An invigoratingly savage Nordic western, The Promised Land is earthy, enjoyable stuff: an expansive, sweeping epic with hope in its heart and dirt under its nails.

The ending is simultaneously satisfying and slyly subversive, allowing an unravelling of ideas that should lead audiences to think about what they have watched.

The economical, precisely calibrated screenplay is nicely filled with enough simmering conflicts, character flaws and guilty resentments to keep you intrigued by what lies beneath the surface of these comfortable, middle-class lives

The latest picture from Melanie Laurent is a strikingly beautiful production which delves deep into the ugliness at the roots of psychiatric medicine.

Earth Mama offers no falsely encouraging happy ending, but its clear-eyed humanity nonetheless feels like a balm. In a society that often tries to sweep the poor away so that they’re out of sight, this film encourages us to see — and to care.

Rather like the butterfly wings that are its central metaphor, Son of Monarchs is deceptively fragile-seeming, yet robust, structurally complex and vibrantly hued.

The Dating Game is sustained by the humanity that Du Feng finds in each of the individuals we come to know and understand a little better.

There are moments when, like the gaudy lights of Acapulco, Sundown flickers into something rather special when seen from the right angle, in the right mood: a film about a goodbye to life which is also a film about a kind of afterlife.

Lady is a vivid, bracingly energetic examination of sisterhood and female bonds in an unequal society.

With a running time of four hours, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros is a marathon, even by Wiseman’s leisurely standards. But it is an absorbing film, a forest full of trails for viewers to wander in.

This film is an informative, polished and bracingly upbeat production.

It’s a film that requires considerable investment from the audience, and one that rations its rewards even to those who fully commit to the experience. Still, Schanelec’s approach draws the audience in, even as it holds them at arm’s length; she is uncommonly fond of wide shots. It’s an oddly fascinating endeavour.

An elegant, absorbing piece of storytelling.

Debut director Prano Bailey-Bond crafts a stylish, effective horror that is both an homage to genre cinema of that period and a psychological dive into the combined traumas of grief and guilt.

The initial promise of a South African Brokeback Mountain broadens into a measured consideration of class, race, self-loathing and self-assertion in a compact but pleasingly complex drama.

Sad, proud, loud, funny, energetic and affecting, Kiki the documentary reflects accurately the spirit of kiki, the scene.

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.

The film expertly blends satirical social commentary and disturbing horror tropes to shine a light on the appalling racial and economic divides that still shape the country 30 years after the end of apartheid.

Luca is undeniably slight. But there’s also relief in its modesty: rather than shoehorning spectacle and stakes into this story, Casarosa gives the film and its easygoing humour room to breathe.

Co-directors Ainsley Gardener and Briar Grace Smith tell a sprawling story of separation and disposession which feels both intimate in terms of its setting and epic in resonance.

La Civil paints a compelling picture of a society in which nobody can be trusted and everyone is complicit in a neverending cyle of violence, intimidation and revenge.

Its dramatic heft and its stars’ upfront audacity make it a sexy proposition in every respect.

Dramatising Steinem’s life during different periods, and with different actresses, Taymor has crafted an exceedingly thoughtful portrait of a leader and the women’s movement she championed.

Goodman emerges as a passionate advocacy journalist but also a well-navigated professional who is wise to the tricks of the trade and prepared to use them.

Set in Rome’s sprawling Cinecittà studios in their 1950s heyday, Finally Dawn is a rich, shape-shifting fairy tale, an odyssey of empowerment about a vulnerable girl navigating her way through a day and night of enchantments and dangers, using her weakness as a kind of magic shield.

Much of the movie’s success stems from Contreras, his regular cinematographer Tonatiuh Martínez and the rest of the technical team’s handling of its spiritual musings, with a beguiling mood as crucial as the underlying backstory.

Lengthy it may be, but this is light-of-touch fare, provocative and satisfyingly enigmatic, and though it feels like a four-hour MacGuffin, it remains an accomplished, literary and self-referential exercise in narrative deferral.

If the village’s utter isolation feels unlikely, that’s because The Sower is in one sense a dream, the enactment of a myth that goes back to Ancient Greece and beyond.