A Fox Under a Pink Moon review – Iranian teen refugee paints boldly imaginative self-portrait
Soraya Akhlaghi filmed her perilous flight from Iran and precarious new life over five years on her phone, reassembled here with yearning animations
Tinto Brass, director of Caligula and maestro of Euro erotica, dies aged 93
The cult Italian film-maker began as an assistant to Roberto Rossellini but moved into sex films, believing ‘eroticism to be a fundamental key to human expression’
I Died review – moving portrait of Tzotzil women confronting patriarchal violence in the Mexican highlands
Ana Ts’uyeb’s poetic film celebrates the resilience of Indigenous women while exploring the possibility of a different future
Ghost in the Cell review – Indonesian prison-slasher-satire contains the most unhinged punch-up in decades
Director Joko Anwar uses horror for social commentary as he skewers corruption and hypocrisy with likable silliness and raucous energy
‘Opening the lid of a horrible secret’: Jamaicans confront enslavement with taboo-busting stories on screen
As violent spirits are unleashed in Sky’s Possession, observers see confident creatives reclaiming the island’s narratives in a form of ‘cultural reparation’
La Bola Negra wins Toronto film festival people’s choice award
The queer period drama wins Oscar-predicting award, being named the most popular audience film at the festival
Iranian actor Laleh Marzban faces severe threats after Venice film festival speech
Marzban, who won a best actress award for her portrayal of a woman held hostage by her father in Falling House, has received condemnations from authorities after dedicating her prize to ‘the women of Iran’
Woman Unknown wins Venice film festival as NAZA takes special jury prize
May el-Toukhy becomes eighth female director to take Golden Lion as Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love and Guardian-produced exposé of Israel’s Gaza killings also awarded
The best films of 2026 so far
Jessie Buckley is dug up to marry Christian Bale, while Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel are the double act of the year in Steven Soderbergh’s dark comedy. Here’s our round up of movie magic from the last six months in the UK, in order of release
The Beloved review – Javier Bardem turns in a career-scariest performance
Cannes film festival: This tremendously alarming drama from Rodrigo Sorogoyen is a meditation on male auteurs entirely without sentimentality
Nathalie Baye, prolific star of French and Hollywood cinema, dies aged 77
Baye went from working with the great French auteurs in the 1970s and 80s, including Truffaut and Godard, to high profile roles in Catch Me if You Can and Downton Abbey: A New Era
‘It’s the year of gay Brazilian cruising!’ The makers of Night Stage on public sex and their ‘deranged erotic thriller’
Writer-directors Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher talk about the ‘assimilation myth’, why Wim Wenders is wrong and how they’re developing queer western and horror movies
Why The Secret Agent should win the best picture Oscar
Kicking off this year’s series in which our writers advocate for one Academy Award nominee, our chief critic on why the Brazilian drama-thriller is the most audacious and fully realised film in the race
‘A love letter to all the good men I know’: Shahrbanoo Sadat on making Afghanistan’s first romcom
Opening the Berlin film festival, No Good Men blends romance and rebellion, capturing love, humour and female agency in Kabul on the eve of the Taliban’s return
Silence and Cry review – deeply strange 1960s erotic ballet meditating on Hungary’s history and politics
Director Miklós Jancsó creates a bizarre psychodrama set after the fall of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet republic, encompassing postwar trauma and erotic overtones