Directed by: Michel Franco
Mexico, 2017, 103 min

Mexican director, screenwriter and producer Michel Franco has four writer-director feature films and four presentations at Cannes to his name, and this year saw him revisiting the French Riviera with a precisely structured tale of the complex relationship between two half-sisters and their mother. Assailing the audience with its masterful build-up of tension, this familiar domestic drama setup won the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard.

Directed by: Affonso Uchôa, João Dumans
Brazil, 2017, 96 min

A picture of contemporary, industrial Brazil rises out of the main character’s journal entries – without the stereotypes of favelas and crime. On his travels to farms, construction projects, and factories, Cristiano represents the poorest, who have decided to work day after day, to go from town to town, taciturn, proud, and resilient.

Directed by: Sergei Loznitsa
Germany, 2016, 94 min

Hordes of people make their way towards entrance gates crowned with the notorious slogan Arbeit macht frei. Why do they visit places that bear such appalling vestiges of the past? This documentary, examining cultural memory in today’s world, has featured at various major IFFs since its premiere at Venice.

Directed by: Helene Hegemann
Germany, 2017, 94 min

Although just 16, Mifti is already well aware of her electrifying appeal. It’s not just her provocative sexuality, but an assertive disposition that places her in the company of older people who are no strangers to a bohemian lifestyle and parties that last for days. A sexual relationship with an older woman and closer intimacy with a beautiful actress only add to the confusion in the heroine’s head.

Directed by: Aktan Arym Kubat
Kyrgyzstan, France, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, 2017, 89 min

The only thing that disturbs Centaur’s deeply happy, if imperfect, family life is his pressing need to secretly liberate racehorses. But misfortune comes from his desire to take a stand against human greed for a subjugated animal that gives humans wings. This visually polished updating of the Don Quixote story premiered at the Berlinale.

Directed by: Rati Oneli
Georgia, USA, Qatar, Netherlands, 2017, 104 min

A cinematic vanitas about a dying town in Georgia, a formerly vibrant centre of industry where the monotonous sound of the manganese mines has been replaced by a silence rarely interrupted. The film’s crystal-clear style, in which each shot is given the length it needs, seeks out the photogenic side of decay and explores the specific nature of the lost souls that continue to live here.

Directed by: Gustavo Rondón Córdova
Venezuela, Chile, Norway, 2017, 82 min

Andrés, the single father of 12-year-old Pedro, has to break his back just to ensure the mere basics for his son. On the outskirts of Caracas, people live from one moment to the next and any mistake is immediately punished. This deeply realistic story takes us into the ruthless environment of the Venezuelan capital, which – at a time when the country suffers immense social problems, hyperinflation, and a shortage of food – takes on an increasingly more savage character.

Directed by: Trudie Styler
USA, 2017, 91 min

Billy Bloom never felt he was like other people, but if there’s something his classmates don’t like, it’s the fact that his fashion choices range between David Bowie and Lady Gaga at their most psychedelic. Billy’s response to bullying is simple: an even thicker layer of glitter and a stubborn determination to fight for his uniqueness.

Directed by: Bruno Dumont
France, 2017, 115 min

Bruno Dumont is back! After the intensely subversive comedy Li’l Quinquin and the whacky Slack Bay, his quarry this time is a musical you could call anything you want, but just not classical. Eight-year-old Jeannette has a profound love of God, she tends a flock of sheep, and yet only history is aware that, in a few years’ time, she will become the iconic Joan of Arc.

Directed by: Pelayo Lira
Chile, 2017, 79 min

A romance without romanticism. Alejandro is in his first year at university; Sofia is finishing her dissertation. With a cool, detached realism and sense for detail, Kingdoms exposes the anatomy of a university love affair. Besides the romantic storyline, which does not shy away from explicit erotic scenes, the film also engages in a subtle generational study.

Directed by: Ala Eddine Slim
Tunisia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, 2016, 94 min

The movie, which makes do without dialogue, deftly alternates between film poem, topical movie critique, and existential allegory or myth. On his way through Tunis to Europe, N is ripped off by human smugglers, but sheer determination gets him in a boat on the sea and then to a mysterious forest where he must find his destiny.

Directed by: Joshua Z Weinstein
USA, Israel, 2017, 81 min

Likeable loser Menashe, a widower employed at a kosher supermarket who lives in Brooklyn’s rule-based community of ultra-Orthodox Jews, is trying to gain the right to raise his own son. This gentle, deeply-human drama graced with humorous moments was a hit at this year’s Sundance.

Directed by: Bruce LaBruce
Germany, 2017, 91 min

A feminist terrorist cell is plotting a revolution. But the rigid order of the women living at a remote convent school is endangered by the arrival of a young man who accepts refuge from one of the girls. Provocateur Bruce LaBruce has returned with a radical utopian vision of the world that combines a B-movie esthetic with leftist ideals.

Directed by: Pedro Pinho
Portugal, 2017, 176 min

One day, workers at an elevator factory receive an unpleasant surprise: at night someone has taken away all the equipment and materials, so it’s impossible to continue production. The struggle for existence is on – not only via sophisticated negotiating tactics but also with the help of singing, dancing, and vaguely idealistic leftist theories.

Directed by: Marcela Said
France, Chile, 2017, 94 min

Contemporary Chilean cinema is present at every major festival, and things were no different this year at Cannes where Marcela Said’s second movie played Critics’ Week. This disturbing psycho-romance with political overtones brings together pampered fortysomething Marina and Juan, a former army officer troubled by a dark past (starring Antonia Zegers and Alfredo Castro from The Club).

Directed by: Hirobumi Watanabe
Japan, 2016, 117 min

Yusuke Mizuhara is a taciturn lifeguard living out his monotonous life in a suburb north of Tokyo between home and a forgotten pool. What’s behind the impenetrable façade of a young man confronted daily by reports of the tragedies plaguing different parts of the world? A formally ambitious, geometrically precise film about certain unexplained thought processes associated with the Japanese mentality.

Directed by: Daan Bakker
Netherlands, Norway, 2017, 85 min

Five men, five stories. Although stylistically very different, the stories are connected through the director’s ability to incisively yet charitably comment on the situation of his feckless thirtysomething characters. It isn’t always easy to finally start living your own life – a UFO can stand in the way, or even just a bucket of urine hidden in a bedroom. But sometimes a time machine can be helpful, maybe.

Directed by: Bojan Vuletić
Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Russia, France, 2017, 94 min

There are some countries where it isn’t easy to get even simple things done. All the more vexing, then, is when you decide to commit suicide and only have a few days to get your affairs in order, and neither task goes according to plan. This sarcastic peek into the Kafkaesque soul of restructured Serbia made its mark at this year’s Berlinale.

Directed by: Mark Cousins
Sweden, United Kingdom, 2016, 88 min

This multilayered metropolitan symphony is, at once, a music film, a love letter to the city, an intimate study of grief, and an urbanistic essay. Architect Alva (Neneh Cherry) doesn’t make it to her class, instead choosing to stroll through the city while her contemplation of her surroundings mingles with her own memories of the most traumatic experience of her life.

Directed by: Deepak Rauniyar
Nepal, USA, Qatar, Netherlands, 2016, 89 min

A partisan named Chandra who fought against monarchy and dictatorship returns home years later to a Nepalese mountain village to bury his father. But he arrives in the middle of a traditional burial ceremony, and after a conflict he is forced to complete the process merely with the help of two children. Perhaps their journey signifies more than mere submission to the bygone ways Chandra fought against, but also hope for a brighter future for a country at a crossroads.