Venice etc.

“Our Time gores masculinity on its own horns. Carlos Reygadas lays bare masculine pathology with a typically bravura and extraordinarily unsparing dissection of love and marriage, casting himself and his spouse, Natalia López, at the heart of the piece. Reygadas conducts existential investigations into the human capacity for altruism, the correlation between love and possession, [...]

“Son of Saul director László Nemes deftly conjures the death throes of the Austro-Hungarian empire in an atmospheric mystery drama. Sunset is an occult mystery drama about the fin-de-siècle anxieties of the dying Austro-Hungarian empire. It takes place in Budapest in 1913, with a distinctly disturbing coda in the wartime trenches, a setting that is [...]

“Early 18th century. England is at war with the French. Nevertheless, duck racing and pineapple eating are thriving. A frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne and her close friend Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) governs the country in her stead while tending to Anne’s ill health and mercurial temper. When a new servant Abigail [...]

“An offbeat Sudanese love story set in a time of civil war. Adnan is a Sudanese war hero whose love for his AK-47 are rivalled only by his feelings for Lina, his long-suffering sweetheart. When Adnan is late to return to his military unit after leave, the army commander launches a “kasha” to round up [...]

“Saeed is a young cinephile trying to teach film rules to other young people in Eastern Ghouta, Syria, but the reality they face is too harsh to respect any rules. Saeed’s friend, Milad, is on the other side of the fence; in Damascus, a city under the control of the Assad regime, finishing his studies [...]

“Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante’s work has included the challengingly violent crime drama Heli (2013). Now he has created a bizarre realist-fantasy parable in which queasy eroticism and body horror are absorbed into life’s many pains and injustices. It is set in Guanajuato in central Mexico, which Escalante’s movie endows with a forbidding remoteness. (…) This [...]

“Home focuses on a group of surly teenagers who appear indifferent to school, resentful of their elders and constantly in search of a fresh sensation to alleviate the boredom of their existences. It quickly develops into something more complex and compelling as it explores the vast difference in values and attitudes between teenagers who disregard [...]

“There may be no greater ambassador for Chile’s complex historical identity than Pablo Larraín, the writer-director whose diverse filmography explores his country’s struggles from a variety of inventive directions. While “Tony Manero” and “Post Mortem” offered bleak, subversive allegorical statements on life under dictatorship, the Oscar-nominated “No” explored the climax of the Pinochet dictatorship in [...]

“In some ways, “Neon Bull,” the astonishing second feature by the Brazilian documentarian director Gabriel Mascaro, is a movie about animal smells. An intoxicating reflection on the interconnection of taste, scent, instinct and desire, the film, gorgeously photographed by Diego Garcia (“Cemetery of Splendour” by A. Weersasethakul) immerses you in the intensely pungent world of [...]

“Rose reckons a family’s like a constellation - all connected, hanging up there, in the infinite. Stars can feel each other, even if some died millions of years ago. Even if they’re light years apart. Over the course of one long day, as mum wills her children closer, Rose’s fractured family pulls back into its [...]