Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Date: 1972
Genre:
Country: USA
The short novel tells the story of Hugh Person, an American literary editor and proofreader, and his four trips to and from Switzerland over the course of almost two decades.
Tag: Priority 3
Eight Stories (Thomas)*
Author: Dylan Thomas
Date: 1930s
Genre: Short Stories
Country: UK
Collected here are eight particularly enjoyable Dylan Thomas stories, stories hailed by The New Statesman as “the unself-conscious classics, compassionate, fresh, and very funny… radiating enthusiasm and delight in the telling.” This story collection includes: The End of The River, The School for Witches, The Peaches, Just Like Little Dogs, Old Garbo, One Warm Saturday, Plenty of Furniture, The Followers.
Quite Early One Morning (Thomas)*
Author: Dylan Thomas
Date: 1968
Genre: Short Studies, Essays
Country: UK
Many of the 25 short stories, autobiographical sketches and essays in Quite Early One Morning, a volume planned by Thomas shortly before his death, were read by him on such occasions. They are alive with his verbal magic, his intense perception of life, his gargantuan humor and with the very ring of his voice. Included in this collection of prose pieces are such favorites as the hilarious “A Visit to America,” the account of a small boy’s marvelous day’s outing––”A Story,” and the memorable “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” which has been called ’the twentieth century Christmas Carol.’ Other pieces show Thomas’s power as a sensitive critic of poetry and as an exponent of his own intent as a poet.
77 Dream Songs (Berryman)*
Author: John Berryman
Date: 1965
Genre: Poetry
Country: USA
John Berryman was hardly unknown when he published 77 Dream Songs, but the volume was, nevertheless, a shock and a revelation. A “spooky” collection in the words of Robert Lowell-“a maddening work of genius.”
As Henri Cole notes in his elegant, perceptive introduction, Berryman had discovered “a looser style that mixed high and low dictions with a strange syntax.” Berryman had also discovered his most enduring alter ego, a paranoid, passionate, depressed, drunk, irrepressible antihero named Henry or, sometimes, Mr. Bones: “We touch at certain points,” Berryman claimed, of Henry, “But I am an actual human being.”
Summer (Wharton)*
Author: Edith Wharton
Date: 1917
Genre:
Country: UK
While most novels by Edith Wharton dealt with New York’s upper-class society, this is one of two novels by Wharton with rural settings. Its themes include social class, the role of women in society, destructive relationships, sexual awakening and the desire of its protagonist, named Charity Royall. The novel was controversial at the time of its publication and is one of the less famous among her novels because of its subject matter.
In the Cage (James)*
Author: Henry James
Date: 1898
Genre: Novella
Country: UK
This long story centers on an unnamed London telegraphist. She deciphers clues to her clients’ personal lives from the often cryptic telegrams they submit to her as she sits in the “cage” at the post office. Sensitive and intelligent, the telegraphist eventually finds out more than she may want to know.
Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, The (Emerson)*
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Date: 2000
Genre: Speeches, Essays, Poetry
Country: USA
The definitive collection of Emerson’s major speeches, essays, and poetry, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson chronicles the life’s work of a true “American Scholar.” As one of the architects of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embraced a philosophy that championed the individual, emphasized independent thought, and prized “the splendid labyrinth of one’s own perceptions.” More than any writer of his time, he forged a style distinct from his European predecessors and embodied and defined what it meant to be an American. Matthew Arnold called Emerson’s essays “the most important work done in prose.”
Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now, A (various)*
Author: Various
Date: 1992
Genre: Poetry
Country: USA
A monument to the literary genius of women throughout the ages, A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now is an invaluable collection. Here in one volume are the works of three hundred poets from six different continents and four millennia.
Sonnets from the Portuguese (Browning)*
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Date: 1850
Genre: Poetry
Country: UK
A collection of 44 love poems. Barrett Browning was initially hesitant to publish the poems, believing they were too personal. However, her husband Robert Browning insisted they were the best sequence of English-language sonnets since Shakespeare’s time and urged her to publish them. To offer the couple some privacy, she decided to publish them as if they were translations of foreign sonnets.
Essential Byron, The (Byron)*
Author: Lord Byron
Date: 1999
Genre: Poetry
Country: USA
Byron’s mature style is wonderfully discursive, ranging from Aristotle through hitting the sack to hitting the bottle sack, while relishing the rhyme on “Aristotle” and “bottle” along he way; he reminds us again and again that poetry can be serious without being solemn, that it might even be fun.
Twice-Told Tales (Hawthorne)*
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Date: 1837
Genre: Short Stories
Country: USA
A short story collection in two volumes.
Art & Lies (Winterson)*
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Date: 1994
Genre:
Country: UK
‘There is no such thing as autobiography, there is only art and lies’. Set in a London of the near future, its three principal characters, Handel, Picasso and Sappho, separately flee the city and find themselves on the same train, drawn to one another through the curious agency of a book. Stories within stories take us through the unlikely love affairs of one Doll Sneerpiece, an 18th century bawd, and into the world of painful beauty where language has the power to heal. Art & Lies is a question and a quest: How shall I live?
Fifth Child, The (Lessing)*
Author: Doris Lessing
Date: 1988
Genre: Short Novel
Country: UK
It describes the changes in the happy life of a married couple, Harriet and David Lovatt, as a consequence of the birth of Ben, their fifth child.
Birds of America (Moore)*
Author: Lorrie Moore
Date: 1998
Genre: Short Stories
Country: USA
A collection of short stories by American writer Lorrie Moore. The stories in this collection originally appeared in The New Yorker, Elle, The New York Times, and The Paris Review.
Good Morning, Midnight (Rhys)*
Author: Jean Rhys
Date: 1939
Genre: Modernist
Country: USA
It is experimental in design and deals with a woman’s feelings of vulnerability, depression, loneliness and desperation during the years between the two World Wars.
Autobiography of Malcolm X, The (X, Haley)*
Author: Malcolm X with Alex Haley
Date: 1965
Genre: Autobiography
Country: USA
An autobiography written by Muslim American minister and activist Malcolm X in collaboration with American journalist Alex Haley. It was released posthumously on October 29, 1965, nine months after his assassination. Haley coauthored the book based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and 1965. The Autobiography is a religious conversion narrative which outlines Malcolm X’s philosophy of Black pride, Black nationalism, and pan-Africanism. After Malcolm X was killed, Haley wrote the book’s epilogue,[a] which describes their collaborative process and the events at the end of Malcolm’s life.
Waterland (Swift)*
Author: Graham Swift
Date: 1983
Genre: Postmodern
Country: UK
The plot of the novel revolves around loosely interwoven themes and narrative, including the attraction of the narrator’s brother to his girlfriend/wife, a resulting murder, a girl having an abortion that leaves her sterile, and her later struggle with depression. As an adult woman, she kidnaps a baby.
Quantity Theory of Insanity, The (Self)*
Author: Will Self
Date: 1991
Genre: Short Stories
Country: UK
It was the first published collection of the author’s short work and includes themes and characters (such as Zack Busner) that are common throughout Self’s shorter and longer fiction.
