Good but not great, Kaurismaki does ‘60s period drama with his brand of droll comedy as two Finnish men on a test drive encounter two female ‘comrades’ (a Russian and an Estonian) in need of a ride to the harbour.
Leigh’s bleak family drama catches us in an emotional no man’s land, accompanied by a committed performance by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who plays an incredibly noxious mother who hates people and is in deep pain.
A loyal bodyguard to a mobster boss must think for himself when things go terribly wrong in this compelling and bloody Korean revenge thriller about the inevitability of karmic retribution.
The lives of six Romanians intersect days before the momentous fall of Communist dictator Ceaușescu, as this ambitious debut feature with a terrific climax shows us what it’s like to live in a totalitarian country, oblivious to the winds of change just around the corner.
Two lonely, emotionally wounded men find connection in each other as Wenders’ road movie takes us on a poetic journey of self-reflection as they drive from one town to another, repairing faulty cinema projectors.
More political than it appears to be, Sora’s first narrative feature explores the punitive impact of heightened school surveillance as several students rebel against oppression in an increasingly destabilised Japanese society.
A soft-hearted, if sometimes amusing, elegy about love in all forms, be it unrequited, unconditional or burgeoning, as several students navigate a school ‘Talentime’ show and family problems in Yasmin Ahmad’s sincerely-made final feature.
Wang draws intimate links between the Chinese and their land post-1949 Chinese Civil War in this reflective and dreamlike work from the perspective of a boy who longs for a water toy gun from his late grandfather.
Bresson’s acrid final feature may be seen as a ‘counter-feit/fict-ion’, exploring the transactionality of exploitation through an anti-narrative, as a fake bill sparks an irreversible chain of events.
Things go dreadfully south during a wild night in a Louisiana juke joint in Coogler’s most original work yet, marked by patient setups, foreshadowing, and playful blending of genres in this fervent, intoxicating music-horror.
Eternality Tan 