A man moves in with his employerโs widow in this playful but dreamlike and inscrutable drama from Alain Guiraudie, the director of Stranger By the LakeWriter-director Alain Guiraudie must surely now be said to match Quentin Dupieux for the weirdest sen…
Set in 1980s Spain, actor Paz Vegaโs subtly affecting directing debut shows a family suffering under an abusive father, but is warmed by optimism and compassionSpanish actor Paz Vega makes her directing debut with this sensitive portrait of domestic ab…
A teenager hides 12 Jews in a basement under the nose of her Nazi boss in this tactful English-language dramaHere is an extraordinary true-life tale. For more than two years during the second world war, a teenager named Irene Gut kept 12 Polish Jews sa…
Ozonโs drama mixes implied horror with sentimentality as it examines dangerous secrets and the disastrous ramifications of an (accidental?) poisoningThat amazingly prolific film-maker Franรงois Ozon returns with an intriguing, if tonally uncertain, myst…
A very believable couple take a hike along the remote and icy coastline to test whether itโs make or break time in Maria Zbaskaโs charming two-handerThe endgame of a relationship โ or maybe the crisis from which the relationship will emerge reinvigorat…
With more than a nod to Charlie Kaufman this fun metafiction centred around Athensโ queer scene has plenty of sun, sea and acres of male fleshTwo men lie on the beach debating how to write a screenplay. One is conventionally hunky: muscular, naturally …
A mysterious stranger arrives in a small town in western Poland soon after the second world war, and embarks on a string of messy, equally enigmatic affairsThis cult 1960 Polish film is a political absurdist nightmare from director Kazimierz Kutz, writ…
A bailiff has an identity crisis after a tragedy in Radu Judeโs new film, a scornful polemic on 21st-century Europe set between hope and despairOnce again, Romanian film-maker Radu Jude has given us a garrulous, querulous movie of ideas โ a scattershot…
When Johanne, at 17, writes a memoir about her passion for teacher Johanna, the precocious result rattles three generationsHere is the third in a playful trilogy from Norwegian novelist and film-maker Dag Johan Haugerud (after Sex and Love, which appea…
In this fantasy-satire of bourgeois family life, a girl is suddenly able to see everything her messed-up parents are up toHere is a high-concept satire of bourgeois family life with all its secrets and lies from German film-maker Frรฉdรฉric Hambalek; it …
The brutalising reality of the battlefield connects five different stories in this anti-war dramaThis portmanteau film โ produced by Warsaw Film School and released for the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine โ is in the Come and See …
Noรฉmie Merlant, Naomi Watts and Will Sharpe languish in a luxurious hotel in Audrey Diwanโs self-conscious remake of the classic French softcore dramaIf anyone could have rebooted and revitalised the much-mocked 70s softcore-sexy franchise Emmanuelle, …
A classy cast plays it straight in this enjoyably daft action epic about the crossbow sharpshooter forced to shoot an apple from his sonโs headNick Hamm lets rip with some gonzo Game of Thrones craziness in his retelling of the William Tell myth with a…
Alain Delon is coltishly beautiful in this compelling 1960s tale of homesickness, aspiration, anguish and rageโIf only we had never left home โฆ but it was our destiny.โ The speaker is Rocco, played by Alain Delon โ coltishly beautiful and yet innocentl…
Based on a real mass killing, this 16th-century tale of backstabbing and beheadings is a clunker with a laddish edgeโA great deal of this actually happened,โ reads the title card at the start of this action-packed historical epic. Possibly. But itโs un…
A schoolgirl bullied over her sexuality heads to the city with her wise-cracking gay best friend in this overcooked but heartfelt dramaIn the outskirts of modern-day Dublin, teenage Lily (Clara Harte) looks on the outside like a kid on top of the world…
Director Rich Peppiatt said โthere is an irony in the best British film being Irishโ as his Belfast-set film won seven prizes in totalIrish-language rap comedy Kneecap emerged as the big winner at the British independent film awards (Bifas), with seven…
