Diana Clarke

Burshtein's lush visual sensibility, and the subtle performances of the excellent cast, create an aching portrayal of longing and interdependence that transcends the boundaries of the family's small world.

Wang's film allows the public activist to be privately human, showing Ye at home with her lively daughter, sharing moments of friendship with other women activists or clearing brush and describing the hard rural lives of her family.

Lipper does an excellent job of using her film as a vehicle for the voices and concerns of Nigerians, and especially of Nigerian women, who are traditionally expected to stay at home while men operate in the public sphere. But Lipper does not limit her camera to political struggles.

This film does not pander. Rather, it demands that the viewer rise to the occasion.

This film is raw in the truest sense, yet refined in its sympathy and scope.

Urgent, deeply painful yet lovely in its aesthetics.

Cutting between present, childhood, and recent past, Bispuri constructs a subtle, richly emotional collage.

This film is a wakeup call in the best sense: urgent, clear, understated.

A dance is not only motion, but emotion. This fascinating film reminds us how closely the two are linked.

Like a well-executed fine-dining experience, this sleek documentary entertains, delights, and makes viewers comfortable without evident sweat.

[A] gorgeous and unsettling documentary.

Monk With a Camera hints at answers, but imposes nothing. Like a good photograph, or a wise abbot, it only presents the evidence and allows us to arrive at truth.

What a relief to watch this small, expert film — a pane of glass in a concrete wall — that whispers, that dares to stand still and witness ordinary human pain.

It's a fault of feminism, of artistry, of generosity, for the older woman to envy one younger. And yet. How do we escape the myths into which we are born? We tell them, and show the hard work of telling.

Shot like a photo album, gorgeous frame after gorgeous frame, it continually suggests that crisis and struggle can be beautiful when viewed from the right angle.

What Dotan has to say — in arresting new footage — about today’s Hilltop Youth, a right-wing Jewish Israeli settler organization that unites and mobilizes young people to occupy territory in the West Bank, is crucial and, in the American context, frighteningly familiar.

What Yeger stirs up is profoundly unsettling and deeply moving.

[A] fascinating, unnerving documentary.

This gripping documentary about unleavened bread and the people who need it asks us to consider what we in the world owe one another — and demands that we do better.

Grounded in the art of listening, The Ruins of Lifta builds a powerful, personal, political conversation between Palestinians and Israelis looking to live differently.

Pervert Park reveals a linked chain of incidents; we are all connected whether we admit it or not. What if we all lived in communities where the people around us agreed to help us get better, rather than blaming and shaming us for our transgressions?

The Jewish Cardinal uses the luscious pleasures of the everyday to underscore and endure the big questions of identity, humanity, and home.

Despite a melodramatic title, the film is keen and measured. Drama builds in the small moments.

Surreal and wordlessly unsettling, Eduardo Williams’ globe-crossing feature The Human Surge is intimate and pleasurably inscrutable.

It's rare to find a film that portrays dancers of all shapes, colors, ages, and sizes as beautiful, which they are.

Each person’s actions here are not theirs alone, but part of a network of complicated needs and conflicting ideologies that make up contemporary Pakistan. Some of the stories are difficult to hear, but they must be listened to.

Oz is the best-known novelist in Israel, notorious for supporting a two-state solution. If you don't yet understand why he does, watch this film. If you're already on Oz's side, keeping the wound open might be worth it.

The Tainted Veil is a long conversation, wide in scope and geography, but nonetheless intimate.