Traces (2022) (Tragovi)
★★★☆☆
Traces (Tragovi) is a sensitive portrayal by first-time feature director Dubravka Turic of a Zagreb academic’s journey through grief to identity. It is Croatia’s entry for the 2024 Oscars.
features
Fallen Leaves (2023) (Kuolleet lehdet)
★★★★☆
Fallen Leaves is Aki Kaurismäki’s drily touching film of a kind of love story amid the grinding reality of life.
A Stitch in Time (2023)
★★★☆☆
A Stitch in Time, a heart-warming Australian film directed by Sasha Hadden, stars Maggie Blinco.
Driving Madeleine (Une Belle Course) (2022)
★★★★☆
Driving Madeleine is an endearing, very human French film starring Line Renaud and Dany Boon, directed by Christian Carion, with a dark undercurrent.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
★★★★☆
Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet’s Palme d’or winner, stars Sandra Hüller in a gripping, ambiguous puzzle of a courtroom drama.
Good Boy (2023)
★★★☆☆
The ironically titled Good Boy, a semi-comic short written and directed by Tom Stuart, demonstrates once again what a good actor Ben Whishaw is.
BFI LFF 2023: In Camera (2023)
★★★★☆
In Camera, written and directed by Naqqash Khalid, is a debut satirical drama full of pain about the racism experienced by second-generation Asians in Britain.
Past Lives (2023)
★★★★☆
Universally acclaimed romantic Past Lives is an extraordinary feature debut by US/Korean Celine Song.
Passages (2023)
★★★★☆
Passages is Ira Sachs’ toxic European love triangle set in Paris, starring Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw and Adèle Exarchopoulos.
Scrapper (2023)
★★★★☆
Scrapper, an inventive, award-winning first feature written and directed by Charlotte Regan, was the crowd-pleasing opening film of the Sundance London Film Festival.
Smoking Causes Coughing (2022) (Fumer Fait Tousser)
★★★☆☆
Smoking Causes Coughing, the brainchild of über-absurdist Quentin Dupieux, is bizarre, very, very silly, strangely disquieting and rather flimsy.
Mother and Son (2022) (Un Petit Frère)
★★★★☆
Mother and Son is an ★★★★☆
involving, compassionate film by Léonor Serraille that poignantly shows the difficulties and the effects on a family – both positive and negative – of immigration into a strange country.
La Syndicaliste (2022)
★★★★☆
Isabelle Huppert stars in Jean-Paul Salomé’s thriller and nuclear-industry investigation La Syndicaliste, based on the recent true story of French union official Maureen Kearney.
The Eight Mountains (2022) (Le Otto Montagne)
★★☆☆☆
Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains, which they adapted from Paolo Cognetti’s novel Le Otto Montagne, tells the story of the friendship of Pietro and Bruno from boys to men in their 30s from the perspective of Pietro.