Jonathan Romney

This is an exuberant manifesto that celebrates the infinite possibilities of what cinema can be.

In its narrative tautness, this documentary can hold its own alongside the best of Romania’s contemporary fiction.

A documentary that is particularly urgent and eye-opening in the context of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A complex work of novelistic density, this is among the boldest and most accomplished statements from one of the world’s exemplary filmmakers.

To say that Dominik’s film touches on a raw nerve is an understatement, but the film, dedicated to the memory of Arthur, is revealing both about these musicians’ creative processes, and about questions of mourning, trauma and emotional survival

Some cinema hits you in the gut – this film places you right inside the gut, and while it’s not always a pleasant place to be, it’s a visit you’re not likely to forget.

The Zone of Interest is a challenging rather than conventionally provocative film but, by any measure, essential viewing and a work that will be a vital focus of discussion both in the cinephile world and beyond.

Using techniques of distanciation that sometimes make it an alienating, even confusing experience, László Nemes’s cogent, strikingly confident debut is harrowing, but cinematically rewarding.

Tótem embraces chaos and bustle in an ensemble drama of a family living through crisis. This thematically rich piece offers a set of vivid character studies, while musing on life, death and time – largely from a child’s perspective.

The Brutalist is defiantly its own kind of construction, but longueurs and narrative inertia make it not quite the resounding statement it aspires to be.

What you get in these performances is intelligence, emotion and physicality, and when they come together as combustively as they do here, what you get is something extremely rare - a film that catches the messy, hot complexity of life and love.

Following the siege month by month through 2016, the film has a gripping narrative drive, with many sequences that work to variously harrowing and cathartic effect.

You don’t have to be an animal lover to appreciate the craft and the genuine poetic vision of a film which, though strictly unsentimental, is intensely moving, transfixing and quite genuinely unique.

If The Power Of The Dog isn’t the absolute killer coup that Campionites might have hoped, this is her most thoroughly conceived, consistently involving drama for years: taken all in all, pretty much the full visual, dramatic and, indeed sonic package.

Maria Speth’s study of a veteran teacher and his early teens students lasts three and a half hours, but not a moment is wasted. Anyone who teaches, or has ever been taught, will find something to relish in this serious-minded but quietly celebratory film. just as Bachmann puts the students at ease, the film-makers have managed to do the same – unintrusively catching the pupils’ episodes of vulnerability, or certain telling moments, as when two of them exchange flirtatious taunts.

Into what might have been an alienating, hard-edged setting, human warmth comes from some relishably muted performances.

While the three sections don’t tie up narratively, nor strictly conclude as such, they leave plenty of ideas in their wake – and a multitude of entrancing images.

Following his hugely ambitious period productions Mr Turner and Peterloo, the director returns to what might be considered the quintessential Leigh mode of tightly-framed domestic drama, and does so with exceptional bite.

Taken on its own terms as an unashamedly anachronistic attempt to muster the emotional intensity of the Hollywood melodrama tradition, Cooper’s film must be at least grudgingly acknowledged as a success.

Even as the film sails insouciantly into a rarefied imaginative stratosphere of its own, it’s anchored to emotional reality by a dazzling performance by Emma Stone – if anything, outdoing her revelatory turn in The Favourite.

A challenging narrative structure - withholding key information and skipping between several time frames - makes this film a daunting watch overall. But Wang’s ambition and seriousness, aided by strong ensemble performances, ensure it is a formidable and, for the most part, involving work of novelistic scope.

Andersson’s consistency may have made him a director for acolytes above all, but they will find this a satisfying and richly resonant lesson in obliqueness and sometimes opacity.

There’s more than a hint of other-worldly tragedy here, limned in parallel with the allusions to political conflict whose root causes no-one can quite remember.

Beautifully shot, like Rohrwacher’s other features, on Super-16, this film, with its richly textured images, does indeed feel at times like a retrieved and rather miraculous relic from a lost era of cinema, which is not to say that it isn’t of its own moment.

Fallen Leaves may not set the film world on fire, but is guaranteed to cast a warm glow.

In terms of execution and panache, Museum has the mark of a true original – at least, of a film-maker discovering his own voice through fearlessly trying whatever works, sometimes tipping his hat to tradition, sometimes following his own path with brio.

