One of Turkey’s most underrated directors reaches new filmmaking heights in this terrific slow-burn of a psychological thriller, set in a sweltering, water-scarce town in danger of imploding.
Abbasi’s disquieting based-on-a-true-story work about an unorthodox serial killer who ‘takes care’ of prostitutes in the name of religion is as dark as they come, set in the most unexpected of locations—the holy Iranian city of Mashhad.
A ragtag group of Icelandic youths drink, smoke, experiment with drugs and beat people up in this hard-hitting yet poignant tale about the joys and limits of male friendships.
This is one of 2022’s finest films and an extraordinary feature debut—as far as stories about father-daughter relationships are concerned, this incredibly nuanced drama finds that rare pitch-perfect tone of joy and melancholy that must be savoured.
Peele’s third feature is his most ambitious yet though not necessarily as sharp as his previous works, firmly locating itself in sci-fi horror territory while expressing our innate desires for attractions and spectacles.
Using familiar genre tropes to tackle provocative themes, this shot-in-Istanbul, Cairo-set Cannes Best Screenplay winner asks hard questions about the troubling intersections between political and religious institutions.
Park’s latest Cannes winner charts an alluringly new direction for him—a layered if at times convoluted crime procedural that hides an elusive romantic drama about the perverse relationship between a conflicted investigator and a seductive murder suspect.
Mungiu’s somewhat belated take on xenophobia isn’t an all-powerful tale, but it smartly situates prevalent issues as a trickle-down effect of EU migrant policies in collision with chronic small-town racism.
It’s more of the same from Kore-eda, but transplanted into a Korean setting, in this heartening mid-tier drama about characters trying to remain human despite not always being on the good side of the law.
Eggers’ third film is maximalist filmmaking to a fault—it may be his most ambitious, but also his weakest in terms of storytelling where it offers the requisite thrills and action, but little in the way of deeply-resonating themes or characters.
Eternality Tan 