The running time (like all Lanzmann's films) is not oppressive but allows for Murmelstein and his interlocutor to talk through, around and inside the context and reality of pragmatism, egoism, heroism and evil.

It is remarkably good.

A near-wordless study of dairy cow Luma’s life and shot from a bovine-eye view, Cow resists the urge to anthropomorphise Luma while eliciting deep empathy for this non-human animal.

Gomes has created something truly unique and remarkable; a rally cry against the powers that have choked the fire out of his country and a love song to those he sees rekindling the flame. Its constituent parts may not be perfect, but what a stunning whole.

The resulting film is an exemplar of fine balance, managing to be both a humane character study and issue-driven polemic, looking at the ongoing personal and social repercussions and contextualising the events.

Hotel Salvation is a bittersweet meditation on life, death and salvation.

Paul Dano’s directorial debut Wildlife lands not with a thud but a slow caress, to be inhaled and ruminated on, its stagnant images billowing into your lungs, giving kudos to the fact that his switch from acting (There Will Be Blood, Prisoners) to directing has been made with a precision and ease.

The Lost Leonardo is about obsession, ego, power and greed. For almost all of the film’s characters, Salvator Mundi represents nothing more than opportunity.

The film conjures a man who is fundamentally, simplistically decent, while his demons only intrude on his integrity in the most superficial ways. Yet, in the end, Mank is not about capturing the totality of a person, but leaving an impression of one, and in that it is certainly successful.

It's a feel good movie but also a refreshing blast from the past, expressing a nostalgia for a time when political quietism and apathy had not won the day and a Billy Bragg song made more than historical sense.

Ava is a singular vision marking Foroughi as a talent to watch.

For most of his career, Paik was dismissed by critics and struggled financially, but as director Kim amply demonstrates, his work has had tremendous influence on both fine art and popular culture. Moon Is the Oldest TV is at once a celebration of that work and testament to its incalculable value.

The Cordillera of Dreams is a stirring look at a nation still recovering from the brutalisation meted out by General Pinochet’s callous and paranoid actions, but Guzmán goes further to offer his opinion of the present issues facing the country, specifically neoliberalism’s assault on land, resources and people.

Although A Most Violent Year may hit fever pitch when Abel engages in a nerve-wracking chase of a stolen tanker, it's in the murky uncertainties and frosty climate that it endures and excels.

There are moments when Garrone’s vision strays too close to the fable in its narrative even as its images portray a brutal reality. However, Io Capitano doesn’t lose its humanity.

The magical realms of Justino’s stories are echoed in the real world, where spaces are enclosed but liminal, defined by uneasy boundaries that are easily breached.

Though some artfulness is dredged up amongst the trash, there's plenty to perturb and perplex.

As every section seeks to deepen and complicate the basic message of Mountains May Depart - that the incredible speed of technology and society has its prices and dangers - and the failure of the final section dilutes where it should intensify.

There is a great deal to enjoy here for devotees of Strickland’s work and the film feels destined to be described as his weirdest piece yet. But underneath that surface strangeness, Flux Gourmet doesn’t quite satisfy the appetite.

Herzog may shepherd the creative output, but its Kinski’s impassioned misrule that makes Nosferatu, the Vampyre truly terrifying.

It should confirm Nichols' reputation as a mature filmmaker of great tact and intelligence.

If we allow ourselves - as Scorsese asks us - to place ourselves in the shoes of these priests, then we have a graceful film of stoic power, which wrestles with the very nature of faith.

Whatever you take from Hitchcock/Truffaut one thing is for sure: you'll be reaching for a copy of the book and a box set of thrillers at your earliest convenience.

It’s a coming-of-age tale without summer sun that feels all the more formative because of it.

Fukunaga and his actors - especially the two leads - have managed to create a riveting drama which is suitably appalling.

The aimless, wandering of this twenty-something is a little kooky but rarely unfunny, and Côté flourishes as a woman positively drained by the prospect of having to move forward at all.

Petrov’s Flu finds its meaning through sensation, memory and aesthetics, depicting social and political decay in its purest form stripped of the comforting scaffolding of linear narrative.

Despite the multiple viewpoints, Monster is actually the anti-Rashomon, a jigsaw puzzle rather than a riddle wrapped in an enigma. The care and empathy with which the director and writer, as well as the performers, extend to all corners of the piece is extraordinary.

Even magnificent scenery like this can get dull if there’s no invention or novelty to proceedings, but fortunately the six tales collected in the dusty old hardback book The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the Wild West, complete with colour plates and tracing paper, are packed with originality, poetry and glorious wit.

