The Farewell (2019)
★★★★☆
The Farewell is a family comedy drama by Lulu Wang, starring Awkwafina as a young woman caught between the cultures of East and West through her love for her grandmother.
Female Filmmakers
Varda by Agnès (2019)
★★★★★
In Varda by Agnès, her last film, iconic film director and feminist Agnès Varda looks back on her ground-breaking, long career at the age of 90. of 90.
Birds of Passage (2018)
★★★★☆
In Birds of Passage, directed by Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, the violent birth of Colombia’s drug trade destroys a unique traditional culture.
Happy as Lazzaro (2018) (Lazzaro felice)
★★★★☆
Happy as Lazzaro by Alice Rohrwacher is a magical-realist fable that features types of exploitation.
Out of Blue (2018)
★★☆☆☆
Out of Blue by Carol Morley, the director of Dreams of a Life, is a metaphysical neo-noir, a Schrödinger’s cat of a film.
What They Had (2018)
★★★☆☆
Writer and director Elizabeth Chomko’s drama What They Had centres around that familiar concept of a crisis bringing a family together and drawing them closer to each other.
Destroyer (2018)
★★★☆☆
Nicole Kidman plays startlingly against type in Karyn Kusama’s LA noir Destroyer.
3 Days in Quiberon (2018)
★★★★☆
3 Days in Quiberon by Emily Atef is a compelling slice of a few days in the life of actress Romy Schneider as she gives her last interview.
Faces Places (Visages Villages) 2017
★★★★☆
Legendary filmmaker Agnes Varda teams up with photographer JR in a charming creative road trip around France that celebrates the extraordinariness of ordinary people and the power of the imagination.
Wajib (2017)
★★★★☆
Wajib translates as ‘duty’ and Annemarie Jacir’s film focuses on a beautifully observed father-son relationship as they take a road trip around Nazareth amid the confines of being an Arab in Israel.
Leave No Trace (2018)
★★★★☆
Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace is a sympathetic, realistic character study of a father and daughter trying to adapt to society after being off grid in a US wilderness.
Zama (2017)
★★★★☆
In Lucrecia Martel’s hallucinatory, dreamlike, absurdist Zama, Spanish colonialists take on South America and lose.
Let the Sunshine In (2017)
★★★★☆
Juliette Binoche stars in a rom-com departure for Claire Denis in Let the Sunshine In (Un Beau Soleil Interior).
Western (2017)
★★★★☆
The captivating German/Bulgarian culture clash in Valeska Grisebach’s Western could only happen in the EU and it’s subversive.