Memory Box (2021)
★★★★☆
A Memory Box triggers delayed reconciliation between past and present in Joana Hadjithomas’s deeply personal, emotional intergenerational drama.
Still in cinemas
Cicada (2020)
★★★★☆
In Cicada by Matt Fifer and Kieran Mulcare, a twenty-something in New York finds love but his life is clouded by the memories of childhood abuse and the pain of not knowing how to deal with it.
A Cop Movie (2021) (Una Película de Policías)
★★★★☆
Award-winning Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacio with A Cop Movie has made a brilliant, intriguing and innovative – and startlingly genre-unclassifiable – film, starring Mónica Del Carmen and Raúl Briones.
Azor (2021)
★★★★☆
Azor, Andra Fontana’s subtle, sophisticated feature debut, unsettles with an increasing sense of dread as a Swiss banker is enveloped in the Argentinian junta’s heart of darkness.
BFI LFF 2021: Azor (2021)
★★★★☆
Azor, Andra Fontana’s subtle, sophisticated feature debut, unsettles with an increasing sense of dread as a Swiss banker is enveloped in the Argentinian junta’s heart of darkness.
Herself (2020)
★★★★☆
After escaping an abusive marriage, a young Irish mother’s plan to self-build a home is fraught with complications in director Phyllida Lloyd’s empowering Herself.
Film reviews
The Collini Case (2019)
★★★☆☆
The Collini Case by Marco Kreuzpaintner is a slickly made German legal drama that hinges on postwar European history.
Shorta (2020)
★★★★☆
During a time of high police tension, two officers find themselves trapped in a notorious estate as riots break out in writer/directors Frederick Louis Hviid and Anders Ølholm’s gripping and timely Danish drama Shorta.
Cannes Film Festival 2021 Day 3: Lingui (2021) and others
★★★★☆
Cannes Film Festival 2021 Day 3: Lingui, La Fracture, The Worst Person in the World, After Yang and The Gravedigger’s Wife.
The Man with the Answers (2020)
★★★☆☆
A burgeoning connection with a stranger may deeply affect the life of an ex-diving champion in writer/director Stelios Kammitsis’s charming but slight The Man with the Answers.
FÁTIMA (2020)
★★★☆☆
Fátima is a fascinating glimpse of Catholic faith, respectfully translated to the screen by Marco Pontecorvo.
Agony (2020) – on demand
★★☆☆☆
Agony (original title The Executrix) by Michele Civetta, starring Asia Argento, is a heavily atmospheric Italian-set gothic horror-cum-giallo.
Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman streams all his films for free
★★★★☆
Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman to stream all his films for free from 21 to 30 May.
Frankie (2019)
★★★☆☆
In Frankie, written and directed by Ira Sachs, Isabelle Huppert stars in an ensemble piece that illuminates a terminally ill actress’s final attempts to control the tangled relationships of her extended family.
Sound of Metal (2019)
★★★★☆
Sound of Metal by Darius Marder, starring Riz Ahmed, is the sensitively told and brilliantly acted story of every musician’s worst nightmare – going deaf.
The Mauritanian (2021) – on digital
★★★★☆
The Mauritanian, directed by Kevin MacDonald, brings a legal drama to devastating life on screen from the New York Times acclaimed best-selling memoir Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was tortured and detained without charge in Guantánamo for 14 years.
