Joyland review – groundbreaking Pakistani love triangle
This potent debut follows a couple and a trans woman dancer navigating rigid social constraints
Music review – shapeshifting puzzle is an enigmatic mind bender
Angela Schanelec’s disparate series of stark and startling tableaux appear to be showing us the key to some locked cabinet of significance – but any meaning feels out of reach
Broker review – Kore-eda gets the tone all wrong in sudsy Korean baby adoption tale
The director of Shoplifters shows naivety in trying to turn two baby kidnappers into lovable rogues. Even Parasite’s Song Kang-ho can’t make it stick
Afire review – useless-author comedy-drama in saga of angst and lust
A gloomy writer and his friend are trapped with strangers in a Baltic holiday home in Christian Petzold’s tonally wayward tale
The Teachers’ Lounge review – a deeply unsettling day at the chalkface unravels
This uncompromising classroom drama from director Ìlker Çatak initially tackles some insidious and uncomfortable truths, but never quite finds its full dramatic force
Joyland review – subtle trans drama from Pakistan is remarkable debut
Saim Sadiq’s film explores the unsettled social and sexual identities of a widower and his children with delicacy and tenderness
Tótem review – family tensions feel real in heartfelt Mexican cancer drama
The family of a young father dying of cancer organise a party for him in this tender story from director Lila Avilés that lacks dramatic weight
Disco Boy review – freaky trip into the heart of imperial darkness
Giacomo Abbruzzese’s drama follows Belarusian Aleksei on his journey into the French Foreign Legion and a very strange epiphany in the Niger Delta
The Lion Has Seven Heads review – a fierce revolutionary leftist bad dream from 1970
With its white-robed preacher striding through Congo-Brazzaville, this denunciation of imperialism from Brazilian director Glauber Rocha is very much of its time
Stop-Zemlia review – tender Ukraine teen drama is unbearably poignant
Director Kateryna Gornostai’s documentary-like film, originally released in 2021, has assumed a heartbreaking new significance since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Nostalgia review – joy and danger await in a Naples homecoming
A man returns to his birthplace in Mario Martone’s evocative but waywardly plotted drama
Spanish film-maker Carlos Saura, director of ¡Ay Carmela!, dies aged 91
One of Spain’s most prolific auteurs continued to work until the end – his last film, Walls Can Talk, was released last week
Saint Omer review – Alice Diop’s compelling courtroom drama
The French director draws on her own experience in this story of a writer sitting in on the trial of a woman accused of murdering her own baby
Saint Omer review – witchcraft and baby killing in extraordinary real-life courtroom drama
Alice Diop’s unnerving fiction feature is based on the true case of a Senegalese immigrant accused in the French court of murdering her 15-month-old daughter
EO review – an innocent donkey leads the way in surreal Bresson-inspired ride
Life is seen through the eyes of a put-upon beast of burden in this beautifully photographed homage to Au Hasard Balthazar by the veteran Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski