The fourth volume in the 'Cinema 16' series, after collections of early shorts by major filmmakers from Britain, Europe and America, plays out the collections largest canvas yet: the world. Fair play to producer Luke Morris that the only overlap between this installment and his previous ones is the inclusion of Andrea Arnold's Wasp.  Beyond that there are rare or little-seen films from such world players as South Korean Park Chan-wook, Canadian Guy Maddin, Russian Alexander Sokurov and 13 other filmmakers from across the globe – an there's a commentary for each, usually from the director.

Once again, the films are great to watch – and the ample commentaries are an informative listen – but by its very nature there's less coherence to this collection then its predecessors, meaning that you don't walk away afterwards with a new appreciation of an entire nation or continent's film culture and history. The works are too sprawling and miscellaneous for that. Not only is there animation on the disc, from Sylvain Chomet's creepy tale of an underfed Parisian policeman imitating a pigeon for bread to Adam Elliot's touching memoir (in claymation) of his uncle, but there are also directors whose careers offer little context, such as Japan's Naoto Yamakawa or New Zealand's Taika Cohen. That doesn't mean their work isn't interesting – it is – but their relative anonymity dilutes the curiosity.

That's no the case, though, with Ousmane Sembene's fascinating and incisive Borom Sarret – one of the late African's first shorts and a quiet attack on economic and social division – or Jane Campion's Girls Own Story, a funny, autobiographical tale of dealing with family and adolescence in the Australian suburbs of the 1960's. But I'm not sure how these early gems of later superlative careers fit with the likes of the amusing, sardonic Forklift Driver Klaus, a faux-instructional doc about safety in the workplace. It's funny but not instructive in the way of Campion or Sembene's films. This is a worthwhile collection but curatorially it's a little amiss.

Dave Calhoun