Elles (2011)
★★★★☆
A devastating bedroom battle of the sexes, Malgorzata Szumowska’s Elles offers a glimpse into the secret lives of women behind closed doors.
Country
This Must Be The Place (2011)
★★★★☆
His first English language feature, Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be The Place turns the U-turn into a narrative art as a has-been popstar turns Nazi-hunter.
Headhunter / Hodejegerne
★★★★☆
Based on the bestselling novel by Jo Nesbø, Headhunters is a taut Norwegian thriller of slick art thefts, aggressive male rivalry and big inferiority complexes.
Wild Bill (2011)
★★★☆☆
Set in Stratford’s badlands, Dexter Fletcher’s debut feature Wild Bill has Olympian dreams of turning a wayward father into a family hero. So very London 2012.
Tiny Furniture (2010)
★★★☆☆
Tiny Furniture sees young filmmaker Lena Dunham trying to carve out a path for herself amidst the monochrome post-graduate confusion of New York.
Babycall (2011)
★★★☆☆
Pål Sletaune’s Babycall is a hall of ghostly mirrors and fantasy reflections as a mother and victim of domestic abuse tries to keep a fracturing reality together.
The Kid With A Bike / Le Gamin Au Vélo (2011)
★★★★☆
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne return to heartbreaking form with The Kid With A Bike with a little boy lost looking for love with all the kinetic anxiety he can muster.
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia / Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da (2011)
★★★★☆
An epic night-time police investigation, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon A Time In Anatolia exhumes an inconvenient truth from the soul’s darkest recesses.
How To Re-establish A Vodka Empire (2012)
★★★☆☆
How To Re-establish A Vodka Empire is a creative look at Dan Edelstyn’s attempt to retrace his lost Ukrainian heritage and relaunch the family vodka brand.
Trishna (2011)
★★★★☆
Reinventing Hardy’s Tess Of The d’Urbervilles in a colourful India in its own glorious revolution, Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna is a bitter fall from grace.
A Man’s Story (2010)
★★★☆☆
Filmed over 12 years, Varon Bonicos’s A Man’s Story is more than a bio-doc on Ozwald Boateng, it’s a sharp look at the essence of the man.
The Woman In The Fifth (2011)
★★★☆☆
Filmed in French, English and Polish, Pawel Pawlikowski’s The Woman In The Fifth offers a uniquely European look at love, literature and lunacy.
Michael (2011)
★★★★☆
With echoes of Michael Haneke, the Austrian master’s casting director Markus Schleinzer has us on a knife-edge with his paedophilia drama Michael.
Khodorkovsky (2011)
★★★☆☆
From oligarch to the Siberian gulag, Cyril Tuschi’s documentary Khodorkovsky shines a light on Russia’s murky politics and its most infamous dissident. Oh, those Russians.