain | Xie Jin | People's Republic of China |
| Atlantic City | Louis Malle | France, Canada, United States |
| The Youth of Peter the Great | Sergei Gerasimov | Soviet Union, East Germany |
| The Champ | Franco Zeffirelli | United States |
| Ordinary People | Robert Redford | United States |
| The Battle of Guningtou | Chang Tseng-chai | Taiwan |
| Dragon Fist | Lo Wei | Hong Kong |
| The Avenging Eagle | Sun Chung | Hong Kong |
| The Blue Lagoon | Randal Kleiser | United States |
| Babylon | Franco Rosso | United Kingdom |
| Bad Timing | Nicolas Roeg | United Kingdom |
| The Electric Horseman | Sydney Pollack | United States |
| ...And Justice for All | Norman Jewison | United States |
| Right On, Man! | Tapio Suominen | Finland |
| The Bailiff of Greifensee | Wilfried Bolliger | Germany, Switzerland |
| A Leap in the Dark | Marco Bellocchio | France, Italy |
| The Amsterdam Kill | Robert Clouse | United States, Hong Kong |
| Solo Sunny | Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Konrad Wolf | East Germany |
| Rocky II | Sylvester Stallone | United States |
| The Widow of Montiel | Miguel Littin | Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico |
| Little Valentino | András Jeles | Hungary |
| Fish Hawk | Donald Shebib | Canada |
| More American Graffiti | Bill L. Norton | United States |
| The Warriors | Walter Hill | United States |
| Stalker | Andrei Tarkovsky | Soviet Union |
| Apocalypse Now | Francis Ford Coppola | United States |
| A Wedding | Robert Altman | United States |
| Hospital of the Transfiguration | Edward Żebrowski | Poland |
| The Angry Man | Claude Pinoteau | France, Canada |
| Norma Rae | Martin Ritt | United States |
| Agent of the Secret Service | — | Soviet Union |
| Angi Vera | Pál Gábor | Hungary |
| Blood of the Railroad Workers | Erik Solbakken | Norway |
| Love and Bullets | John Huston, Stuart Rosenberg | United Kingdom, United States |
| Love on the Run | François Truffaut | France |
| Autumn Sonata | Ingmar Bergman | France, Germany, Norway, Sweden |
| Just like Home | Márta Mészáros | Hungary |
| Cekání na dést | Karel Kachyňa | Czechoslovakia |
| Despair | Rainer Werner Fassbinder | France, Germany |
| A Strange Woman | Yuli Raizman | Soviet Union |
| Shadows of a Hot Summer | František Vláčil | Czechoslovakia |