Fiennes is broodingly compelling as a potential English pope caught up in murky Vatican intrigue around choosing the next pontiffWho knew that the laborious process of democracy, of simply voting over and over again, could be so exciting and so amusing…
A young woman leaving the care system returns to her childhood home is a strong directorial debut from acclaimed Irish actor Eva BirthistleIrish actor Eva Birthistle has given successful performances in Ken Loachโs Ae Fond Kiss, Peter Greenawayโs Night…
Laura Carreiraโs impressive debut drama sees a quietly excellent Joana Santos endure dehumanising work conditions while looking for a way outThe human cost of the online convenience shopping revolution is, arguably, still to be properly addressed in ci…
Sheโs worked with most of the great names of European cinema, from Godard to Haneke, and on one of Hollywoodโs greatest disasters. Now sheโs ready for your closeup quizzingFrance has quite a few grandes dames of cinema, with Catherine Deneuve, Juliette…
The reconstruction of the 1976 trial of voluble and charismatic leftist Pierre Goldman tackles antisemitism and historyFrench cinema has recently given us some sensationally good courtroom dramas, such as Alice Diopโs Saint Omer and Justine Trietโs Ana…
He was a street-fighting revolutionary with a taste for flash cars and crisp shirts โ a moralising bank-robber who was eventually gunned down in the streets of Paris. As a film recreates this astonishing figureโs notorious trial, we speak to his old ac…
Maura Delperoโs beautifully-made drama explores the complex dynamics of a sprawling family near the wartime border with GermanyMaura Delperoโs new film was a richly deserving winner of the Grand Jury prize at the Venice film festival this year and will…
Venice film festivalJethro Masseyโs New Wave-style feature debut about a couple who meet in Paris is quirky and well-acted but strikes some peculiar false notes with Nazi gagsHereโs a dreamy, quirky, well-acted but weirdly misjudged movie that I couldn…
Venice film festivalGianni Amelioโs saga is set in 1918, when a pair of Italian doctors take very different approaches to treating the wounded that pass through their wardsHere is the upstanding infantryman of this yearโs Venice film festival competiti…
Venice film festivalNineties-set drama adapted from the bestselling novel zeroes in on tensions in a post-industrial community, sparked by a feud over a motorbikeClass and racial tensions come to the boil in this potent tale of disaffected youth in sma…
Baltasar Kormรกkurโs beautifully shot romance sees Kristรณfer try to track down Miko, a lifetime after their youthful love affair is unexpectedly cut shortNotes tucked between the leaves of a book; plastic cherry blossoms; a verse or two of an old poem โฆ…
Mika Gustafsonโs feature has some obvious influences in The Virgin Suicides or American Honey but wears them lightly in this fresh and beautifully cut debutLike an unusually designed coat featuring quirky details and an interesting fabric choice from a…
A big-money business pitch is threatened when a tech entrepreneurโs unpredictable inner child is unleashed after hypnotherapyThe squirm factor is high in this dark comedy of social awkwardness from Sweden, ruthlessly directed by first-time feature dire…
Locarno film festivalA young womanโs breakdown โ or is it an epiphany? โ in coastal Italy, in Luca Bellino and Silvia Luziโs film, does not surrender its meaning easilyLuca Bellino and Silvia Luziโs new film is an intriguing yet perplexing piece of wor…
Moodysson reunites the gang of hippies from his joyful 2000 sendup for a fun yet slightly sour sequelMore than 20 years ago, Lukas Moodysson directed the Swedish comedy Together: set in 1975, it was about a bunch of hippies living in a Stockholm commun…
Tarr and รgnes Hranitzkyโs 2000 film moves slowly around a small town where a very strange circus has arrived. Its eerie power has only grown in a time of rising fascismHungarian auteur Bรฉla Tarr and his co-director and editor รgnes Hranitzky now have …
