From its guileless exposition and comically life-drawn Americana, to its Scripture quotations and sensitivity to a child’s perspective, the film proceeds with a simplicity of inexhaustible depth.

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.

Jean-Luc Godard’s masterpiece stands the test of time, still managing to feel incredibly fresh and exciting.

There is too much going on in Manchester by the Sea and still it is among the best films of this or any year. It is too funny, too tragic, and too full of nods to all manner of movie genres.

This is another slam-dunk for Anderson, who has made a film that is a very rare beast indeed: one that is incredibly fun without ever once straining to be. And if you’re reading these words, it’s your god-given duty to go see this in a cinema on the biggest, loudest screen you’re able to access.

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

Gavron has used her clout to pull together an inclusive team that goes beyond representational box ticking. She has made a film powered by real empathy and joy. Bakray isn’t a black face in a white story – there is space for cultural nuance.

What’s surprising about the film is how hopeful it is, zeroing in on human creativity and resilience during the worst of times rather than wallowing in abject misery.

Faces Places is a subtly self-reflexive documentary that swims against this tide, inviting audiences to see that filmmaking is a process of having conversations with people, and enveloping each individual and their private creativity within the wider collaborative process. Art is a form of social work or, rather, it can be with the right people at the helm.

The thorny nuances of multiethnic relationships are deeply understood by Celine Song’s directorial debut, Past Lives.

It’s compulsive and completely absorbing, and Laura’s dedication to this ad hoc investigation which may have no conclusion is echoed in a performance that empathetically redefines tired cinematic notions of obsessive behaviour.

With the verve of a master classical storyteller, Citarella stages the unfolding of this eccentric mystery while processing the dizzying flow of information with a grace and precision that will have you hanging on every frame.

Petite Maman becomes a profound meditation on inheritance.

Gerwig nails how mothers and daughters argue – always at each other’s throat. Because of the tonal breadth of the film, different shades of feeling are found in each grudge match. Love as a combative war of words is an energising force.

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.

No Other Land exemplifies the bravery and patience of activists and journalists. The occupation started over 70 years ago, and together, this unlikely pair capture its inhumanity with humanity.

It’s stylish and sad and funny and bleak and a thousand other things. But most of all, it’s a pure hit of Sandler and Safdie.

Tár, Todd Field’s portrait of the artist as an abuser, is the funniest horror film of 2022.

The same ground that once bore the sturdy foundation of a loving home now stands eternally scarred by the searing cuts of imaginary lines, an irreparable fissure that – in Panahi’s heartfelt visual diary – cruelly severs the frail umbilical cord to the motherland.

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.

At only 84 minutes and light on plot, at times this film feels so slight that it might just slip through your fingers. And yet its ethereality is what makes it enchanting.

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.

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 Secret Agent is, of course, a film of its own, and feasibly Mendonça Filho’s most refined, outright-auteurist work yet. Moura anchors this tale of history as an afterlife with a terrific encapsulation of the kind of hopelessness that masks itself as resilience, his gaze infused with the aching longing of a future condemned to remain possibility.

It’s gripping in the moment, but with plenty to take away for afterwards. Genius really isn’t too strong a word.

Drive My Car is endlessly fascinating and rich, the type of film which you could spend hours analysing and come no closer to feeling as if you’ve landed on its true intent.

It’s a beautifully written and executed work, one of Panahi’s most formally straightforward yet powerful, gripping and generous.

With Saint Omer, Diop not only refreshes and expands upon the tired conventions of the courtroom drama, but she really drills down into the fundamental gaps in our understanding of human nature and the tantalising but illusive ‘why?’ of it all.