Long and detailed and frequently terrifying, Alex Gibney’s documentary about a 1994 massacre in a pub in Northern Ireland is investigative journalism at its rigorous best.

I Lost My Body (J’ai perdu mon corps) is sit up and take notice animation.

Ultimately what makes this an unusually rewarding picture about motherhood is the fact that it shatters the binary distinction between the good mother and the bad one.

To the outsider, Naples is often seen as a city of colour and life, a place of bubbling exuberance. Not so in Giancarlo Rosi’s strikingly melancholic documentary portrait of the southern Italian metropolis.

The set up promises a high concept romantic comedy, but in execution, Maria Schrader’s immensely enjoyable picture delves rather deeper, touching on philosophy, socio-sexual ethics and humanity’s uneasily symbiotic relationship with technology.

Proceeds without flashy tricks or showy technique, offering the pleasures of captivating storytelling with an irresistible human pulse.

The Fire Inside, in a deceptively brilliant twist on the inspirational sports film, is a humanist story, whose every hard hitting beat and aching emotion is also truly earned.

Women Talking is a challenging work that requires a little patience from the audience, which is rewarded with a troubling, provocative story that lingers in the mind long after the film is over.

This is a documentary that carefully, meticulously builds a case and then blindsides the viewer with revelations, second thoughts and fresh evidence that makes you reconsider everything you thought was certain.

Baldwin’s insights originate from 1979, but they still speak volumes, and Peck makes their observations sting.

The film’s most considerable achievement, however, is to sustain its drama on a finely poised level of emotional intimacy, while sometimes hitting us with intense imagistic charges, not least the graphic slaughterhouse scenes at the start.

Tracey Deer’s feature debut Beans vibrates with ferocious anger and righteous pride.

A gripping crime thriller that also makes a sharp political statement, Just 6.5 paints a bleak picture of Iranian law enforcement’s attempts to deal with the country’s flourishing narcotics trade.

Conjuring up a serving of visual magic is one thing, of course; bringing Kipling’s characters and narrative to life is another.

Peck’s film is a rich chronicling of Cole’s unique career, peerless artistry, political strength and moving end.

Superbly acted and executed, this spare piece of storytelling marks an assertive feature debut for theatre and opera director William Oldroyd.

It’s a beautifully composed ballad that both celebrates and laments the passing of time and resonates long after the credits roll.

The film starts by promising a bourgeois social drama about secrets and lies, suspicions and rivalries, and the troubled waters of juvenile and adult sexuality. What it ultimately becomes is much harder to define, but the result is resonant and haunting – and should spark plenty of post-screening discussions.

What’s perhaps unexpected, in a film that has the look of a brooding fable by Carl Theodore Dreyer, is how funny it is at times.

Guzman’s heart and soul investment in the film and the snapshots of people power in action make for an emotional and involving documentary.

A compelling political campaign chronicle and an incisive allegory of American democracy, Boys State is also much more fun that you’d expect.

The latest anime from Mamoru Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) is a beguilingly sweet-natured little gem. The film balances spiralling flights of fancy with glinting observations on parenting and family dynamics.

Abbasi has made an Iranian noir which, even though it dares to poke around the spiritual capital of Iran with its largest mosque in the world, isn’t an assault on the Iranian government per se, but a crime thriller which shows how far fundamentalist morality can be twisted and how banal the face of evil really is.

Pondering imbalances of power is always timely, and here, it adds an extra layer of urgency and commentary to an already potent and perceptive offering.

If in the past Abu-Assad’s movies could be criticised for stridency, The Idol finds him sacrificing none of his thematic drive while locating a more humanistic, inspirational tone.

Savage’s success at getting under the skin of the kind of cancerous depression which gnaws away at the soul means that this is not always the easiest watch. There are no audience-appeasing neat happy endings, just raw emotional wounds and aching compromises. But, despite a low key approach, this is a compelling, sometimes wrenching drama.

Much credit too must go the actors, all non-professionals who were discovered by the director via community meetings and theatre workshops. There’s no Brechtian alienation here: these are committed yet unmannered performances that help to flesh out what might otherwise be a thin story.

Some intricately choreographed long takes - Eric Gautier’s photography is superb throughout - enhance a project which is both vivid in its evocation of the recent past, and razor-sharp in the light it sheds on the way that religious and nationalistic fanaticism continue to exert a dangerous sway.