Aleksandar Petroviฤโs 1965 interlinked stories focus on the changes wrought in one young Yugoslavian by the brutality of the war and its aftermathSerbian film-maker Aleksandar Petroviฤ was a member of the former Yugoslaviaโs insurgent Black Wave cinema…
There are stabs of the same fear that made The Beast fascinating, but this tale of a bored teenager in a scary, affectless future is too unfocusedProminent French film-makers are supported by their national industry and even their lockdown projects ha…
Zoltรกn Fรกbriโs 1976 film follows military veteran Karoly in wartime Hungary as he asks fellow drinkers in a bar what they would choose: be the slave master or the slaveThe seventh seal that gave Ingmar Bergmanโs film its title is the one whose opening …
Skarsgรฅrd and his son Gustaf sparkle in Ran Huangโs rarefied film, but canโt rescue this weirdly hallucinatory murder mystery from falling flatThis intense psychological drama has a squid in the sky problem. Specifically itโs that, by its halfway point…
Ollie West is superb as a sensitive misfit who inadvertently causes a terrible tragedy in this atmospheric family drama Beautiful West Cork is photographed like a crime scene, chilly and sinister, in this atmospheric family drama about grief and guilt,…
Director Niels Arden Oplev has written movingly of his intimate knowledge of the mental illness, but this story is soaked in treacly good tasteDanish film-maker Niels Arden Oplev, director of the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with Noomi Rapace,…
Agnieszka Hollandโs vital drama about refugees stranded between Belarus and Poland could hardly be more topicalโThey arenโt people. They are live bullets.โ The dehumanisation of refugees has long been a key weapon in anti-migrant rhetoric. But even so,…
Plans to show The Last Screenwriter, whose script is credited to โChatGPT 4.0โ, prompted complaints although the film-makers insist the feature is โa contribution to the causeโA cinema in London has cancelled the world premiere of a film with a script …
The star of La Dolce Vita and A Man and a Woman, who has died aged 92, had a unique screen presence that was at once alluring and forbiddingThe superbly aquiline beauty and patrician style of Anouk Aimรฉe made her a 60s movie icon in France, Italy and e…
Wonky-toned story follows Dunham as a journalist visiting Poland, and Fry as her cuddly European dad, both trying to get to grips with family historyAn uncomfortable experience this: a laboriously acted odd-couple heartwarmer starring Lena Dunham and S…
Six year old Louise Mauroy-Panzani is wonderful as Clรฉo, strongly bonded to her carer Gloria, who has to leave herBy rights Louise Mauroy-Panzani should be at the front of the queue for every acting award going for her role in this gorgeous French dram…
Rocking big hair and fake eyelashes Dyrholm shines in provocative film that deals with issues of sexual assault and female bondingTrine Dyrholm is one of Europeโs finest and hardest-working actors, though she is hardly a household name for viewers beyo…
Alma Pรถysti stands out as a feminist politician in this irritatingly cosy portrait of a very complicated relationship worked out all too easilyA rosy glow of self-satisfied emotional intelligence emanates from this film about polyamory from Finland. A…
Lives change course after a chance encounter between a construction worker and an academic in Bas Devosโs microscopically detailed gem of a filmBelgian director Bas Devosโs gentle, delicate and quietly beguiling movie, a prize winner last year in Berli…
Based on a true story, this film presents hormone-disordered Rosalie, who has hair on her face and body, as a perky outsider in period dressHere is an intriguing, if not wholly successful, attempt to create a hero for gender-fluid times and give them t…
Cannes film festivalGilles Leloucheโs new movie aims for a Springsteenesque blue-collar energy but buckles under the weight of its own naivetyGilles Leloucheโs new film is a giant operatic crime drama of star-crossed lovers and hurt feelings; itโs very…
Cannes film festivalMiguel Gomesโs beguiling and bewildering story follows a jittery fiance fleeing his intended across the British empire, and her hot pursuitOnce again, Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes delivers a film in which the most complex sophisti…
