The Square

Director: Ruben Östlund, Sweden 2017, 151 minutes, Cert 15

Christian, a handsome divorcee father, is the respected curator of a contemporary art museum in Stockholm which is host to a new minimalist project on the importance of community values. After he finds himself the victim of a scam, his liberal credentials and sense of social responsibility are put to the test, with excruciating results. This hugely entertaining, provocative and satirical drama from the director of Force Majeure takes a swipe at both the art world and male, middle class privilege.

Winner: Palme d’Or, Cannes 2017

“A provocative art-world satire full of anxious laughs and honest gasps” Robbie Collins, Telegraph

Human Flow

Director: Ai Weiwei, USA 2017, 141 minutes, Cert 12A

More than 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war, the greatest displacement since World War II. Artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei, spanning 23 countries and filming over the course of a year, tracks and examines the staggering scale of the migrant crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. An ambitious, deeply humane and visually striking work that contemplates the pressing subject of human migration.

“Powerful and beautifully made” Financial Times

Happy End

Director: Michael Haneke, France 2017, 105 minutes, Cert 15

The affluent Laurent family live in an haute-bourgeois bubble in Calais, all under the same (albeit palatial) roof, oblivious to the migrant crisis unfolding a few miles from their home: patriarch George, succumbing to dementia, workaholic daughter Anne (Isabelle Huppert) who now runs the family construction business, and womanising doctor son Pierre, his new wife Anais and their baby. A black comedy portrait of family dysfunction and an unforgiving and gripping satire on the moral failings of polite society.

“A stark, unforgiving and gripping satire” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Call Me By Your Name

Director: Luca Guadagnino, Italy 2017, 129 minutes, Cert 15

Elio, the precocious 17-year-old only child of American professor Perlman and his cosmopolitan translator wife, is languishing restlessly and moodily during the lot, hot summer of 1983 at the family’s Italian house, when Oliver, a handsome older graduate student, arrives to work with his father. After the initial spark, the two discover –unhurriedly – the heady beauty of awakening desire. This ravishing drama is a poignant, sensuous coming-of-age love story.

Winner: Best Adapted Screenplay, Academy Awards 2018; BAFTA Best Screenplay 2018

“A period romance as warm and therapeutic as sunlight” Robbie Collins, Telegraph

Loveless

Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev, Russia 2017, 124 minutes, Cert 15

An estranged Russian couple going through a brutal divorce both have new partners and want to start over. Their 12-year-old son Alyosha, caught in the firing line and finding himself an intolerable burden to both parents and their plans for a clean break, disappears. From the director of Leviathan, this devastating drama, while turning its sharp focus on one unhappy family and a total loss of human feeling, is a pitiless critique on modern-day Russia.

Winner: Jury Prize, Cannes 2017

“Unsettling and compelling… a fiercely smart drama” TimeOut

The Rider

Director: Chloé Zhao, USA 2018, 104 minutes, Cert tbc

Brady, a celebrated bronco rider living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and recovering from a head injury from falling off a bucking horse, is struggling to find a new way to live and earn, after the doctors warn him that riding again will kill him. A beguiling mix of fiction and docudrama, the film explores the physical and psychological impact on a modern cowboy denied the only life he has known. A tender, lyrical tale of loss and recovery.

Winner: Art Cinema Award, Cannes 2017

“Impressive, stylish bronco rider drama bucks the trend” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian” Leslie Felperin, Guardian

On Body and Soul

Director: Ildikó Enyedi, Hungary 2017, 116 minutes, Cert 18

Endre, the middle-aged manager of an abbatoir, is drawn to the delicately beautiful, shy Maria, the new hygiene inspector and, slowly but surely, they begin to fall in love – but in the alternative universe of their shared nightly dreams, where they are deer wandering in a snowy forest, a pastoral dreamscape that contrasts starkly with their brutal, bloody daily workplace. A beautifully composed, out-of-the-ordinary and quietly mind-expanding story exploring human connection and the difficulty in finding it; intriguing and intoxicating.

Winner: Golden Bear for Best Film, Berlin 2017

“A witty, sensitive romance… [with] lyrical, elliptical charm” BFI

The Ciambra

Director: Jonas Carpignano, Italy 2018, 118 minutes, Cert 15

In a small Romani community in Calabria, Pio is desperate to grow up and prove he can step into his imprisoned older brother’s shoes. At 14, he drinks, smokes, and generally navigates his way between the region’s factions – the Italians, the African refugees and his fellow Romani – but soon finds himself faced with a wrenching moral dilemma. With non-professional actors playing versions of themselves, this vibrant, gritty film offers an unflinching and spirited portrayal of life in a marginalised community.

Winner: Label Europa Cinemas Prize, Cannes 2017

“A wildly impressive amateur cast … have created an impossibly gripping fiction” Kevin Maher, The Times

Back to Berlin

Director: Catherine Lurie, UK 2018, 83 minutes, Cert tbc

This contemplative documentary charts the journey of eleven Jewish bikers, who include Holocaust survivors and their descendants, from Tel-Aviv to Berlin, riding in commemoration of the 1931 team who travelled across Europe to find participants for the inaugural Maccabiah games (aka the Jewish Olympics). The 4,500km journey is an emotional confluence of tragic personal and political histories, highlighting along its poignant route the tenuous political mood of Europe today. A moving, thoughtful and timely reflection on anti-Semitism past and present.

“This film teases and eludes. It’s Continental drift. But few films so make us want to drift with them” Nigel Andrews, FT

Summer 1993

Director: Carla Simón, Spain 2017, 97 minutes, Cert 12A

Following the death of her parents, six-year-old Frida leaves her grandparents in Barcelona for the countryside, where she is to live with her uncle, aunt and younger cousin. Exploring the unfamiliar rural world and still burdened by the trauma of her huge loss, she struggles to settle into her new life and adoptive family. A beautifully crafted, dreamlike but unsentimental autobiographical drama in the Catalan language, with an extraordinary central performance and a seductively evocative sense of time and place.

Winner: Best First Feature Award, Berlin 2017