The US-born, Kenyan-raised director’s feature-length debut is told with honesty, determination and grace.

A sumptuously shot, nostalgic bildungsroman framed by a bitttersweet darkness, the film deploys many well-worn tropes of the coming of age drama. But they’re executed with such a light, self-aware confidence that Summer of ’85 has wit, warmth and charm to spare.

Doing these usually faceless public servants justice is vitally important. But Totally Under Control somehow feels unfinished.

Exciting, thought-provoking and visually striking, it is everything an animation can and should be for viewers young and old.

Nathan Grossman charts her rise in this perfectly enjoyable but ultimately unpersuasive and shallow documentary.

White Riot is a belligerently hopeful film: Shah vividly depicts the insidious violence of racism, but she also renders its futility in the face of community, and of music’s limitless power to unite and strengthen.

Positing the question of whether the principal objective of incarceration is punishment, rehabilitation or undue persecution, Garrett Bradley’s Time is another vital addition to a growing canon of films to pointedly critique the US legal and prison systems’ unjust treatment of people of colour.

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.

Fundamentally, On the Rocks understands that the rich complexity of long-term relationships – both paternal and spousal – can never truly be captured, only gestured towards. The result, on screen, is deeply warm, funny and comforting, and among Coppola’s finest work.

Not only does it represent some of Sorkin’s best work for years, but in this time of civil unrest and with the dark clouds of November nearly upon is, this reminder of the right to resist the state could not be timelier.

Eternal Beauty, whilst it is not entirely devoid of cliché, provides a much-needed, deeply human alternative to the noisy and tragic narratives about hallucinatory derangement, terror, and victimisation that we may have come to expect from films about madness.

Rocks is a faultlessly authentic study of contemporary young life in the inner city.

Entertaining from start to finish and wonderfully played by a largely female cast, David Arquette has a small role as an escaped convict, Grant’s film beautifully upends the sexist notion that women are naturally inclined to nurture. It surprises, too, as a tribute to the fortitude of working-class women.

Suburban suffocation, impending doom, a tragedy waiting to happen, The Swerve is a compelling depiction of existential angst, melancholy, and mental illness, with director Kapsalis opting for subtlety over big-scene meltdown histrionics and much to his credit.

Away combines Zilbalodis’ signature minimalist style with the structure of a classic survival story.

It’s a shame that the real hope gap here is that between expectation and reality.

Although the handling of certain plot dynamics on occasion isn’t as strong as its potent aesthetic finesse, Ly mounts a thriller operating as a savage indictment of social policies and underhand police tactics and ass-covering corruption.

This movie is a slow-burning story of loss and solitude which is also resonant with humanity, dignity, and hope.

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 alienness of humanity, when seen from another perspective, is evident throughout the film.

She Dies Tomorrow is billed as a horror, and its scenario certainly is that. But the word ‘horror’ denotes active subjects – even if their activity is mainly screaming and running – whereas there’s a melancholy to Seimetz’ film that feels too fixed in place for the instability of horror.

The master of cerebral action cinema is back, and whatever lessons were learnt about the triumph of the human spirit during the making of Dunkirk, they were swiftly forgotten for this new piece of filmic flimflammery.

Doff, who acts as both writer and director, establishes an offbeat, ridiculous tone from the start that solidifies itself with visual humour and sharp dialogue that pay off in riches further down the line.

Perfect 10 is an acutely observed and beautifully shot coming-of-age story. It is also a tender, fastidiously constructed portrait of working-class girlhood that shimmers with angst, vulnerability, and compassion.

No amount of tight corridors and shots of CCTV monitors ever make protagonist Tatyana feel in peril: this, far more than derivative monsters and confusing themes, is Sputnik’s fatal error.

There’s little here to surprise anyone with a passing familiarity with the story, and its creepiest elements sometimes feel neutered. It may be heresy, but the body-horror of the Land of Toys and sublime terror of the whale were imagined far more viscerally in the Disney version.

The moral ambiguities and questions of legacy, friendship, family and integrity in Marco Bellochio’s The Traitor are the strongest points of an ambitious, punishing addition to a long line of films to explore the inner workings of the Cosa Nostra.

Labyrinth of the Turtles is a charming and occasionally moving love letter to the legendary Spanish-Mexican surrealist, and at a spry 80 minutes, doesn’t outstay its welcome.