The heroine is a victim of her own beauty in this exercise in languorous image-making that is too conceited to allow any emotional investmentPaolo Sorrentino, for over 20 years one of the most vibrant and distinctive film-makers, is coming close to sel…
Shot on 16mm, Marija Kavtaradzeโs quiet drama tells a mature and moving story about the many ways people can be in loveA delicate love affair blooms in the new film from Lithuanian director Marija Kavtaradze, which explores attraction and intimacy with…
Cannes film festivalNoรฉmie Merlantโs first film as a director is relentlessly silly, self-indulgent and unsuited to its themes of misogyny and sexual violenceHere to prove that โactor projectโ movies are always the ones with the dodgiest acting is the …
Cannes film festivalA star player at an elite tennis school decides to stay silent when the head coach is suspended in Leonardo Van Dijlโs absorbing movie of things unsaid and subjects avoidedFilmgoers are currently gobbling up Luca Guadagninoโs tennis…
Cannes film festivalA drama of despair plays out in a remote village, as a debt-ridden father is mortified to discover his son is gay Here is a self-laceratingly painful tale of repression and denial in a remote Romanian village in the Danube delta, di…
Cannes film festival Loosely based on fact, Magnus van Hornโs fictionalised true crime nightmare leaves you with a shiver of pure fearJust in case you were thinking that this is an upbeat story of a sweet young seamstress winning BBC TVโs The Great Bri…
Cannes film festivalFirst-time actor Agathe Riedinger is a wannabe influencer from the wrong side of the tracks in this forthright and fluent filmFeature first-timer Agathe Riedinger is bringing the TikTok energy for this story of a wannabe Insta influ…
Roberto Rosselliniโs 1945 neorealist drama is unsparing in its depiction of the heavy price of both resistance and collaboration with the Nazi occupationRoberto Rosselliniโs 1945 film is a blazingly urgent and painful bulletin from the frontline of Ita…
Elene Naverianiโs film tells the story of a middle-aged single woman in a remote Georgian village whose life is changed for ever after a near-death experienceHere is a marvellously tender story of loneliness and love which starts with a bigger bang tha…
This idealistic feature draws parallels between the struggles of immigrant Polish workers in Norway and the homophobia faced by two young lovers, but canโt quite sew up the two seamsDirector Leiv Igor Devold makes an unexpected link-up between Norway, …
Kerry Condon plays a potty-mouthed IRA gang leader and Neeson is the quiet antihero in this action thriller set at the height of the TroublesProducer-director and veteran Clint Eastwood collaborator Robert Lorenz is now saddling up for this โDonegal we…
Paola Cortellesiโs directing debut, in which she also stars, depicts gruelling domestic abuse before finding its way to startling redemptionItalian actor and singer Paola Cortellesi has been breaking hearts and box office records on her home turf with …
Musician and film-makerโs story about a Belgian-Congolese man who takes his white wife to DRC to meet the family is complex, risky and boldCongolese-born rapper, musician and film-maker Baloji (nรฉ Serge Baloji Tshiani) was a prizewinner at Cannes last …
A sexually candid, seriously intentioned drama about a young Kurdish woman who feels she has to surgically โrestoreโ her virginity before her weddingThere is a heartfelt and courageous performance from 28-year-old Syrian-born, German-based actor Bayan …
In this adaptation of the John McGahern novel, about a middle-aged man who has returned, with his wife, to the countryside of his childhood, makeshift friendships are forged and lifeโs grand rhythms observedโDoes anything happen, or is it the usual?โ a…
Travelling across Russia in mostly silence, Ilya Povolotskyโs debut feature has a strange confidence in its own insistent dispiritednessWith long journeys in a red camper van, long unbroken shots of shattered Caucasian landscapes, and very long silence…
Payman Maadi brings a fierce intelligence to his portrayal of a refugee seeking a secure new home for his family in SwedenBennett Millerโs Foxcatcher from 2015 and Sean Durkinโs recent The Iron Claw show the sport of wrestling as deeply dysfunctional; …
