Serena Donadoni

No one does dissolute hubris with as much charm as Grant, and his ebullience is the perfect foil to the misanthropic McCarthy.

While Saldivar and Burgos are better dancers than actors, Collado and Flores are incredibly charismatic performers who bring every scene they’re in to life, but it’s Zayas who anchors Shine. His gravitas shot through with mischief sets the film’s tone, showing that serious-minded storytelling can still be fun.

With Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., Loveridge celebrates the mashup aesthetic that enabled the artist to find a voice, and reveals that reconciling contradictions — like an outrageous sense of humor and earnest political activism — is key to both Arulpragasam’s music and the life she’s constructed with audacity and wit.

Anchored by a remarkable child’s performance, The Swan is a sensitive example of an overlooked element in coming-of-age films: awakening to the outside world.

Rojas and Dutra have created a singular fable where anxiety and fear are directed inward, even when the danger is all too real.

Pin Cushion has the visual cues of comedy, with its candy-colored kitsch and exaggerated signifiers of eccentricity and snobbery, but at heart, it’s a tragedy of naïveté.

Usually a tart-tongued scene-stealer, Henderson is devoid of her trademark hauteur in this remarkable performance.

The atmosphere of Jason Saltiel’s debut feature is decidedly chilly despite the summer heat. With icy precision reminiscent of Claude Chabrol, Saltiel captures the social intricacies of affluent leisure.

In his astute look at the artistry and business of food, de Maistre makes the case that haute cuisine serves the same function as haute couture, creating an indelible experience while encouraging new ideas to filter through the industry.

The portentously titled Measure of a Man is at once an escapist fantasy and sensitive portrait of adolescent transformation.

Early absorbs Freda’s pain into his own, and McNeil builds a delicate idyll from their defiant embrace of unexpected second chances.

Qu unpacks much that matters in Angels Wear White, including the abuse of power and importance of status and wealth in Chinese society, but her most thoughtful, nuanced observations involve female sexuality.

Tully encapsulates the psychological process of maturity with pithy humor and vertiginous insight. Tully’s appearance may have seemed like a magical interlude, but she solidifies Marlo’s reality by exposing the path that led her there.

The structure of After Auschwitz may be simple (talking heads and archival footage), but the cumulative effect of six women revealing the physical, psychological, and emotional toll taken on Holocaust survivors is a powerful testament to individual humanity emerging from inhuman horrors.

When the violence comes, as it must, Sen stages his shoot-outs with the physical and emotional wallop of the best westerns, but he’s more interested in restoring the faith of law enforcement officers whose belief in justice has eroded.

Hirayanagi acknowledges that reinvention isn’t as simple as trading Setsuko’s messy stagnation for Lucy’s zany possibility. What Setsuko fears most is losing everything, but that may be her best option.

Robin uses well-timed jolts and gross-out moments to awaken his solitary characters from their stupor, to shock them into acknowledging that their existence isn’t confined to the soul’s protective shell.

Kangaroo is a sobering depiction of how deep cultural divides affect the future of a species, even one so seemingly ubiquitous and resilient.

[A] bitterly funny and warmly empathetic first feature.

In the nourishing documentary Soufra, Thomas Morgan shows the claustrophobic living conditions and dangerous infrastructure of the tightly packed concrete towers, and chronicles how Lebanese government bureaucracy maintains the camp’s invisible borders and keeps occupants in a permanent state of legal limbo.

The humor in Shady Srour’s Holy Air isn’t entirely satirical, but the bone-dry wit is breathtaking.

With quiet precision, Lechuga (Melaza) charts Andrés’s resilience and Santa’s awakening, using a naturalistic visual style and sparse dialogue that reveals how these characters instinctively read between the lines.

For all the outrageous cosplay and assless trunks on display, director Tristan Ferland Milewski is more interested in exploring the interior lives of gay men.

The intoxicating A River Below contains elements of immersive nature documentaries and shocking wildlife exposes (like Blackfish and The Cove), but director Mark Grieco’s profile of two driven conservationists tells a more slippery tale.

After a lifetime of routine punctuated by loss, these aging adults fall back into roles as children and siblings. Treading common ground, they seek comfort in the suffocating succor of family, afraid to release the burdens that grief will unleash.

An engrossing exploration of the artist’s final days rendered in his signature painting style.

Adopting the philosophy of neorealism, Rauniyar reveals the overarching forces (religion, caste, patriarchy) that forge Nepali communities, but his characters are also profoundly shaped by individual decisions.

Sidemen seems at first like a didactic cultural corrective. It’s only when Rosenbaum digs into the trio’s life stories that their historic impact becomes clear:.