The Colony (2015)
★★☆☆☆
Florian Gallenberger’s thriller The Colony (Colonia) dramatises events following Chile’s 1973 coup.
Europe
Adult Life Skills (2016)
★★★★☆
Rachel Tunnard’s debut feature Adult Life Skills is a quirky, witty and moving film about grief and identity.
Remainder (2015)
★★★★☆
What if you couldn’t remember your past and you tried to recreate it? Omar Fast’s visually stunning debut Remainder is a compulsively mind-bending puzzle.
The Violators (2015)
★★★☆☆
An uncompromising directorial debut by author Helen Walsh, The Violators is a powerful story of teenage girls in broken Britain.
Tale of Tales (2015)
★★★★★
Beautiful and grotesque – director Matteo Garone’s visually stunning collection of dark fairy tales for adults Tale of Tales defies description.
Bang Gang (2015)
★★★☆☆
In a long hot summer, a collective sexual madness grips a group of French school students in Eva Husson’s uninspired Bang Gang.
Departure (2015)
★★★☆☆
A delicate debut of sexual exploration and lifelong frustration, Andrew Steggall’s poetic Departure comes undone with its exquisite manners.
Chicken (2016)
★★★★☆
A teen maelstrom of romance, secrets and family in the Essex countryside, Joe Stephenson’s Chicken is a moving portrait of a breaking idyll.
Cannes Film Festival: The Student (2016)
★★★★☆
Bringing Christian fundamentalism to the playground, Kirill Serebrennikov’s The Student satirises the conservatism of Russian institutions.
La Danseuse (2016)
★★☆☆☆
A portrait of revolutionary dancer Loie Fuller, Stephanie Di Giusto’s La Danseuse makes for a disappointingly pedestrian biopic.
Ma Loute (2016)
★★★☆☆
Divided into stalwarts of French cinema and non-professional actors, Bruno Dumont’s crime caper Ma Loute exposes the grotesque in everyone.
Mustang (2015)
★★★☆☆
A stirring portrait of female freedom denied, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang is a deeply personal story with a profound political resonance.
I, Daniel Blake (2016)
★★★★★
Moving, tragic and brutally direct, Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake is a scathing portrait of Britain’s benefits system.
Sieranevada (2016)
★★★★☆