Lovia Gyarkye

The stories in Simon’s doc live in a French context, but the plight of its participants is near universal. In the face of resurgent attacks on bodily autonomy around the world, Our Body is an urgent and political project.

Sankofa’s marvels range from Gerima’s meticulous editing style and electrifying use of music to his liberating nonlinear storytelling techniques. But I find myself most consistently drawn to the film’s fluid embrace of language, what it reveals about rebellion and how it deepens our understanding of Gerima’s characters.

A kinetic blend of a fictional Afro-futurist narrative, archival research on decades of Black visual and multimedia work, and personal history.

Saint Omer might be fiction, but Diop does not stray too far from her documentary roots. The film maintains a sense of naturalism even during its most tense moments. Diop’s directing style leans observational, as if she is watching and recording her screenplay’s effect on her performers.

The frenetic editing might leave some viewers dizzy as they try to sort sober realities from sensational storytelling, but Grimonprez makes thrilling connections that should push viewers to pursue their own research.

Ross, honoring the perspective shift that characterizes Whitehead’s novel, switches between Elwood and Turner’s points of view, remaining, at all times, in the subjective mode. The commitment to this way of storytelling imbues Nickel Boy with an overwhelming intimacy and becomes another way that Ross, as a filmmaker, stretches what it means to represent Black people.

Seeds is not a journalistic investigation but a poetic contemplation.

Sugarcane’s sensitivity to the ongoing pain of its subjects is one of the film’s principal achievements. NoiseCat and Kassie offer an affecting portrait of a community that endures in spite of colonial genocide.

It’s a clear-eyed, but by no means exhaustive, documentary that investigates this underreported crisis without losing sight of the people processing the depths of their loss.

The conclusions that Our Father, the Devil ultimately draws are powerful, redemptive and stirring.

The film is not merely an observation of aging. It is also about how this process echoes the emotional dramas of adolescence, and Friedland liberates the story of older adults from the confines of melancholy.

Perhaps what’s most impressive about On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is Nyoni’s respect for subtext. Her film doesn’t aim to be a guide, a balm or an ode to forgiveness. The director rejects the ease of over-explanation and allure of an exclusively reverential tone. She reaches for honesty, and what she uncovers is at once disquieting and deeply absorbing.

Throughout Night Is Not Eternal, Wang models an urgent and necessary type of critical thinking. Her questions become one of the most striking elements of this project, which takes a surprising turn.

The latter half of Chevalier obediently fills the holes of its familiar puzzle. The cast — a wonderful bunch — sustain our interest with their congenial performances. Harrison is especially spry as he balances Saint-Georges’ confidence, jovial comportment and rumored temper.

Despite its subject matter, Playground is not a call to action masked as a film. It’s a gripping work of observation more concerned with identifying patterns, teasing out motivations and laying bare the reality of how we come to relate to one another.

In this way Across the Spider-Verse gets even more serious about recreating the experience of reading a comic book. The animations are not just striking, but incredibly absorbing in each new dimension.

The Inheritance, Ephraim Asili’s debut feature film, beautifully abandons genre to consider questions about community, art and Black liberation.

Katrina Babies is an assertion of presence, a proclamation that the devastating hurricane is not simply a past story, but a present one too.

Davies Jr. deftly connects the broken promises of the nation state with the fragility of the family at the center of his story. It’s in these final scenes of this impressive debut that he displays his full promise as a filmmaker.

In less assured hands, Cactus Pears might have edged into trite territory, yielding to the familiar beats of trauma-laden queer love stories, but Kanawade’s considered direction and spare storytelling keep the narrative refreshing.

Part of this tender animation’s appeal comes from its committed and absorbing voice performances.

It is a responsible and uncomplicated adaptation, one that capitalizes on the story’s lore and legacy. But it’s not withholding, either. The film crucially invites a new generation to join Margaret in the weird, challenging and sometimes wonderful experience of getting older.

Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama is a melancholic story transformed into a precious portrait by the director’s generous and nurturing eye. She digs into the familiar landscape of a Black mother facing an oppressive legal system and pulls from it the most unexpected and humanizing details. She observes them with a loving curiosity, and then asks viewers to do the same.

