Suzuki’s middle entry of his arthouse ‘Taisho’ trilogy sees a playwright get bogged down by his own shifting realities, fictive or otherwise, spawning a spectral meta-theatrical experience that is largely inscrutable yet weirdly transfixing.
Violent, intense, darkly comic and a tour de force experience, this is God-tier Scorsese and one of the greatest films about gangsters and organised crime ever made.
A sweeping if unremarkable, ‘globe-trotting’ drama about a father who tries to locate his daughters after surviving the Armenian genocide of 1915 by the Ottoman Empire, with Faith Akin’s approach too conventional to really compel.
A vibey Moroccan music documentary about the popular group Nass-El Ghiwane that is a mix of invigorating performances, behind-the-scenes, and colonial history.
Triet’s highly-charged frenzy of a debut feature sees a female news reporter navigate rowdy crowds and an even rowdier family row, as her persistent ex-husband attempts to pay her little children a visit on the day of the 2012 French Presidential Election.
A down-to-earth and poignant drama about a female student who has a crush on her married male teacher facing a midlife crisis, featuring indelible performances from Jacky Cheung, Anita Mui, and a breakout role by Karena Lam.
Larrain imagines Pinochet as a still-alive vampire in this darkly comic if sometimes absurd take on tackling national historical trauma—it doesn’t work that convincingly but one can admire the conceptual vision.
A significant work of the Cinema Novo movement, one that dared to challenge the legitimacy of politics and religion as a poor farmer tries to seek salvation after killing his exploitative employer.
Technically exceptional but overlong and somewhat meandering, this Vietnamese Cannes Camera d’Or-winning work takes a leaf out of Weerasethakul’s slow cinema playbook, as a man must process and reflect on loss after an unexpected death in the family.
A tad overlong, but this coming-of-age, teen angst movie captures with exceptional ambition the pre-social media stan culture with a kind of authenticity, intimacy and raging fervour quite rarely experienced in cinema.
