Lee Marshall

Some of the credit must go to the stellar casting and performances. It’s difficult to single out one of the six actors in this alternative family unit as it’s a true ensemble display. But Kore-eda’s deft command of tone is a key factor too.

Surprising, awkward, refreshing and, at times, downright hilarious, German director Maren Ade’s dazzlingly original follow-up to her 2009 Berlinale Silver Bear winner Everyone Else is that rarest of things: a nearly three-hour-long German-Austrian arthouse comedy-drama that (almost) never drags.

It is an absorbing film of quiet power.

It’s this adoption not only of Minnie’s point of view but the voice and narrative style of her half girlish, half womanly outlook on life that makes The Diary of a Teenage Girl such a vibrant, hopeful film.

The Favourite is one of those rare films where the energy generated by three talents at the top of their game and the energy generated by their characters swirl and merge in a perfect storm.

The nothing much that unfurls over the following eighty or so minutes feels like everything.

A rich, densely cinematic film, it is a stunning assured debut from young Filipino filmmaker Rafael Manuel.

Limber and thought-provoking, An Unfinished Film is an absorbing portrait of an unfinished era.

The wry, flamboyant cinematic opera of Paolo Sorrentino reaches new heights of showy, utterly tasteful magnificence in Youth.

Hardly a second too long despite its almost two-hour running time, this urgent, absorbing documentary should be required viewing for those, inside or outside the United States, who are struggling to make sense of the recent presidential election. It will also speak to anyone interested in the battle over books and gender issues that has been raging for some time now in the American educational sector.

Wiseman’s true subject here is arguably off-screen, shamed by example, guilty in absentia: the erosion of democratic values and civil, civic debate in an increasingly divided country.

Those who have the patience to go with its ravishing flow will find ample rewards, as Long Day’s Journey is a beautiful, smoulderingly romantic film.

Johnson and co-writer Matthew Miller turn the story of RIM’s brisk rise and meteoric fall into a kind of breathless tech fever dream, a relentless but addictive downbeat human comedy about the struggle to stay on top in a fast-moving industry.

By the end, loving and eating, wanting and devouring are made to converge in ways that are both gruesome and fascinating, thought-provoking and oddly touching.

While it smoulders with indignation for the injustice that was perpetrated for so many years, Great Freedom is also a love story, a remarkable character study, and an absorbing meditation on what long-term imprisonment for a crime that is not a crime does to the soul.

The main thing with a rousing cinematic experience like Architecton is that it wins the emotional argument.

Perhaps the most persuasive aspect of this hopeful parable of failure is the way casting, acting, script, and camerawork conspire to usher us into an immediately believable world which is observed with a painterly eye yet never seems staged.

An engaging, authentic, moving film about the way society persists in seeing monsters where there are none.

Tickled is unexpectedly compelling, alternately painful and funny and deeply sad.

The Lighthouse provides a marvellous chamber-drama platform for two actors, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, who seize the opportunity with gusto.

It’s a tragedy of sorts, one that at times is almost too dark to bear. But there are moments too when Hold Me Tight achieves something quite remarkable, blurring the line between reality and imaginings to burrow into the heart of grief and loss in ways that are also life-affirming.

Nobody is quite perfect here, nobody fully the villain; and as our suspicions wax and wane about Rahim himself, we, the audience, become the emotional repositories of these constantly shifting grey areas.

Director Jon Watts’ self-penned script possesses a faultless sense of timing, and it becomes the gift that keeps on giving in the hands of Clooney, Pitt and a fine supporting cast.

The prolific French director clearly needed to breeze through this one – and the breeziness is infectious.

Hadzihalilovic is a director who refuses to compromise her very distinctive vision and that is the case here, even if The Ice Tower, which bows in Berlin Competition, is her biggest film to date; utterly beautiful in every frame with a breakout lead performance by young French actress Clara Pacini.

Making a great documentary is half finding the right story, half knowing what to do with it. Ramin Bahrani hits the jackpot on both counts in this slyly entertaining but also morally and emotionally resonant investigation.

The Childhood Of A Leader is as relentlessly sombre and compelling as the film’s remarkable, full-volume orchestral soundtrack by musician’s musician Scott Walker.

It makes for powerful and stimulating viewing whether or not a game is being played with viewers.