Nikki Baughan

It’s a trip, and then some.

The film expertly blends satirical social commentary and disturbing horror tropes to shine a light on the appalling racial and economic divides that still shape the country 30 years after the end of apartheid.

Exceptional performances, particularly from Caleb Landry Jones in the lead, and a sensitive touch from director Justin Kurtzel can’t shake the unease of giving yet another cinematic spotlight to a real-life mass murderer.

Featuring superb turns from Vicky Krieps and the late Gaspard Ulliel - in his final role - as a couple facing the most difficult of choices, More Than Ever persuades, rather than forces, its audience to stare death in the face, and proves surprisingly life affirming in the process.

While the film is contemplative, intimate and visually arresting, its deliberately slow pace lessens its dramatic impact.

It is a fascinating, horrifying story and Klayman eschews any tricks or gimmicks — bar some lively collage animation — to allow this explosive narrative to evolve through the eye-opening experiences of those who lived it.

There are some tremendous misdirects, effective jump scares, and literal piles of gore. There just happens to be plenty of brains to go with all that blood.

Beautifully designed, carefully measured and expertly cut, The Outfit is a handsome debut from director Graham Moore.

Like her Lewis Carroll namesake, the protagonist of writer/director Krystin Ver Linden’s bold and enlightening feature debut hurtles down a rabbit hole — but the alternative reality in which she finds herself is certainly no fairy tale.

Probing issues of motherhood, adolescence and identity with a delicate dramatic touch while expertly harnessing some outre genre elements, Hatching is a bold, arresting feature debut from Finnish director Hanna Bergholm.

Exceptional near-future production design and a strong dual performance from Mahershala Ali as a man and his clone fuel Benjamin Cleary’s impressive, thoughtful sci-fi debut.

While Michael Pearce’s second feature may not deliver quite the same wallop as his debut feature Beast, it demonstrates the same mastery of filmmaking craft and another incredible performance from Riz Ahmed.

Tracey Deer’s feature debut Beans vibrates with ferocious anger and righteous pride.

An impressive filmmaking debut from actor-turned-director Rebecca Hall which largely avoids cliché or soapboxing about race, featuring two excellent performances from Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.

Co-written and directed with sensitivity and visual flair by Anne Zohra Berrached, Copilot puts an intimate spin on the devastating events of 9/11.

With strong performances and an arresting tone, Black Conflux doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking in terms of its narrative, but is nevertheless a striking calling card for its talented maker.

An assured, intelligent piece of filmmaking.

A sharp screenplay and strong performances give this life as a watchable thriller, rather than just a mere pastiche.

While the titular criminal gang at the centre of this action thriller may be presented as supposedly quirky and unconventional, the film in which they operate is as blunt-edged and cliched as they come.

Layering its fairly straightforward story of an adopted Irish girl who tracks down her birth mother with immersive visual and aural motifs, it plays more like modern operatic tragedy than run-of-the-mill social drama.

Everything about this hard-hitting film is restrained, like a breath tightly held, and all the more powerful for it.

Debut director Prano Bailey-Bond crafts a stylish, effective horror that is both an homage to genre cinema of that period and a psychological dive into the combined traumas of grief and guilt.

There’s something strangely beautiful about short filmmaker Elizabeth Lo’s concise, allegorical debut feature documentary, which starts off as a fly-on-the-fur exploration of Istanbul’s stray dog epidemic and becomes a lament about the difficulties of finding somewhere to belong in an increasingly fractured, and fractious, world.

Talpe is excellent in the lead, his tightly-honed physique an increasingly transparent veneer for his troubled emotional state.

A moving exploration of the realities of growing old, Maite Alberdi’s documentary effectively blends documentary with dramatic elements to charming, if not always transparent, effect.

Strongly acted and effectively staged, The Boys In The Band has lost little of its impact in the five decades since its first debut, and is a fitting tribute to its creator Mart Crowley, who died in March.

Successfully mining the awkward humour of the adolescent experience, Karen Maine’s coming-of-age feature makes the most of a strong central performance from Natalia Dyer.

Featuring strong performances and excellent effects work, The Vigil is a genuinely creepy debut which explores the ways in which our psychological demons can get their claws into our entire lives.