Last And First Men is a stunning work of beauty and horror.

It’s a film made with honesty, integrity and a certain grace, but it can’t quite overcome an earnestness that was never a problem in Hansen-Love’s best films, which carried their literary and cinematic inspirations lightly.

While Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach may couch this self-discovery narrative in powder pinks and unrelenting pep, their message is authentic and acerbic: an urgent feminist call to arms wrapped up in a hugely entertaining popcorn movie.

For all its deft style and sympathetic characters, there’s still something missing in We,The Animals. In its efforts to evoke a young boy’s inner-world, it falls short of fully capturing his emotional reality. Jonah’s story should be heartbreaking, but when we see images of him flying over the forest, it’s just picturesque and lyrical.

It is the viewer who feels the injustice and outrage on his behalf, deepening the emotional connection to events.

An engaging documentary that’s perhaps too enchanted by its own “stranger than fiction” oddness to delve deeply enough into the human drama on display.

The Eternal Daughter is at its most poignant when it plunges into the personal – in Swinton’s retreating mother and faltering daughter, you can sense the director’s power growing as she continues to acknowledge herself.

The Settlers shows promise: it’s the work of a daring director intent on developing a distinctive and original voice.

Each of the film’s three strands has its own dramatic flaws and virtues. But what is most intriguing is the way that the stories are braided, both in editor Anita Roth’s intercutting and in the establishing of visual parallels.

It’s as cosy as Mr Rogers’ trademark zip-up cardigan, but the sweetness of this film about the beloved US children’s television personality is tempered by the inventive eccentricity of its approach.

Blank’s lively debut feels liberated by its maker’s creative freedom.

Compartment No. 6 is something of a minimalist shaggy dog story, ending on a bittersweet low-key note.

This impressive feature from Alexandre Moratto takes the topic of modern-day enslavement as a jumping-off point for a morality tale which gets increasingly knotty and satisfying as it goes on.

What the film does brilliantly is compose a symphony of social awkwardness, with Anne as its virtuoso focus.

For all that it dances on familiar ground, Firecrackers ends on a pleasingly opaque note. It’s attractively shot by Catherine Lutes, and smartly cast with unknowns, making it more than just a calling card for its young writer/director. There’s much to take note of here foom Mozaffari and her all-female crew.

The downside to the film is Kossakovsky’s feeling that he had to include people in the mix.

Tools associated with fiction are used to tell the truth, and an elegant tone is deployed to disguise a righteous fury.

In the gripping, inspiring — and, ultimately, dispiriting — documentary The Force, a troubled police force tries to redeem itself, only to learn how nearly impossible the task may be.

It is a premise that facilitates a forensic examination of China’s family planning model within the quasi-futuristic trappings of its urbanised present. It is also paradoxically highly specific in its subject yet incredibly difficult to pin down in terms of its broader identity, as it skilfully skirts genre lines.

It’s a halfway house between reality and the desires and dreams and disappointments of a 40 year-old woman, and should be appreciated as such by Francophone audiences everywhere.

Midi Z’s control of mood, pace and performance builds an engrossing drama that works on the intimate level of a moving human tragedy whilst also providing an insight into the much bigger picture of the problems and heartaches facing the people of Burma.

The feature debut from Swedish writer/director Isabella Eklöf is an uncompromisingly tough and unforgiving study of social standing and market forces.

The film crafts a framework of superstition and ritual, onto which is hung a vividly realised, if somewhat enigmatic portrait of a child’s life.

Shot from inside its community, Rocks is more than simply a polemic, though, and is careful to root its message in sequences of day-to-day reality.

The results are often revelatory, offering an unvarnished look at being young, free and unsettled, with the individuals they meet being almost as important as the journey itself.

Hadzihalilovic is a director who refuses to compromise her very distinctive vision and that is the case here, even if The Ice Tower, which bows in Berlin Competition, is her biggest film to date; utterly beautiful in every frame with a breakout lead performance by young French actress Clara Pacini.

A saga of complicated relationships, longings and heartbreak sometimes strains to fully develop all its disparate elements. Yet this is still an ambitious feat of storytelling delivered with a sensitivity to mood and emotion.

This Quebecois romantic comedy is as sharp and perceptive as it is funny.