BFI LFF: A Fantastic Woman (2017)
★★★☆☆
Facing the humiliation of social exclusion after losing a loved one, Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman is a heartbreaking portrait of loneliness.
Genre
BFI LFF: 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.
BFI LFF: Stronger (2017)
★★★★☆
Stronger, directed by David Gordon Green, stars Jake Gyllenhaal in a gruelling but inspirational portrait of a man rebuilding his life after the Boston Marathon bombing.
BFI LFF: Breathe (2017)
★★★☆☆
Opening the BFI London Film Festival, Andy Serkis’s debut as a director is the inspiring drama Breathe, a very moving true story.
BFI LFF: Filmworker (2017)
★★★★☆
Tony Zierra’s Filmworker approaches Stanley Kubrick from the perspective of his assistant and close friend, Leon Vitali, in a well-informed and satisfyingly impartial talking-heads doc.
BFI LFF: The Summit (La Cordillera) (2017)
★★★★☆
Santiago Mitre’s political thriller The Summit is a prescient tale of high-level corruption.
Brimstone (2016)
★★★★☆
Brimstone is an almost unbearably violent take on the Western with a strong female character at its centre.
Borg vs McEnroe (2017)
★★★☆☆
Janus Metz’s Borg vs McEnroe recreates Wimbledon 1980 and delves into the winning psychology of the two tennis rivals.
The Vault (2017)
★★★☆☆
The Vault is director Dan Bush’s surprisingly successful and suspenseful supernatural thriller/horror heist mash-up.
Insyriated (2017)
★★★★☆
Philippe Van Leeuw’s Insyriated is a suspenseful microcosm of Syria’s civil war played out through its effects on one family and the hard decisions they have to take to survive.
God’s Own Country (2017)
★★★★☆
A gay romance set high in the Yorkshire moors, Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country is a no-nonsense evocation of hard-won life in the country.
Your Name (2016)
In Makoto Shinkai’s haunting Japanese anime, two teenagers swap bodies and lives.
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Maudie (2016)
★★★★☆
Aisling Walsh’s biopic inspires a transcendent performance from Sally Hawkins as Nova Scotian folk painter Maudie.
The Ghoul (2016)
★★★★☆
Executive produced by Ben Wheatley, The Ghoul is a teasingly self-aware psychological thriller.