Defense, The (Nabokov)*
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Date: 1930
Genre:
Country: Russia
As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen–an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster–but at a cost: in Luzhin’ s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants the world of reality. His own world falls apart during a crucial championship match, when the intricate defense he has devised withers under his opponent’s unexpected and unpredictabke lines of assault.
Desolation Angels (Kerouac)*
Author: Jack Kerouac
Date: 1965
Genre: Semi-Autobiographical Novel
Country: USA
The events described in the novel take place from 1956-1957. Much of the psychological struggle which the novel’s protagonist, Jack Duluoz, undergoes in the novel reflects Kerouac’s own increasing disenchantment with the Buddhist philosophy. Throughout the novel, Kerouac discusses his disenchantment with fame, and complicated feelings towards the Beat Generation. He also discusses his relationship with his mother and his friends (and prominent Beat figures) such as Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Lucienn Carr and William S. Burroughs. The novel is also notable for being a relatively positive portrayal of homosexuality and homosexual characters, despite its use of words that were at the time considered homophobic slurs.
Separate Peace, A (Knowles)*
Author: John Knowles
Date: 1959
Genre: Realism
Country: USA
Set against the backdrop of World War II, A Separate Peace explores morality, patriotism, and loss of innocence through its narrator, Gene Forrester, in his relationship with classmate and friend Phineas.
Gesture Life, A (Lee)*
Author: Chang-Rae Lee
Date: 1999
Genre: Autobiography
Country: USA
It takes the form of a narrative of an elderly medical-supply salesman named Doc Hata, who deals with everyday life in a small town in the United States called Bedley Run, and who remembers treating Korean comfort women for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. He once owned a medical and surgical supply store and he has an adopted daughter named Sunny. All the problems which Doc Hata has to deal with stem from his experiences serving the Japanese Imperial Army in the World War II.
Sabbath’s Theater (Roth)*
Author: Philip Roth
Date: 1995
Genre: Autobiographical Fiction, Spy
Country: USA
Mickey Sabbath (modeled after American Jewish painter R.B. Kitaj) is an unproductive, out-of-work, former puppeteer with a strong affinity for prostitutes, adultery, and the casual sexual encounter. Sabbath takes great pleasure in his status as the prototypical “dirty old man.” He takes an equal pleasure in manipulating the people around him, primarily women—in a sense, they play the same role as his puppets. The loss of a decades-long wingman—the equally depraved Drenka—precipitates a crisis in a life he has long considered an utter failure. Sabbath wonders whether he should simply take his own life, thereby heeding the advice of the ghost of his departed mother, a frequent visitor who urges suicide as the fitting end for his failed life.
Written on the Body (Winterson)*
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Date: 1994
Genre:
Country: UK
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman.
Tropic of Capricorn (Miller)*
Author: Henry Miller
Date: 1939
Genre: Autobiographical Novel
Country: France
A prequel to Miller’s 1934 work, the Tropic of Cancer. The novel is set in 1920s New York, where the narrator ‘Henry V. Miller’ works in the personnel division of the ‘Cosmodemonic’ telegraph company. Although the narrator’s experiences closely parallel Miller’s own time in New York working for the Western Union Telegraph Company, and though he shares the author’s name, the novel is considered a work of fiction. Much of the story surrounds his New York years of struggle with his first wife Beatrice, before meeting, and eventually marrying, June.
Art Objects (Winterson)*
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Date: 1995
Genre: Essays
Country: UK
In these ten intertwined essays, Winterson proves that she is just as stylish and outrageous an art critic as a novelist. For when Jeanette Winterson looks at works as diverse as the Mona Lisa and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, she frees them from layers of preconception and restores their power to exalt and unnerve, shock and transform us.
Ignorance (Kundera)*
Author: Milan Kundera
Date: 2000
Genre:
Country: Czech Republic
Czech expatriate Irena has been living in France since fleeing Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion. In 1989, when the Velvet Revolution overthrows the governing Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Irena decides to return to her home after twenty years of living as an exiled immigrant. During the trip she meets, by chance, Josef, a fellow émigré who was briefly her lover in Prague.
If the War Goes On… (Hesse)*
Author: Hermann Hesse
Date: 1978
Genre: Essays
Country: German
One of the most astonishing aspects of Hesse’s genius is the clear-sightedness of his political views and hid passionate espousal of pacifism from World War I to the end of his life. This superb collection of essays is charged with emotion. World War II was a shock to Hesse, and his writings from that time are filled with personal anguish and his antagonism to racism, nationalism and war.
Beloved (Morrison)*
Author: Toni Morrison
Date: 1987
Genre: African American
Country: USA
Set in the period after the American Civil War, the novel tells the story of formerly enslaved people whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit.
Big Sea, The (Miller)*
Author: Langston Hughes
Date: 1940
Genre: Autobiography
Country: USA
Hughes tells his experience of being a writer of color in Paris, France, and his experiences living in New York, where he faced injustices surrounding systemic racism.
After the Fall (Miller)*
Author: Arthur Miller
Date: 1964
Genre: Play
Country: USA
A thinly veiled personal critique centered on Miller’s recent divorce from Marilyn Monroe: the plot takes place inside the mind of Quentin, a New York City Jewish intellectual who decides to reexamine his life, in order to determine whether or not he should marry his most recent love, Holga.
Violent Bear It Away, The (O’Connor)*
Author: Flannery O’Connor
Date: 1960
Genre: Southern Gothic
Country: USA
The novel tells the story of Francis Marion Tarwater, a fourteen-year-old boy who is trying to escape the destiny his uncle has prescribed for him: the life of a prophet. Like most of O’Connor’s stories, the novel is filled with Catholic themes and dark images, making it a classic example of Southern Gothic literature.
Wise Blood (O’Connor)*
Author: Flannery O’Connor
Date: 1952
Genre: Southern Gothic
Country: USA
The novel concerns a returning World War II veteran who, haunted by a life-long crisis of faith, resolves to form an anti-religious ministry in an eccentric, fictionalized city in the Southern United States after finding his family homestead abandoned without a trace.
Fury (Rushdie)*
Author: Salmon Rushdie
Date: 2001
Genre:
Country: UK
Rushdie depicts contemporary New York City as the epicenter of globalization and all of its tragic flaws.
Hunger (Hamsun)
Author: Knut Hamsun
Date: 1890
Genre: Psychological Novel, Philosophical Novel
Country: Norway
This novel is a psychological journey through the mind of a starving young writer in 19th century Norway. Driven by pride and stubbornness, he refuses to accept help and instead chooses to endure severe hunger and the mental and physical deterioration it causes. His struggle is not only with his physical condition but also with his own mind as he battles hallucinations, mood swings, and an increasingly distorted perception of reality. The book is a profound exploration of poverty, mental illness, and the human will to survive.
