Chen’s third feature, shot in picturesque Greece with Cynthia Erivo, mostly works as a finely-drawn take on an unlikely friendship between a woman who fled her war-torn country and a somewhat passionless tour guide.
Kieslowski’s often overlooked middle installment of the famed trilogy may be one of his most mischievous if perverse films as a downtrodden, recently divorced Polish man plans an elaborate revenge plot against his French ex-wife.
Polish master Zanussi’s early work is such a uniquely irresistible and besetting experience, about a man who returns to his ancestral home after many years only to find that his family is still as dysfunctional.
As much a cultural touchstone as it is an exemplar of the Huangmei opera genre, this classic of classics sucks you into its overt melodramatism and a heartrending story of everlasting love as a woman dressed as a man in order to attend university meets another man.
A young woman’s unwavering stand against the shameful Iranian legal system is captured with both intimacy and exasperation in this insightful documentary about the case of Reyhaneh Jabbari, who was hanged for acting in self-defence against a rapist in 2014.
This largely assured debut feature by Pakistani director Saim Sadiq boldly tackles themes of patriarchy and transgender as a young, married man becomes smitten by a trans woman.
This beautifully animated adaptation of several Murakami’s texts is talky and philosophical as it flits between surrealism and a sense of groundedness, urging us to find or create meaning in life even when there might be none.
Song Kang-ho is superb in this highly-engaging mainstream drama based on the dark history that was the 1980 Gwangju Uprising as a taxi driver unwittingly brings a German reporter to the site.
Petzold’s Berlinale Grand Jury Prize winner, about a group of friends and strangers at a holiday house as a forest fire blazes many miles away, is a strong, terrifically scripted and effortless portrayal of human relationships under scrutiny and pretence.
Light-hearted and mildly amusing, Ozu’s most accessible late-career work explores the generation gap and quirks of communal communication amid a rise in consumerism in a modernising Japan.
