Jung's feature début is packed full of twists but succeeds because of its focus on character - something that seems to remain consistent even when the characters' circumstances have changed.
A police detective investigating a tragedy in a small town wakes up one morning to find he’s no longer who he thought he was – or so the locals lead him to believe.
There are huge struggles going on here, with far reaching relevance, yet everything is conducted in a very quiet, polite, downbeat way.
Atsushi Sakahara, a victim of the 1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo's subway system, travels with Hiroshi Araki, an executive of Aleph (formerly Aum Shinrikyo), the attack's perpetrators, visiting their respective hometowns and the university they both attended.
A teenager living in a Dublin housing estate with his grandfather is caught holding drugs for his friend's older brother and is sentenced to three months in prison.
Bong loses the thread in numerous half-baked sub-plots whose inflation takes its toll on the bloated runtime.
The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes, has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job … to die, for a living.
The acting is strong all round and there’s some beautiful cinematography, mostly in black and white – all of it to a point.
A young sketch artist agrees to a in-house therapy session with a renowned psychiatrist as his life begins sprawling out of control following years of physical and verbal abuse.
Director Jeon Go-Woon keeps the camera close to emphasise cramped conditions and the emotional pressures they generate.
When a woman living on the breadline becomes homeless, she gains a new perspective on her life through her observations of the lives of the old friends she stays with.
There are still very few films that make room for male characters to be emotionally honest to this degree.
A fresh-faced Texan arrives in New York, determined to become the new stud in town. His plan to woo the wealthy ladies of Manhattan is as naive as it is ridiculous but along the way he finds an unlikely ally in a seedy, small time con man who dreams of escaping to Florida.
A hard-hitting, ruthlessly honest account of a young American's experience of being locked up in a throw-away-the-key situation miles and years from home.
Authentic experiences of a
young American incarcerated in
a Turkish prison in the Seventies.
By keeping the camera in the back of the ambulance largely at a level above that of the various patients, Lorentzen ensures the film never becomes voyeuristic.
In Mexico City's wealthiest neighborhoods, the Ochoa family runs a for-profit ambulance, competing with other unlicensed EMTs for patients in need of urgent care. In this cutthroat industry, they struggle to keep their financial needs from compromising the people in their care.
This is what cinema does best - showing us technicolor worlds that make us see and appreciate the black and white home.
As a catastrophe unfolds on Earth, a dying man crosses the Arctic in an attempt to make contact with a spacecraft which may have found a habitable world elsewhere.
Unlike a more conventional refugee documentary - shot by an outsider parachuting in - this is an intimate and ongoing study in which the family have complete agency, lending the film an additional ring of truth.
When the Taliban puts a bounty on Afghan director Hassan Fazili’s head, he is forced to flee with his wife and two young daughters. Capturing their uncertain journey, Fazili shows firsthand the dangers facing refugees seeking asylum and the love shared between a family on the run.
It takes its time to build but Pawel Pogorzelski's evocative cinematography will hold your attention in the meantime.
A young woman recovering from tragedy joins a trip to a Swedish midsummer festival with her boyfriend and his friends, only to be caught up in an ancient ritual.
While it’s important to bring attention to the wider-spread government actions against the minority group, the film’s truly valuable observations are of how the prejudice impacts normal life.
Two midwives work side-by-side in a makeshift clinic in Myanmar.
Even by Allen’s standards it’s an incredibly solipsistic spin on a tale that has undercurrents of the exploitation and oppression of women, failing relationships and the pitfalls of parenthood.
A sports writer goes looking for the sex worker birth mother of his adopted son.
One of the most impressive documentaries of the year.
A portrait of a gay man who confronts the ghosts of his past. After fleeing war and repression 37 years ago, Miguel returns to Lebanon where he traces hidden longings, unrequited love and tormenting feelings of guilt.
Graves does these things with a twinkle in his eye that keeps the viewer guessing as to just how serious he is, but we never get the sense that he's misleading us about his beliefs, merely testing to see if we're with him.
A documentary portrait of renowned percussionist Milford Graves.
Adopting a style that blends collage and observational filmmaking, they probe how human minds and bodies contort, struggle and resist against a cruel war and its repercussions.
A trio of documentarians captures the everyday realities of Ukrainian life amid the Russian invasion, exploring the fractured psyches of soldiers, survivors, and the country's youth.
In one of the finest performances of his career, Sean Penn is understated to convey finer feeling, yet passionate on the soap box to an inspirational degree.
The story of groundbreaking gay politician Harvey Milk and his assassination.
This is a splendid exercise in world building. Bösch gives us everything we need to believe in this place and understand the character dynamics, but does not stray beyond that.
Trouble brews for a young woman and her mother after they take in a foundling youngster against the wishes of their community.
Jonckeere is ebullient in the lead yet there's a subtlety to her performance that communicates Milla's gradual passage from a life driven by instinct to one where she must take responsibility not only for herself but for her son.
Meditation on young motherhood and the vagaries of growing up.
Whilst the story is ultimately fairly straightforward thriller stuff, the things it has to say are anything but. It's also a stunningly beautiful, atmospheric piece of work.
A disgraced journalist and a computer hacker stumble on a chain of undiscovered serial killings.
