A Far Shore
Japanese director Masaaki Kudo turns a compassionate eye on a 17-year-old nightclub hostess with a toddler, sent skidding toward prostitution in a heart-felt story set on Okinawa.
Karlovy Vary
My Love Affair With Marriage
Signe Baumane’s animated feature is so brilliant in presenting a female perspective on love and marriage that you forgive its need to tell us the science behind romance.
In Broad Daylight
Ambiguity abounds in Emmanuel Tardif’s elusive Québécois drama about a family’s self-imposed isolation after an unexpected event and the spreading fractures in their fragile status quo.
You Have to Come and See It
Spanish director Jonas Trueba reunites his favorite actors for a 64-minute chamber piece, in a relaxed, engaging, free-wheeling exchange of moods and ideas between two 30-something couples.
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
Director Nina Menkes attacks cinema’s long history of sexism, including some canonical male directors, in her timely and enjoyably polemical filmed lecture ‘Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power’.
Summer with Hope
Canadian-based filmmaker Sadaf Foroughi (‘Ava’, 2017) revisits the theme of teenage rebellion in middle-class Iran in a drama full of danger and nervous energy.
A Provincial Hospital
The Covid ward of a hospital in a town in western Bulgaria is the subject of this clear-eyed observational documentary about the perseverance of both its staff and patients.
Like a Fish on the Moon
Iranian director Dornaz Hajiha pushes maternal and paternal sentiment to anguishing extremes in an intriguing and intensely acted debut feature, but the ending is missing.
Catcave Hysteria
The women’s toilet in a nightclub becomes the site of miniature disasters and minor catastrophes in Angelika Abramovitch’s multi-stranded and surprisingly affecting short.
Silence 6-9
Actor-director Christos Passalis draws on his Greek Weird Wave roots for ‘Silence 6-9’. a cryptic but mostly impressive debut feature.
Art Talent Show
A wild documentary ride through the selection process at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where the teaching staff brainstorms to test the hidden talent of young applicants, and future artists do their best to make the undefined grade.
Strasbourg 1518
Jonathan Glazer’s lockdown short embraces the urge to dance, re-framing a 16th century madness into an infectious ode to perseverance in the pandemic era.
Borders of Love
A couple decide to broaden their sexual horizons with increasingly complicated results in Tomasz Winski’s knotty and intimate examination of honesty within relationship dynamics.
A Room of My Own
A young Georgian woman struggles to overcome stifling sexism and emotional trauma in director Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze’s worthy but muted chamber drama ‘A Room of My Own’.
You Won’t Be Alone
Noomi Rapace is among the moving female cast of Goran Stolevski’s Macedonian folk tale about blood-sucking, shape-shifting witches who offer body horror at its scariest, yet it’s also full of poetry, with a lot to say about women and life on Earth.
And Then There Was Love…
A woman seeks a fortune teller’s guidance about her ailing love life in this discursive but affecting portrait of generational trauma and self-love.
Fucking Bornholm
Polish director Anna Kazejak chronicles scenes from a collapsing marriage in her darkly comic holiday-from-hell psychodrama ‘Fucking Bornholm’.
The Ordinaries
A richly satirical sci-fi allegory with an edge of biting social commentary, writer-director Sophie Linnenbaum’s impressive feature debut ‘The Ordinaries’ is anything but ordinary.
The Worst Person in the World
An insightful exploration of youth, ambition, romance, and meaning through the lens of a young woman you both identify with and love to hate.
Drive My Car
Winner of the Academy Award for best international feature, Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Drive My Car’ is the story of how love survives death in a long, measured, ultimately mesmerizing examination of the human soul.
Otar’s Death
Partly inspired by real events, Otar’s Death is a fractious Georgian family drama with breathless thriller elements and a deep streak of black comedy.
Wild Roots
Young Hungarian writer-director Hajni Kis delivers a highly assured debut feature with non-professional actors in the lead roles.
Bird Atlas
Olmo Omerzu’s Czech boardroom farce is an absurdist comic parable about lives ruined and families divided by too much focus on money.
As Far as I Can Walk
The big prize-winner at Karlovy Vary film festival, As Far as I Can Walk is a modern migrant story with historic literary echoes.