Alcarràs

Carla Simón’s award-winning story of a peach farmer struggling to make ends meet asks many important questions about our relationship with the land and the human cost of progress.
What we said: “This is a really shrewd, empathic and subtle movie which engulfs you in its dust and sweat and heat.” Read the full review.

Till

The story of Emmett Till, the black 14-year-old tortured and lynched in 1955 Mississippi for supposedly whistling at a white woman, and his mother Mamie Till’s fight for justice.
What we said: “A fierce portrait of courage and a sombre study of the human cost involved in resisting this kind of barbarity.” Read the full review.

Empire of Light

The “love letter to the movies” genre is revived in Sam Mendes’ poignant, wonderfully acted drama about love, life and films, featuring Olivia Colman as a Margate cinema manager in the 1980s.
What we said: “A sweet, heartfelt, humane movie, which doesn’t shy away from the brutality and the racism that was happening in the streets outside the cinema.” Read the full review.

Enys Men

Bait director Mark Jenkin delivers another eerie prose-poem of a film, about an isolated woman lost inside her own mind.
What we said: “This is not a scary film in the generic sense but there is something unsettling in the simple spectacle of solitude: no company, no television, no shopping, no diversions.” Read the full review.

Tár

Todd Field’s outrageous tale stars Cate Blanchett as the orchestra conductor starting to unravel and unhinge into crisis.
What we said: “No one but Blanchett could have delivered the imperious hauteur necessary for portraying a great musician heading for a crackup or a creative epiphany.” Read the full review.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Laura Poitras’ documentary following Nan Goldin, the artist who became addicted to OxyContin, as she confronts and protests against the wealthy art patrons who profited from its sale.
What we said: “Poitras shows that these protests were really Goldin’s great artwork: her entire life had been leading to this moment of passionate expression, this inspired situationist gesture which fused the personal and the political.” Read the full review.

The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg’s 1950s-set semi-memoir about a movie-mad kid brilliantly examines how we edit our own life stories, and the repercussions.
What we said: “As with so many autobiographical movies, so much incidental pleasure lies in wondering what is real and what has been changed, and why? I wonder if the real Spielberg ever got to confront his mother as directly as Sammy manages to.” Read the full review.

Saint Omer

Alice Diop’s unnerving fiction feature is based on the true case of a Senegalese immigrant accused in the French court of murdering her 15-month-old daughter.
What we said: “The severity and poise of this calmly paced movie, its emotional reserve and moral seriousness – and the elusive, implied confessional dimension concerning Diop herself – make it an extraordinary experience.” Read the full review.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Stop-motion animation about a tiny talking shell with shoes trying to find his family is funny and beguiling.
What we said: “The film appears to exist in the Venn diagram overlap between twee and hipster, which isn’t for everyone – but let it grow on you, and there is a real sweetness and gentleness in its absurdity, a savant innocence and charm.” Read the full review.

Town of Strangers

Documentary about the town of Gort in Galway, which has the highest percentage of migrants in Ireland, in which people talk to camera to wonderful effect.
What we said: “This film is an invigorating, refreshing experience because of its clear-sighted compassion and lack of parochialism, its interest in other people from other cultures, without these impulses being problematised in any way.” Read the full review.

Sharper

Benjamin Caron applies Derren Brown experience to direct stylish swindler yarn set in Manhattan with Julianne Moore and John Lithgow leading the way.
What we said: “If in the final reel you can sort of guess what’s coming, or if you wonder a little bit about the plausibilities … that doesn’t stop this being a very smooth ride and a very classy piece of entertainment.” Read the full review.

Nostalgia

A Neapolitan gangster drama from Mario Martone is a bittersweet crime yarn and also homecoming love-letter to the city.
What we said: “Nostalgia is tremendously shot, and terrifically acted … It challenges the idea of ‘nostalgia’ as broadcast in the title: it isn’t simply that nostalgia is delusional, or that the past wasn’t as great as it appears when viewed through rose-tinted spectacles. It is that there is no past and present.” Read the full review.

