The Great Beauty / La Grande Bellezza (2013)
★★★★☆
A love poem to the Italian capital and a searing portrait of its glitterati, Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty is a virtuoso vision of fiddling while Rome burns.
★★★★☆
A love poem to the Italian capital and a searing portrait of its glitterati, Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty is a virtuoso vision of fiddling while Rome burns.
★★★★☆
A study of the great British cultural theorist, John Akomfrah’s bio-doc The Stuart Hall Project is a patchwork of black identity exposing the empire state of mind.
★★★★☆
A rhapsody in blue, Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color takes a trip through other worlds and interconnected lives.
★★★★☆
A timely revisit to Egypt’s democratic revolution, Ibrahim El-Batout’s Winter Of Discontent exposes the human side of the Arab Spring and the power of the image.
★★★★☆
With its corrupt politics and hustling broads, Mikael Marcimain’s Call Girl offers a pleasurably nostalgic vision of teenage girls living in a material world.
★★★★☆
East meets West in Umut Dag’s Kuma when a Turkish girl, chosen as a second wife, sets an immigrant family living in Vienna awhirl.
★★★★☆
Part documentary and part fiction, Pat Collins’ Silence is an Irish evocation of one man’s long journey home.
★★★★☆
With a teenager falling for an older man at fat camp, Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise Hope remains optimistic of a better life. All it needs is a little discipline.
★★★★☆
Down and out in Paris and Brooklyn, Noah Baumbach’s playful comedy Frances Ha is a bittersweet romp through the earnest dreams of youth.
★★★★☆
In Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Wadjda, an enterprising Saudi schoolgirl enters her school’s Koran recitation competition to raise money to buy a forbidden bicycle.
★★★★☆
A very Spanish retelling of the Snow White fairytale, Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves is an enchanting, spellbinding homage to the silent age.
★★★★☆
Putting the stories of nine venerable gay men and women under the spotlight, Sébastien Lifshitz’s Les Invisibles pays homage to love, self-fulfilment and revolution.
★★★★☆
Through teen scams, Native American song and an ownerless cradle, Ruben Östlund’s Play offers a long hard look at social discomfort at play.
★★★★☆
Removing the fog of war, Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets: The Story Of WikiLeaks exposes the truth behind whistleblowers and hackers on the digital stage.