A migrant cyborg is sent out into the world to record moving images of random human encounters in Tsangari’s rather prescient if sometimes incoherent debut feature that distils the sense of obliviousness to the new anxieties at the turn of the millennium.
An unsurprisingly quaint coda to Sokurov’s extraordinary career, as archive footage is combined with deepfake technology, resurrecting Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Churchill as spectral artefacts in a liminal, purgatorial space between death and death.
A meaningful social initiative to connect young daughters with their incarcerated fathers is the subject of this rewarding Sundance award-winning documentary that might be one of the most moving films of the year.
Way too stilted and spiritless performances mar Schoenbrun’s aesthetically ‘flamboyant’ but ultimately vacant feature about gender and mediated identities, as two teenage social misfits find a human connection over a long-running television show that mysteriously gets cancelled.
An unclassifiable but whimsically rewarding anti-neocolonialist travelogue that sees the director turn the camera onto himself as he leaves his poor village and discovers how ridiculously modern the Western world is.
Trials and tribulations beset a Taiwanese family of four in Chung Mong-hong’s intimate and grounded work, one that is blessed with exceptional performances throughout.
McElwee’s intended docu-travelogue about General Sherman’s American Civil War campaign turns into a narcissistic look at his faltering romantic exploits with the Southern women around him, yet its unabashed subjectivity feels surprisingly fresh and compelling.
A construction worker becomes an actor in a theatre production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in this moving and sincere film about how art can help us process grief and cope with daily strife, played by a real-life family of acting professionals who give such naturalistic performances.
A polished but disturbing period film with a ‘modern’ sound design, set in the years after WWI in Copenhagen, as an unemployed and pregnant young woman seeks refuge with an older woman who operates a clandestine baby adoption service.
A Finnish youth environmental activism documentary that is surprisingly genteel, and hence quietly effective and reflective, encouraging us to be compassionate to activists—and as activists—in active modes of disruption.