The Son

Florian Zeller’s follow-up to The Father features a tremendous performance from Hugh Jackman, as a divorced lawyer who agrees to look after his troubled offspring.
What we said: “A laceratingly painful drama, an incrementally increased agony without anaesthetic. At the centre of it, Hugh Jackman gives a performance of great dignity, presence and intelligence.” Read the full review.

Creature

Akram Khan’s dance creation for English National Ballet, about a creature kept captive in some remote army research unit, starring the charismatic dancer Jeffrey Cirio, is filmed by Asif Kapadia.
What we said: “An intriguing one-off, reaching out beyond dance connoisseurs to anyone who wants to see something genuinely strange that can’t be pinned down to a single explanation.” Read the full review.

Joyland

Subtle trans drama from Pakistan explores the unsettled social and sexual identities of a widower and his children with delicacy and tenderness.
What we said: “This is a movie about people who find their inner lives and sense of themselves don’t match up to what is expected of them. Their feeling of wrongness is part of what they have to suppress, from day to day.” Read the full review.

Close

When two 13-year-old boys are no longer close friends, the fallout is unbearably sad, in Girl director Lukas Dhont’s anguished second feature.
What we said: “The story of Close is disturbing because, however wised-up teenagers probably are now about the language of relationships and LGBT issues, compared with the relative naivety of maybe 10 years ago, the breakup of an intense friendship is shocking.” Read the full review.

Pearl

Mia Goth and Ti West’s pandemic horror is a brilliant prequel to their previous collaboration, X, a ciné-fever dream set in the dying days of Spanish flu.
What we said: “This film is terrifically accomplished and horribly gripping, with golden-age movie pastiche and dashes of Psycho and The Wizard of Oz.” Read the full review.

The Beasts

Middle-class incomers to a remote village in Spain’s “wild west” expose fear, resentment and nationalism in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s disturbing true-crime drama.
What we said: “Here is a fierce, bitter tale with a flinty sharpness: partly a social-realist drama of class and xenophobia, and partly a rural noir horror, a Euro-arthouse twist on Straw Dogs or Deliverance.” Read the full review.

1976

A wealthy woman is drawn into Chile’s anti-Pinochet resistance in this thrilling feature debut from actor turned director Manuela Martelli.
What we said: “This film is part of that wave of Chilean cinema from film-makers such as Pablo Larraín, Patricio Guzmán and Sebastián Lelio who are trying to make sense of the Pinochet era.” Read the full review.

Law of Tehran

Michael Mann-style thriller of the Iranian underworld with a morally ambiguous cop taking on a powerful drug lord.
What we said: “It is a grim and grisly world in which the ‘law of Tehran’ feels like a futile rearguard action against chaos.” Read the full review.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Animated adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s surreal tales revolving around a Tokyo earthquake and a constellation of characters trying to save the city.
What we said: “It has the ruminative lightness, almost weightlessness, the watercolour delicacy and reticence of the emotions, the sense of the uncanny, the insistent play of erotic possibility and that Murakami keynote: a cat.” Read the full review.

The Night of the 12th

A young woman is murdered in this unnerving version of a real case that haunts the French police officers unable to solve it.
What we said: “A desolate study of the ubiquity of evil and misogynist violence and the abyss of unknowing into which everyone finds themselves gazing: crime victims, relatives and the police themselves.” Read the full review.

Riotsville, USA

Film-maker Sierra Pettengill curates archive footage from riot-torn 60s America to create an unsettling picture of the authorities’ response.
What we said: “This film is obviously comparable to the work of Adam Curtis … A shiver of disquiet runs right through it.” Read the full review.

Godland

Hlynur Pálmason’s fictional account of a Danish pastor sent to Iceland in the 19th century offers nuanced depictions of hostility.
What we said: “I left the cinema dazed and elated by its artistry; it is breathtaking in its epic scale, magnificent in its comprehension of landscape, piercingly uncomfortable in its human intimacy and severity.” Read the full review.

One Fine Morning

Mia Hansen-Løve returns to Paris with this powerful story of a single mother torn between emotionally unavailable men, starring Léa Seydoux.
What we said: “The mystery of what the heart wants, and what it might give in return, is the theme of this humane, sympathetic movie.” Read the full review.

