Revolutionary, overrated, or somewhere in between, Welles’s extraordinary debut turns power, ego, and misery into an enigmatic cradle-to-grave portrait of a larger-than-life figure—‘European’ in its artistic style, but fiercely American in its spirit of derring-do.
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.
Wiseman’s observational mastery in this patient, humane, and richly textured work reveals a vision of community sustained through dialogue, care, and conflict, offering a quietly stirring reflection on what it means to nurture shared public spaces.
An editing masterclass that feels ahead of its time, this is Welles at his most playful and elusive—utterly fascinating if you surrender to his tricks, obvious or otherwise, as he slyly provokes with a thesis on fakery, expertise, illusion and truth.
The fearless and admirable Laura Poitras weaves the traumatic personal history, artistic legacy, and near-fatal overdose of Nan Goldin into a formally inventive documentary that urgently reveals the power of transformative social justice.
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.
Peckinpah’s masterful final word on the Western, this elegiac piece, about a reluctant lawman hired to kill an outlaw who is a longtime friend, is a cat-and-mouse chase of an existential order, drawn out expertly as a cinema of delay and detour, as inertia begets inertia.
The first-ever feature made by a Black lesbian filmmaker, this deceptively smart auto-fictive engagement with the ‘absence’ of Black film history and personal identity asks us to recognise the voices that are missing in the age-old narratives that have come to pass.
A rapist released from prison hatches a nefarious plan to desecrate the family of the lawyer who ruined him in Scorsese’s disturbing and intense Hitchcockian take on vengeance, control and submission, a studio remake of the 1962 original.
Eternality Tan 