You Were Never Really Here (2017)
★★★★☆
You Were Never Really Here by Lynne Ramsay is a dark, disturbing odyssey into the mind of a brutal yet tender hitman.
Female Filmmakers
Dark River (2017)
★★★★☆
Her native rugged Yorkshire is the setting for Dark River, Clio Barnard’s follow-up to The Selfish Giant, a grim drama of a dysfunctional family and their failing farm.
Mudbound (2017)
★★★★☆
Dee Rees, in Netflix’s Mudbound adapted from Hillary Jordan’s novel, evokes a period and place in the Deep South where racial prejudice engulfs rural communities like a muddy swamp.
BFI LFF: I Am Not a Witch (2017)
★★★★☆
Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not a Witch is a surreal deadpan satire.
BFI LFF: Ava (2017)
★★★★☆
In Ava, the increasing darkness of Léa Mysius’ direction echoes the encroaching blindness of its young heroine in a strikingly original coming-of-age story.
On Body and Soul (2017)
★★★☆☆
Intersplicing oneiric images of deer in the snow with slaughterhouse romance, Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body And Soul is an unexpectedly romantic vision of star-cross’d loving.
Maudie (2016)
★★★★☆
Aisling Walsh’s biopic inspires a transcendent performance from Sally Hawkins as Nova Scotian folk painter Maudie.
The Beguiled (2017)
★★★★☆
Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is compelling Southern Gothic, richly textured and deeply feminine.
The Levelling (2016)
★★★★☆
The Levelling is an original, haunting British first feature from writer and director Hope Dickson Leach.
Heal the Living (2016)
★★★★☆
As a heart intended for transplant passes from teenage accident victim to middle-aged-mother recipient, humanity, compassion and medical professionalism triumph in Katell Quillévéré’s moving Heal the Living.
Their Finest (2016)
★★★★☆
Danish director Lone Scherfig’s Their Finest is a very British romcom.
Certain Women (2016)
★★★★☆
Kelly Reichardt takes an appraising look at four women’s lives in Certain Women‘s intriguingly overlapping stories.
Spoor (2017)
★★☆☆☆
A clarion call against the mistreatment of animals and the hunting confederacy of men, against Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor loses its way in the snowy mountains.
Cannes Review: Toni Erdmann (2016)
★★★★☆
A feelgood father-and-daughter comedy, Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann sees the joylessness of the corporate world undone by paternal clowning.