51st International Film Festival Rotterdam

The history of Hong Kong and its seething democratic movements is interwoven with a cryptic ghost story in Clara Law’s challenging film about memory and political struggle.

A bittersweet chronicle of Miao farmers who form a Christian choir in the remote mountains in China, and who are recruited to perform nationally while gradually losing their lands, autonomy, and identity.

Eugenio and Mara Polgovsky gently comment on the cycle of life in an observational documentary shot through a window in Mexico City.

An innocent farm boy experiences first-hand the horrors of the Nazi occupation of the Baltic states when he becomes a collaborator in Maria Ignatenko’s sensitive but over-aestheticized reflection on war.

Amanda Kramer recreates a 1970s-style variety TV special to comment on a certain kind of diva celebrity, but the results are tediously self-indulgent, clueless about camp affect, and open to claims of disingenuousness.

The Greek weird wave meets film noir in this quirky crime drama from first-time feature director Christos Massalas.

A little lie to the police threatens to change a teenager’s life in Sam De Jong’s insightful and sometimes distractingly overdriven film.

This fictionalized portrait of a trans woman’s emotional journey towards selfhood tries to cover too many bases in the psychological process, but Raphaëlle Perez’s sympathetic performance and the film’s overall sensitivity make up for some of its flaws.

Brett Michael Innes’ third film, set mostly at a gym in Johannesburg, goes down easy and would be fun for the family—as long as you keep the kids away.

A pleasant though minor queer-skewed indie slice-of-life look at Millenials in Chile, using a ghost device as a way of concretizing the niggling concerns within a struggling actor’s subconscious.

Andrea Riseborough, Harry Melling and Demi Moore celebrate the hidden queerness of vintage Hollywood in Amanda Kramer’s WTF retro-musical Please Baby Please.

Robinson Crusoe goes musical in a deliciously disorienting brain-teaser from feted Romanian animation director Anca Damian.