Call My Agentโs Laure Calamy stars as a scheming factory worker with designs on a mega-rich fortune in this classy feast of backstabbing, double cross and venal greedSuccession meets Knives Out in this comedy-thriller directed by Sรฉbastien Marnier in w…
Portuguese director Susana Nobre explores the sadness of bereavement with deadpan obliqueness in this story about a womanโs reaction to her motherโs deathThereโs a studied impassivity to this elegant Portuguese movie about grief from Susana Nobre. Itโs…
Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy tell a cool, low-key drama about the wealthy debutante who joined the IRA, abetted an art heist and bombed a police stationFilm-makers Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy have a restless creativity and alertness to ideas whi…
The film-maker, who won the Palme dโOr for 1977โs Padre Padrone, was a towering presence for more than three decades, creating politically engaged works with his brother VittorioThe Italian film-maker Paolo Taviani, whose gritty biopic Padre Padrone wo…
This quirky story of a lonely farmer and his deceased mother celebrates the Nordic countryโs breathtaking landscapeThis film hits just about every sweet spot possible: it is Icelandic and shot on black and white stock; it is a quirky road movie set in …
Berlin film festival: Adaptation of Czech absurdist novel finds Sandler on a trippy cosmic mission while his marriage breaks down on EarthHereโs an existential sci-fi wearing its influences and its supposed humour really heavily, as if entering some su…
Lars Eidinger plays the man embarking on a major orchestral project, but whose professional status is threatened by family turmoil behind the scenesMatthias Glasnerโs epic is a black comedy of Franzenesque family dysfunction; maybe not profound exactly…
Olivier Assayasโ thinly disguised autobiographical study of a film-makerโs Edenic experience during Covid isolation is a civilised pleasureOlivier Assayasโs new film is a flimsy but elegant autofictional sketch about his own experiences during the Covi…
Lessons of Tolerance follows a family overcoming their homophobia, an education that war with Russia seems to be giving many in the countryArkadii Nepytaliuk grew up in a small village in Ukraineโs Khmelnytskyi region under the control of the Soviet Un…
Inspired by a true story about a retired 18th-century army captain turned farmer, Nikolaj Arcelโs brash drama is entertaining, if a little preposterous Thereโs old-fashioned entertainment value in this tough, if faintly preposterous Nordic western, a m…
A young woman plots her escape from behind the Iron Curtain until a baby ruins her plans in this 2014 debut from Maya VitkovaMaya Vitkovaโs eloquent, ambitious, emotionally committed drama Viktoria premiered at Sundance 10 years ago and more than deser…
1980s black comedy unravels the brutal legacy of a despot who is as ludicrous as his crimes are appallingThe sense of an ending is what this fascinating film delivers: an unimaginably painful ending and the moral reckoning that has to follow. This drea…
Italian director Stefano Mordini manages an admirably tasteful dramatisation of a carmaker contest that defined a decade โ but it never quite gets the pulse racingCast your minds back, if you will, to 1983. The year of Return of the Jedi and The A-Team…
Intelligent, unsettling drama focuses on the treatment of German refugees by the Danes who have endured five years as a captive nationAt the end of the second world war, around 250,000 German refugees were left stranded in Denmark. What responsibility,…
Rereleased for its 50th anniversary, this gripping retelling of a true story about a disturbed youth who finds favour in high society, features a masterstroke of castingWerner Herzogโs enduringly gripping and influential movie is rereleased for its 50t…
Director Zeno Gratonโs debut subtly yet powerfully shows two young men growing closer and pushing back against the systemInside the austere walls of a juvenile detention centre, love dares to blossom against all odds in Zeno Gratonโs bold and tender fe…
