Good but not great, this handsomely-mounted biopic about a Welsh journalist’s news-breaking report on the Ukrainian famine of the early ‘30s under Stalin is a welcome introduction to a murky and disturbing part of 20th-century history.
Straightforward but effective feature debut that depicts the perils of social media virality in a post-truth world, through the eyes of a young boy suffering from an immeasurable injustice.
An old feisty street seller and his poor family fight for their right to make a living as local authorities demand their relocation in this engrossing, and at times, hilarious documentary filmed in pre-COVID Wuhan.
A decades-spanning Brazilian melodrama about two sisters separated from each other—while it’s lushly-filmed and features strong performances, its repetitive nature and an underwhelming finale stop it from being a memorable film.
The banality of cultural tourism as variety show is poetically expressed in the hands of Kiyoshi Kurosawa as a Japanese crew travel to Uzbekistan for work—it also features an underrated performance by ex-AKB48 J-pop star Atsuko Maeda.
Roy Andersson’s latest won’t turn heads, but it is a tender, and at times, world-weary look at the fallibility of human beings as they eke out a despairing existence.
A conventional documentary about an unconventional instrument—the ancient shakuhachi—and the people who seek spiritual clarity through playing it.
A modest if tender documentary about an Alzheimer’s-stricken father (a retired Peking opera director) and his son (a multimedia artist) who try to heal through art and the creative process as they witness the ravages of time on their mortal connection.
There’s something elusively poetic about this dementia drama from Chang Tso-chi that elevates it into rich yet nuanced work about a fractured family’s relational dynamics in flux.
A dead body is found in the Mongolian steppes in this sublimely-shot if at times bizarre arthouse tale about carnal desires and the cycle of life.
