Kuma (2012)
★★★★☆
East meets West in Umut Dag’s Kuma when a Turkish girl, chosen as a second wife, sets an immigrant family living in Vienna awhirl.
When The Dragon Swallowed The Sun (2010)
★★☆☆☆
Canvassing a breadth of opinion from Tibet’s leaders in exile, Dirk Simon’s When The Dragon Swallowed The Sun traces the battle lines drawn and lost during the Beijing Olympics.
Silence (2013)
★★★★☆
Part documentary and part fiction, Pat Collins’ Silence is an Irish evocation of one man’s long journey home.
Foxfire (2012)
★★★☆☆
It’s girl power Fifties style in Laurent Cantet’s Foxfire as a brazen girl-gang, taking on man and the world, spread dissent like wildfire.
Looking For Hortense / Cherchez Hortense (2012)
★★☆☆☆
With the fate of a young woman hanging on a middle-aged nobody, Bonitzer’s Looking For Hortense is a rather bloodless comedy on husbands and wives, fathers and sons.
Paradise Hope / Paradies Hoffnung (2013)
★★★★☆
With a teenager falling for an older man at fat camp, Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise Hope remains optimistic of a better life. All it needs is a little discipline.
Frances Ha (2012)
★★★★☆
Down and out in Paris and Brooklyn, Noah Baumbach’s playful comedy Frances Ha is a bittersweet romp through the earnest dreams of youth.
Viramundo (2013)
★★★☆☆
On tour through the globe’s indigenous and marginalised peoples in Pierre-Yves Borgeaud’s Viramundo, Gilberto Gil is turning the world upside-down.
Breathe In (2013)
★★★☆☆
With a New York family in crisis, Drake Doremus’ Breathe In finds an unlikely villain in Felicity Jones in this intimate, genre-busting chamber piece.
Blancanieves (2012)
★★★★☆
A very Spanish retelling of the Snow White fairytale, Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves is an enchanting, spellbinding homage to the silent age.
Les Invisibles (2012)
★★★★☆
Putting the stories of nine venerable gay men and women under the spotlight, Sébastien Lifshitz’s Les Invisibles pays homage to love, self-fulfilment and revolution.
Play (2011)
★★★★☆
Through teen scams, Native American song and an ownerless cradle, Ruben Östlund’s Play offers a long hard look at social discomfort at play.
Trap For Cinderella (2013)
★★★☆☆
Adapting Sébastien Japrisot’s novel for the 21st century, Iain Softley’s Trap For Cinderella is a cautionary tale of lust, vengeance and greed.
The Deep / Djúpið (2012)
★★★☆☆
A Norse saga for the modern day, Baltasar Kormákur’s The Deep stages a play on survival and mythmaking against the backdrop of Iceland’s dramatic landscape.