It's become a Hollywood blockbuster trope. The story that splits into branching timelines. The hero who dies, respawns, and tries the level again. Writer-director Tom Tykwer did it in 1998, with a limited budget and an abundance of ingenuity.

RUN LOLA RUN (1998) gives Lola twenty minutes to find a small fortune and save the man she loves, then runs those twenty minutes three times. Each attempt, she brushes the same strangers, and a half-second's difference, a stumble, a slammed door, cascades into an entirely different world. It is a video game, a philosophy lecture, and a techno track fused into one unbroken sprint.

The pounding score driving every step was composed by Tykwer with his musical collective Pale 3, star Franka Potente singing over it. Potente ran straight out of this movie into Hollywood, as the woman at Jason Bourne's side.