Ironically, Sirat gets muddled near the end. Although the last act is in many ways the liveliest — viewers will be jolted by a series of bleak twists — it’s also where Laxe relinquishes narrative coherence in the service of making his metaphors more literal.

A timely reminder of the legacy of voting rights in the U.S. and an inspiring testament to the power of community organizing.

As evidence mounts, The Perfect Neighbor steadily and deftly builds momentum until its crushing apogee.

Haroun takes a quiet, meditative approach to storytelling.

In exploring how the ruptures of the past map themselves onto relationships in the present, [Quy] elegantly approaches a familiar theme: how war reverberates throughout generations, imposing on witnesses and their successors.

Collaborating again with The Unknown Country cinematographer Andrew Hajek, Maltz plays with close-ups and other snug camera angles to make viewers co-conspirators in Jazzy’s adventures. There’s an endearing clumsiness to the film, too, reflecting the awkward pauses and missteps of real life.

Vengeance Most Fowl is a brisk and well-paced escapade, in which Gromit proves himself to still be one of our best screen actors and Wallace’s absentminded behavior still endears.

Dawn Porter crafts a striking profile of a singular musician.

Rare is the reflection on Black cinema that even tries to address all these critical points. Still, it makes digestion, especially on the first watch, overwhelming. Is That Black Enough for You?!? is layered and informative but, like a scholarly thesis, requires a bit of work to unpack. It’s a challenge worth accepting.

The feature is a visual poem, an enveloping four-stanza ode to experiences shared by a man and his daughters.

All elements of this arresting documentary work together to push an urgent thesis: What we are attuned to hearing, to seeing and to thinking about the U.S. and what the country can and cannot afford to do is by design. It’s better to realize that now before it’s too late.

Mars One revels in the lives of its characters, taking a leisurely and scenic route to understanding their dreams and realities.

Self Reliance fares better when it plays up its fictional reality TV show. Johnson flexes his familiarity with the landscape and its mechanics.

As Joyland heads toward its end, the film grows increasingly moving. Secrets and their attendant lies collapse under pressure. The weight of what’s left unsaid strangles interactions.

It’s in transporting viewers into the heart of this jungle, where the moths calibrate the ecosystem, that Nocturnes most its most compelling case for protecting these exquisite creatures and our planet.

Belly of the Beast does not reach for happy endings and is most absorbing in its thesis, which makes the stakes of this battle against human rights violations loud and clear.

If making a film is challenging under fortunate circumstances, one can only imagine the obstacles faced by filmmakers trying to survive annihilation.

Kaphar, who also wrote the screenplay, draws many fine, if familiar, conclusions about the corrosive nature of generational trauma.

Pain Hustlers is strongest when it focuses on Liza and maps her complicated web of desire and integrity.

The film — and in turn the director — demands a lot from viewers; even with ample warning and disclaimers, it won’t be for everyone. Those who can stomach it will be rewarded with a courageous work of art.

American Fiction is smart and, thanks to its fine cast, has genuine heart.

By focusing on the students’ stories, honoring their choices and leaving considerable room for their ambivalence, regret and uncertainty, the doc provides a sobering and emotional look at what, if any, options exist for those who aren’t white or wealthy in an unequal system.

Performances are what ultimately sets Bruiser apart as a debut and signal Warren’s potential as a director.

Even when Mountains’ narrative, which often feels more like a series of beautifully conjured vignettes, doesn’t hit its full potential, the way Sorelle thinks of gentrification rewards our close attention.

With its stellar performances, dramatic orchestral score and rich costume and set design, Illusions Perdues is a worthwhile, sweeping narrative of love, lust and literary ambition.

Its success comes from interrogating the cultural assumption that there is no space for a range of sexual orientations and gender identities within religious communities.

Dig deeper and Huesera reveals itself to be a wilier film — an astute study of desire and self-deception.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is a film with much to offer when it comes to lessons and laughs. It even handles its primary themes about loss, grief and community with humor and grace, an approach that, these days, seems especially hard to find.

