★★★★☆
The Mauritanian, directed by Kevin MacDonald, brings a legal drama to devastating life on screen from the New York Times acclaimed best-selling memoir Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was tortured and detained without charge in Guantánamo for 14 years.
★★★★☆
Apples, Christos Nikou’s assured debut as a director, is a disturbing, opaque fable about the relationship between memory, identity, grief and the selfie culture, set in Athens during an allegorical pandemic.
★★★★☆
The Trial of the Chicago 7‘s all-star cast enlivens and sharpens the points of Aaron Sorkin‘s docudrama of a historic court case intended to destroy the ’60s counterculture.
★★★★☆
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.
★★★★☆
Inspired comic creation Borat and his daughter fearlessly tease Trump’s America in Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest Kazakhstani spoof Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Unmissable satire.
★★★★☆
Promising Young Woman stars Carey Mulligan in a witty, much-talked-about and multi-award-nominated writer/director debut by actor Emerald Fennell.
★★★★☆
An Australian teen’s obsession with an anonymous sex app ventures into dangerous territory when he is invited into the Blue Room in Samuel Van Grinsven’s stylish gay thriller Sequin in a Blue Room.
★★★★☆
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.
★★★★☆
Filmed over three years in war zones in Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon, Notturno (Nocturne) by Gianfranco Rosi is a documentary oddity.
★★★★☆
Working relations between four women working at a Danish research facility escalate dangerously when death threats are received and suspicions start to turn within the team in Jesper W. Nielsen’s The Exception.
★★★★☆
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.
★★★★☆
Mogul Mowgli is a passionate, sincere, deeply felt snapshot of conflicting identity in contemporary Britain, starring Riz Ahmed, a strikingly compelling actor, directed by Bassam Tariq.