Haynes makes intriguing work of subtly metafictional psychodrama in May December.

Its immersive intensity makes it essential viewing for Serra followers, and for anyone interested in documentary’s ability to record, and make us think about, the extremes of the real world.

The result is bound to offend on a wide scale, but also exhilarate with its sheer rage and ebullient aggression. Not for the faint-hearted, and certainly not for fans of Israel’s political status quo, Yes promises to stir very heated debate.

Two Prosecutors is crisply fable-like in construction.

The film displays intense emotional seriousness and is finely performed and directed; but further shaping could have revealed the more focused work that’s begging to emerge.

A potent emotional charge, very contemporary eco-consciousness, and film-making that at its best fairly sizzles in its strangeness mark out EO as an animal film that stands defiantly on its own hooves.

The film derives a magnetic continuity, and an unsettling range of dynamics, from Haque Badhon’s performance

Laxe maintains rising tension throughout, although to frustratingly inconclusve effect and somewhat at the cost of conventional dramatic satisfactions, but the boldness of the undertaking will appeal mightily to cinephiles hungry for movies that take real risks.

The film is uneven: gripping when it maps out psychological stresses in a claustrophobic domestic setting, less so in the final stretches when it incongruously morphs into a women-in-peril thriller.

Landmarks may not strictly be the film that admirers of Martel’s formal radicalism have been waiting for: notwithstanding some eccentricities, it is a relatively conventional work. But it’s very much from the heart, and from the political conscience – a critique of colonial history and the enduring abuse of power in Argentina.

The result is mixed: buoyantly energetic at times, manically unamusing at others and decidedly overstretched.

Hard Times, as the name title suggests, is not an easy film to watch, nor is it intended to be.

The Blue Caftan is a keenly tuned, non-judgmental exploration of an enduring relationship that has thrived despite the stresses of conflicting desires and the pressures of social norms.

Sarsgaard is characteristically impressive, his gentle performance holding onto its mysteries and maintaining a dry delicacy that eschews Hollywood demonstrativeness.

With contemplative slow pacing that is leisurely rather than laborious, and Cecilie Semec’s clean, luminous camerawork equally making the most of Oslo’s harbour area and the cast’s characterful, attentive faces, Love is a drama about choice, chance and the carpe diem imperative, especially in the face of illness and emotional distress.

This is undeniably a very theatrical film, but it never hides that – indeed, it makes the most of a certain claustrophobia. It’s an immensely watchable evocation of a moment when black America was on the verge of an upheaval that continues to resonate, in 2020 as strongly as ever. It absolutely puts you – to coin a phrase of the time – in the room where it happened.

Beautifully shot, impressively cast, and revolving round a charismatic lead from long-time US indie favourite Pitt, the film otherwise comes across as a derivative, solemn affair with a look that suggests a retro gloss finish on generic material.

Some small-scale but surprising formal twists, and much playfulness, will keep his admirers happy.

Co-scripted by Céline Sciamma, director of Water Lilies and Girlhood, Being 17 manifestly benefits from her insight into the problems of young people searching for their social and sexual identities; this, combined with Téchiné’s controlled vision and superb direction of actors, makes the new film a quietly potent proposition.

Featuring a terrific performance from Jennifer Ehle and a bold, quietly nerve-shredding lead from Morfydd Clark, this is a hugely individual, distinctly British piece of genre-tweaking with a strong female focus and clear potential to cross borders between arthouse and upmarket horror sectors.

This might suggest that Misericordia is ultimately a film with a message, and a more solemn one than we’re used to with Guiraudie. But any apparent clarity should be taken with a pinch of salt, the film’s meanings shifting as constantly as the erotic drives between the various male (and occasionally female) characters.

At once over-repetitive and less surprisingly digressive than some of his other films, The Woman Who Left may not represent Diaz at his absolute peak, but it’s a powerful, thoughtful melodrama that pulls you into its world and delivers a number of irresistible emotional coups.

Given that it’s about a tequila factory, Mexican drama Dos Estaciones is as sobering as they come – but it’s also a bracingly potent distillation of drama, psychological portraiture and passionate flouting of clichés, both national and sexual.

The film’s magnetic centre is a strong performance from Vysotskaya, working from a base line of initial testiness to rising anxiety and terror in face of the oppression that she realises she has been enabling.

