Aparna Sen’s first feature is a well-tuned Indian melodrama about the relationships that define and change us as a tender-hearted teacher lends her apartment to an ex-student and her boyfriend.
Told in reverse chronology, this is a masterpiece that deals with South Korea’s ‘80s military dictatorship and its ensuing socioeconomic changes, and does it with such profound emotional and psychological clarity.
Malaysia’s taboo but painful ‘513’ incident is tackled through Chong’s sophomore feature, an exceptional work that shrewdly uses a diptych narrative structure to delve deeper into unresolved trauma.
This ‘exploitative’ curious oddity in the Shaw Brothers canon blends bloody vengeance wuxia action with taboo-breaking erotica as a powerful Madam operating a brothel lusts over a rebellious sex worker.
A donkey becomes both a gift and a nuisance in an Indian village, as this stirring Tamil film makes pointed observations about the irrational anxieties and delusions of the religiously reliant.
This mystery-drama set in a remote village alternates between blissfulness and the ominous, exploring the transgression of hidden desires through the lens of sexuality.
Brazilian director Karim Ainouz looks back at his family’s history as he journeys to his late father’s Algeria in search of his roots in this poetic, experimental documentary that constantly surprises with its film form and language.
A significant work of Malayalam cinema, Aravindan’s work, by turns exuberant and elegiac, about a circus act coming to a rural Indian village teases out the hypnotic and exhibitionistic qualities of performative art in ways that challenge our unquestioned spectatorship.
Assayas’ first feature isn’t really great but it still is an enigmatic treatise on the tension between youthful idealism and fatalism as a group of friends with music ambitions rethink their existence after a plan goes awry, leaving blood in their hands.
Remarkably crafted and told refreshingly in a non-linear way, Guadagnino transforms tennis into a three-way psychological match in hell, where romantic entanglements serve up ‘underhands’ and ‘double-dealings’ that take morally contentious turns.
Eternality Tan 