Human Stain, The (Roth)
Author: Philip Roth
Date: 2000
Genre:
Country: USA
The Human Stain is a novel that explores the life of Coleman Silk, a classics professor in a small New England town who is forced to retire after accusations of racism. The story delves into Silk’s personal history, revealing that he is a light-skinned African American who has been passing as a Jewish man for most of his adult life. His affair with a much younger, illiterate janitor further scandalizes the community. The novel examines themes of identity, race, and the destructive power of public shaming.
Life: A User’s Manual (Perec)
Author: Georges Perec
Date: 1978
Genre: Postmodern
Country: France
The novel explores the lives of the inhabitants of a Parisian apartment block through a complex, multi-layered narrative. It delves into the interconnected stories of the building’s residents, revealing their secrets, desires, and disappointments. The narrative is structured like a puzzle, with the author employing a variety of literary styles and devices, making it a complex and intriguing exploration of human life.
2666 (Bolaño)
Author: Roberto Bolaño
Date: 2004
Genre: Postmodern, Surrealism, Metafiction
Country: Spain
The novel is a sprawling, ambitious work that spans continents and time periods, centering around an elusive, reclusive German author. It intertwines five different narratives: a group of European academics searching for the author, a professor in Mexico dealing with his own personal crises, a New York reporter sent to cover a boxing match in Mexico, an African-American journalist in Detroit, and the horrifying and unsolved murders of hundreds of women in a Mexican border town. The narratives are linked by themes of violence, mystery, and the search for meaning in a chaotic world.
Quantity Theory of Morality, The (Self)
Author: Will Self
Date: 2026
Genre: Satire
Country: UK
Self’s middle-English characters appear trapped in a timeless go-round of polite chitchat in dinner parties that refract like a hall of mirrors, until one day someone says something to the effect of, “This way to the gas chamber, please, ladies and gentlemen.”
Shuggie Bain (Stuart)
Author: Douglas Stuart
Date: 2020
Genre: Bildungsroman, LGBTQ+
Country: USA
It tells the story of the youngest of three children, Shuggie, growing up with his alcoholic mother Agnes in 1980s post-industrial working-class Glasgow, Scotland.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Kalanithi)
Author: Haruki Murakami
Date: 2013
Genre: Bildungsroman
Country: Japan
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present.
When Breath Becomes Air (Kalanithi)
Author: Paul Kalanithi
Date: 2016
Genre: Autobiography[
Country: USA
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.
Underground Railroad, The (Whitehead)
Author: Colson Whitehead
Date: 2016
Genre: African American, Alternate History
Country: USA
The alternate history novel tells the story of Cora, a slave in the Antebellum South during the 19th century, who makes a bid for freedom from her Georgia plantation by following the Underground Railroad, which the novel depicts as an actual rail transport system with safe houses and secret routes.
1Q84 (Murakami)
Author: Haruki Murakami
Date: 2010
Genre: Alternate History
Country: Japan
It covers a fictionalized year of 1984 in parallel with a “real” one. The novel is a story of how a woman named Aomame begins to notice strange changes occurring in the world. She is quickly caught up in a plot involving Sakigake, a religious cult, and her childhood love, Tengo, and embarks on a journey to discover what is “real”.
Goldfinch, The (Tartt)
Author: Donna Tartt
Date: 2013
Genre:
Country: USA
The Goldfinch follows 13-year-old Theodore Decker, and the dramatic changes his life undergoes after he survives a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother and results in him coming into possession of Carel Fabritius’s painting The Goldfinch.
All the Light We Cannot See (Roth)
Author: Anthony Doerr
Date: 2014
Genre: Historical Fiction
Country: USA
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
Half of a Yellow Sun (Adichie)
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Date: 2006
Genre: Bildungsroman
Country: UK
Set in Nigeria in the 1960s, the story follows Ugwu, a teenage houseboy who has moved from his village to work in a university town; his master Odenigbo, a mathematics professor with revolutionary views; and Olanna, with whom Odenigbo is in love, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Nigerian man. When the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970) breaks out, their lives are thrown into anarchy.
Wolf Hall (Mantel)
Author: Hilary Mantel
Date: 2009
Genre: Historical Novel
Country: UK
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
Kafka on the Shore (Murakami)
Author: Haruki Murakami
Date: 2002
Genre: Magical Realism
Country: USA
The book tells the stories of the young Kafka Tamura, a bookish 15-year-old boy who runs away from his Oedipal curse, and Satoru Nakata, an old, mentally disabled man with the uncanny ability to talk to cats. The book incorporates themes of music as a communicative conduit, metaphysics, dreams, fate, and the subconscious.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Clarke)
Author: Susanna Clarke
Date: 2004
Genre: Alternative History
Country: UK
It is an alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Its premise is that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centred on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of “Englishness” and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dane, and Northern and Southern English cultural tropes. It has been described as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel.
Glass Castle, The (Walls)
Author: Jeannette Walls
Date: 2005
Genre: Memoir
Country: USA
Walls recounts her dysfunctional and nomadic yet vibrant upbringing, emphasizing her resilience and her father’s attempts toward redemption. Despite her family’s flaws, their love for each other and her unique perspective on life allowed her to create a successful life of her own, culminating in a career in journalism in New York City. The book’s title refers to her father’s ultimate unfulfilled promise, to build his dream home for the family: a glass castle.
Underworld (Chang)
Author: Don DeLillo
Date: 1997
Genre: Postmodern
Country: USA
While Eisenstein documented the forces of totalitarianism and Stalinism upon the faces of the Russian peoples, DeLillo offers a stunning, at times overwhelming, document of the twin forces of the Cold War and American culture, compelling that “swerve from evenness” in which he finds events and people both wondrous and horrifying.
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (Chang)
Author: Jung Chang
Date: 1991
Genre: Biography
Country: UK
A family history that spans a century, recounting the lives of three female generations in China, by Chinese writer Jung Chang. First published in 1991, Wild Swans contains the biographies of her mother and her grandmother, then finally her own autobiography. Her grandmother had bound feet and was married off at a young age as the concubine of a high-status warlord. Chang’s mother rose in status as a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Chang took part in the Cultural Revolution as a member of the Red Guards, but eventually her father was tortured and she was sent to the countryside for thought reform. Later, she earned a scholarship to study in England, where she still lives.
Memoirs of a Geisha (Golden)
Author: Arthur Golden
Date: 1997
Genre: Historical Fiction
Country: USA
The novel, told in first person perspective, tells the story of Nitta Sayuri and the many trials she faces on the path to becoming and working as a geisha in Kyoto, Japan, before, during and after World War II.
J R (Gaddis)
Author: William Gaddis
Date: 1975
Genre:
Country: USA
J R Vansant is an 11-year-old schoolboy who obscures his identity through payphone calls and postal money orders in order to parlay penny stock holdings into a fortune on paper. The novel broadly satirizes what Gaddis called “the American dream turned inside out”. One critic called it “the greatest satirical novel in American literature.”
Sula (Morrison)
Author: Toni Morrison
Date: 1973
Genre: African American
Country: USA
The novel tells the story of two girls, Sula and Nel, and their friendship and coming of age in a black community in Ohio.
