Robot Dreams is Berger’s first fling with animation, and he takes to the new artform with evident and infectious enthusiasm.

Anchored by four very strong performances, Murina is a taut psychodrama that makes subtle but impactful statements about misogyny and personal choice.

Drive-Away Dolls revels in ridiculousness, allowing nothing serious get in the way of a good joke.

Dillane is a remarkable discovery.

Not only does The Creator work as a good time at the movies, but it is also a reminder that mid-budget, (somewhat) original, crowd-pleasing stories can be told with aplomb.

The film’s tender emotional core is its greatest asset, which is enhanced by inventive tonal shifts and complemented by incredibly fleshed-out characters, a uniformly brilliant cast and naturalistic dialogue that keeps it from lurching into the terrain of sterile realism.

At its heart is Tessa Thompson, giving a performance so commanding that it seems to reshape the molecules around her. Her Hedda is poised and sensual with a magnetism that affects virtually every interaction. The glance is a seduction and the lightest curled lip becomes a threat, with DaCosta trusting her leading lady to convey the power of this woman in silent, lingering close-ups.

Inu-Oh plays out as if it is a modern version of a song by an itinerant musician, relating a blend of history and folklore to us in terms we can understand.

There are many hallmarks of the psychological horror at play (a creepy killer, a traumatised survivor, a parent with dark secrets) but under Perkins’ careful hand, the familiar feels unnerving all the same, a puzzle box dripping with bright red blood.

Formally, the film seldom takes its foot off the gas.

The trio’s company is so embracing that it is hard to say goodbye. The benefit of the Yuletide setting is that Payne has gifted us a film intended to be watched every year. It feels like finding an unwatched classic under the tree on Christmas morning.

Blending courtroom drama and claustrophobic tech-tinged nightmare, Red Rooms is a striking and austere examination of the true-crime industrial complex that benefits from its formality and disturbingly removed protagonist.

Lurker is an excellent showcase for the talents of Théodore Pellerin (quietly marvellous in every role he takes) and an intriguing first step as a feature filmmaker for Alex Russell.

It’s a rare bird indeed in that it’s a work of art that actively practices what it preaches, a celebration of unfettered creativity and farsightedness that offers a volcanic fusion of hand-crafted neo-classicism while running through a script of toe-tapping word-jazz that merrily dances between the raindrops of logic and coherence.

Where The Wedding Banquet really shines is in its characters, not only in its two romantic pairings that feel profoundly real, but also in subverting our expectations of its intergenerational relationships.

It’s a tender and warm film about missed connections and ships that, for whatever reason, end up passing in the night.

How we deal with death in the absolute moment is a fascinating subject, and one that His Three Daughters has many original thoughts about. In the end, it tackles the howling messiness with an earned measure of levity and wisdom.

Vibrant, wicked and welcoming, [Baker] is putting these people on the map like nobody else.

Where Favoriten differentiates itself from the aforementioned films is in its combination of formal and emotional complexity.

The director is an expert in this precise kind of world-building, one intricately related to yearning – for another, for belonging, for redemption.

In showing a working-class Black girl confront a classist, racist establishment, this is also of course a political film, offering an allegorical display of both the claustrophobic power structures in which we live and strive, and the possibility of smashing it to build something better.

It’s as minimal as a drama can get, softening the highs and lows of narrative into a meditation on memory, purpose and recreation. Don’t be put off by its ambling form, for its function effectively probes political topics behind a gauze of cinematic serenity.

The Harder They Fall is a thrilling feature debut from Jeymes Samuels, redefining the movie western for a modern age. These. People. Existed. And we want more.

A brilliant and tense allegory on the human paradoxes of violent conflict.

The Humans won’t work for many – it’s a slow burn with a mean ending. Some may insist that the story lacks cogency offstage, but it’s those frenetic, intimate and often senseless moments that justify its title.

In the authentic way is captures this unique world, Jockey shares similarities with Chloé Zhao’s The Rider, another quietly meditative and poignant tale of life on the fringes.

While other men move through then out of the picture, Rogowski holds everything together with an exquisite deftness that is often emotionally overwhelming.

This is a film that has been double dipped in lavish spectacle and then generously sprinkled with all the charm, silliness and wit found in Roald Dahl’s source novel.