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.
Exquisitely shot and not without its dense subject matter, Im’s transcendent film is a masterful look at secularism and asceticism from a bold, singular lens of Buddhism.
Words have little meaning but faces bear the truth in Antonioni’s remarkable treatise on modern alienation and ennui as it follows a well-to-do couple facing a sinking marriage on an afternoon and night out.
Probably Fincher’s zeitgeistiest film, this initially misunderstood but now modern classic traverses effortlessly between popular and cult realms as its unflinching takedown of capitalism and consumerism is marked by a thick, poisoned air of existential malaise.
A Trans-Siberian train journey turns into a ‘Trans-Mongolian’ detour on the steppes as a group of Westerners find themselves ‘enjoying’ the hospitality of a Mongolian Princess and her people, in an oddly-structured but exuberant work that challenges exoticist assumptions in East-West cultural discourse.
