Deborah Young

How this outspoken film, Bustamante’s most gripping to date, will fare domestically is an open question (it has not come out yet in Guatemala). It had a blazing bow in the Venice Days sidebar (Giornate degli Autori), where it easily grabbed the best film prize.

An uncompromising drama from one of Iran’s most outspoken directors.

Mary Shelley is a luscious-looking spectacle, drenched in the colors and visceral sensations of nature, the sensuality of young lovers, the passionate disappointment of loss and betrayal. But above all it is a film about ideas that breaks out of the well-worn mold of period drama (partly, anyway) by reaching deeply into the mind of the extraordinary woman who wrote the Gothic evergreen Frankenstein.

With great delicacy, [Maryam Touzani] shows how Moroccan society censures a woman who gives birth outside marriage — not a terribly original theme, but here it is made heartrending by the superb performances of Lubna Azabal and Nisrin Erradi in the lead roles.

It packs an unsettling message of empowerment very rare in the social injustice genre.

In his second outing as a director, top thesp Sergio Castellitto (also playing the surgeon) takes the viewer on an emotion-filled ride and brings a violently masculine perspective to the story. However, it is Penelope Cruz who gives the film's knockout performance.

A visually exalting, emotionally horrifying view of Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.

Charming, smart and funny.

Okada both wrote and directed Maquia, which showcases her ability to depict complex relationships and project delicate character arcs.

There is much to appreciate in Poitras’ low-key, down-to-business approach which employs instinctive editing choices, and not her own persona (she never appears onscreen), to build the most revealing portrait of Assange and his WikiLeaks staff in the public domain.

In his most accessible and spontaneous picture, ranking Iranian helmer Jafar Panahi reveals unsuspected comic gifts barely visible in his dramatic festival winners "The White Balloon," "The Circle" and "Crimson Gold."

Lacking the astounding social complexity of his Academy Award winning drama A Separation, here the gears are not so hidden and a sense of contrived drama leads to some tedious sections. But all is forgiven when the final punches are delivered in a knock-out finale that leaves the viewer tense and breathless.

Though shot from the Palestinian P.O.V., the Dutch/Palestinian Film Foundation co-production is remarkably balanced, offering a convinced message of hope for the future.

Rather miraculously, picture succeeds in painlessly educating its viewers about global politics and economics while it describes contemporary Africa with freshness and clarity.

The story is scarce to non-existent, but Kim Min-hee in the main role keeps the audience awake, waiting for her next socially uncensored outburst of truth.

Though it abounds in the kind of sardonic humor intrinsic to life’s absurdities, the film is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. In a nutshell, quiet desperation prevails.

Where journalism leaves off, Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) begins. It takes a unique documentary filmmaker like Gianfranco Rosi to capture the drama through the periscope of his camera focused on the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa.

Perhaps the most striking thing about David Gordon Green’s Stronger is how it refuses to turn its subject into a hero or even a small-time symbol of courage, as one might legitimately expect of a survivor story, even while the world is clamoring to put him on a pedestal.

Van Dormael's intriguing script is more than matched in his flamboyant direction of this 2-hour-plus tale, heroically edited by Matyas Veress and Susan Shipton into a fluid, generally understandable narrative.

Starless Dreams (Royahaye Dame Sobh), shot in a juvenile correctional facility for girls under the age of 18, is the perfect example of how powerful simplicity can be, when it’s underpinned by compassion for its subject.

Though it sounds like an offbeat idea even for horror fans, the tech work is so well done that it could disarm unwary buffs attracted by the campy title.

Feeling more spontaneous and improvised than ever, this tale of chance encounters at a big film festival is easy on the eye and strewn with humorous gems, as it wryly reflects on the festival business and its denizens.

Kim Ki-duk is back in fighting form in Pieta, an intense and, for the first hour, sickeningly violent film that unexpectedly segues into a moving psychological study.

If the title MS Slavic 7 fails to ring a bell, its abstractness conveys the industrious intellectual labor demanded by this witty one-hour Canadian film.

Though grippingly shot and paced, its realism makes it not an easy watch. However, one never questions the horrific circumstances in which the protag finds himself and the ending provides a bitter sort of closure and enough salve on the wounds to make the story palatable.

Both intensely exciting for its cinematic inventions and terribly uninvolving on emotional and dramatic levels.

Part let's-get-it-together band saga and part road movie, the story arc is awfully familiar, but that doesn't stop it being a rollicking romp.

Though shot in the most classic of idioms, the film commands attention with its mesmerizing performances and lively cross-cutting between key moments in the hero’s life.