Rarely does Ben Hania’s film feel exploitative or manipulative. In fact, more than anything, Four Daughters is radical in its honesty and courage.

Barbie is driven by jokes — sometimes laugh-out-loud, always chuckle-worthy — that poke light fun at Mattel, prod the ridiculousness of the doll’s lore and gesture at the contradictions of our sexist society.

Through a pointed script and propulsive storytelling, Moratto smartly makes the stakes of living within such a perverse system clear.

Harka darts between genre conventions: One minute it feels like a thriller, the next a heart-wrenching drama, another a psychological study. When the risky mix-and-match works — and sometimes it doesn’t — the results are emotionally potent. Nathan is fascinated by desperation, the kind that roots itself in the mind and soul. What lengths will a desperate person go to in order to survive? That is the essential, thrilling question coursing through Harka.

It’s a declarative project, which oscillates between didacticism and experimentalism. What viewers take away from the doc will depend on their familiarity with Woolf novel. Preciado’s film comes most alive when it plays with its source material.

Shine Your Eyes, from the Brazilian filmmaker Matias Mariani, finds a distinctive way to tell a familiar narrative — of immigrants in megacities, of how dreams can pummel you and of the complexity of fraternal bonds.

Ricky struggles with underbaked narrative threads and breathless direction that can verge on unfocused.

Part Two is plagued by a nagging shallowness when it comes to portraying the Fremen, an indigenous people fighting for self-determination within the empire; the film has difficulty fully embracing the nuance of Herbert’s anti-imperial and ecologically dystopian text.

There’s a satisfaction to hearing Blume, a sharp woman with a winking sense of humor, talk about her path to writing. Her meandering trajectory toward the medium and her challenging journey to harnessing her craft are a refreshing contrast to the contemporary system of publishing, which rewards the young, gifted and confessional.

Talati’s film offers a sensitive and distinctive take on the fraught dynamics between mothers and daughters.

Charlie Polinger opens his thrilling and uneasy directorial debut feature The Plague with an arresting sequence that quickly establishes the haunting undertones of this adolescent psychological thriller.

Manning Walker does a fine job building a sense of dread and shifting tone without losing the story’s momentum.

Vigalondo’s film has a compelling premise, but the story (he also wrote the screenplay) gets away from him, resulting in a film that never quite hits its stride.

Punchy delivery styles, shimmering personalities and kaleidoscopic perspectives make up the soul of D. Smith’s gutsy documentary Kokomo City

What makes Twinless special and surprisingly compassionate is how this director handles grieving characters.

Despite its commitment to biting humor and acerbic analysis, Competencia Oficial is, at its heart, a celebration of artists and their process.

The clashes between Afghan women and the Taliban forces oppressing them is captured with clear-eyed honesty and a compassionate eye in Bread and Roses

It’s a moving and intimate narrative about the toll displacement takes on generations of people.

One could walk away with deep thoughts about modernity and the relationship between nature and man, but that’s not required. Appreciating the beauty of an intricate process unfolding is more than enough.

Fresnadillo’s film puts on fewer airs of disruption than other versions of this story, so the narrative comes off as less self-satisfied. Still, it struggles to sustain an inspirational tenor.

The most compelling parts of The Substance deal with how social conventions turn women against themselves. A stronger version of the film might have dug into the complexities of that truth, instead of simply arranging itself around it.

It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but Nope offers up a glutton’s feast for Peele disciples and fans of brainy sci-fi thrillers, ushering the director into an intriguing new phase of cinema that’s as rhapsodic as it is demanding.

Every Body is primarily an informative documentary, one that takes a cursory glance at many facets of the intersex awareness conversation to give viewers unfamiliar with the material a new perspective.

Disenchanted lacks the charisma and curiosity of its predecessor.

One of the most absorbing parts of Alice, Darling is watching Alice, Sophie and Tess interact with each other throughout the weekend — to witness the frustrating moments of misunderstanding and the triumphant ones of clarity. Kendrick, Mosaku and Horn sustain a natural rapport, which makes investing in their friendship easy.

While filming Transition, Bryon was on assignment, working on a feature film in the final stages of post-production. Even when the documentary doesn’t fulfill its ambitions or potential, it does preview the exciting work coming from its director.