Song of Solomon (Morrison)
Author: Toni Morrison
Date: 1977
Genre: African American
Country: USA
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.
Clown, The (Böll)
Author: Heinrich Böll
Date: 1963
Genre:
Country: Germany
A post-WWII German novel following Hans Schnier, a disillusioned, alcohol-dependent professional clown, who falls into despair and poverty after his lover, Marie, leaves him for a strict Catholic official. The book is a biting critique of German society’s hypocrisy, religious rigidity, and failure to confront its Nazi past.
V. (Pynchon)
Author: Thomas Pynchon
Date: 1963
Genre: Postmodern, Metafiction, Satire
Country: USA
It describes the exploits of a discharged U.S. Navy sailor named Benny Profane, his reconnection in New York with a group of pseudo-bohemian artists and hangers-on known as the Whole Sick Crew, and the quest of an aging traveler named Herbert Stencil to identify and locate the mysterious entity he knows only as “V.”
Bell Jar, The (Plath)
Author: Sylvia Plath
Date: 1963
Genre: Roman à clef
Country: USA
It follows protagonist Esther Greenwood as she navigates societal pressures and a profound identity crisis during a summer internship in 1950s New York, leading to a breakdown and institutionalization. The book is a classic of American literature, known for its raw, darkly humorous, and intense exploration of depression, female ambition, and the suffocating expectations placed on women.
Bonjour Tristesse (Sagan)
Author: Françoise Sagan
Date: 1954
Genre:
Country: France
The story follows Cécile’s carefree summer with her widowed, womanizing father, which is upended by the arrival of Anne, a sophisticated woman who threatens to disrupt their hedonistic lifestyle, prompting Cécile to orchestrate a plan with tragic results. The novel is known for its exploration of youthful selfishness, guilt, and the complexities of family dynamics, set against a backdrop of sun-drenched luxury.
Night (Wiesel)
Author: Elie Wiesel
Date: 1956
Genre: Memoir
Country: Argentina
Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor’s perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century.
Love in the Time of Cholera (Márquez)*
Author: Gabriel García Márquez
Date: 1985
Genre: Romance Novel
Country: Colombia
Florentino Ariza has never forgotten his first love. He has waited nearly a lifetime in silence since his beloved Fermina married another man. No woman can replace her in his heart. But now her husband is dead. Finally – after fifty-one years, nine months and four days – Florentino has another chance to declare his eternal passion and win her back. Will love that has survived half a century remain unrequited?
Member of the Wedding, The (McCullers)
Author: Carson McCullers
Date: 1946
Genre:
Country: USA
With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of a weekend crisis in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl. Within the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish Frankie passionately plays out her fantasies at her elder brother’s wedding. Through a perilous skylight we look into the mind of a child torn between her yearning to belong and the urge to run away.
Tropic of Cancer (Miller)
Author: Henry Miller
Date: 1934
Genre: Autobiographical Novel
Country: France
Tropic of Cancer redefined the novel. Set in Paris in the 1930s, it features a starving American writer who lives a bohemian life among prostitutes, pimps, and artists. Banned in the US and the UK for more than thirty years because it was considered pornographic, Tropic of Cancer continued to be distributed in France and smuggled into other countries. When it was first published in the US in 1961, it led to more than 60 obscenity trials until a historic ruling by the Supreme Court defined it as a work of literature. Long hailed as a truly liberating book, daring and uncompromising, Tropic of Cancer is a cornerstone of modern literature that asks us to reconsider everything we know about art, freedom, and morality.
Pnin (Nabokov)
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Date: 1957
Genre:
Country: USA
Professor Timofey Pnin, previously of Tsarist Russia, is now precariously positioned at the heart of campus America. Battling with American life and language, Pnin must face great hazards in this new world: the ruination of his beautiful lumber-room-as-office; the removal of his teeth and the fitting of new ones; the search for a suitable boarding-house; and the trials of taking the wrong train.
Narcissus and Goldmund (Hesse)
Author: Hermann Hesse
Date: 1930
Genre: Historical Fiction, Philosophical Fiction
Country: German
One of Hermann Hesse’s greatest novels, Narcissus and Goldmund is an extraordinary recreation of the Middle Ages, contrasting the careers of two friends, one of whom shuns life in a monastery and goes on the road, tangled in the extremes of life in a world dominated by sin, plague and war, the other staying in the monastery and struggling, with equal difficulty, to lead a life of spiritual denial.
An superb feat of imagination, Narcissus and Goldmund can only be compared to such films set in medieval Europe as Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. It is a gripping, profound reading experience – as startling, in its different way, as Hesse’s Siddhartha and Steppenwolf.
Enchanter, The (Nabokov)
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Date: 1939
Genre: Novella
Country: Russia
Nabokov described this novella, written in Paris in 1939 but only published twenty years later, as ‘the first little throb of Lolita‘. The plot is similar: a middle-aged man wedding an unattractive widow in order to indulge his paedophilic obsession with her daughter.
However, The Enchanter has an utterly different atmosphere, as time, place and even names remain a mystery. Nabokov transforms his protagonist’s attempts to lull his twelve-year-old step-daughter into a state of ‘enchantment’ into a graceful, chilling fairytale.
Mary (Nabokov)
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Date: 1926
Genre:
Country: Russia
Lev Ganin is a young officer sharing a boarding house in Berlin with a host of Russian émigrés. Alone in his room, he dreams of his first love, Mary. Awash with memories of youth and idyllic scenes of pre-Revolution Russia, Ganin becomes convinced that Mary is in fact the wife of a fellow-boarder, due to arrive at this very house soon. He longs for her arrival, when he can whisk her away and leave everything behind …
Look at the Harlequins! (Nabokov)*
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Date: 1974
Genre: Fictional Autobiography
Country: USA
‘Look at the harlequins … Play! Invent the world! Invent reality’. This is the childhood advice given by an aunt to Russian born writer Vadim Vadimovich, who emigrates to England, then Paris, then Germany and then the US, and, now dying, reconstructs his past. He remembers Iris his first wife, Annette his long-necked typist and Bel his daughter, as well as his own bizarre ‘numerical nimbus syndrome’.
North and South (Brontë)
Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Date: 1854–1855
Genre: Social Novel
Country: UK
When her father leaves the Church, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice.
Agnes Grey (Brontë)
Author: Anne Brontë
Date: 1847
Genre: Romance Novel
Country: UK
When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes’s enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate. Drawing on her own experience, Anne Brontë’s first novel offers a compelling personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried, educated women for whom becoming a governess was the only respectable career open in Victorian society.
Capital (Marx)
Author: Karl Marx
Date: 1867
Genre: Political and Philosophical Text
Country: German
One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in exile in England, where this work was largely written, Marx drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society to support his analysis and generate fresh insights. Arguing that capitalism would create an ever-increasing division in wealth and welfare, he predicted its abolition and replacement by a system with common ownership of the means of production. Capital rapidly acquired readership among the leaders of social democratic parties, particularly in Russia and Germany, and ultimately throughout the world, to become a work described by Marx’s friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as ‘the Bible of the Working Class’
Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon)
Author: Thomas Pynchon
Date: 1973
Genre: Postmodern, Satire, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction
Country: USA
The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device, the Schwarzgerät (‘black device’), which is slated to be installed in a rocket with the serial number “00000”.
