Littermates is a film full of kindness, blending real sweetness with the unutterably bleak, equally at ease with the comic and the tragic.
Amidst the chaos of a mysterious war, two victims of an attack take refuge at a cottage in the English countryside, where an enigmatic caretaker insists they must stick together.
Amélie doesn’t just narrate but completely dominates this film as a personality.
Amélie is a little Belgian girl born in Japan. Thanks to her friend Nishio-san, the world is full of adventure and discovery. But on her third birthday, an event changes the course of her life. For Amélie, everything is at stake at that age, happiness as well as tragedy.
The complex relationship between the two brothers is beautifully observed.
During a stormy night in the Scottish Highlands, two criminal brothers on the run seek refuge in a desolate farmhouse. But after taking the resident family captive, they find the house holds even darker secrets of its own.
Answers are as thin on the ground as they are beside the point.
Two socially awkward people find love and then define it for themselves in a barren, post-apocalyptic world before they discover a small, wooden door in the side of her body and decide whether or not to open it.
If you're going to do science fiction, you really need to get the science right, because otherwise all you're doing is attacking straw men.
A genetically engineered plant scatters its seeds and seems to cause uncanny changes on living creatures. The afflicted appear strange, as if they were replaced - especially for those, who are close to them. Or is it all just imagination?
After a series of misfortunes, Michael rents a cheap bedroom and comes to terms with the state of the world, via online encyclopedias and edutainment videos. He becomes fixated on an English businessman who is mismanaging a local lough.
The presence of human faces in some places makes this no less an act of animation than anything made solely of ink on paper.
A young mermaid makes a deal with a sea witch to trade her beautiful voice for human legs so she can discover the world above water and impress a prince.
This is very much fly-on-the-wall documentary, with explanations and expiation left up to those involved.
Story of Ren, the first out transgirl to compete in the Little Miss Westie Pageant. Coaching her through the competition is her older brother Luca, who previously took part in the pageant when he lived as a girl.
While eight-year-olds on up with love the scrapes and triumphs that the kids get themselves into, there is also a lot of pleasure to be had from an adult's perspective.
Family comedy about the misadventures of a young boy in Fifties France.
Everything flows with the flourish of an expensive ink pen on paper, as sketches are made to bloom with colour or a bicycle ride turns into a mini adventure, all given additional life by the zippy score from Ludovic Bource.
The French schoolboy's adventures mix with the biography of his creators.
Despite its bleakness, Al-Khatib also captures the spirit of the older Palestinians - already exiled once and refusing to simply move on again - and the resourcefulness of the children.
Documentary about the siege at Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Syria.
For all the debt owed to Sister Rosetta Tharpe the essence here is not translation uncovered but transgression buried. That makes the decision not to further explore these hidden histories all the more surprising.
This celebration of Little Richard reveals the Black queer origins of rock ’n’ roll, finally exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music.
Along with Vladimir Gojun’s progressively rhythmic editing and Julij Zornik’s subjective sound design, the filmmaker takes us right into the protagonist’s, and therefore any and every teenager’s head.
During a weekend of rehearsals with the school choir at a convent, an introverted teenager begins to view the world from a new perspective.
The deliberate airlessness - which finds contrast in the likes of Miss Harris' joy at her first knickerbocker glory - works well initially, but as Nighy has less screen time and the film slips into considerations of the switch in Williams' life in the past tense, it drifts towards the stagey.
In 1952 London, veteran civil servant Williams has become a small cog in the bureaucracy of rebuilding England post-WWII. As endless paperwork piles up on his desk, he learns he has a fatal illness. Thus begins his quest to find some meaning in his life before it slips away.
A film full of great stories and packed with details which will fascinate fans.
A filmmaker who grew up alongside Chucky the killer doll seeks out the other families surrounding the Child's Play films as they recount their experiences working on the ongoing franchise and what it means to be a part of the Chucky family.
The Kopps' film provides insights into the fundamental nature of storytelling, its psychological relevance and its importance in intellectual development.
Five orphaned children create a story which is realised in animated form.
This is a grim, austere story of the pressure cooker of frustration, rage and fear that results when the patriarchy squeezes just as tight as the corsets of the time.
Lays bare the legend of Lizzie Borden to reveal the much more complex, poignant and truly terrifying woman within — and her intimate bond with the family’s young Irish housemaid, Bridget Sullivan.
Bustamente, in both of his films last year, prefers subtle suggestion to overt statements.
Enrique, a retired general who oversaw the Maya genocide, is haunted by his devastating crimes. A tale of horror and fantasy, reimagining the Latin American fable as an urgent metaphor of Guatemalan recent history and its unhealed political wounds.
Glavonic, who has a background in documentary, has crafted a moody and broody piece, built less on onscreen incident than the oppressive atmosphere and offscreen imaginings.
A truck driver is tasked with transporting mysterious cargo across a scorched landscape from Kosovo to Belgrade during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
“What is this about?” one of the characters eventually demands, of no-one in particular. One might well ask – but hey, there’s a giant monster involved, and that’s what you’re watching for, right?
A group of people, dispatched to investigate the disappearance of a ship, find themselves confronted by something monstrous.
With knife threats, a Molotov cocktail and a mysterious disappearance all coming into the picture, there’s plenty to reassure viewers of the old adage that man is the real monster.
A portrait of the hunters of Scotland's famous creature. who camped out on the shores of the loch throughout the 1970s and 1980s, chasing but never finding her.
The plotting takes precedence over characterisation, which saps the film of tension, while its melodramatic developments feel out of keeping with the cooler noir vibe.
The two halves of a young man's double-life become set on a collision course.
The Lodge hinges on a powerhouse performance from Keough, who inhabits the troubled Grace so completely that we can stay with her even as her ability to distinguish what's real and what isn't breaks down.
A young woman and her reticent new stepchildren find themselves isolated in the family’s remote winter cabin, locked away to dredge up the mysteries of her dark past.
Richard Kendrick's cinematography is gorgeous and O'Malley is unafraid to let his camera linger, drawing out the atmosphere in scenes lesser directors might have rushed.
Twins in a crumbling family home live according to rules set by a mysterious supernatural entity, but when one of them falls in love, the stage is set for conflict.
Although the emotions in this story are raw, she approaches them with sensitivity and a strong respect for people who are trying hard even if they don’t always succeed.
A mum is desperate to regain custody of her children after release from jail.
News and features
News & Features
Going ape
Antonin Niclass on character creation, empathy and animated short Into The Forest
Freeform
Will Niava on grief, new immigrant experiences and Jazz Infernal
In silence
Emir Kumova on child marriage in Türkiye, moral challenges and making The Witness
