★★★★☆
Calm With Horses is a stunning first feature by director Nick Rowland, adapted by screenwriter Joe Murtagh from a short story by Colin Barrett in his Young Skins collection, executive produced by actor Michael Fassbender.
★★★★☆
Oliver Hermanus’ Moffie is a haunting, incisive look at apartheid-era toxic white masculinity.
★★★★★
Ali Abbassi’s Border (Gräns) is startlingly original, a magical fantasy (or is it?) that blends the real world with Nordic myth and folklore.
★★★★☆
Curzon’s Live Q&A series continues with Mark Jenkin, director of Bait hosted by Mark Kermode on Tuesday 31 March.
★★★★☆
The Perfect Candidate by Haifaa Al-Mansour is a fascinating glimpse of women’s changing status in the patriarchal kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
★★★★☆
Despite its silly title, black comedy Dogs Don’t Wear Pants by J.-P. Valkeapää is a touching – if harrowing – study of an extreme way of overcoming corrosive grief.
★★★★☆
Hirokazu Koreeda turns to Europe for a French-language family drama with comic undertones that spans the generations in The Truth.
★★★★☆
Fire Will Come is a prophetic, arresting and mesmerising love letter to nature by Oliver Laxe.
★★★★☆
Bacurau by Kleber Mendonça Filho is an exhilarating mixture of genres – political satire, western, science fiction – underpinned by savage political and social comment. It’s a blast.
★★★★☆
A deeply physical coming-of-age gay romance in the dance world, And Then We Danced directed by Levan Akin is an uplifting and inspiring feature about the path to queer liberation.
★★★★☆
The Berlin Film Festival awards presented on 1 March 2020…
★★★★★
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am is Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ spellbinding tribute to a literary treasure that makes you feel as if you have lost a friend.
★★★☆☆
Scottish nouveau dreich, downbeat Run, expanded from a short by director Scott Graham, still has a way to go.
★★★★☆
Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a sumptuously sensual lesbian love story set in 1770 that comments fiercely on the role of women in society – then and now.