Although astute viewers may easily predict God’s Country’s final moments, the journey there is still a wild and satisfying one.

The artist’s charm is never more apparent than in the final section of Apolonia, Apolonia, in which we hear Glob and Apolonia’s phone conversations. Apolonia is no longer just a subject but a confidant. She has pulled not only Glob but us, too, into her orbit.

Wignot handles details of the legend’s tumultuous biography with great care, honoring his talents while acknowledging the toll they took on him. But perhaps the greatest gift of this tightly conceived and beautiful doc lies in its appreciation of the divinity of dance.

Questlove shapes an engaging narrative that charts Stone’s undulating career.

The strengths of this slender film, which Tsou co-wrote with Baker, stem from its authentic rendition of daily life in a bustling metropolis.

Arnow’s film won’t be for everyone — there’s a specificity and an insider energy to some of the jokes, which don’t always land — but there’s enough to fuel curiosity about what Arnow is trying to do. Even the title, with its sense of drifting and silent ellipses, makes you think.

What makes Leo special are the kinds of lessons on offer. Its message is well-timed for a generation who find themselves held hostage by their parents’ anxieties and stand to inherit a world of problems. Leo encourages adults to let go and reminds kids that growing up doesn’t have to be so scary.

If we take a step back, we can see the faint outlines of another, more urgent, narrative thread in Kaepernick & America — one that encourages an all too rare kind of integrity and commitment to creating a more just world.

I Am: Celine Dion abandons tricks of the eye for an unflinching look at the subject’s new reality.

The film does an excellent job of introducing the pop star to unfamiliar audiences, contextualizing her activism and, more broadly, examining the role art can play in shaping our beliefs.

The result is a film that takes the idea of beauty seriously and works, with deceptive ease, to show us the tiny pleasures that make up life in Cabrini-Green.

What does it mean to lose faith in one’s role models and form an identity outside their ideological purview? It’s a conventional narrative drama, but Amrum approaches this question with commendable tenderness.

With a formidable cast, assured direction and skillful camerawork, Nostalgia proves to be a surprisingly absorbing film.

Energetic performances and technical precision come together to glorious effect in Prince-Bythewood’s rousing action film. It’s a lush, prime piece of entertainment in many respects.

While these stories are relatable and well-acted by a sturdy cast of exciting talent, they lack the potency of depth. How to Blow Up a Pipeline is skillfully executed — it hits all the right beats as a genre film, especially when it comes to ratcheting up the tension ­— but suffers from the same narrative limitations as Goldhaber’s equally compelling debut feature Cam.

There’s no doubt, from the way Reptile creeps in the first half, that Singer is a skilled director. But there’s something to be said for restraint, which the helmer, who wrote his screenplay with Benjamin Brewer and the film’s star Benicio Del Toro, doesn’t exercise enough of here. In an effort to prove its cleverness, Reptile clanks, rattles and stumbles in its second half.

The vigilance of the character building doesn’t translate to the narrative. The story at the center of My Dead Friend Zoe — a young woman suffering from PTSD and tasked with caring for her aging grandfather — is oddly unyielding, never relaxing enough to fully engage or move us.

At its strongest, In Flames teases out how the patriarchy — a large, unruly force — fractures the relationship between mother and daughter.

As Santosh closes in on the suspect, who has absconded for another town, Suri’s film embraces the nail-biting aesthetics — dark and shadowy locales, heart-racing music — of a classic procedural. This assured sense of direction coupled with controlled performances make Santosh a compelling drama. But it’s Suri’s screenplay that renders the film immersive.

Garland has always been a director of big ideas, and Civil War is no exception when it comes to that ambitiousness. But he’s also reaching for an intimacy here that his screenplay doesn’t quite deliver on.

Performances are also key to reinforcing Bring Her Back’s creepy tenor, from Hawkins’ increasingly distressed portrait of a woman undone by loss to Wren Phillips’ engrossing portrayal as Oliver. Barratt and Wong have a tender, natural chemistry that makes their sibling bond easy to invest in.