★★★☆☆
The Sweet East is cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ directorial debut, with a screenplay by film critic Nick Pinkerton. It stars Talia Ryder (Never Rarely Sometimes Always) as a contemporary Alice in Wonderland, a student on a dreamlike road trip, satirising US subcultures.
★★★☆☆
Baltimore (misleading title) is a biopic of the life of revolutionary class warrior Rose Dugdale in Ireland, written and directed by husband and wife team Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor.
★★★★☆
strong>The Delinquents directed by Rodrigo Morena is an enthralling, misleading Argentinian film – original but also reminiscent of Spike Jonze or a reversal of The Shawshank Redemption.
★★★★☆
Rumours, lies, cover-ups and maybe the truth – all are layers of the onion in the compelling Monster, directed by award-winning Hirokazu Koreeda, written by Yûji Sakamoto, with music by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
★★★☆☆
Lusciously beautiful: the doomed romance in Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s poetic debut feature Banel & Adama takes place amid the severe effects of climate change in remote northeastern Senegal.
★★★★★
Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World is a wide-ranging, vicious satire on the post-communist, rampantly privatised, chaotically capitalist economy in Romania and everything else in modern European life, by Radu Jude.
★★★★★
Four Daughters is a powerful and emotionally compelling mixture of documentary and drama directed by Kaouther Ben Hania that examines the roots of fundamentalism and how women pass on self-imposed repression through the generations.
★★★★☆
Perfect Days is acclaimed director Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-set film for which Koji Yakusho won a well-deserved Best Actor award.
★★★★☆
The Taste of Things, directed by Tran Anh Hung is so, so French. It’s beautiful and it’s a 19th-century love story that is also food and beauty obsessed.
★★★☆☆
The Settlers is an angry, violent Western-type version of the brutal colonial birth of Chile by first-time filmmaker Felipe Gálvez.
★★★★☆
December 1970, a grumpy teacher forced to stay on campus over the holidays gradually bonds with a volatile teenager in Alexander Payne’s latest comedy drama The Holdovers.
★★★☆☆
Two teenage boys in a juvenile detention centre develop a passionate bond which is tested when one of them approaches his release in director and co-writer Zeno Graton’s The Lost Boys.
★★★★☆
In Camera, written and directed by Naqqash Khalid, is a debut satirical drama full of pain about the racism experienced by second-generation Asians in Britain.
★★★★☆
BFI LFF 2023: Award Winners