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Swan Song review – amiable tale of a hairdresser’s final flourish

A celebrity stylist comes out of retirement to do the funeral preparation for his arch enemy in this insubstantial yarn

‘I know I’m not going to please everyone’: Lucile Hadžihalilović on her beguiling film-making

Story of Film director Mark Cousins talks to an emergent champion of slow-burn, surrealist cinema on the release of her debut English-language feature, Earwig

Olga review – political gymnastics drama sets the bar high

Gymnast Anastasiia Budiashkina gives an impressive performance as a rising star whose world is flipped upside down by the 2014 Ukrainian revolution

Pickpocket review – existential thrills in Robert Bresson’s study of a thief’s progress

Bresson’s 1959 film about a misfit who dreams of rising above conventional morals is a brilliant example of the cinema of ideas

Between Two Worlds review – Emmanuel Carrère’s jagged, furious tale of low-paid work

Newcomer Hélène Lambert excels alongside Juliette Binoche in this gritty drama about friendship and lies on the breadline

Mother and Son review – moving immigrant drama goes from Ivory Coast to Paris

A son reflects on the struggles he faced with his brother and wayward mother after they moved to France from Africa, in a meditative coming-of-age story

Pacifiction review – trouble in paradise, in apocalyptic Tahitian mystery

Benoît Magimel’s French high commissioner confronts the end of his personal Eden in Tahiti, in Albert Serra’s distinctive film

Nostalgia review – bittersweet crime yarn also homecoming love-letter to Naples

Tremendously shot and terrifically acted, this Neapolitan gangster drama from Mario Martone shatters the rose-tinted spectacles

Tori and Lokita review – clarity of purpose in the Dardennes’ parable of the dispossessed

The new film from double Palme d’Or winners focusses on a pair of young immigrants to Belgium who find themselves working in dangerous situations

Decision to Leave review – Tang Wei stuns in Park Chan-wook black-widow noir

Park’s tale of a married detective torn between infidelity and moral duty keeps the viewer off-balance at every turn

Forever Young review – endlessly tedious story of self-involved drama students

Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi’s latest Cannes lock-in is a woeful soap about aspiring actors in 80s Paris with neither the songs – or the soul – of Alan Parker’s Fame

Brother and Sister review – sibling battle with Marion Cotillard that leaves us all losers

The latest in Arnaud Desplechin’s overwrought oeuvre features plenty of film-making elan but not one line of plausible dialogue

Cairo Conspiracy (aka Boy from Heaven) review – stirring spy thriller set on an Egyptian campus

Egypt’s religious and secular institutions both breed mistrust in Tarik Saleh’s superbly realised paranoid nightmare

One Fine Morning review – Léa Seydoux sparkles in poignant drama

Mia Hansen-Løve returns to Paris with this powerful drama about a single mother torn between emotionally unavailable men

Russian Cannes contender defends Roman Abramovich as a ‘patron of the arts’

Dissident Russian film-maker Kirill Serebrennikov, whose film Tchaikovsky’s Wife received backing from the oligarch, has called for sanctions to be lifted

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  • The Pout-Pout Fish review – Nick Offerman is best thing in kids cartoon adventure on the high seas
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  • John Cameron Mitchell: ‘It’s punk to turn off your phone – you’re walking away from the herd’
  • Sam Neill on making Hunt for the Wilderpeople: ‘We were attacked by a puppet pig!’
  • This Is Ballroom review – pulsating documentary tells story of Brazilian ballroom
  • How to feel optimistic in the face of crisis? Ask the kids fighting slug-like aliens
  • Lesbians, latex and $2,000 condoms: why are this summer’s movies so obsessed with sex?
  • RL Stine’s Pumpkinhead review – horror from Goosebumps writer has kid confined inside large fruit
  • Ancestral Visions of the Future review – visceral cine-memoir is a haunting return to Lesotho
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  • It’s not just the Odyssey effect: poetry is booming because it’s the only language for these times of violence and chaos
  • Mermaid Beach review – Wales gets its mermaidcore moment in teen-empowerment tale
  • Movie paradise? How Malta became a magnet for big film shoots
  • I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming review – brilliant bulletin from Ukrainian frontline dives deep into culture war
  • ‘Watch The Odyssey for free online’: scam targets film fans with fake streaming sites
  • Sex, drugs and washing dishes: inside Anthony Bourdain’s unruly younger years
  • Human Centipede director Tom Six reveals multiple sclerosis diagnosis in ‘final film’
  • The Guide #255: The great front‑row backlash ignores what makes films feel truly colossal
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  • From Love Me Tender to Kevin Bridges: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
  • Tony Jones: ‘I’m very far from being an activist’
  • Sam Neill filmed role in Legend of Zelda film adaptation before his death
  • Out of the blue: James Cameron’s surprise departure would be good for Avatar
  • Hamnet to On Falling: the seven best films to watch on TV this week
  • The Last House review – post-Covid apocalyptic lockdown thriller is a solid night in
  • ‘These cooks ripped each other apart’: Dominic Sessa on playing Anthony Bourdain, kitchen bullies and the joys of being a 70s barfly
  • ‘James Dean has got nothing on that kid’: River Phoenix films – ranked!
  • Practical Magic review – Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock’s 90s witchy fantasy still enchants
  • Super Troopers 3 review – misfiring cop comedy threequel
  • Hunt for the Wilderpeople review – Sam Neill is warm and wise in Taika Waititi’s goofily tremendous film

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