Uncle Howard begins as a slightly tentative film about a nephew’s quest to discover more about his adored film-maker uncle, Howard Brookner. But it grows into a perceptive, poignant documentary which looks at many things.

How does where we are from impact on the kind of love we feel? López Riera’s answer, which can be summed up as boy meets girls meets magical realism meets women’s solidarity, is both intimate and ambitious in scope, thought-provoking and emotionally engaging.

Featuring superb turns from Vicky Krieps and the late Gaspard Ulliel - in his final role - as a couple facing the most difficult of choices, More Than Ever persuades, rather than forces, its audience to stare death in the face, and proves surprisingly life affirming in the process.

An unassuming character study set to poetic rhythms makes for an empathetic study of Black life, full of resolve.

Even when the lines uttered sound more like a statement than an actual conversation, Sen remains a master of everything he controls as Goldstone slowly inches towards its bullet-riddled finale.

It would be unsporting to say more but, simply put, there are moments of unalloyed terror (juxtaposed with a crowd-pleasing giddiness) that make Nope worth not just seeing on the big screen but with as huge a crowd as possible.

It is often very funny, unsettling and yet still proves illuminating on the character of Neruda and the battle for Chile in the 1940s.

The narrative may have familiar contours, but Ford’s close attention to the have-nots’ desire to transcend their circumstances gives the proceedings a gripping emotional undercurrent.

The only thing that’s clear from start to finish is that Hadžihalilovic is in absolute command of her unsettling cinematic realm.

Krieps is terrific in a role which depicts Elisabeth as both a victim of her gilded cage circumstances and a chain-smoking self-absorbed uber-bitch.

Goat is a potent reminder that even traditional gender roles can be rife with angst, anxiety and devastating social pressures.

The well-drawn characters, clever plotting and sting of social commentary in a tale of pride and property create an entertaining film that could follow in the wake of Parasite, Squid Game and other South Korean success stories.

The situation of Israel’s Arab population is treated with poised satirical acidity in Let It Be Morning, a film mixing social comedy with a touch of absurdism that, though rooted in real-world conflict, has distinct echoes of Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel.

A suffocating slipknot drama, it embeds violence and extortion in a destructive ecosystem, showing that every favour is loaded, every gift poisoned, every debt unpayable. Brutality never cleanses in Kim’s impressive debut; it simply engenders more brutality.

What gives the film a force that balances out the delicacy is a commanding, charismatic lead by Wendy Chinchilla Araya, best known as a dancer, whose highly physical presence in turn evokes Clara’s sensitivity, isolation, vulnerability, fury and – despite the pressure to keep it hidden – powerful sexuality.

Structurally inventive, if not downright format-twisting, it takes a Jacob’s Ladder to 1990s China, where a beleaguered police detective tries so hard to unravel a killing that he spins himself into seeming madness.

The combination of a unique personality and a fascinating place makes for a beguiling and poetic film, which blurs the lines between science and art.

Watching The Tale Of King Crab feels like watching the stories on which all later stories have been based. You also get brooding intensity and slippery, dreamlike atmospherics and dialogues that strip things back to their essentials.

Dancing across multiple themes and frequently upending expectations, Barbarian keeps us wonderfully uncertain about where it’s going — or even what it’s ultimately about — which only makes the picture that much more gripping.

It would take a hard heart not to break at the sight of Alex Wheatle (now a much-loved children’s author in the UK), sitting frozen on the sofa as his friend’s mother prepares his first-ever Christmas meal.

An old-fashioned, beautifully crafted nature documentary for family audiences.

Like taking a dip in alluring yet choppy surf, as its characters do often, it’s equally vivid and calm, swelling with emotion yet still in its approach.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is an impressive achievement, a piece of storytelling which balances moments of flighty whimsy against deeper existential questions, marking Foldes as a talent to watch in the world of adult-skewed animation.

Fizzing with ideas, as difficult to pin down as its heroine, Divines keeps generating electricity long after the lights have gone down.

Sarah Snook turns in a terrific performance which is always true to the character at every point of a complex arc.

Fascinating, mind-expanding, infuriating and bewildering, this is a bracingly ambitious documentary which embraces the artificiality of the computer generated animation which constitutes a large part of its approach.

Ziba is a genuine intellectual heroine, and Hekmat conveys a sense of how her introversion and seriousness might set her apart in a hedonistic high-school culture.

BPM (Beats Per Minute) is a moving, lump-in-the-throat love story but should also resonate on a political level as a testimony to the power of activism to awaken an indifferent world.