In Short, Europe: Loving Encounters review – small and sweet chunks of Euro love
Small and mostly sweet, this short film selection buoys us up in the wake of the pandemic with an upbeat view of relationships
Wild Men review – the world’s worst Viking goes off grid
Dressed in animal furs and brandishing an axe, an office worker goes full Fred Flintstone in this madcap comedy featuring Sofie Gråbøl
Atabai review – great man’s homecoming in sincere Iranian drama about love and loss
Anger and pain course through this film about an architect who returns to his village, but it fails to deliver the emotional payoff
Happening review: unflinching abortion drama that draws you in
The audience really feels the trauma of a young student’s hard choices in 1960s France in Audrey Diwan’s compelling Venice winner
Rap the casbah: the Casablanca school giving young hip-hop stars a voice
Nabil Ayouch’s film Casablanca Beats offers a glimpse of how Moroccan teens are finding an outlet in hip-hop. The director reveals how its positive energy has given him hope
Playground review – kid’s-eye-view nightmare of schoolyard bullying
Maya Vanderbeque makes an amazing debut as seven-year-old Nora, who tells on the boys bullying her brother with nightmarish consequences
The film Putin doesn’t want the world to see: Firebird, a gay love story about fighter pilots
It has been accused of ‘shaming Moscow’ and ‘punching the Russian soldier in the face’. But the makers of this powerful drama about dogfights and dangerous desires refuse to be silenced
Happening review – cleverly structured and impeccably produced abortion drama
Winner at the Venice film festival, Audrey Diwan’s film captures the panic of an unwanted pregnancy before the legalisation of abortion in provincial France
Director Laura Wandel: ‘The brutality of the playground is conveyed through noise’
The schoolyard is a psychological minefield in Playground, Wandel’s stomach-churning debut. As the film is released in the UK, she reveals the secret to immersing the viewer in a child’s world
The new wave of female film-makers confronting Mexico’s violence against women
After years of on-screen successes led by the likes of Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón, female directors are making their mark with urgent, disquieting cinema
The Tale of King Crab review – storytelling session turns into Herzogian nightmare
The bizarre tale of an Italian village drunk which switches to a crustacean-assisted treasure hunt aims for warped horror but doesn’t always get it right
The Great Movement review – compellingly strange Bolivian drama
A former miner uncovers dangerous magic in the hidden corners of La Paz
White Building review – Cambodia’s modernist masterpiece is centre of attention
This gentle-going watch injects sensitivity and insight into the story of a family’s displacement at the hands of property developers
The Great Movement review – intriguing drama as Bolivian miners look for work
Following three friends as they struggle to survive in La Paz, the drama lurches confusingly from verité drama to bonkers dance routines
Navalny review – extraordinary documentary about the attempt to kill Putin’s rival
Daniel Roher directs a riveting account of how the charismatic Russian opposition leader narrowly survived being poisoned by a nerve agent