Rich with scenes of affection and reconciliation, the most charming thing about Fourteen is the degree to which Sallitt finds a balance between his own brand of independent filmmaking and the kind of French middle-class realism he’s clearly influenced by.

Scary and funny by turns, Green Room has the potential to become a cult hit, with a genuine midnight movie appeal, and furthers the growing reputation of this young director.

This isn’t a film about sexual assault as a rare aberration, but about a culture which collectively diminishes any notion of consent and encourages a rush to experience.

Poignantly reflecting the intimate connections humans can create in a short space of time, Chained for Life is a rich and rewarding experience.

A vital and timely missive to a new generation that is as sobering as it is uplifting, all built around a performance of astounding accomplishment.

A hugely accomplished debut, and an innovative approach to filmmaking, Cummings will be one to watch for sure.

Quietly raging, The Assistant is a bleakly precise study of complicity in workplace abuse.

Underground is bravura filmmaking at its most entrancing and its labyrinthine political context only serves to heighten its fascinating appeal.

A satisfying balance of family drama, political intrigue and all-out action (an ape cavalry charge has to be seen to be believed) do, in truth, only constitute half of the story, as Reeves' sci-fi sequel is as much a technical triumph as a narrative one.

Bright Sunshine In is a pithily precise portrait of the love life of an artist.

For Those in Peril isn't afraid to take risks and is full of ingenuity, but at its core is an emotive piece about overcoming a death in the family - something we can all surely associate with.

With its depth and power, Wilson's play is a blue-collar Death of a Salesman and the music of the dialogue, with Davis and Washington at the peak of their powers, makes the whole thing sing.

It doesn’t hit the heights of former collaborations, but there’s a lot to drink in and appreciate here, and Mikkelsen’s all-dancing finale is one of the most exultant, triumphant moments in recent cinema memory.

Shiva Baby is ostensibly a comedy yet has all the tension of a thriller. At its most emotionally fraught, it uses the visual and aural grammar of horror cinema.

Carney, who wowed everyone with Once, has a knack for this kind of film. Sing Street promotes his best attributes, and succeeds in delivering toe-tapping, head bobbing thrills, heartfelt, if cheesy romance and big laughs.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a midnight movie to relish.

Not only does Li'l Quinquin's procedural strand evoke countless laughs both macabre - the body that incites the story is found chopped up inside a cow - and slapstick, but also provides the context the exploration of deeper themes.

Uncovering the man behind the mask, Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story is a deeply compassionate documentary. Created thanks to the tireless efforts of its filmmakers in sourcing crowdfunding to produce the feature, a communal spirit lingers over the film.

There is quite literally a darkness at the heart of the American dream as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl.

Benjamin Ree’s The Painter and the Thief is an art heist film like no other and an arresting documentary of startling, often brutal, emotional honesty.

Led by a tour de force performance as savage, unpredictable and frightening as the film’s titular ursine, Black Bear stars Aubrey Plaza in stellar form as a writer-director seeking inspiration, in this bamboozling psychological character study.

Kaufman’s latest work, a creeping, deeply unsettling, cerebral horror of sorts, is a further addition to his challenging, thought-provoking brand of filmmaking which gets under your skin, and stays there.

The Green Fog is part city symphony, part playful tribute; but primarily an example of pure, unadulterated cinematic delirium.

The Age of Shadows is a bloody and breathtaking piece of filmmaking which confirms that Kim can do pretty much anything.

As historical noir, Martelli’s film is thrilling, but as a document of the comforts of complicity and the terror of resistance, 1976 is visceral.

As a study of injustice and systemic deprivation, and in its description of the conditions necessary for revolution, Ly’s film is in its very being a modern Les Misérables.

Having penned the script herself, July trusts her four actors to provide the goods, which they do. The director is left to concentrate on the construction of this haphazard, seat of their pants, wing and a prayer lottery of a film. And though it feels like it shouldn’t work, it really, really does.

A good two-thirds of Top Gun: Maverick is very solid, if unremarkable, but what really gets it off the ground are its top-drawer flight sequences, staged thrillingly by director Joseph Kosinski.

The final twist is so manipulative and cynical as to be actually enraging.

Panahi keeps everything as softly spoken as his own onscreen presence and yet some of those quiet observations are devastating.

Luzzu is a slender, rather bleak but tough, rough-cut little jewel that deserves your time and attention.

The film that made Jackie Chan an international star, Police Story fully embodies the martial artist’s spirit of entertainment – equal parts endearing, goofy and packed with eye-popping kung fu action.

