Venice Film Festival — A–Z of films

Although the shift in the film's gears isn't exactly smooth, it's an ambitious idea for a first-time filmmaker and Nayfeh brings home the sharp reality of the smuggling business.

There’s sadness here for isolation and a grief that goes beyond the loss of a single life once lived. There’s also a heightened sense of the smaller absurdities of existence.

Time doesn't just shift in Shahram Mokri's Iranian drama about a fire at a cinema that killed 478, it also folds like origami and pirouettes, the past and present so close as they dance they can feel each other's breath.

A tribute to the fallen, and so fine an example of cinematic craft that it ensures they will not quickly be forgotten again.

We are given time, which is wonderful, to count and study the painted ceiling fans and observe the hand-movements of the attentive music listeners.

There's some lovely family-driven humour in the script by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman delivered with great comic timing by the veteran leads.

Ideas of war in the abstract and the tension between the necessity of an action and the action itself will go on to be explored throughout a film that mostly concerns itself with the horrors of war that happen away from the frontline.

There's a continual nagging sense that this was, perhaps, once two separate ideas for short films which the directors have grafted together in a way that means the film as a whole falls short.

Shot with a fluid intimacy by cinematographer Baris Özbiçer, Oyay's film gathers momentum and an increasingly punk energy as it goes.

When Almodóvar has the protagonist talk about kitchen knives and their temptation, all I could think of was the brand of knife he might choose to showcase.

"Patience is the greatest gift on the path to perfection," we're told and, truth be known, you're going to need plenty of it when it comes to the plot.

The themes attach themselves like lead to each exchange, giving everything a theatrical quality and rendering character development so bland that no amount of roving camera can offset the airless result.

Garcia... takes the socio-economic circumstances as the core and builds her elegant thriller around it.

Given that one of the central tenets of Ben Hania's latest film is a debate about form... it's a joy that this extends to almost every frame of the film, many of which are so carefully composed they could hang in a gallery themselves.

The film's distanced, sometimes esoteric approach does nothing to diminish the sense of threat.

While each of these little worlds holds intrigue - as do the dreamlike cutaways to forests of the mind that Zhenia induces through hypnotism in his clients, lit and shot with care by Englert - the film never quite settles into a groove.

Documentarian Milo Rau's hybrid feature is part passion play and part call for compassion.

Everything here is wrapped in layers of fiction.

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.

Rosi’s camera lets the light and the landscapes, the shattered houses and the fractured humanity speak for themselves.

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.

There are no weak links in the performances here, but Ben-Adir is the standout, communicating most in the moments when he doesn't say a word.

Part of the problem is that the characters are either opaque or unpleasant – and all lack rounded definition.

Calling it a plain melodrama would be reductive for such a thrilling piece of cinema.

Zbanic's measured approach ensures that we can't look away from the unfolding horror - something that she makes clear many at the time, both peacekeepers and non-Muslim residents, found all too easy to do.

Insightful and at times wonderfully playful.

The film fails to acknowledge its own absurdity and that, as it turns out, is okay, because May is more than capable of carrying it as it is.

There is a miraculous playfulness to all this destructive behaviour. When one riddle is solved, another one appears.

The scoring from Alejandro Otaola reinforces the otherworldly elements but the action feels underpowered by comparison.

Bahrami's approach is deceptively simple, drawing us in with its easy rhythms and repetitions as the more complex picture of emotions, workplace exploitation and community tensions begins to be revealed.

All the while, Yuryev keeps us married to Leshka's experience, even flipping us over to view the world in the same topsy-turvy way he does.

Overall, the story is a familiar one, with a predictably, one could even say, cliched tragic sweep - a well-trodden pioneer trail that while watchable for the fine performances, still feels overly stuck in a rut.

There's such a warmth to the comedy here that the inevitable tragic sweep of the film feels all the more steeped in sadness.

The barest hooks of a narrative are here but stitched together with a lot of energy and stylish flourishes from cinematographer Benjamin Rufi.