★★☆☆☆
Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains, which they adapted from Paolo Cognetti’s novel Le Otto Montagne, tells the story of the friendship of Pietro and Bruno from boys to men in their 30s from the perspective of Pietro.
★★★☆☆
Love According to Dalva, directed by Emmanuelle Nicot, features some extraordinarily intense performances in a paedophilia drama where the victim refuses to accept she is a child who has been abused.
★★★☆☆
Adam arrives in Cairo to study at the renowned Al-Azhar University and unexpectedly finds himself drawn into the centre of a dangerous world of religious and political power in writer/director Tarik Saleh’s compelling thriller.
★★★★☆
Pacifiction, a hypnotically paced, dark political thriller set in French Tahiti directed by Catalan Albert Serra, enjoys the Polynesian island’s beauty, but also its inherent vulnerability to threats.
★★★★☆
Godland, directed by Hlynur Pálmason, is an incredibly visually beautiful and involving unfolding story of the consequences of a Danish Lutheran priest’s loss of faith in 19th-century Iceland.
★★★★☆
Close by Lukas Dhont (Girl) is a heartbreaking film of two boys’ friendship.
span style=”color:#D1A316″>★★★★☆
EO, veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski’s compelling, beautifully shot homage to Bresson’s classic, takes a donkey’s eye view of the vagaries of life.
★★★★☆
Cannes-award-winning unforgettable Decision to Leave directed with pyrotechnical flair by Park Chan-wook is a haunting Korean neo-noir and yet so much more.
★★★★☆
Holy Spider, angrily written and directed by Ali Abbasi (Border), is a grisly, reality-based story of violence against women in a patriarchal, theocratic society.
★★★☆☆
Neptune Frost, a visionary collaboration between poet/artist Saul Williams and actress and playwright Anisia Uzeyman, is a unique Afro-futurist political musical filmed in Rwanda.
★★★★☆
Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Ôstland’s second Palme d’or winner, is an uncompromising black contemporary satire.
★★★★☆
Cannes-award-winning unforgettable Decision to Leave directed with pyrotechnical flair by Park Chan-wook, which screens at the BFI London Film Festival, is a haunting Korean neo-noir and yet so much more.
★★★★☆
Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Ôstland’s second Palme d’or winner screening at the BFI LFF 2022 on 11 and 12 October 2022 , is an uncompromising blackly contemporary satire.
★★★★☆
BFI LFF 2022: Pacifiction, a hypnotically paced, dark political thriller set in French Tahiti, directed by Catalan Albert Serra, enjoys the Polynesian island’s beauty, but also its inherent vulnerability to outside geo-political threats.