Way too stilted and spiritless performances mar Schoenbrun’s aesthetically ‘flamboyant’ but ultimately vacant feature about gender and mediated identities, as two teenage social misfits find a human connection over a long-running television show that mysteriously gets cancelled.
The death of nine sheep at the jaws of a snow leopard incurs the wrath of a sheepherder in Tseden’s occasionally farcical take on small-town moralities as the ideals of ‘law’ and ‘justice’ are challenged.
An unclassifiable but whimsically rewarding anti-neocolonialist travelogue that sees the director turn the camera onto himself as he leaves his poor village and discovers how ridiculously modern the Western world is.
Visually stunning, contemplative and disruptive, Denis’ brilliant take on toxic masculinity—for men, and by men—revolves around one French Foreign Legion sergeant’s attraction and repulsion towards a new recruit.
Panahi is literally in the driver seat, as he charts a new course for Iranian cinema (of the oppressed) in this powerful docu-drama that is as defiant as any in his oeuvre.
Lanthimos’ weakest work since ‘Alps’ is an uneven if morbid triptych of stories that operate as playful, nihilistic exercises at best, led by Cannes Best Actor winner Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone.
A disappointment from Kaurismaki in this way too simplistic and monotonous tribute to silent era filmmaking about a young and naïve wife of a farmer husband who is lured away by a rich old man promising a better life.
Trials and tribulations beset a Taiwanese family of four in Chung Mong-hong’s intimate and grounded work, one that is blessed with exceptional performances throughout.
A political statement of intent by Panahi – one that is imbued with a sense of loss and frustration, yet shines brightly as a courageous beacon of hope for change.
McElwee’s intended docu-travelogue about General Sherman’s American Civil War campaign turns into a narcissistic look at his faltering romantic exploits with the Southern women around him, yet its unabashed subjectivity feels surprisingly fresh and compelling.
