Thessaloniki International Film Festival — A–Z of films

It is the things taken for granted, as much as the things that stand out, which shape the tale.

The film is a brash, vulgar, joyously realistic portrait of a three-way friendship with roots that run deep.

The word ballad is a good choice in the title because Hunt-Ehrlich’s film is a rhythms and muse affair.

The camera drifts through it at a leisurely pace, back and forth, up and down, taking in different details one might when wandering around drunk or half asleep. From these, story and meaning gradually coalesce.

It’s Schafer’s performance that anchors it.

Martin Gschlacht’s glorious and smart cinematography adds clarity here while sprinkling doubt over there.

Dosch uses the true story to make wider observations about the often fraught relationships between humans and animals.

Franju is carefully slicing along the line where the concrete rigours of modern science intersect with the abstractions of youth, beauty and ephemerality.

Panigrahi is pitch perfect in her debut role.

Hvistendahl and her cast have a very strong sense of the emotional weight of the piece.

A thoughtful, shrewd examination of the impact of rapidly developing technologies.

An intense pop-cultural awareness permeates Heretic. This is the doctrinal dialogue of our age.

Despite its tendency to lose sight of a unifying thread, Holy Electricity picks up a musical cadence, guiding the viewer through a series of moments that shine with a disarming honesty.

Condensed and symbolic in its approach, sometimes to the point where it becomes surreal, Hunting Daze uses a small story to address big subjects.

It tells what could be a goofy story, about awkward teenagers obsessed with a TV series called The Pink Opaque, but portrays it as an ominous, nightmarish mindfuck.

The director shows how it’s not just Julie’s tennis skills that have been groomed by the coach but large aspects of her life.

Between fragments of formal experimentation, the relationship between the two siblings and their father's struggle with melancholia deliver a muddled but tender summer chronicle.

Elliot time and again marries darkness and light, sweetness with sour to create a satisfying emotional umami.

Diaz has drawn partially on his relationship with his own mother and the specificity of place and time also help the tensions to feel authentic.

Once again, Guiraudie proves himself the master of setting up a mystery by the means of perfect script economy that functions strictly on “need to know” basis.

While many other films feel as though they are really staking out a deliberate political stance against the Iranian regime or coming at it from deep within metaphor, My Favourite Cake is casually, but almost constantly, rebellious in small ways.

Nyoni expertly controls her narrative so that it glides effortlessly between the reality of the funeral preparations to the more surreal psychological trauma Shula is working through.

Carreira shows how quiet desperation can be eroding

The close proximity camerawork employed by Sheldon Chau, coupled with the fact that the frame is often reduced by foreground intrusions, lend Pooja, Sir an intense and often claustrophobic feel.

A film that is so focused on the presence we can’t see it forgets to fully flesh out the lives that we can.

Writer/director Sandhya Suri - who has a documentary background - is keen to show that everyone plays their part in the prejudices and corruption of the legal system.

David and Craig Zellner aren’t just here to make us laugh - although they certainly achieve that - they’re also in the business of building a detailed and delicate world around a year in the life of their creatures that proves surprisingly poignant.

Having set up all the elements of a thriller, the film proceeds to untangle them in a refreshingly different and mature way.

The spectacular visual effects are less a product of slick new technology than of pure imagination, and they really are unforgettable.

This playfully filmed coming-of-age narrative never loses its empathetic eye.

There is a feeling of being in a constant movement, with cars and buildings whizzing by as Souleymane is rushing through the city, either riding his bike, or running from one type of public transport to the next.

As Zürcher explores his protagonist's psyche, straining the limits of a pervasive sense of turbulence, he steers the narrative into a dream-like realm of refreshing sincerity.

Nothing short of an instant cult.

Starchenko is extraordinary in her ability to develop an emotionally complex character despite the state of shock that covers everything.

A highly mannered approach, a staccato script and deliberate emotional distance mean that the drama never really comes alive, but the whole thing looks and sounds divine.

Hoogendoorn crafts the tension around space and body which cinematographer Gregg Telussa captures candidly, usually keeping both protagonists within the frame.

The imagery is almost dream-like, feverish and intense without straying away from reality.

Cassigoli and Kauffman capture the muscle of family life as it bends, stretches and, from time to time strains, to accommodate all of its members.