It’s confusing and heavy and bears down hard until a third-act swerve throws in colours and movement and spins the viewer out of the theatre in wonder. It won’t be forgotten.

A likeably offbeat and disarmingly self-aware documentary essay on how humans deal with the immutable transience of the universe, Ian Cheney’s globetrotting Arc Of Oblivion should leave a trace in the minds of receptive viewers.

This essential documentary is necessarily, unflinchingly grim; the cinematic equivalent of walking in the survivors’ shoes, and a complex, challenging but crucial viewing experience that burrows its immense sorrows deep into the audience’s bones.

Cameraperson is about process and aesthetics, images and rules but it is also about empathy and ethical dilemmas.

The Quiet Girl is thoughtful, spiritual in its stillness but alive with the hum of the land and the emotions it guards. Editing by the experienced John Murphy finishes the work with a precision that also smoothes this rites of passage story. Certainly, this is a quiet film, but it speaks in high volumes.

Charlie Kaufman is back – with a wistful, resonant film, a bracing, wry, honest dose of cinematic melancholy.

Those who have the patience to go with its ravishing flow will find ample rewards, as Long Day’s Journey is a beautiful, smoulderingly romantic film.

While it could be described as being more of a filmed play than a piece of cinema, it’s also a riveting, raw work which, in its stripped-back simplicity, magnifies the power of tucker green’s fiercely compelling writing.

The striking feature film debut from Andreas Fontana brings a prickly thriller sensibility to the closed world of high finance and a piquancy to the phrase ‘dirty money’.

An exemplary sequel, the film retains the innocence and beguiling lack of cynicism of the first film, but moves on to explore other motifs

Wiseman’s true subject here is arguably off-screen, shamed by example, guilty in absentia: the erosion of democratic values and civil, civic debate in an increasingly divided country.

The novelty of his volcanically vulgar, deeply cynical tone may have worn off some, but Iannucci has nonetheless crafted another poisonous cocktail of naked ambition and blustery bravado with a decidedly bitter aftertaste.

About Dry Grasses is a ravishingly cinematic piece of work that seems designed to spark animated, if not acrimonious, debate.

Following his hugely ambitious period productions Mr Turner and Peterloo, the director returns to what might be considered the quintessential Leigh mode of tightly-framed domestic drama, and does so with exceptional bite.

Anchored by a funny, foul-mouthed performance from McDormand, McDonagh’s daringly-structured dark comedy is rich and layered and often laugh-out-loud funny but trips over constant tonal shifts.

It’s to the credit of Isabelle Huppert, who excels in the role of philosophy teacher Nathalie, and to the deft handling by Hansen-Løve that the film wears its wealth of ideas so lightly.

Director Clint Bentley sculpts a sentimental story whose gentle ironies and modest design have a cumulative power.

Taken on its own terms as an unashamedly anachronistic attempt to muster the emotional intensity of the Hollywood melodrama tradition, Cooper’s film must be at least grudgingly acknowledged as a success.

In terms of filmed stage entertainment, Hamilton is a cut above (literally, as there’s an overhead camera, as well as one from the back of the stage). Hamilton is a technically difficult, fast and extremely complex stage show to perform: this film puts the viewer up close but also backs out when appropriate and makes strong strategic decisions on how to frame and move.

On the whole, The Father incorporates what could have just been a storytelling gimmick and infuses it with such sorrow, grace and even the occasional dark joke that it becomes a profound exploration of how we say goodbye to someone dear to us — even though they have not yet really gone.

Though it is all about mourning and loss, Maoz’ script reaches way beyond, unveiling in each one of his leading characters deep layers of past guilt that might have never been revealed in normal circumstances.

One of the many pleasures of this understated drama is its slow-burn magnetism and lack of flashy genre posturing.

It’s a film that never overwhelms but it lingers, leaving its mark on the viewer.

This comfortable armchair of great, old-school cinematic craft is made all the more embracing by Iglesias’s nuanced soundtrack. But we’re jolted out of that seat, and made to stand in admiration, as the film deftly weaves together two tales of removal – one maternal, the other political and historic.

The film’s ace card is its intertwining of not one but two mismatched buddy relationships.

As the story of the mysterious Cordona plays out, the persuasive personalities of the three women both then and now strike a chord.

Even as the film sails insouciantly into a rarefied imaginative stratosphere of its own, it’s anchored to emotional reality by a dazzling performance by Emma Stone – if anything, outdoing her revelatory turn in The Favourite.

Favouring an unhurried pace, Filho takes the time to let us get to know Clara. And while the moments of drama are small and intimate, the effect is engrossing.