We spend a good deal of time getting to know them before the action starts, and these are the strongest scenes of the film.
Kate and her daughter Beth live alone in an isolated farmhouse in the woods, but when Kate slowly begins to suspect that something sinister is happening, her motherly instincts are put to the test.
The director protects the identities of the pregnant women and new mums involved, shooting them from behind or below neck level, so that we still get a feel for their body language.
A documentary profile of a refuge for women who fall pregnant out of wedlock in Morocco.
Funny and frightening from start to finish, with a set of memorable characters and powerful performances that do them the justice they deserve.
Brothers fleeing a bank robbery invade a yuppie housewarming party at their mother's recently foreclosed home and sadistically attack the guests, but when mother arrives, events take a still nastier turn.
A Mother’s Embrace has an organic quality. Even its strangest elements feel convincingly part of the whole.
During massive 1996 Rio storm, firefighter Ana and her firefighter team must evacuate a collapsing nursing home, but the mysterious residents have other sinister plans.
Chastain and Hathaway have tremendous chemistry, screen presence.
Alice and Celine live a traditional lifestyle with successful husbands and sons of the same age. Life's perfect harmony is suddenly shattered after a tragic accident. Guilt, suspicion and paranoia combine to unravel their sisterly bond.
Filled with strong sentiment but without sentimentality.
In the late 1980s, Rose moves from the Ivory Coast to the Paris suburbs with her two young sons, Ernest and Jean. Spanning 20 years from their arrival in France to the present day, the film is the chronicle of the construction and deconstruction of a family.
The complex relationship between power, status, duty and personal desire lends gravity to what might otherwise be interpreted as a fairly simple fairy tale.
Krisha is the daughter of the Yates who are the nomad tribe of the tundra. To save her sick mother, she follows the words of Shaman and takes off on her adventure to the end of Northern land to find the red bear she saw in her dreams.
Everything about El Moudir’s film is unusual, from the structure to the mood.
The filmmaker doesn’t have any pictures of herself as a child. This is the starting point of a documentary investigation that unfolds the secrets of a Casablanca family.
It’s shock comedy with no sense of impact or context, because before you can let the shock set in, the movie is running full steam ahead toward another disgusting episode.
Issachar & Zabulon, two brothers in their twenties, are supremely stupid and never bored, as madness is part of their daily lives. When they lose their mother's beloved dog, they have 24 hours to find it – or she will kick them out.
Mother Superior often puts style over substance, but that style is a real treat for fans of the Gothic.
1975, Rosenkreuz Manor. Sigrun Fink, desperate for information about her biological family, starts a new position as nurse to the aging, ill and eccentric Baroness Heidenreich. For a shared longing binds them together: the old lady’s memory contains the secret to Sigrun's true identity; the nurse’s lifeforce holds the key to the future for the Baroness.
The camera is close when it needs to be but often focused on a detail, such as hands on a rosary or capturing the detail of surroundings, including religious iconography or the texture of a horse’s coat that help us to feel Mother Vera’s place within these spaces.
An Orthodox nun in a Belarussian convent considers her past and her future.
Bleakly realistic and shorn of romance of all kinds, Mountain Fever may be set in desperate times but many of the dangers it depicts are mundane realities in harsh environments.
When a fatal flu virus devastates Europe, city boy Jack takes refuge in the Alps but he’s ill-equipped to survive the harsh winter. Things only get worse when renegade Kara breaks into his house and commandeers his dwindling food supplies.
A beautifully observed portrait of a family in crisis.
Okju and Dongju move into their grandpa's house during their summer vacation after their father goes broke... but problems begin with their grandad falls ill.
This film is one of the most rounded of any of Godard’s work and can easily be viewed as ‘mainstream’ – the more philosophical riddles being purely optional.
An American producer and Austrian director clash over the making of a film.
It’s a gently paced film, slow to get to where it’s going but full of interesting observations along the way, and not afraid to face up to hard truths.
A father and son travel across the American West in an aging Winnebago as they pursue psychedelic-assisted addiction treatment in Colorado.
Williams is wonderful in this Granma Poppins role, except he's sugar-free, funnier and doesn't let you forget that he's Daniel inside, screaming to be a father again.
An estranged father dresses up as housekeeper in order to see his kids.
If one bears in mind that parts of it may be more fiction than fact, it’s an interesting character study, as well as one of the more unusual cinematic portraits of a marriage under stress.
Wild schoolboy and son of an alcoholic miner, Rich Jenkins is mentored by teacher Philip Burton to transform into Richard Burton - Wales's greatest star.
Production designers Manolito Glas and Maarten Piersma do a stunning job with the sets, creating an atmosphere of sleaze and decay which one can almost smell, whilst layering in detail.
A magician checks into a hotel full of strange occupants... and discovers there is no way to leave.
Losey had shown how adept he was at claustrophobic interiors before, with the likes of The Servant, but here he also shows a flair for more abstract sweeping cinema.
A man who is taking advantage of his fleeing Jewish neighbours in the Second World War becomes obsessed with his Jewish 'double'.