Rotoscope-style animation gives this version of Wลadysลaw Reymontโs story an interesting look, but the performances and tone canโt live up to the visualsHusband-and-wife film-makers DK Welchman (nรฉe Dorota Kobiela) and Hugh Welchman made a real impress…
Real-life pianist Tymoteusz Bies and his younger brother Jacek star in Damian Kocurโs extraordinary and intriguing debutThereโs an icy, unforgiving clarity and compositional rigour to this arresting feature debut from Polish film-maker Damian Kocur, ma…
Animated feature, based on Michel Kichkaโs autobiographical graphic novel, explores the legacy of genocide from a sideways angleAdapted from Second Generation, an autobiographical graphic novel (perhaps the genre should be termed โautobiographic novelโ…
Line Renaud and Dany Boon give low-key, sincere performances as they reunite for an eventful cab ride through ParisA fourth collaboration between French funnyman Dany Boon and one-time music-hall sensation Line Renaud (who played his mother in 2008 Eur…
Gerhard Liebmann is brilliant as Eismayer, an Austrian drill officer who falls for a recruit in this intelligent, understated film about acceptanceThe character of Sgt Maj Eismayer is instantly recognisable from every basic training movie youโve ever s…
As Italy succumbs to the fascists, a war veteran and small-town restaurateur falls for a beautiful stranger in Giuseppe Piccioniโs robustly made and excellently acted prewar melodramaGiuseppe Piccioni is the Italian director whose early movie Light of …
An orphaned Irish teenager spars with her scheming uncle in this insightful reworking of Sheridan Le Fanuโs novelHere is a tightly laced, elegantly cut gothic period drama that easily slips through the cracks as the barrage of upmarket cinema vying for…
Laura Linney is upstaged by older co-stars Smith and Kathy Bates in this sentimental tale about a group of Dublin women who go on a spiritual journey togetherWhoโs up for a golden-hued heartwarmer set in 60s Ireland starring Kathy Bates and Maggie Smit…
Formulaic it might be but this likeable, will-they-wonโt-they underdog comedy about a group of female rowers in rural Kerry is a small triumphThis comfortingly familiar Irish underdog sports movie deviates for not one single second of its running time …
An expectant husband-and-wifeโs lives are shattered when their home in Donbas is hit by a bomb in Maryna Er Gorbachโs powerful dramaAlthough this Ukrainian drama mostly unfolds in and around a small farmhouse on the Donbas steppes in 2014, it contains …
This visually exquisite, tender film about a boy growing up in a military air base on an former colony is a wonderful watchFilm-maker Robin Campillo has surrendered to the flow of memory and given us this wonderful, personal movie, created with tendern…
Latest from Cristian Mungiu is a low-key drama about a multi-ethnic community in Transylvania who turn on a group of Sri Lankan immigrantsCristian Mungiu has returned with this dour, gloomy psychodrama of central European xenophobia: a Romanian-Brexity…
The drama, which won a Venice film festival prize, was called โNazi propagandaโ by proponents of Polandโs right-wing migrant policyPolish film director Agnieszka Hollandโs prize-winning refugee drama Green Border is to be released in Poland, weeks befo…
These two striking, improvisatory remasters by Kira Muratova resemble early Polanski, and establish the late director as a fiercely intelligent auteurTwo complex, elusive and demanding films by the late Moldovan-born, Ukrainian-based director Kira Mura…
Venice film festival: Agnieszka Hollandโs brutal and timely drama shines a dark spotlight on the horrors faced by refugees in the exclusion zone between Poland and BelarusAt 74, Polish film-maker Agnieszka Holland has lost none of her passion โ or comp…
Venice film festival: Disaster appears imminent as Seydoux and an impressive George MacKay meet across three different eras in what maybe Bertrand Bonelloโs best movie yetBertrand Bonelloโs new film is a vast unsettling dream of the future and the past…
A gay man cheats on his husband with a straight woman in this fiercely sexy and heartbreaking tale of young Parisians Fiercely sexy and piercingly sad, Ira Sachsโs new movie is a tremendous return to form after the disappointment of his very odd Isabel…