Le Morte D’Arthur (Malory)
Author: Thomas Malory
Date: 1485
Genre: Chivalric Romance, Historical Fiction
Country: UK
Le Morte D’Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory’s richly evocative and enthralling version of the Arthurian legend. Recounting Arthur’s birth, his ascendancy to the throne after claiming Excalibur, his ill-fated marriage to Guenever, the treachery of Morgan le Fay and the exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, it magically weaves together adventure, battle, love and enchantment. Le Morte D’Arthur looks back to an idealized Medieval world and is full of wistful, elegiac regret for a vanished age of chivalry. Edited and published by William Caxton in 1485, Malory’s prose romance drew on French and English verse sources to give an epic unity to the Arthur myth, and remains the most magnificent re-telling of the story in English.
Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais)
Author: Rabelais
Date: c. 1532 – c. 1564
Genre: Satire
Country: France
The dazzling and exuberant moral stories of Rabelais (c. 1471-1553) expose human follies with their mischievous and often obscene humour, while intertwining the realistic with carnivalesque fantasy to make us look afresh at the world. Gargantua depicts a young giant, reduced to laughable insanity by an education at the hands of paternal ignorance, old crones and syphilitic professors, who is rescued and turned into a cultured Christian knight. And in Pantagruel and its three sequels, Rabelais parodied tall tales of chivalry and satirized the law, theology and academia to portray the bookish son of Gargantua who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided in his wisdom, and his idiotic, self-loving companion Panurge.
Yellow Wall-Paper, The (Gilman)
Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Date: 1891
Genre: Short Story
Country: USA
Wonderfully sardonic and slyly humorous, the writings of landmark American feminist and socialist thinker Charlotte Perkins Gilman were penned in response to her frustrations with the gender-based double standard that prevailed in America as the twentieth century began. Perhaps best known for her chilling depiction of a woman’s mental breakdown in her unforgettable 1892 short story ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’.
Tempest, The (Shakespeare)*
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: c. 1610–1611
Genre: Comedy
Country: UK
A storm rages. Prospero and his daughter watch from their desert island as a ship carrying the royal family is wrecked. Miraculously, all on board survive. Plotting, mistaken identities, bewitching love and enchantment follow as the travellers explore this mysterious place of spirits and monsters, and discover that all is not as it seems. Shakespeare’s late, great play is a work filled with marvels, music and strangeness, fully exploiting the power of language and the magic of theatre.
Richard III (Shakespeare)
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: c. 1592–1594
Genre: Play, History
Country: UK
Shakespeare’s final drama of the Wars of the Roses cycle begins as the dust settles on England after bloody civil war, and the bitter hunchback Richard, brother of the king, secretly plots to seize the throne. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal. Richard III shows a man who, in his skilful manipulation of events and people, is a chilling incarnation of the temptations of power in a land shocked by war.
Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: 1623
Genre: Play, Tragedy
Country: UK
A battle-hardened soldier, Antony is one of the three leaders of the Roman world. But he is also a man in the grip of an all-consuming passion for the tempestuous and alluring queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. And when their life of pleasure together is threatened by encroaching politics, the conflict between love and duty has devastating consequences. A tragic drama of love and loss, sex and power, told in language of poetic sublimity, Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s supreme imaginative achievements.
Wings of the Dove, The (James)
Author: Henry James
Date: 1902
Genre:
Country: UK/USA
Emerging from the grit and stigma of poverty to a life of fairytale privilege under the wing of her aunt, the beautiful and financially ambitious Kate Croy is already romantically involved with promising journalist Merton Densher when they become acquainted with Milly Theale, a New York socialite of immense wealth. Learning of Milly’s mortal illness and passionate attraction to Densher, Kate sets the scene for a romantic betrayal intended to secure her lasting financial security. As the dying Milly retreats within the carnival splendour of a Venetian palazzo, becoming the frail hub of a predatory circle of fortune-seekers, James unfolds a resonant, brooding tale of doomed passion, betrayal, human resilience and remorse.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A (Joyce)*
Author: James Joyce
Date: 1916
Genre: Pastoral Novel
Country: Ancient Greece
The first, shortest, and most approachable of James Joyce’s novels, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man portrays the Dublin upbringing of Stephen Dedalus, from his youthful days at Clongowes Wood College to his radical questioning of all convention. In doing so, it provides an oblique self-portrait of the young Joyce himself. At its center lie questions of origin and source, authority and authorship, and the relationship of an artist to his family, culture, and race. Exuberantly inventive in style, the novel subtly and beautifully orchestrates the patterns of quotation and repetition instrumental in its hero’s quest to create his own character, his own language, life, and art: “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
Old Curiosity Shop, The (Dickens)
Author: Charles Dickens
Date: 1841
Genre:
Country: UK
The sensational bestselling story of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, seems to belong less to the history of the Victorian novel than to folklore, fairy tale, or myth. The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens’s creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters-the eloquent ne’er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the “Marchioness”; the mannish lawyer Sally Brass; Quilp’s brow-beaten mother-in-law; and Quilp himself, the lustful, vengeful dwarf, whose demonic energy makes a vivid counterpoint to Nell’s purity.
Little Dorrit (Defoe)
Author: Charles Dickens
Date: 1857
Genre:
Country: UK
When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy’s father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea prison. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens’s maturity.
Blithedale Romance, The (Hawthorne)
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Date: 1852
Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance
Country: USA
A superb depiction of a utopian community that cannot survive the individual passions of its members. In language that is suggestive and often erotic, Nathaniel Hawthorne tells a tale of failed possibilities and multiple personal betrayals as he explores the contrasts between what his characters espouse and what they actually experience in an ‘ideal’ community. A theme of unrealized sexual possibilities serves as a counterpoint to the other failures at Blithedale: class and sex distinctions are not eradicated, and communal work on the farm proves personally unrewarding and economically disastrous. Based in part on Hawthorne’s own experiences at Brook Farm, an experimental socialist community, The Blithedale Romance is especially timely in light of renewed interest in self-sufficient and other cooperative societies.
Our Mutual Friend (Dickens)
Author: Charles Dickens
Date: 1865
Genre:
Country: UK
Our Mutual Friend centres on an inheritance – Old Harmon’s profitable dust heaps – and its legatees, young John Harmon, presumed drowned when a body is pulled out of the River Thames, and kindly dustman Mr Boffin, to whom the fortune defaults. With brilliant satire, Dickens portrays a dark, macabre London, inhabited by such disparate characters as Gaffer Hexam, scavenging the river for corpses; enchanting, mercenary Bella Wilfer; the social-climbing Veneerings; and the unscrupulous street-trader Silas Wegg. The novel is richly symbolic in its vision of death and renewal in a city dominated by the fetid Thames, and the corrupting power of money. Our Mutual Friend uses text of the first volume edition of 1865 and includes original illustrations, a chronology and revised further reading. As Adrian Poole writes in his introduction to this new edition, ‘In its vast scope and perilous ambitions it has much in common with Bleak House and Little Dorrit, but its manner is more stealthy, on edge, enigmatic.
Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens)
Author: Charles Dickens
Date: 1839
Genre:
Country: UK
When Nicholas Nickleby is left penniless after his father’s death, he appeals to his wealthy uncle to help him find work and to protect his mother and sister. But Ralph Nickleby proves both hard-hearted and unscrupulous, and Nicholas finds himself forced to make his own way in the world. His adventures gave Dickens the opportunity to portray an extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentrics: Wackford Squeers, the tyrannical headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys, the slow-witted orphan Smike, rescued by Nicholas, the pretentious Mantalinis and the gloriously theatrical Mr and Mrs Crummels and their daughter, the ‘infant phenomenon’. Like many of Dickens’s novels, Nicholas Nickleby is characterised by his outrage at cruelty and social injustice, but it is also a flamboyantly exuberant work, whose loose, haphazard progress harks back to the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding.
Gulliver’s Travels (Swift)
Author: Jonathon Swift
Date: 1726
Genre: Satire, Fantasy
Country: UK
Gulliver’s Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality; while they plan and calculate, their country lies in ruins. Gulliver’s final voyage takes him to the land of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses whom he quickly comes to admire – in contrast to the Yahoos, filthy bestial creatures who bear a disturbing resemblance to humans.
Northanger Abbey (Austen)
Author: Jane Austen
Date: 1817
Genre: Gothic, Satire, Coming of Age
Country: UK
During an eventful season at Bath, young, naïve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares Catherine’s love of Gothic romance and horror, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father’s mysterious house, Northanger Abbey. There, her imagination influenced by novels of sensation and intrigue, Catherine imagines terrible crimes committed by General Tilney. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine, this is the most youthful and and optimistic of Jane Austen’s works.
Mansfield Park (Austen)
Author: Jane Austen
Date: 1814
Genre:
Country: UK
Taken from the poverty of her parents’ home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle’s absence in Antigua, the Crawford’s arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen’s first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.
Utopia (More)
Author: Thomas More
Date: 1516
Genre: Satire, Political Philosophy
Country: Netherlands
In his most famous and controversial book, Utopia, Thomas More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is communal. Through dialogue and correspondence between the protagonist Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution and imagines the day-to-day lives of those citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering. Originally written in Latin, this vision of an ideal world is also a scathing satire of Europe in the sixteenth century and has been hugely influential since publication, shaping utopian fiction even today.
Persuasion (Austen)
Author: Jane Austen
Date: 1818
Genre:
Country: UK
At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen’s last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.
Haunting of Hill House, The (Jackson)
Author: Shirley Jackson
Date: 1959
Genre: Gothic, Psychological Horror
Country: USA
First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
Sense and Sensibility (Austen)
Author: Jane Austen
Date: 1811
Genre: Romance
Country: UK
The novel is probably set between 1792 and 1797[2] and follows the three Dashwood sisters and their widowed mother as they are forced to leave the family estate in Sussex and move to a modest cottage on the property of a distant relative in Devon. There the two eldest girls experience love and heartbreak that tries the contrasting characters of both.
Idiot, The (Dostoyevsky)
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Date: 1868
Genre:
Country: Russia
The title is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young prince whose goodness, open-hearted simplicity, and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight. In the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting “the positively good and beautiful man.” The novel examines the consequences of placing such a singular individual at the centre of the conflicts, desires, passions, and egoism of worldly society, both for the man himself and for those with whom he becomes involved.
Austerlitz (Sebald)
Author: W.G. Sebald
Date: 2001
Genre: Historical Novel
Country: Germany
The discursive, dreamlike recollections of Jacques Austerlitz, a man who was once a small refugee of the kindertransport in wartime Prague, raised by strangers in Wales. Like the namesake Paris train station of its protagonist, the book is a marvel of elegant construction, haunted by memory and motion.
Mother Mary Comes to Me (Roy)
Author: Arundhati Roy
Date: 2025
Genre: Memoir
Country: India
A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces the complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati’s life both as a woman and a writer.
Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.”
Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, The (Desai)
Author: Kiran Desai
Date: 2025
Genre:
Country: USA
In the snowy mountains of Vermont, Sonia is lonely. A college student and aspiring writer homesick for India, she turns to an older artist for inspiration and intimacy, a man who will cast a dark spell on the next many years of her life. In Brooklyn, Sunny is lonely, too. A struggling journalist originally from Delhi, he is both beguiled and perplexed by his American girlfriend and the country in which he plans to find his future. As Sonia and Sunny each becomes more and more alienated, they begin to question their understanding of happiness, human connection, and where they belong.
Back in India, Sonia and Sunny’s extended families cannot fathom how anyone could be lonely in this great, bustling world. They arrange a meeting between the two—a clumsy meddling that only drives Sonia and Sunny apart before they have a chance to fall in love.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next.
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, The (Fielding)
Author: Henry Fielding
Date: 1749
Genre: Bildungsroman, Picaresque Novel
Country: UK
A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squire—though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to make his own fortune and Sophia follows him to London to escape an arranged marriage, the adventure begins. A vivid Hogarthian panorama of eighteenth-century life, spiced with danger and intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial interjections, Tom Jones is one of the greatest and most ambitious comic novels in English literature.
Room of One’s Own, A (Woolf)
Author: Virginia Woolf
Date: 1929
Genre: Essay, Feminist
Country: UK
A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women’s colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.
Paradise Lost (Milton)*
Author: John Milton
Date: 1667
Genre: Epic Poetry
Country: UK
It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind’s destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds – heaven, hell, and earth – as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, who are motivated by all too human temptations but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.
House of Mirth, The (Wharton)
Author: Edith Wharton
Date: 1905
Genre: Tragedy, Comedy of Manners
Country: USA
Lily Bart, beautiful, witty and sophisticated, is accepted by ‘old money’ and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears thirty, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing and to maintain her in the luxury she has come to expect. Whilst many have sought her, something – fastidiousness or integrity- prevents her from making a ‘suitable’ match.
Golden Notebook, The (Lessing)
Author: Doris Lessing
Date: 1962
Genre:
Country: UK
Two women talk, and what they say is explosive. One woman writes, and each part of her becomes a fragment set down in a different notebook. Torn apart by marriage, love affairs, children, and a neurotic society, the one woman, Anna, is going to pieces, breaking down–and finally coming to terms with herself as a total, complete human being…a woman who truly understands herself.
Native Son (Wright)
Author: Richard Wright
Date: 1940
Genre: African American
Country: USA
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright’s powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
Eugénie Grandet (Balzac)
Author: Honoré de Balzac
Date: 1834
Genre:
Country: France
This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac’s Comedie humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie’s cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugenie’s emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel.
