Pioneer moviemaker D. W. Griffith birthed the anthology film with his 1916 silent epic
Intolerance, which boldly interwove four historical tales of religious and political oppression (one featuring no less than Jesus Christ) with the thematic aplomb of a thinking man’s Cecil B. DeMille spectacle. Over the top, both narratively and financially, it bombed at the box office. Since then, the genre’s popularity has waxed and waned, with the brilliant 2014 Argentinian sextet of modern madness
Wild Tales and the 2018 Coen-quirky collection of mini-Westerns
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs serving as the best examples of recent omnibus releases. The Iranian production