Survived pain arises as both a vehicle for growth and catalyst for the revaluation of one’s impetus in Joanna Hogg’s introspectively awe-inspiring stroke of virtuosity The Souvenir.

The film does not stab as deeply in laying bare the schizoid moral hypocrisy of the perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide as its peerless predecessor, but instead offers an extraordinarily poignant, desperately upsetting meditation on the legacy of those killings, and on the bravery required to seek any kind of truth about them.

All of Mendonça Filho’s aesthetic, genre proclivities, and ideological concerns coalesce in this larger period canvas.

Simmering with ambiguity, Burning plays its staging, writing, dialogue, acting, music, everything with carefully calibrated minimalism, but in turn it makes some grandiose statements. An unrecognizable murder-mystery Burning torches genre clichés and leaves a lasting, scorching blister.

Despite what may initially seem to be a somewhat straightforward contemporary drama, Hamaguchi has crafted a rich, skilfully layered masterwork with flawless performances and a script that is a screenwriter’s holy grail. It sticks in your brain for days and nudges you to take it in again.

This is a film about anger, felt as deeply by the characters whose lives unspool in front of the camera as by the filmmaker who sits behind it. Such anger is a long river that bifurcates into two opposing forces: violence and empathy.

Diop’s Saint Omer doesn’t condescend to the viewer by slinking toward black-and-white offerings of good and evil, or broad statements about race or gender. This ripped-from-the-headlines narrative accomplishes a feat far more creative, and a bit less forced. It dances on the surface of these participants, and in their subtle ripples, to reveal the humanity in the seemingly inhumane.

Though it has a few elements of its construction that might be questionable, it's mostly a powerful, thoughtful, and visually striking picture.

It’s an incredibly melancholy, intimate and yet often hilarious look at relationships and connection that provides a surprisingly great deal of insight into the human condition. It’s both sweet and considered, as well as observant about our fears, masks and growing alienation.

It is a film that feels movingly personal while speaking to the ubiquitous tussle between duty and desire, and that does so through the gnarling of fresh and guts and bones to find what is buried deep within one’s being: a throbbing vein of wanting, undeniably alive, and that, once freed, will not stop until its thirst is quenched.

From one scene to the next, like paint strokes slowly giving shape to an idea on a canvas, one can draw thematic parallels between the individual stories.

Little Wome fills and drains your heart, fills and drains your heart, fills and drains the heart. But the best remains the same. ‘Little Women’ lives by vitality and hope.

Even if the film threatens to bustle over with ideas, the Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat format deftly juggles several narrative threads, making history feel more alive — and in sync — than many other documentaries of its kind.

To say it’s a stellar feat of cinema is something of an understatement.

It’s a lovely, gracious, soul-satisfying thing.

A luminous and soul-nourishing microcosm built on profound love in the face of impending grief, the film reveals itself in the charged interactions between its multiple characters.

Fans of Polley’s work to date will be delighted by a documentary that serves simultaneously as a gripping mystery, a moving record of a family and a fascinating investigation into the nature of truth, memory, and the documentary form itself.

It’s somewhat remarkable a new work exists that sparks such conversation in the first place. Even if it doesn’t completely succeed, that’s art. That’s dynamic. That deserves your attention.

The Boy and the Heron is Miyazaki’s strong-willed encouragement for us to persevere. If this is, in fact, a swan song, then it’s a ravishing one because no one has the ability to distill elemental truths into vividly rendered moving paintings like Miyazaki.

An insightful, enjoyable, absorbing ride that stands as a testament to its director's lively, ungovernable storytelling imagination.

If it does suffer slightly from an overall lack of urgency that will mean those looking for a more directly emotive experience may find it hard to engage with, the more patient viewer has rewards in store that are rich and rare indeed.

Having these two storylines run parallel provides for both disconnect and whiplash, a narrative choice that emphasizes what Goldin beautifully labels “the darkness of the soul” — to be plagued to feel everything while concurrently condemned to nihilistic numbness.

Panahi manages to keep an impressive amount of plates spinning all at once in Hit the Road, a breath of fresh air and a truly original work that marks him as a talent to watch.

It makes a deeply human experience, and one that’s frequently both educational (the film’s main purpose: a copy will be given to every school in Britain) and moving. In fact, it’s not so much individual faces or interviews that leave the most lasting impression so much as it’s the cumulative impact of all the faces.

This Is Not A Burial, It’s A Resurrection, is that rare gem of a film that falls into an unclassifiable category.

While Baker has proven his worth as a true cinematic auteur, his greatest skill has been guiding his actors to new heights wherever his stories may take them. You’ll have to decide if that’s enough to gloss over the rough patches this time around.

This time the irony is of the tragic kind, and the stinging, wicked wit is tinctured with wholly new notes of tenderness.

It is hard to conceive of a director this young and early in his career to be able to deliver a film that comes out of the gates with the confidence and grandeur of a classic. And not a classic in the making, but one already made.