Dreams and reality are porous in Alexandre's world - characters and situations so heightened they could also be imagined - although Alexandre's existential crisis about where he 'fits' in the world feels sharply real.
Alexandre, an instructor at the Canadian customs college, finds himself under surveillance by police trying to get to the bottom of the sexually explicit drawings that have been troubling the town.
What worked so well in The Rider, namely that people were playing versions of themselves, falls flat because of the casting of McDormand in the lead.
A woman in her sixties who, after losing everything following the Great Recession, embarks on a journey through the American West, lives as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.
Everything comes to life under Herzog's gaze, but rarely has he revealed so much of himself directly.
When writer Bruce Chatwin was dying of AIDS, his friend Werner Herzog made a final visit. As a parting gift, Chatwin gave Herzog his rucksack. Thirty years later, Herzog sets out on his own journey, inspired by Chatwin’s passion for the nomadic life.
This is stunning country under any circumstances, and if you can’t be there in person, watching this on a big screen is the next best thing.
Two old friends set out to walk 600 kilometers through the Scottish highlands, hoping to reconnect with each other, nature and parts of themselves that they've lost.
Despite a certain listless pace at times, Norwegian Wood benefits from an energetic soundtrack that doesn't ram home too strongly the particular period setting.
The Beatles song prompts a man to remember the complicated romance, with devastating consequences, that shaped his youth.
Some of this is a bit heavy-handed, as the film attempts to communicate to a mixed audience, but the capable Burt keeps it feeling real.
When student Ember is invited to a fun weekend at the country home of school Queen Bee Abigail, she finds the place oddly familiar. Drawn to an unkempt grave in the backwoods, Ember begins to be plagued by the black bugs known throughout Florida as Noseeums.
The movie's two main strengths are Max Schreck's compelling performance, as the eerily inhuman vampire, and Murnau's unparallelled ability to blend naturalistic and expressionistic elements.
F W Murnau's silent adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Adjani's performance has an ethereal, otherworldly quality about it.
Count Dracula moves from Transylvania to Wismar, spreading the Black Plague across the land. Only a woman pure of heart can bring an end to his reign of horror.
Patricio Guzmán has wisely chosen to step back and let the story unfold largely by itself.
A documentary about astronomers in Chile's Atacama Desert who gather to consider the stars while beneath the ground lie the remnants of ancient civilisations.
There’s an organic quality to it, like something knitted together intentionally yet with varicoloured wool so that the eventual outcome could not be fully anticipated.
A portrait of artist Orla Barry, who returned to Ireland after many years working in Brussels, planning to do a bit of sheep farming on the side, and fell in love with the sheep.
If you've recently left an extremist religious group yourself and you're full of anger about the things you were told or persuaded to do as part of it, you may find this film cathartic.
A small-town journalist is sent to cover the opening of a controversial church. As the ministry digs its roots into the town and its residents, her life takes an unexpected, violent turn.
Ullón adopts a spare but attentive approach, not imposing herself or archive upon the film but instead letting Mateo and others tell this story through their conversations and via the old cassette player he uses to capture them.
Considers the material of Mateo Sobode Chiqueno, who has been using an old tape recorder to capture stories, songs, and testimonies of his ancestral culture since the Seventies.
Finds a strong propulsive narrative with an emotional core.
The story of Sinéad O'Connor's phenomenal rise to worldwide fame and subsequent exile from the pop mainstream. Focusing on Sinéad's prophetic words and deeds from 1987 to 1993, the film reflects on the legacy of this fearless trailblazer through a contemporary feminist lens.
Rosi’s camera lets the light and the landscapes, the shattered houses and the fractured humanity speak for themselves.
Documentary about the everyday life in the Middle East that lies behind the continuing tragedy of civil wars, ferocious dictatorships, foreign invasions and interference, up to the murderous apocalypse of ISIS.
Nicholas Bruckman's film follows Ady long enough that we see not just the impact upon him but the changes wrought in those around him.
An intimate, inspiring look at activist and loving father Ady Barkan, diagnosed with ALS at age 32 and who, in spite of declining physical abilities, embarks on a nationwide campaign for healthcare reform.
Guillaume Marbeck as Godard is pitch perfect, trademark dark glasses and tobacco smoke his indispensable props with even the voice uncannily resonant of the man himself.
This is the story of Godard making Breathless, told in the style and spirit in which Godard made Breathless.
A queer college freshman who joins her university’s rowing team and undertakes an obsessive physical and psychological journey to make it to the top varsity boat, no matter the cost.
There is something quite profound here about learning to achieve what you can in the moment and for making peace with a situation you are unable to change.
John, a 35-year-old window cleaner, devotes his life to raising his young son Michael as a single dad, but after he's given only a few months to live, he tries to find the perfect set of adoptive parents.
At one point it seems “Panahi” could easily step from one country to the other, but as his film shows, leaving is not always an easy option.
The director appears as himself, relocated to a rural border town to remotely oversee the making of a new film in Turkey, the story of which comes to sharply parallel disturbing events that begin to occur around him.
Against the whisper of wind and buzz of flies, the Coens manage to find tension in the subtlest of movements and cut the dialogue through with humour as arid as the landscape.
A man goes on the run from a psychopath in Texas after coming across a briefcase of stolen cash.
No Date, No Signature is a moral maze in which superb performances mean we can never lose sight of the human impact of what might seem like logical decisions.
A pathologist is riven with guilt after the death of a child.
The jumps from scenes in the style of Romanian New Wave to stylised oneiric dream sequences are so sharp that the overall result feels jarring in a way that undermines both stylistic choices.
A retelling of the Cinderella story on the margins of modern day Serbia.
A teenage British Kashmiri, Noor, retraces her roots. She is joined by Majid, a local Kashmiri boy who is more smitten by her exotic foreignness than her obsession with unravelling the mysteries of their disappeared fathers.
Well acted and sensitively delivered, No Future is a reminder that addicts don’t exist in isolation; that their suffering, and the paucity of state services to support them.
Following the overdose of an estranged friend, recovering addict Will, still struggling with his own sobriety, returns to his hometown where he begins a troubled affair with his friend’s grieving mother.
To better understand the infamous serial killer’s crimes, FBI investigator Bill Hagmaier sits down with Ted Bundy for multiple jailhouse interviews over five years. Their conversations lead to unexpected results.
No Other Land brings humanity and particularity to a topic that is too often discussed in the abstract.
This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli authorities and the unlikely alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.
The 40-something director is sensible enough not to sensationalise
A Kurdish female sniper, has survived war but when she learns the younger sister she believed was dead may still be alive in Mosul, she returns on a rescue mission that forces her to confront the trauma of her past.
Jacob Møller’s cinematography brings out the mystery and danger of fog; the bright urgency of summer days, green grass and sparkling water on pale bodies; and the weight of darkness with equal surety.
A fisherman falls in love with a rugged whaler on the isolated Faroe Islands in this unconventional vampire story.
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
