Ash is Purest White (2018)
★★★★★
The exquisite Ash Is Purest White by Jia Zhang Ke, starring Tao Zhao in an extraordinary performance, follows the lives of its characters against the background of a rapidly transforming China.
★★★★★
Eighth Grade (2018)
★★★★★
The pressures and anxieties of a 14-year-old girl navigating eighth grade in the social media age are put under the microscope in writer/director Bo Burnham’s achingly observant little gem Eighth Grade.
Donbass (2018)
★★★★★
In Donbass Sergei Loznitsa’s anger at the war in eastern Ukraine pours out like red-hot lava in 13 episodes of a vicious cycle of dark comedy, absurdity, brutality and horror.
Roma (2018)
★★★★★
Roma is Alfonso Cuarón’s beautiful and compelling homage to his family’s maid, Libo, when he was growing up in Mexico in the 1970s.
The Wild Pear Tree (2018)
★★★★★
The Wild Pear Tree (Ahlat Agaci) is a masterpiece by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Shoplifters (2018)
★★★★★
Worthy Cannes Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, is a wonderfully human film about families and making choices that continually misleads and intrigues.
BFI LFF: The Winners 2018
★★★★☆
BFI LFF 2018 Competition winners
BFI LFF Review: Sunset (2018)
★★★★☆
Sunset is tour de force immersive filmmaking in which László Nemes that captures a chaotic watershed in European history.
BFI LFF Review: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
★★★★☆
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an anthology of six stories that the Coen Brothers use to hilariously and darkly both overturn and pay homage to the tropes of the pioneering days of the old West.
Faces Places (Visages Villages) 2017
★★★★☆
Legendary filmmaker Agnes Varda teams up with photographer JR in a charming creative road trip around France that celebrates the extraordinariness of ordinary people and the power of the imagination.
The Rider (2017)
★★★★★
The Rider is a magical, must-see mixture of real life and fiction by director Chloe Zhang that opens up a world of modern-day cowboys through the story of injured rodeo rider Brady Jandreau,
62nd BFI London Film Festival 2018
★★★★☆
From 10-21 October, Britain’s foremost film festival, the BFI London Film Festival, will host 21 world premieres, nine international premieres and 29 European premieres.
Custody (2017)
★★★★☆
Custody is a superbly acted, terrifying domestic abuse drama by Xavier Legrand.
120 BPM
★★★★★☆
In BPM director Robin Campillo turns his naturalistic documentary-style technique from The Class on a group of AIDS activists in the epidemic of the 1990s in a moving, tender and compassionate film.