Dust, haunted technology, and political trauma mark this uncanny deadpan Thai comedy where the corporeal and supernatural coexist with grounded preposterousness, as a dead wife returns as a possessed vacuum cleaner to protect her misunderstood husband.
A socially awkward boy at a summer water polo camp faces stigmatisation and arbitrary inclusion/exclusion by his peers in this formally assured feature debut, marked by a haunting sound design and body horror that depict bullying as not merely social or pathological but psychosomatic.
Four gangsta-wannabe schoolgirls navigate friendship, school rules and academic expectations in Tan Siyou’s fantastic debut feature, an emotionally resonating work about the codification of teenage identity and destiny in conformist Singapore.
Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning cinema of courageous resistance sees a man encountering someone he believes was his former prison torturer in this picture of genres that is tonally masterfully juggled, exploring themes of cycles of violence and circles of victimhood in Iran.
An oddly-paced yet riveting plunge into covert histories, Filho’s Cannes award-winning work plays like a spectral puzzle—pulpy, sly, and quietly haunting, turning Brazilian political trauma into a carnivalesque memory piece.
A nuanced, layered, and finely acted work about art, memory, and fractured familial bonds, Trier’s latest is quietly absorbing and emotionally intelligent, centering on an absent father who is a famous auteur hoping to get his elder daughter to star in his new, personal film.
Realism without filters, Chernov’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning ’20 Days in Mariupol’ is a devastating war vérité that strips conflict of rhetoric, leaving only attrition, absurdity, and the unbearable weight of patriotic labour carried by ordinary Ukrainian men.
Unadorned in form yet uncompromising in purpose, Jacir’s invigorating new work about the late ‘30s Arab revolt in Palestine shows that power lies in the clarity with which one reframes both past injustice and present responsibility.
Shot nearly entirely in one location, and very close to real time, Linklater’s sublime chill pill of a Berlinale entry centers on the legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart, who suffers a severe morale dip, played by Ethan Hawke in an Oscar-worthy performance.
Linklater brings his ‘hangout’ cinema vibe to the French New Wave era, centering on Godard’s attempt to direct his first feature, in this breezy, blissful ‘comedy’ (for cinephiles at least) that is nostalgia-laden and wonderfully cast.
Eternality Tan 