Edinburgh International Film Festival — A–Z of films

Despite all of its shortcomings, 107 Mothers nonetheless, makes for quite a completing piece of filmmaking.

The long wordless opening of 2001 remains one of the most beautiful sequences on film.

If you listen closely to what this film has to say, you won’t listen to the world the same way afterwards.

Wells shows how interactions that were solid within their own moment become more ambiguous as time has gone by and the adult understanding of Sophie has grown.

Kogonada is the directorial equivalent of a careful tea maker himself, he knows how to infuse his films with complex ideas without getting preachy or overtechnical about it.

An emotionally honest if slight documentary that is most likely to appeal to existing fans of Barnett's work.

The way doubt starts to enter into everything we hear from any of the characters is subtly orchestrated.

Moody and embittered and near unique.

The film has immense charm and skates skillfully across the surface of sentiment.

While Brave may occasionally shy away from darker territory in order to retain its appeal for even the youngest of audiences, there are still plenty of 'big' ideas here for small minds to think about.

Without the soft focus common in representations of female subjects, we get to see their faces in all their lived-in three dimensionality.

I have been discomfited watching films before but the anguish here is so genuinely and affectingly captured that it is almost unbearable.

There's so much here that, as with cleaning, it goes through the fabric, past the underling, to the structure, the joists, the soil.

We spend most of our time inside the house in spaces which could as easily be rendered on a stage, but presenting it as film allows the actors to go deeper inside their characters, improvising the dialogue, with Sanders knitting together the best stuff.

While the framing of cinematographer Gerardo Guerra has a steady calm, González uses every inch of it from side to side and top to bottom to such a consummate degree that even the subtitles have to make way at one point.

Lidén isn’t interested in rehashing controversies which it’s easy to explore elsewhere. Her interest is in William’s lived experience of what is happening to him.

A fantastic adaptation that manages to surpass its source material while staying entirely true to its spirit.

Wang proves adept at slowly and gently building up the onion layers of this family as more and more of them come into each other’s orbit.

Amy and Chloe’s odyssey, filmed by Daniel Götz, is an adventure tale, which includes a visit to the cutest llamas in Peru.

A charming bit of stop-motion and well worth seeking out.

Feels more like an amuse bouche than a full meal, while at the same time all proving a bit too much.

Lorne Balfe’s magnificent, melodic score shapes our sense of time passing, just as shots of the open desert, of the emptiness around the palace, add to our sense that all that history is present and immediate.

For such a studiously artificial work...it is profoundly moving.

It's entertaining, no doubt.

Gravel cleverly works the tempo, so we feel the occasional moments when Julie almost gets to relax, but that keep being snatched from her, more acutely.

It’s a wonderful experiment, and often very funny, but it is also, perhaps intentionally, exhausting.

Storywise, there’s not a great deal here which hasn’t been done before, but it will be new to the young audience it’s really aimed at, and it’s beautifully told.

The end result could do with less tangent and more of the gent himself.

Wonderfully uncomfortable.

Jarvis' performance connects, or perhaps more accurately, carefully unhinges the dots of Hamish's unravelling.

The Illusionist has a sense of humour, a sense of wonder, and a sense of place, and in combination that's enough to make it magical.

Shows that escapist films can serve every bit as valid a purpose as anything else when it comes to uniting people.

Licht is a document of brutal honesty.

By turns enchanting and heartbreaking, it speaks to the troubled history of the 20th Century yet feels bang up to date.

Essentially an old fashioned tale in which the pursuit of dreams needs to be balanced by learning to appreciate what one has.

It might be that my empathy was miscalibrated that day, but I came out of Mediterranean Fever feeling worse than when I went in.

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.

The entire tenor of the film is downbeat.

If there’s a single word to describe the latest film from Signe Baumane, it’s vibrancy.

Arashi is a model with Middle Eastern roots, making her screen début, which is difficult to belief given the quality of her performance in this complex, multifaceted role.

For a slow film, there is too much plot.

The love story is remarkable in its own right but the film also shows the way these sorts of histories could be hidden in plain sight.

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.

Finds a strong propulsive narrative with an emotional core.

It’s almost a shame they’ve bothered with the subtitles at all, as much of the comedy speaks for itself, which makes the subtitles feel rather “pushed” to lewd extremes in a bid to extract further laughs in places.

These are easy targets although there’s a lot of enjoyment to be hand in seeing them hit so accurately.

Even if you've never given parkour a second thought, Day will help you to see it through fresh eyes but, more importantly, to see the boys behind the bravado and the stunts, trying to make their way in the world just like everybody else.

Beyond the enjoyably unpredictable narrative, you can feel Giménez's love of the possibilities of cinema more widely.

Paddington is irresistible, funny and smartly constructed with a disarmingly big heart.

This is a film which might sound cloying sentimental, yet is anything but.

There are layers and layers of humour here, sometimes rooted in queer and theatrical traditions but mostly accessible regardless.

An instant classic and far too good for children.

Barlow and Senes let the situation simmer, with plenty going on to keep viewers entertained.

Alongside the thrilling driving sequences, there are some great fight scenes of the variety which shun polish and show us characters who really look like they’re suffering.

The message is clear - the world needs to pay much closer attention to what is happening in Brazil, before it's too late.

This movie is ridiculous.

A charming pastiche of the whole SF genre.

Whina is given very well-appointed and loving treatment in a story that’s so powerful it rises above the filmmakers’ more sentimental tendencies.

Drew Barrymore's directorial debut blasts in some girls who just want to have fun - and you'll be happy to join them.

Television schedules seem to be crammed with middle-aged men taking train journeys or motorcycle rides, so the first thing that’s notable about Women Behind The Wheel is that it brings with it the freshness of a much younger demographic in addition to its female perspective.