By adopting an eerily voyeuristic approach and filming the barren North Dakota landscape with a cold, penetrating gaze Welcome to Leith creates a bone chilling atmosphere not too dissimilar to a horror film; leading the audience down a compelling, yet genuinely unnerving path into the darkest rudiments of the human psyche.

After Yang is a moving, subtle and grounded piece of science fiction that doesn’t necessarily get to the core, but certainly hits the heart.

The whole affair feels perfectly adequate – nothing more or nothing less. As always, Moore delivers a nuanced portrayal of a middle-aged woman that is as sumptuous to watch as her graceful ageing on screen over decades worth of work.

Nothing short of an aesthete’s dream, a film crammed with visual bravado that at various times echoes Kubrick, Malick, and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

In one sense, Il buco is a testament to human hubris, contrasting the self-satisfaction of our own temporary structures with the unknowable depth of nature’s works.

Whereas Bait was a lament for a way of life swallowed up by mindless urbanite tourism, Enys Men is a hymn to sublime, endless time and the hauntedness of existence.

Taking place over the course of a little less than 24 hours, it is day-in-the-life cinema at its most pertinent.

Sticking to documentary form for the most part with key talking heads, a barrage of headlines and ample news broadcasts, the co-directors are not afraid to shock with gruesome crime scene footage.

Ultimately, Diego Maradona is about the corrupting influence of exceptionalism – swept into the game and made financially responsible for his family at 15, the arrested development Maradona suffers is writ large and ultimately leads to his downfall.

Following the disappointing period dalliance of Jimmy's Hall, Ken Loach's latest I, Daniel Blake is something of a return to form. It stands as a succinct and furious raging against the dying of the light, or more accurately the snuffing of the light by a privatised and punitive system more intent on lowering the figures than caring for those in need.

The extraordinary amount of footage, which moves from monochrome, to grainy colour, to vibrant turquoises as technology and time march on, is really a wonder to behold. If, wherever you are in the world, there’s the opportunity to see Playing with Sharks on the big screen, then you should, to fully experience this eye-opening, vivid documentary.

An ornately mounted story marked with tints of antiquarianism, The Lost City of Z is perhaps Gray's most accomplished film to date.

This is fan service elevated into an art form, transcending winking self-aggrandisement to become something of a reflection on the past eleven years, a chugging, tooting, spectacular train of a franchise, careering indefinitely forward.

The film’s displays of humour give away to harsher scenes of brutality and intense moments where rural calm is suddenly disrupted by mortar explosions and transformed landscapes dotted with corpses.

A nefarious misadventure that's technical prowess and heartbreaking lead performance belies its economical pedigree, Saulnier's farcical tale is punctuated with irregular scenes of dark, bumbling humour whilst a wanton disregard for the bellicose testosterone of similar tales successfully constructs a tense and naturally opaque mood that broods with the clammy tension of an impending storm.

Hooligan Sparrow is a chilling reminder of the extent of state repression and corruption in China.

Ex Machina exposes the insecurity of the male ego by showing his lust for creation as simply another strand in the patriarchal power game. The film's trajectory forms a thrilling, exciting corrective.

Despite a first half of great promise, the film is ultimately ground down by the endless suffering even as it bloats with a bizarre lurch into satirical fantasy.

Slaboshpitsky's The Tribe is gripping, tour de force cinema from its opening jab, and from there it continually forces you against the ropes before delivering a knockout punch with a gut-wrenching conclusion destined to leave audiences stunned.

After the profanity-laced Shakespearean barrage of Deadwood, Dewitt and Audiard’s Wild West is a more prosaic place, but it is also sharply intelligent, extremely funny and full of surprises.

Zootropolis is a real delight - an entertaining and endlessly inventive comedy and something with more insight than anyone could have anticipated.

To modern audiences the nostalgia and issues seem dated and trite. Whilst it touches on several interesting themes, Colin Welland's script only succeeds in establishing the tension of the two conflicting characters. He fails to truly engage with the issues at hand, and most surprising of all is how this sporting saga of triumph over adversity fails to ever uplift.

Its social reality – that of the emptying and decline of rural regions in Italy – is contemporary and vital, but there is something deeper and simpler at play here. In that simplicity, with its notes played purely, there is no need of distortion or abstraction to justify itself.

The film isn’t without hope, but it lifts the lid of an ugly truth and asks the tough questions needed.

Delighting in the ancient tradition of storytelling as a means of education and understanding as well as entertainment, Nora Twomey's The Breadwinner is a richly animated jewel.

The work bears the burden of Classical Hollywood, making it not only a film about two people decoupling, but a striking example of forms in combat, struggling for a dominant voice.