Ma Vie

Peter Bradshaw: Everything is presented through the supposed medium of Etienne's "video diary"; a tiresome, even fraudulent conceit

City of God

Hyperactive in style and content, this stunning Brazilian film feels controlled and unhinged at the same time. It pulls you into the unknown world of Rio's most notorious favela and keeps you locked in, intrigued and unnerved, as director Fernando Meirelles crams in a whole history of a gang growing up through the 1960s to the 1980s.

Unknown Pleasures

Peter Bradshaw: There is something mesmerising about this movie: a story of passion and rage and frustration in which everything happens none the less in a kind of underwater dreaminess.

Bad Guy

Peter Bradshaw: 'Bad guy' doesn't quite cover it. Maybe 'very bad guy' or perhaps 'thoroughly deplorable guy'.

La Comunidad

Peter Bradshaw: A bizarre thriller-farce from director Alex de la Iglesia that comes on like a modern Spanish version of The Ladykillers, mixed up with Almodovar and It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Dragonflies

Peter Bradshaw: Pinteresque is one way of describing this atmospheric piece from Norwegian director Marius Holst

The Crime of Father Amaro

Peter Bradshaw: This well-acted melodrama from Mexico has a good, range-broadening role for up-and-comer Gael Garcia Bernal

A Snake of June

Peter Bradshaw: A nightmarish exercise in cruelty and voyeurism, shot with unrelenting, monomaniacal intensity

Springtime in a Small Town

Peter Bradshaw: A beautifully acted, exquisitely considered chamber drama of subtlety and nuance: spellbindingly tender and utterly involving

Chihwaseon

Peter Bradshaw: Beautifully shot and paced, exhilaratingly confident, combining a miniaturist's concern for detail with a storyteller's assurance with grand historical narrative

Monrak Transistor

Peter Bradshaw: A racily picaresque and sentimental tale, which pays homage to traditional Thai pop/folk music and also to Thai cinema, with a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the well-known export Tears of the Black Tiger

Shanghai sweetheart

Springtime in a Small Town was a moody Chinese masterpiece about an aristocratic family blown apart by adultery in the aftermath of war. Jonathan Rosenbaum feared the remake of one of his favourite films would simply rehash the original. He couldn't have been more wrong.

Dark Water

Peter Bradshaw: This really very scary Japanese ghost story from director Hideo Nakata exerts a chilling grip with its icy calm and eerie reticence