A marvellously colourful and emotional adventure, Raya And The Last Dragon compellingly argues that the world is a dark place — but the only way to heal it is to hold onto hope.

It takes more than simply celebrating rural life and marveling at nature to make someone the next David Gordon Green, let alone the next Terrence Malick. While Yeomans inarguably finds something significant in the slow pace of small towns, the power of narration and the jolt of handheld cinematography, exactly what that is isn’t always clear. In fact, sometimes it’s literally unclear; shots slip out of focus, and some close-ups are so poorly lit the characters’ features disappear.

Quietly rewarding thanks to an excellent cast whose faces we observe in frequent close-ups as their dirt-poor characters do their very best with scant resources.

The brisk rhythms and energy of the storytelling ensure that the pace rarely flags, and that every frame of this film about the business of death is bursting with life.

Newcomer Hall strikes a real presence. She’s posed a lot, it’s true – against the sun, the rust-coloured sheets of Diddi’s bedroom, the doggedly brown bar in which she works – but she’s as bright as the light of summer in Iceland, and her character seems just as likely to survive this problematic present.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is the kind of bold swing with difficult material that does manage to earn your respect.

The droll, slight Smoking Causes Coughing plays like a loose collection of Quentin Dupieux’s leftover ideas, but there’s ample charm in these surreal bits and pieces — especially for anyone already on the auteur’s cheekily bizarre wavelength.

Neither a broad farce nor a scathing evisceration of sexism (both then and now), Catherine Called Birdy ends up trapped in a dissatisfying middle ground between those two extremes, a tonal decision that results in only mild laughs and somewhat engaging characters.

The film’s freewheeling energy is as appealing as its developments are unpredictable.

The fantastical elements soon fade away and the film becomes grounded in the tender realities of growing up, finding oneself and questions about love, sexuality, home, family, and the future.

Firecracker chemistry between the two leads makes this doomed Romeo and Juliet romance all the more tragically persuasive. Mavela’s kittenish little girl voice is utterly beguiling; Marwan’s adolescent swagger doesn’t quite conceal the sweet boy beneath.

Though the script rarely makes an unexpected choice, it’s the way that the film dissects its many underlying complications that matters more than eschewing predictability. Calmly, but filled with feeling, Graizer lets his protagonists’ actions and choices subvert the norm.

Some things never change: the pranks remain juvenile, the stunts continue to range from harrowing to disgusting, and the laughs come at a steady clip, even if there’s more than a little familiarity to the formula by now.

It’s Eva Green who steals the elaborate show, making villainy seem like the best possible career choice for a beautiful woman, circa the 1620s.

Denis Côté’s eerie fantasy drama juxtaposes the mundane and the parochial with the supernatural, to sometimes disquieting effect.

The mirror it holds up to its subjects — and perhaps the audience — is incredibly, sometimes painfully illuminating.

A small-scale, covert glimpse of the lives led behind the headlines.

With its looming, angular and alienating architecture, and thoroughly considered technological and ethical future landscape, this is a phenomenal and inventive piece of world-building from Prague-based director Robert Hloz.

By the end, loving and eating, wanting and devouring are made to converge in ways that are both gruesome and fascinating, thought-provoking and oddly touching.

Motel Destino may not make a profound impact, but it does make an impact nonetheless.

This Dune dwarfs most contemporary sci-fi in its scope and execution, ably juggling multiple characters and settings so that it matches the sprawling drama of the original tome.

Judith Chemla is a perfect choice for the lead.

It is a sentimental journey to redemption but one that Boonnitipat grounds in understanding and empathy.

Exceedingly thoughtful and self-critical rather than lazily nostalgic, this well-acted coming-of-age tale can sometimes be predictable and muddled, but is steeped in the filmmaker’s sorrow for not recognising the ways in which he and those he loved contributed to an inequitable society that shows no signs of becoming less stratified.

Making a great documentary is half finding the right story, half knowing what to do with it. Ramin Bahrani hits the jackpot on both counts in this slyly entertaining but also morally and emotionally resonant investigation.

Even if Trier doesn’t have much new to say about oppressive religious belief, childhood trauma or the terror of adolescent hormones, Thelma’s sustained, muted uneasiness gives this genre exercise sufficient gusto.

Although director Wash Westmoreland tackles several serious subjects — sexual liberation, the repression of women’s voices, the power of art to change society — the movie has such a playful spirit that the talking points go down smoothly.

The Workshop conveys a stunningly authentic portrait of French youth today; their class, racial and occupational concerns.