The result is an undemonstrative but rich contemplation of memory, time and – as shown by the shifting nuances of expression on Rebecca Hall’s face – the pleasures of simply giving someone your undivided attention.

The Animal Kingdom sets itself up as a brooding chiller, jump scares, freaky coups de cinéma and all, but gradually shifts gear to become more poetic and tender.

This film is an informative, polished and bracingly upbeat production.

Anselm is a portrait of eminent German artist Anselm Kiefer, exploring the man’s spectacular – and often spectacularly sombre – work. Wenders also delves into Kiefer’s biography and his political, historical and literary interests, which chime with the director’s own long-term fascinations to make this arguably the director’s most personal – and certainly most German – film in some time.

While, on one level, it seems to belong to international cinema’s increasingly prevalent strain of climate catastrophe dramas, on another it’s a brittle character piece, a comedy of social embarrassment with a dark and ultimately tragic undertow. Until, that is, a coda ties it off in another register entirely.

It’s his most mature film, an unabashedly and audaciously experimental work.

A hypnotic and inventive Asian odyssey ... The viewer may not know exactly where Gomes and his characters are headed, but the journey is pursued with wit, imagination and intelligence, and delivers oblique insights about the way we see the world and history.

In the sheer exuberance of its exploratory spirit, Koberidze’s film is very much of benefit to cinema – and any who feared that the art form was running out of new ways to find poetry in the real.

So compellingly directed and acted that for much of the time we could almost be watching a documentary, Life and Nothing More is an involving, quietly moving piece that eschews conventional narrative shape to offer a multi-layered depiction of exactly what the title promises.

Murphy’s performance, Tim Mielants’s controlled direction and subtle emotional heft combine to make this low-key adaption of Claire Keegan’s Booker-nominated 2021 novella very much a proposition to be reckoned with.

Her film definitely offers a chance to look more closely not just at the political condition of Brazil but, by extension, at the rise of far-right populism worldwide.

While the film recounts events three decades ago, it couldn’t be more relevant today.

A 21-film anthology on everyday life under bombing in Gaza, From Ground Zero offers a vivid range of insights into the daily challenges faced by civilians, particularly valuable given the restrictions on news reporting there.

A powerful and troubling drama about the Stalin era. ... This is a film to revel in, and to argue about – and for some, no doubt, to recoil from – but it’s one of the most original works of the year, and a stand-out of what is proving a rich spell in Russian cinema.

Kuperstein’s roaming camera may sometimes overwhelm the film with its artful choreography, but generally manages to take the viewer by surprise – as does a comic narrative which constantly takes unexpected turns.

Muntean leads us into a playfully caustic realm of social satire, as his characters find themselves in unknown territory without either GPS or a clear moral compass.

Bernhard Keller’s fine photography gives this tense realist drama a streak of no-frills outdoor poetry, without overstressing its genre affinities. A strong cast, grizzled non-professionals in the great neo-realist tradition, are totally convincing.

Loznitsa’s essay raises questions about the nature and ideological mechanisms of totalitarian myth-making, and the nature of public grief as propagandist display.

Wang’s brutally revealing trilogy presents a challenging statement about working-class life, urban and rural, and urges us to think about economic exploitation and the nature of labour in the globalised world.

Larraín’s highly varied visual invention and command of complex structure serve as a reminder of how vitally an imaginative director can skew what otherwise might have emerged in more mainstream colours.

The young cast, from the newbie leads to an army of go-for-it extras, are terrific, and Marillier is something else – ferociously expressive in a performance that’s no-holds-barred on every front.

Michôd’s film is a determinedly solemn and violent affair, which makes a sober political point at the end – but not before it has treated us to two hours of bleakly realistic historical reconstruction and some lugubrious drama.

It’s a shame that Giannoli’s film, while ambitious, confidently executed and more than honourable, nevertheless feels like something of a relic.

Michael Thomas’ imposing performance will be the hook for a film that, while executed with Seidl’s typical steely control, might strike his followers as being a touch too familiar – while non-adepts will find its darker dimensions altogether too bleak for comfort.

Tantura makes for a fascinating, troubling watch, although it doesn’t altogether come across as rigorously objective, given rhetorical touches in both music (ominous ambient drones, ironically boisterous kibbutz songs) and visuals (thriller-style close-ups of Katz’s cassettes playing, a pointed insert of a see-no-evil monkey statuette).