Tartuffe (Molière)
Author: Molière
Date: 1664
Genre: Play, Comedy
Country: France
Condemned and banned for five years in Molière’s day, Tartuffe is a satire on religious hypocrisy. Tartuffe worms his way into Orgon’s household, blinding the master of the house with his religious “devotion,” and almost succeeds in his attempts to seduce his wife and disinherit his children before the final unmasking.
Vanity Fair (Thackeray)*
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
Date: 1847–1848
Genre: Satire, Social Criticism
Country: UK
A novel that chronicles the lives of two women who could not be more different: Becky Sharp, an orphan whose only resources are her vast ambitions, her native wit, and her loose morals; and her schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a typically naive Victorian heroine, the pampered daughter of a wealthy family.
Giovanni’s Room (Baldwin)
Author: James Baldwin
Date: 1956
Genre: LGBTQ+
Country: USA
Baldwin’s haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.
Painted Veil, The (Maugham)
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Date: 1925
Genre:
Country: UK
Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche)
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
Date: 1883–1892
Genre: Philosophy
Country: Germany
Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche’s utterance ‘God is dead’, his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life passionate, chaotic and free.
Of Human Bondage (Maugham)
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Date: 1915
Genre: Bildungsroman
Country: UK
From a tormented orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey grows into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. His cravings take him to Paris at age eighteen to try his hand at art, then back to London to study medicine. But even so, nothing can sate his nagging hunger for experience. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever.…
Antigone (Euripides)
Author: Euripides
Date: c. 420 and 406 BCE
Genre: Play, Tragedy
Country: Ancient Greece
The curse placed on Oedipus lingers and haunts a younger generation in this new and brilliant translation of Sophocles’ classic drama. The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Antigone is an unconventional heroine who pits her beliefs against the King of Thebes in a bloody test of wills that leaves few unharmed. Emotions fly as she challenges the king for the right to bury her own brother. Determined but doomed, Antigone shows her inner strength throughout the play.
Far from the Madding Crowd (Hardy)
Author: Thomas Hardy
Date: 1874
Genre:
Country: UK
Fate seems to control the unusual events surrounding Bathsheba Everdene as she is courted and married to three different men.
Shipping News, The (Proulx)
Author: E. Annie Proulx
Date: 1993
Genre:
Country: USA
The novel follows the story of a depressed and overweight man who moves with his two daughters to his ancestral home in Newfoundland, Canada, after his unfaithful wife dies in a car accident. There, he begins to rebuild his life, working as a reporter for the local newspaper, The Shipping News, and learning about the harsh realities of the fishing industry. As he delves into his family’s history, he begins to find a sense of belonging and a new love. The story explores themes of family, identity, and the power of place.
Golden Ass, The (Apuleius)
Author: Apuleius
Date: Late 2nd century AD
Genre: Picaresque novel
Country: Ancient Rome
This classic novel follows the protagonist, a young man who is transformed into a donkey after meddling with magic he doesn’t understand. His journey takes him through a series of adventures, where he encounters a variety of characters from different walks of life and gets into all sorts of trouble. Through his experiences, he gains a deeper understanding of the human condition and the world around him. The narrative also includes several mythological tales and allegories, including the famous story of Cupid and Psyche. Eventually, the protagonist regains his human form through divine intervention, having learned valuable lessons about life, love, and humanity.
Doll’s House, A (Ibsen)
Author: Henrik Ibsen
Date: 1897
Genre: Play
Country: Denmark
This classic play focuses on the life of Nora Helmer, a woman living in a seemingly perfect marriage with her husband, Torvald. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Nora has been hiding a significant secret related to their finances. The revelation of this secret, and the subsequent fallout, challenges societal norms and expectations of the time, particularly in regards to gender roles and the institution of marriage. Nora’s eventual decision to leave her husband and children in pursuit of her own independence serves as a powerful commentary on individual freedom and self-discovery.
God of Small Things, The (Roy)
Author: Arundhati Roy
Date: 1997
Genre:
Country: India
This novel is a poignant tale of fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, who navigate through their childhood in Kerala, India, amidst a backdrop of political unrest and societal norms. The story, set in 1969, explores the complexities of their family’s history and the tragic events that shape their lives. Their mother’s transgression of caste and societal norms by having an affair with an untouchable leads to disastrous consequences, revealing the oppressive nature of the caste system and the destructive power of forbidden love. The novel also delves into themes of postcolonial identity, gender roles, and the lingering effects of trauma.
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The (Díaz)
Author: Junot Díaz
Date: 2007
Genre:
Country: USA
This novel tells the story of Oscar de Leon, an overweight Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey who is obsessed with science fiction, fantasy novels, and falling in love, but is perpetually unlucky in his romantic endeavors. The narrative not only explores Oscar’s life but also delves into the lives of his family members, each affected by the curse that has plagued their family for generations. The book is a blend of magical realism and historical fiction, providing a detailed account of the brutal Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic and its impact on the country’s people and diaspora.
Tale of Genji, The (Shikibu)
Author: Murasaki Shikibu
Date: Before c. 1021
Genre: Monogatari
Country: Japan
“The Tale of Genji” is a classic work of Japanese literature from the 11th century, often considered the world’s first novel. The story revolves around the life of Genji, the son of an emperor, exploring his political rise, romantic relationships, and the complex court life of the Heian era. The novel is celebrated for its detailed characterization and its analysis of the different forms of love.
Decameron (Boccaccio)
Author: Giovanni Boccaccio
Date: 1620
Genre: Frame Story, Short Stories
Country: Italy
“Decameron” is a collection of 100 stories told by a group of seven young women and three young men sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. The tales, which range from the erotic to the tragic, the hilarious to the instructional, are embedded in a rich framework narrative that provides a detailed portrait of the society of the Italian Renaissance.
In Search of Lost Time, Books 2-7 (Proust)
Author: Marcel Proust
Date: 1913-1927
Genre: Modernist
Country: France
In Search of Lost Time follows the narrator’s recollections of childhood and experiences into adulthood in late 19th-century and early 20th-century high-society France.
One Thousand and One Nights (various anonymous)
Original Title: Alf Laylah wa-Laylah
Author: Various Unknown
Date: 12th Century
Genre: Folklore, Frame Story
Country: Ancient Middle East
This is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled during the Islamic Golden Age. The stories are told by a young woman, who must weave a new tale each night for her husband, a king, to delay her execution. The tales are filled with magic, adventure, love, and betrayal, and include well-known stories such as “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor”.
Red and the Black, The (Stendhal )
Author: Stendhal
Date: 1830
Genre: Bildungsroman, Psychological Novel
Country: France
The novel is a detailed psychological portrait of Julien Sorel, a young man from a provincial background who aspires to rise above his humble beginnings. He uses his intelligence and hypocrisy to advance in the post-Napoleonic French society, which is deeply divided by class and political loyalties. The story is a critique of the society’s materialism and hypocrisy as Julien’s ambitions lead him to a tragic end. The title refers to the contrasting uniforms of the army and the church, the two routes available to him for upward mobility.
