Anchored by two superb lead performances from a strong and silent Kaluuya and vivaciously hilarious Palmer, Peele flexes his aptitude for creating tension to both horrific and comedic effect.

The Zone of Interest seems to welcome division in its responses – such a bold, horrifyingly eerie work serves as a catalyst as much as an artistic statement.

The filmmaker’s renderings of desi girlhood are subtle but powerful, coming through in small details: the claw clips and medicine strips strewn about the apartment, tiny tattoos and even tinier, heart-shaped lingerie hardware, stolen moments under cover of darkness.

The constant blurring of the lines makes for a fascinating, often hilarious, watch.

It’s Fastvold who somehow makes all these elements coalesce with such brio and eccentricity, expanding the possibilities of filmed biography while also making a film that manages to land direct hits to the head, the heart and the gut.

Like the best of the director’s work, Memoria lulls you into its rhythms, gives you the sparse outlines of an intellectual framework, then hits you with the full weight of accumulated lyricism that must be pure cinema.

It’s a film with fingerprints all over it; one that has been crafted rather than manufactured, and rewatches reveal a chance to revel in its sharpness; a scene in which Amleth seeks the counsel of a blind Seeress (the incomparable Björk) teems with intricate set and costume details, while a violent game of Knattleikr – a Viking cross between lacrosse and rugby – proves more adrenaline-inducing than any CGI special of recent years.

This is not a politically didactic film, nor a lapel-shaking polemic, but a film whose obligation towards fine dramatic authenticity succeeds in convincing that this is the correct way of thinking, and any alternatives are incorrect.

X has no interest in making sweeping statements about sexual liberation, about pornography or ageing. It brings the slasher back to its fleshy basics, leaning into what made the granddaddies of slasher films so memorable.

Glass Onion adopts the sturdy structural underpinnings of the Agatha Christie-like whodunit, and presents them with an ingenious mix of postmodern irony and bona fide awe.

It is, like those beautiful concrete monstrosities which are revered and reviled in equal measure, a film that towers across the Venice line-up this year, tragic and wry and gorgeous and disturbing – any number of hyperbolic terms might apply to the beast that Corbet has created in The Brutalist.

Mangrove is a necessary and exhilarating illustration of the staying power of Black Britons.

Jarmusch’s film thrives in acknowledging the ultimate unknowability of our parents.

The film is not only an enjoyably unique exploration of coming to terms with illness and mortality but a snapshot of the French capital circa 1962, and even its cinematic culture.

Its entwined torrents of pain and pleasure chart the boundaries of sensation in a buttoned-up age, and allow us back in the present to be scandalized by its raw, visceral (in the definitional, from-the-guts sense) hungers as if for the very first time.

Sinners elegantly walks a line between enjoyable mayhem as well as a sense of tragedy around this safe haven being ripped apart – but also leverages the classical allure of the vampire for motivations inspired by its reflective first half.

It’s a character study for the ages, with Reinsve, Danielsen Lie and Nordrum delivering three magnetic turns.

Rounded out by an incredible cast, Lumet’s realisation of Reginald Rose’s script didn’t require anything too bold or exaggerated. It simply took 12 men in a single room with something important to talk about.

One thing that lifts this above the type of hospital-based docu-drama that are ten-a-penny on the small screen is that Paravel and Castaing-Taylor locate a uniquely cinematic quality to the footage.

Aftersun gives all its love to a past reimagined, as it punctures the present.

The Boy and the Heron is richly self-synthesising and achingly sentimental, collating artistic motifs from across the Miyazaki filmography and nakedly articulating the hopes it places in the next generation.

Its delicate blend of wryly observed humanity and thoughtful, understated visuals mean that the more dramatic beats hit harder. Even the occasional moments of gore feel shocking for the sparsity with which McDonagh chooses to deploy them.

With his rumi­na­tive lat­est, The Shrouds, Cro­nen­berg once more makes a play for the heart­strings in what must be one of the most naked­ly mov­ing and rev­e­la­to­ry films with­in his canon.

The challenge, such as it is, of watching a Mike Leigh movie is simply the challenge of being a person in the world – the challenge of paying sustained attention to others – and Pansy is among his most demanding and rewarding tests.

This is a film stripped back to its bare essentials, and Spielberg thrives in having to get creative to make each moment feel as fresh and energised as the last.

Ramsay articulates the inarticulate, here through her saturated blues, yellows, browns and greens, the colours of grief and sickness and rot…but also new life, summer skies, and hope.

Hassan doesn’t need to provide a grand framing device. You sense their powerlessness, you are embedded within it. There is no omniscient camera to take the audience away because there is no freedom of movement for the Fazilis.

Based on Stephen King’s first published novel, from 1974, and in fact the first cinematic adaptation of that well-read author, Carrie dramatises all manner of first times, as Carrie gets her period, falls in love, and is ultimately penetrated, killing – and maybe dy(e)ing – in deep, deep red.