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.
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.
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.
A comforting if bittersweet retelling of Sammo Hung’s formative years at the Peking Opera School where he plays a master mentoring his younger self, as it explores tradition and passion at the crossroads of societal and cultural change.
This award-winning debut feature from Sundance is an empathetic take on the anxieties over identity and belonging as Afghan refugees hope to start a new life in Iran.
This Malaysian slow cinema mood piece may be slight with narrative but it re-centers the protagonist, a Vietnamese illegal immigrant who does odd jobs, in her own space of existential longing.
Featuring finely-tuned performances, this Sundance winner breaks taboos in quietly restrained ways, about an Indian girl in a Himalayan boarding school who discovers love and sex amid a repressive patriarchal order.
A Chinese conglomerate sets up shop in a vacant factory plant in Ohio, transforming livelihoods but also creating cultural and social tensions in this well-made if not particularly memorable Oscar-winning documentary.
Hausner’s bleak feature debut can be difficult to watch, adopting lo-fi aesthetics and conspicuously fast zoom-ins, as an outcast teenage girl tries to cope with the problems of family and school by seducing an older man and a younger boy.
A son films his dying father’s last performances on the piano in this elegiac final tribute to one of the most creative musical minds of the last 50 years.