Cairo Conspiracy

Egypt’s religious and secular institutions both breed mistrust in Tarik Saleh’s superbly realised paranoid nightmare set on a Cairo campus.
What we said: “There’s an intriguing mix of scorn and paranoia here, together with a yearning for individual figures of decency halfway down the food chain – it reminded me of John le Carré.” Read the full review.

The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan

Part one of a glossy new French adaptation of Dumas, as the young fighter and his new gang journey entertainingly through palace intrigue with some excellent stunts.
What we said: “There’s not a lot of roistering going on in the cinema right now, but here’s a film which amusingly roisters its heart out.” Read the full review.

Pacifiction

Benoît Magimel’s French high commissioner confronts the end of his personal Eden in Tahiti in Albert Serra’s distinctive film.
What we said: “It is a nightmare that moves as slowly and confidently as a somnambulist, and its pace, length, and Serra’s beautiful widescreen panoramic framings – in which conventional drama is almost camouflaged or lost – may divide opinion. I can only say I was captivated by the film and its stealthy evocation of pure evil.” Read the full review.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Daniel Goldhaber’s fiercely watchable film is an eco-thriller in which a young crew of protesters come together to destroy a Texas oil pipeline.
What we said: “Goldhaber’s drama shows how this kind of paramilitary adventure might actually happen, month by month, moment by moment, as well as the kind of people who would be sufficiently motivated or reckless to risk decades in federal prison.” Read the full review.

Rodeo

Real-life rider Julie Ledru plays a young tearaway on the outskirts of Bordeaux, drawn to take desperate risks with a criminal biker gang.
What we said: “It’s a movie made dense and vehement with Julie’s passion for bikes and her angry sense of a death wish which is going to strike her ahead of anyone else.” Read the full review.

Polite Society

A pointed satire of the marriage market from We Are Lady Parts’ Nida Manzoor delivers the laughs – and some full tilt comedy action.
What we said: “Manzoor’s fight scenes, so amusingly executed by [Priya] Kansara, effectively dramatise the terrible struggle that women are going to endure – especially the ongoing duel with that certain special in-law. This film delivers a spinning back kick of laughs.” Read the full review.

Little Richard: I Am Everything

Documentary about the trailblazing musician who influenced stars from the Beatles to Bowie also looks back at the artists who inspired him.
What we said: “Lisa Cortes’s documentary is an irresistible tribute to the pioneering rock’n’roll genius, whose wild transgressive energy and explosive sexuality blazed a trail and created a musical and performing language.” Read the full review.

Pamfir

Violent story of a Ukrainian smuggler’s doomed efforts to settle back into family life after a shady trip abroad is dynamic but despairing.
What we said: “It does not allude to Russia’s war on Ukraine, but perhaps that conflict is there subtextually, in the sense of tribal loyalty, community tradition and the distinct, almost occult pull towards the west.” Read the full review.

Return to Seoul

Korean drama about adoption with Park Ji-min, in her acting debut, visiting the country of her birth and deciding on a whim to seek out her biological parents.
What we said: “The implacable forces of nature, nurture and destiny are what this movie grapples with; it is a really emotional and absorbing drama.” Read the full review.

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

Nina Menkes’s rigorous film-theory docu-essay teases out the differences in the ways men and women are treated, both on screen and in the industry.
What we said: “A bracing blast of critical rigour, taking a clear, cool look at the unexamined assumptions behind what we see on the screen.” Read the full review.

The Eight Mountains

A meditation on our capacity for love shapes this sweeping story of two friends, torn apart by family and life’s journeys but bound by something deeper.
What we said: “Belgian film-makers Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch have … created a deeply intelligent meditation on our capacity for love, and how it is shaped by the arbitrary, irreversible experiences of childhood, and by our relationship with the landscape.” Read the full review.

Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV

Documentary shows the awe-inspiring vocation of avant garde disruptor Nam June Paik, who foresaw the internet and meme culture’s importance in the 1970s.
What we said: “The overwhelming sense of vocation necessary for such a life is almost awe-inspiring, although Paik’s own jokey, opaque persona seems to exist as a rebuke to any reaction as bourgeois as that.” Read the full review.