Leave No Trace (2018)
★★★★☆
Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace is a sympathetic, realistic character study of a father and daughter trying to adapt to society after being off grid in a US wilderness.
Female Filmmakers
Zama (2017)
★★★★☆
In Lucrecia Martel’s hallucinatory, dreamlike, absurdist Zama, Spanish colonialists take on South America and lose.
Let the Sunshine In (2017)
★★★★☆
Juliette Binoche stars in a rom-com departure for Claire Denis in Let the Sunshine In (Un Beau Soleil Interior).
Western (2017)
★★★★☆
The captivating German/Bulgarian culture clash in Valeska Grisebach’s Western could only happen in the EU and it’s subversive.
I Got Life! (2017)
★★★★☆
I Got Life! by Blandine Lenoir is a heart-warming story of female solidarity and ‘you’re never too old’ starring wonderful Agnès Jaoui.
You Were Never Really Here (2017)
★★★★☆
You Were Never Really Here by Lynne Ramsay is a dark, disturbing odyssey into the mind of a brutal yet tender hitman.
Dark River (2017)
★★★★☆
Her native rugged Yorkshire is the setting for Dark River, Clio Barnard’s follow-up to The Selfish Giant, a grim drama of a dysfunctional family and their failing farm.
Mudbound (2017)
★★★★☆
Dee Rees, in Netflix’s Mudbound adapted from Hillary Jordan’s novel, evokes a period and place in the Deep South where racial prejudice engulfs rural communities like a muddy swamp.
BFI LFF: I Am Not a Witch (2017)
★★★★☆
Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not a Witch is a surreal deadpan satire.
BFI LFF: Ava (2017)
★★★★☆
In Ava, the increasing darkness of Léa Mysius’ direction echoes the encroaching blindness of its young heroine in a strikingly original coming-of-age story.
On Body and Soul (2017)
★★★☆☆
Intersplicing oneiric images of deer in the snow with slaughterhouse romance, Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body And Soul is an unexpectedly romantic vision of star-cross’d loving.
Maudie (2016)
★★★★☆
Aisling Walsh’s biopic inspires a transcendent performance from Sally Hawkins as Nova Scotian folk painter Maudie.
The Beguiled (2017)
★★★★☆
Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is compelling Southern Gothic, richly textured and deeply feminine.
The Levelling (2016)
★★★★☆
The Levelling is an original, haunting British first feature from writer and director Hope Dickson Leach.