★★★★☆
Oscar-winning Judas and the Black Messiah directed by Shaka King, a tragic true story of a brutal state assassination in the US starring LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya, is gripping, heart-wrenching and sadly still topical.
★★☆☆☆
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.
★★★☆☆
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.
★★★★☆
Francis Lee’s second feature after his stunning, award-winning debut God’s Own Country is another queer love story, this time between two women in 1840s Lyme Regis, starring Kate Winslet and Saorse Ronan.
★★★☆☆
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.
★★★☆☆
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.
★★★☆☆
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
★★★★☆
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.
★★★★☆
Billie is no bio-pic in the conventional sense. James Erskine’s documentary transcends the clichés and presents a new angle on the Billie Holiday legend.
★★★★☆
Perfect 10 is a bold, moving and immersive coming-of-age debut by rising star writer-director Eva Riley.
★★★★☆
The French female astronaut in woman-centred Proxima, directed by Anna Winocour, is torn apart by the conflict between needing the freedom to achieve and the pain of separation from her daughter.
★★★★☆
The BFI London Film Festival 2020 premiered African Apocalypse, a brilliant new documentary by British-Nigerian poet and activist Femi Nylander that uncovers a hidden part Africa’s colonial history.