Neil Young

While this near two-hour feature debut does betray occasional signs of inexperience, on the whole it's a work of striking confidence.

Obtaining all-areas access to Olympic-competing Russian star athlete Margarita Mamun, Prus records in intense detail the verbal and physical pressures to which the young woman is subjected by her fiercely determined coaches.

Herrero Garvin and company have evidently earned the trust of Dona Olga and her customers, their film winningly emerging as warm, humanistic evocation of sisterhood against a fascinating demi-monde backdrop.

A likeably offbeat and disarmingly self-aware documentary essay on how humans deal with the immutable transience of the universe, Ian Cheney’s globetrotting Arc Of Oblivion should leave a trace in the minds of receptive viewers.

A deliberately distanced but often harrowing vision of a living hell.

An undeniably demanding but cumulatively rewarding mood piece.

It is a film in which, over two hours, the maverick Argentinian virtuoso quietly blows up and rebuilds the established language of cinema in challenging but ultimately exhilarating ways.

A shaggy-seeming but carefully modulated affair, To the Ends of the Earth gradually emerges as an offbeat but persuasive investigation of culture-clashes and the potential for trans-global bridge-building.

Derki and his experienced editor Anne Fabini have crafted a sober, sobering bulletin of unambiguous intention and undeniable power.

A steady, austere treatment of a notoriously and riotously rambunctious subject, Set Fire to the Stars takes a non-incendiary, safe-hands approach to potentially combustible material.

The structure of The Plains is playful and idiosyncratic, rather than formalist or rigid.

A phantasmagorical vision of psychological purgatory, Horse Money (Cavalo dinheiro) will enrapture some while leaving others dangling in frustrated limbo.

The result is a lovely, upbeat, even life-affirming film. It's a work which certainly doesn't soft-pedal the less appealing sides of children's behavior, but shows that empathy, given appropriate circumstances and resources, can be taught just as effectively as arithmetic and spelling.

Accessible, informative and wryly humorous, the film uses Srbijanka's tastefully decorated residence as a prism through which to view the woman, her turbulent times and the complicated history of the former Yugoslavia.

While there is no doubting the filmmakers’ admirably humanistic and progressive intentions, however, the picture itself somehow ends up less than the sum of its often-impressive parts.

As a poetic dispatch from society's lower depths, Field Niggas is an oblique but inescapably topical slice of slick but rough-edged humanism — a polyphonic roundelay that hits some powerfully discordant notes before the director decides to start tooting his own horn.

[A] solidly effective addition to Britain's social realism tradition, elevated by excellent performances by the young leads and some unexpectedly poetic touches.

A solid example of low-key, well-observed, humanistically sympathetic ethnography.

It takes skill to successfully handle heavy issues with a light touch, but that's what German-born, Argentina-based writer-director Nele Wohlatz pulls off with her delightfully original documentary/fiction hybrid.

A work of old-school humanism that hovers between pro-Revolutionary fervor and a more objective documentary stance, Cuba and the Cameraman is sustained by the strong bonds of trust which the gregarious Alpert has evidently been able to maintain with Cubans from various echelons of this theoretically classless society.

The genial, relentlessly curious Sharif proves an excellent guide as the security situation spirals from instability into nightmare and the so-called Islamic State (aka ISIS or Daesh) advances inexorably advances towards Jalawla.

An intriguingly structured, multilayered road movie in which an ordinary working-class dude looks back over a nation-wandering decade of his life, this second collaboration by the writer-directors is a cumulatively engrossing and ultimately very moving work of clear-eyed political intent.

An exceptional animated feature from Spain, Wrinkles imaginatively and sensitively explore one of the major issues confronting most of the developed world: how to look after senior citizens in a rapidly aging population.

Skilfully manipulating romantic and social frictions which in lesser hands might have come across as soapily melodramatic, Rauniyar and Barker construct a parable-like tale whose allegorical aspects are there for those who wish to find them. But their priority is the creation of believable characters in a pungently atmospheric setting.

Neatly divided into seven discrete chapters plus prologue and epilogue, it's a necessarily repetitive but engrossing and ultimately optimistic glimpse into a troubled situation entering belated turnaround.

There's little in the way of genuine depth, complexity or nuance here, Diaz instead seeks to convey the illusion of profundity by having various characters throw around weighty social and philosophical verbiage in thuddingly sophomoric fashion.

A picture whose tone wanders between arid academic exercise and something close to parody of the more pretentious trends in current auteur cinema.

Medel, seldom off-screen, turns in a marvelous, utterly engaging portrait of an intelligent, caring person slowly stretched to breaking point.