59th BFI London Film Festival

Belgian maverick Gust van den Berghe completes his faith-themed trilogy with this thrillingly cinematic tale of Lucifer as an angel who visits a Mexican village and leaves suffering in his wake.

The characters in these tense and highly-charged films experience adrenaline-fuelled reactions in response to some extreme situations.

Celebrating the individual and cultural/social memory, Public House is deeply felt and multi-layered, combining documentary with an innovative soundtrack of performance poetry, ambient sound and collective voice.

This directorial debut from award-winning cinematographer Martin Štrba focuses on the lives of the The Slovak New Wave photographers.

Prolific Japanese auteur/icon Takeshi Kitano’s latest sees him switch beats from action back to comedy, with this droll farce about a group of elderly, retired Yakuza who reteam to take revenge on a younger rival gang.

A story of loss, displacement and hope, Lamb offers a beguiling image of Ethiopia interlaced with a touching human story.

Being the Ramones manager is a pretty impressive claim to fame. But as Brendan Toller’s documentary—which employs a classic Ramone track for its title—reveals, that was just one fabulous role in the glittering career of punk rock’s very own Zelig, Danny Fields.

Dog Lady provides a rounded and wonderfully idiosyncratic portrait of an individual who is determined to live life on her own terms surrounded by canine companions who function as a distinctive contemporary chorus on the action

An exquisite, multi-layered directorial feature debut that unfolds amidst the breathtakingly beautiful mountains of Ethiopia.

In this assured debut documentary, Roberto Anjari-Rossi chronicles the daily life of two women in rural Chile, where traditions and religion weigh heavily upon the female members of the community.

Hansal Mehta directs a riveting and nuanced tale that is as touching as it is powerful.

A compelling and unsettling expose of the murkier side of US law enforcement in the ongoing ‘war against terror’.

Paula is both a coming-of-age tale, confidently realised, as well as an insightful portrait of the wider dynamics of Argentine society.

Gunnar Jónsson’s award-winning hangdog performance as Fúsi is remarkable, perfectly supported by writer/director Dagur Kári’s lightness of tone and spattering of comic touches.

A series of international guests conduct their tangled affairs on the sheets of a hotel bed in this paean to the pains and pleasures of love.

Shot in a warm black and white palette, with a dynamic score by Alejandro Fernández, Viaje is a touching portrait of emotional intimacy realised with humour and tenderness.

Three artists’ films that appropriate disparate found material into new affective orders, suspending their original contexts and difference to find intimacy and personal subjectivity across a range of different technologies, times, media and ideas.

Rick Alverson’s uncompromising feature might be seen as anti-comedy—it takes jet-black as the brightest hue on its comic spectrum before pitching into something even darker—but as fearless, hallucinatory filmmaking this is 100% cinema.

Director Hanna Polak spent 14 years filming Yula and some of the inhabitants of a dump on the outskirts of Moscow, capturing glimpses of humanity and extraordinary resilience while witnessing a life blooming in the bleakest of conditions.

The human body, in both corporeal form and ethereal manifestation, provides the loose theme for Małgorzata Szumowska’s blackly droll and entirely distinctive meditation on grief, which surprises at almost every turn.

A compassionate portrait of life in the Filipino city of Tacloban following the devastation wreaked by Typhoon Yolanda in 2010.

This documentary shows Afghanistan as you have never seen it – through the lenses of Afghans themselves.

Prolific award-winning documentarian Tomer Heymann spent eight years painstakingly filming prominent Israeli dancer and choreographer Ohad Naharin.

Short films exploring the complex role of young women in society today.

Between 1972-74, Les Blank spent time with musician Leon Russell, filming hours of live performances and interviews, both in his studio in Oklahoma and at a raucous live show.

Accused of helping a young man on the run, schoolteacher Layal finds herself incarcerated in a top security Israeli detention centre for Palestinian and Israeli women.

In this gripping documentary we are drawn into the world of Shu, a grungy young poet, travelling through the punishing terrain of the Xinjiang province on a self-imposed business trip.

Partho Sen-Gupta delivers an intense, must-see neo-noir thriller, featuring towering performances by Adil Hussain and Tannishtha Chatterjee.

Winner of a Silver Bear at this year’s Berlinale, this distinctive debut feature by Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante recounts the story of a young Mayan woman living with her parents near the edge of a volcano.

Following the cycle of the seasons and the village’s calendar landmarks, first-time director João Pedro Plácido draws warmth and humour with his impressionistic portrait of a young man on the brink of adulthood.

In this extensive kino-essay, Ross Lipman explores the literary, cinematic and personal history surrounding the production of Samuel Beckett’s only screenplay for cinema.

With its main theme composed by Khavn himself and covered by an eclectic array of musicians spanning soul, drone, rock ‘n’ roll and folk styles, this is the cinematic mix-tape for those who fancy their filmmaking visceral.

Four traditional folk fables present disturbing, multi-layered tales of the travails of their female protagonists, revealing the underlying patriarchy that drives the woman to the edge of sanity.

Taking its name from a term denoting someone who hacks into a computer system to take control of its functions, Ratter is the story of Emma, a young college student living away from home for the first time in her brand new, spacious Brooklyn pad.

This extreme, animalistic comedy is black as pitch, but has the sweetest of hearts.

Packing surprising grit into this often-ethereal magic-realist drama, Sylvia Chang tells a tale of people seeking an anchor in the world.