Working with Carbunariu, Jude offers a spare, visually striking evocation of the methods of Ceausescu’s secret police, the Securitate, in its pursuit and punishment of a young dissident.

For all its poetic charm, this is a slender work that comes across as something of a ’mindfulness movie’, in a faintly self-satisfied vein.

Its dramatic heft and its stars’ upfront audacity make it a sexy proposition in every respect.

While American Honey exudes ample energy, this episodic piece doesn’t muster much narrative drive over its daunting running time of two and three quarter hours. There’s probably a stronger, tighter film in here, but fair game at least to Arnold in her commitment to following the winding back roads of filmic experiment rather than the well-mapped highway of storytelling.

Even though it sometimes feels as if Corsini is trying to keep too many plates spinning, the whole risky exercise pays off to provocative effect.

It’s a film made with honesty, integrity and a certain grace, but it can’t quite overcome an earnestness that was never a problem in Hansen-Love’s best films, which carried their literary and cinematic inspirations lightly.

Each of the film’s three strands has its own dramatic flaws and virtues. But what is most intriguing is the way that the stories are braided, both in editor Anita Roth’s intercutting and in the establishing of visual parallels.

Compartment No. 6 is something of a minimalist shaggy dog story, ending on a bittersweet low-key note.

La Caja is a canny blend of detective story, political drama and rites of passage vignette, and is the sort of film that comes across as so simple and direct that it’s easy to miss how meticulously conceived and constructed it is.

It’s a safe bet that many contemporary viewers will find the film confusing, abrasive, pretentious and antediluvian in its sexual politics. But there’s no denying the audacity of Welles’s undertaking, and of the reconstruction project. What can be said with certainty is that this version of Wind is perplexing, sometimes exhausting but never less than fascinating.

A film of sober elegance and control, Wife Of A Spy never quite delivers on the tautness of its build-up, but it is beautifully executed and features a number of teasingly ambivalent performances, notably from lead Yu Aoi.

The film refrains from diagnosing or analysing – either Keiko’s psyche or her condition – but describes and evokes her world with subtle detached insight. It does so on a miniature scale that some might find frustrating or non-committal, but that allows director Miyake to give us Keiko in close-up, yet in a manner that’s scrupulously non-intrusive too.

Narratively spare ... Less substantial and approachable than Hong’s 2022 features The Novelist’s Film and Walk Up, the fragile, fragmentary In Our Day won’t earn Hong any new fans, but avid followers will enjoy its elusive felicities and love puzzling over its enigmatic gaps.

An elegant, sometimes eerie film, Celebration does not editorialise: its only implicit commentary is a futuristic electronic score, which suggests that Saint-Laurent is something of an extra-terrestrial being. A tender, more melancholic work than its title would imply, Celebration should not be construed as a debunking of its subject, more as a gentle lament for an institution fading into the sunset.

Rather than a chic bagatelle, this proves an acutely intelligent, finely acted and – despite its cerebral edge - emotionally rich piece.

This satire about media, emotional alienation and – need it be said? – the state of the nation makes its point quickly and forcefully before going on to make it again and again, with different modulations, for over two hours. It’s a shame, because somewhere within this sprawling piece is something audacious and playful.

Essentially a frothy bagatelle, and sometimes overworking the slightest of jokes, nevertheless this lively, sleekly executed farce from the Argentinian makers of black comedy The Distinguished Citizen offers comic and visual pleasures alike, plus crisp acting from its lead trio.

This story of a guilt-ridden bailiff ostensibly resembles conventional social realism but then broadens its scope fascinatingly, foregrounding satirical intent and a mischievous degree of verbal overload.

For all its familiarity, Ly’s film is executed with enormous confidence and energy, building up to an apocalyptic ending that delivers on a gradual build-up of nervous tension.

Moving, politically committed and with an absolute ring of hard-researched reality, this is at the very least their finest since 2011’s The Kid With The Bike, and arguably one of their very best.

A beautifully executed, intellectually searching and sometimes droll futuristic drama.

The film offers an engrossing overview of the painstaking, insightful investigations carried out over the years by Lewis and associates.

British director Joe Hunting has made a tender, affecting documentary about love, friendship and people finding a place where they can be themselves.