Tribeca Festival — A–Z of films

Petzold’s most literary film to date.

It’s in this fracturing of feminine figures within a familial, uterine space that Thorndike finds the unsettling kind of horror she’s looking for.

There’s a lack of depth in general.

On the surface, this is a comedy of manners taken to extremes. Underneath is a layer of questions about intimacy and why some people feel the need to seek out strangers so that they can be themselves.

Sometimes the most thrilling experience one can have at the movies is simply watching a big monster fight and a lot of stuff getting smashed up.

Lee is terrific and his natural charisma gives the film the energy it needs.

An homage to truly bad film-making - but it sails perilously close to self-parody

Writer/director Noam Kaplan breaks screenwriting rules to show his characters performing actions which are normally filtered out of cinematic depictions.

Although the structure is offbeat, and the muscular scoring from Jonas Colstrup (The Square) emphasises the emotional rollercoaster, Fredriksson’s film remains empathetic to all concerned.

A masterpiece of cinematic efficiency.

Finding a child with as much screen presence as Niemenmaa would be impressive in any circumstances.

Unashamedly quirky but burtsting with the love of film, this is the sort of one-off doc that’s as much about the engaging playfulness of its construction as it is the content.

Ray feels like a real person plunged into an increasingly absurd situation, which is ultimately the source of a lot of the film’s comedy and its sometime tragedy.

The Lesson is a treat. It's properly constructed, beautifully played. It might not quite cleave to classical unities but it knows enough to weave its course among them.

Liv and her mother are at different stages in battling their addiction and that’s a tangible thing in the way they are realised, as important in what it has to say as anything delivered directly by the dialogue.

It’s a story which invites trust and faith in humanity even as it acknowledges that life involves risks.

Morris keeps us guessing as to where the film is going.

The animations give way to film at the end; having heard the stories, we see faces, emphasising that this happened to real people.

Perpetrator heralds the joyous rising up of a regiment of monstrous women.

As the film progresses, and these artists and filmmakers articulate their response to the conflict both verbally and through their work, Gutnik also interrogates the importance of culture when it comes to establishing and preserving nationhood.

There’s a deep understanding of the ways that people can be affected by grief underlying the gentle, quirky comedy of this tale.

It’s the sort of story rarely told in cinema today, and one which seems destined to attract a cult following.

If you have personally struggled with issues of this kind, you’ll find Take Care Of Maya hard to watch, but it is an important watch.

Viewers are likely to go away appreciating Aubrey’s frustrations and perhaps, if they share them, feeling validated, but without the tools to do anything about them.