Charcoal review – tremendous thriller has family looking after mafia interloper

A Brazilian family struggling with their ailing grandfather are offered an unusual way out in Carolina Markowicz’s darkly comic and suspenseful feature debut

Electric Malady review – dreamlike study of one man’s debilitating illness

Swedish director Marie Lidén’s documentary about a musician with a chronic sensitivity to electricity is desperately sad yet visually poetic

Close review – achingly poignant tale of the end of a childhood friendship

Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s Oscar-nominated drama about two inseparable boys tragically driven apart is a low-key treat

Electric Malady review – life under a blanket for man who fears ‘electrosenstivity’

This tactful documentary follows William, living in a tinfoil-covered cabin and covered in a blanket. But is there anything behind his condition?

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