Fionnuala Halligan

In short, The Velvet Underground is a documentary that meets the Velvet Underground eye-to-eye and enriches it.

The Latasters rarely put a foot wrong - from their static opening shot in the town of Hapert to the final frames of Miss Kiet in her classroom, this is a beautifully-judged piece.

Dark River is distinguished by superior film-making and admirable command of tone and pacing. Once again, Barnard delivers an intimate take on a difficult subject, raising anticipation for her future work should she decide to scale up.

It seems to encapsulate a generation’s dreams and disappointments, torments and triumphs. Even if it takes place on the other side of the world, it’s still a story we all know when we see it.

Long and detailed and frequently terrifying, Alex Gibney’s documentary about a 1994 massacre in a pub in Northern Ireland is investigative journalism at its rigorous best.

Abbasi has made an Iranian noir which, even though it dares to poke around the spiritual capital of Iran with its largest mosque in the world, isn’t an assault on the Iranian government per se, but a crime thriller which shows how far fundamentalist morality can be twisted and how banal the face of evil really is.

Like wrapping yourself up in a beloved book, Unicorns takes you to a new place, returning you charmed and changed.

Very British and proudly Black, Edwards’ film juggles tones and formats we’ve never seen put together before and it’s a pleasure to see a first-timer flex her muscles in a part-musical, wholly dramatic story of a recently-released prisoner who takes a shine to his partner’s micro red frock.

As a drama, this is less nourishing than the heritage it pays tribute to. But for Chazelle, the story is just a slight rib around which he builds a modern rhapsody.

Soft and sweet, Kirsten Tan’s bright and airy debut is also quietly eloquent, speaking of a loss and regret.

It’s confusing and heavy and bears down hard until a third-act swerve throws in colours and movement and spins the viewer out of the theatre in wonder. It won’t be forgotten.

A Family Affair is by turns fascinating and futile, running the risk that by exposing the heartbreak of one family it will repel all those with their own unresolvable family sadness.

There’s a lightness to the film and a loveliness to Feña’s open-hearted struggle.

A complex, steady, deeply intelligent film with a chilling resonance today.

Making his debut, writer-director Josh Margolin combines acuity and playfulness in a funny action-drama whose spirit animal is Mission: Impossible.

In terms of filmed stage entertainment, Hamilton is a cut above (literally, as there’s an overhead camera, as well as one from the back of the stage). Hamilton is a technically difficult, fast and extremely complex stage show to perform: this film puts the viewer up close but also backs out when appropriate and makes strong strategic decisions on how to frame and move.

The spirit king of the Greek Weird Wave has produced a profoundly puzzling, dizzyingly disturbing and dark-hearted set of loosely-connected stories which manage to be discordantly amusing and strangely exhilarating – a cinematic salt-rub.

There’s a cheerful pragmatism to the characters and the piece itself, a reflection and distillation of the caring, musical, religious community in which it is set. Deliberate and unhurried, Islands is also the type of quiet film that happily watches a microwave as it warms chicken adobo for a full minute.

Arcevedo is certainly as preoccupied with image as he is content and it is perhaps the individual frames and tableaux which linger on past this resolutely-downbeat, emblematic story.

It’s seductive, fragmented, involving.

There’s much that is brilliant here, although the loss of nuance in translation from page to screen reduces a potent brew of emotions to more literally-depicted stages and consequences of pure, overwhelming, overwrought grief.

The Children Act is a cerebral piece, for sure, and a disturbing one by the end, but Thompson’s performance brings life to the complex moral questions it attempts to examine.

Knight’s intuitive portrayal – her vulnerability, rage and raw sexiness – shows and tells exactly what it’s like. It’s a moving and emotional debut which knocks out any loaded sense of familiarity regarding the film’s no-hope setting.

The extent of Kroc’s greed is The Founder’s unique playing card, and John Lee Hancock delivers it with a depressingly special sauce.

What sets it apart is Thornton’s deep spirituality, examined here as the titular ‘The New Boy’ encounters – and explores – Christianity. But it is not a two-way street: Christianity will never accept who he is.

Wind River can be thrilling and it owns the ability to surprise and shock throughout.

Edward Berger returns to the German source material, adding some twists and turns, in a wrenching, visceral adaptation of a work that is almost a century old, written when ruined veterans could still hear the sound of the gunfire in their dreams.

[An] empathetic documentary ... It can’t be classified as triumphant but, with Ferguson’s editorial savvy, Nothing Compares reclaims O’Connor’s rights to her own narrative in a film which ends on a proud note. It’s also a reminder of how genuine she has been throughout decades of struggle.