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.
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.
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.
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.
Supernova (2020)
★★★★☆
Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci are superb in Harry MCQueen’s Supernova, this intimate portrayal of a couple facing a challenging future with one of them suffering from early onset dementia.
Black Bear (2020) – ON DEMAND
★★★ώ☆
A creatively frustrated film director’s tumultuous visit to a young couple’s lake house may reignite her creative vision in writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear.
Sequin in a Blue Room (2019) – on demand
★★★★☆
An Australian teen’s obsession with an anonymous sex app ventures into dangerous territory when he is invited into the Blue Room in Samuel Van Grinsven’s stylish gay thriller Sequin in a Blue Room.
BFI Flare: Firebird (2021) – on demand
★★☆☆☆
At an Estonian air base in the Cold War a junior officer falls for a new lieutenant, leading to a forbidden romance which affects a number of lives in director Peeter Rebane’s romantic drama Firebird.
BFI Flare: Jump, Darling (2020) – on demand
★★★☆☆
Following a break-up, a struggling drag queen visits his ailing grandmother in the country and finds himself staying as the pair support each other in various ways in writer/director Phil Connell’s Jump, Darling.
BFI Flare: Cowboys (2020) – on demand on Curzon Home Cinema on 7 May
★★★☆☆
In writer/director Anna Kerrigan’s Cowboys a father and his transgender son journey through the Montana mountain ranges escaping the boy’s mother, who is unable to accept his gender dysphoria.
BFI Flare: Sublet (2020) – on demand
★★★☆☆
In Eytan Fox’s Sublet a middle-aged American travel writer visiting Tel Aviv forms an unexpected connection with his young Israeli landlord and in the process learns new things about himself.
BFI Flare: Boy Meets Boy (2021) – on demand
★★★☆☆
After meeting high in a Berlin nightclub, Johannes and Harry casually drift around the city coming down and getting to know each other in Daniel Sanchez Lopez’s Boy Meets Boy
BFI Flare: My First Summer (2020) – on demand
★★★★☆
In My First Summer by Katie Found, in rural Australia a sheltered teenage girl suffers a devastating loss but is unexpectedly brought to life by a sudden special connection with a fellow teen.
The Exception (2019) – On demand
★★★★☆
Working relations between four women working at a Danish research facility escalate dangerously when death threats are received and suspicions start to turn within the team in Jesper W. Nielsen’s The Exception.