Iliad, The (Homer)*
Author: Homer
Date: circa 522 BCE
Genre: Epic Poetry
Country: Ancient Greece
This epic poem focuses on the final weeks of the Trojan War, a conflict between the city of Troy and the Greek city-states. The story explores themes of war, honor, wrath, and divine intervention, with a particular focus on the Greek hero Achilles, whose anger and refusal to fight have devastating consequences. The narrative also delves into the lives of the gods, their relationships with humans, and their influence on the course of events.
Master and Margarita, The (Bulgakov)
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov
Date: 1967
Genre:
Country: Russia
This novel is a complex narrative that weaves together three distinct yet intertwined stories. The first story is set in 1930s Moscow and follows the devil and his entourage as they wreak havoc on the city’s literary elite. The second story is a historical narrative about Pontius Pilate and his role in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The third story is a love story between the titular Master, a writer who has been driven to madness by the criticism of his work, and his devoted lover, Margarita. The novel is a satirical critique of Soviet society, particularly the literary establishment, and its treatment of artists. It also explores themes of love, sacrifice, and the nature of good and evil.
Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoevsky)*
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Date: 1880
Genre: Philosophical Novel
Country: Russia
Set in the backdrop of the Napoleonic era, the novel presents a panorama of Russian society and its descent into the chaos of war. It follows the interconnected lives of five aristocratic families, their struggles, romances, and personal journeys through the tumultuous period of history. The narrative explores themes of love, war, and the meaning of life, as it weaves together historical events with the personal stories of its characters.
Ulysses (Joyce)*
Author: James Joyce
Date: 1922
Genre: Modernist
Country: UK
Set in Dublin, the novel follows a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman, as he navigates the city. The narrative, heavily influenced by Homer’s Odyssey, explores themes of identity, heroism, and the complexities of everyday life. It is renowned for its stream-of-consciousness style and complex structure, making it a challenging but rewarding read.
Epic of Gilgamesh (Various)
Author: Various
Date: c. 2100–1200 BCE
Genre: Epic
Country: Mesopotamia
Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world’s oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh’s adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, the Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind’s eternal struggle with the fear of death.
Satyricon, The (Petronius)
Author: Gaius Petronius
Date: Late 1st century AD
Genre: Roman Novel
Country: Ancient Rome
The Satyricon is the most celebrated prose work to have survived from the ancient world. It can be described as the first realistic novel, the father of the picaresque genre. It recounts the sleazy progress of a pair of literate scholars as they wander through the cities of the southern Mediterranean in the age of Nero, encountering en route type-figures whom the author wishes to satirize.
Republic, The (Plato)
Author: Plato
Date: c. 375 BCE
Genre: Socratic Dialogue
Country: Ancient Greece
The Republic is a Socratic dialogue authored by Plato around 375 BC, concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man. It is Plato’s best-known work, and one of the world’s most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically.
Metamorphoses (Ovid)
Author: Ovid
Date: 8 CE
Genre: Narrative Poetry
Country: Ancient Rome
Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War.
Send Help (Raimi)
Director: Sam Raimi
Stars: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail
Genre: Thriller, Horror, Comedy
Country: USA
On a weekend trip to the countryside, Laura miraculously survives a car crash. Physically unhurt but deeply shaken, she is taken in by a local woman who witnessed the accident and now cares for Laura with motherly devotion. When her husband and adult son also give up their initial resistance to Laura’s presence, the four of them slowly build up some family-like routine. But soon they can no longer ignore their past…
Miroirs No. 3 (Petzold)
Director: Christian Petzold
Stars: Paula Beer, Barbara Auer, Matthias Brandt
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany
On a weekend trip to the countryside, Laura miraculously survives a car crash. Physically unhurt but deeply shaken, she is taken in by a local woman who witnessed the accident and now cares for Laura with motherly devotion. When her husband and adult son also give up their initial resistance to Laura’s presence, the four of them slowly build up some family-like routine. But soon they can no longer ignore their past…
Poetic License (Apatow)
Director: Maude Apatow
Stars: Andrew Barth Feldman, Cooper Hoffman, Leslie Mann
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
Liz, a former therapist and soon-to-be empty nester, becomes the unexpected point of tension between two inseparable best friends and college seniors, Sam and Ari. Liz is forced to re-examine her life as the boys’ friendship unravels in a fierce competition for her affection.
Shuffle (Flaherty)
Director: Benjamin Flaherty
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Through the lens of his own recovery, a filmmaker offers an intimate look inside the billion dollar addiction treatment industry where young people are bought and sold for their insurance policies and ushered into a system designed to keep them sick.
Fairyland (Durham)
Director: Andrew Durham
Stars: Emilia Jones, Scoot McNairy, Geena Davis
Genre: Drama
Country: USA, Italy
A father-daughter relationship evolves through an era of bohemian decadence in 1970s San Francisco to the sober and heartbreaking era of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
Boys Go to Jupiter (Glander)
Director: Julian Glander
Stars: Jack Corbett, Miya Folick, Tavi Gevinson
Genre: Animation
Country: USA
A teenager in suburban Florida desperately hustles to make $5,000 in this dreamy and surreal animated coming-of-age story.
Father Mother Sister Brother (Jarmusch)
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Stars: Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA, France, Ireland, Italy, Germany, UK
Estranged siblings reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.
Architecton (Kossakovsky)
Director: Viktor Kossakovsky
Stars: Michele De Lucchi
Genre: Documentary
Country: France, Germany, UK, USA
An extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?
Deaf President Now! (DiMarco, Guggenheim)
Director: Nyle DiMarco, Davis Guggenheim
Stars: I. King Jordan, Jerry Covell, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Discover the story of the greatest civil rights movement most people have never heard about. During eight tumultuous days in 1988 at the world’s only Deaf university, four students must find a way to lead a revolution—and change the course of history.
Apocalypse in the Tropics (Costa)
Director: Petra Costa
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Brazil, USA, UK
Through deep examination, this documentary from Oscar nominee Petra Costa explores the profound impact of evangelism on Brazil’s political landscape.
Blue Sun Palace (Tsang)
Director: Constance Tsang
Stars: Wu Ke-Xi, Lee Kang-Sheng, Xu Haipeng
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A sudden loss catalyzes an unlikely bond between two migrants in the Chinese community of Queens. Navigating lives far from home and the painstaking labor that supports them, they journey through grief together in hopes of finding family.
Love (Haugerud)
Director: Dag Johan Haugerud
Stars: Andrea Bræin Hovig, Tayo Cittadella, Thomas Gullestad
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Norway
Marianne, a doctor, and Tor, a nurse, avoid relationships. After meeting on a ferry where Tor seeks casual encounters, Marianne explores the possibility of spontaneous intimacy, questioning societal norms.
Viet and Nam (Quý)
Director: Trương Minh Quý
Stars: Phąm Thanh Hài, Đào Duy Bảo, Định Nguyên Thį Nga
Genre: Drama
Country: Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, USA
In the depths of the underground coal mines, where danger awaits and darkness prevails, Nam and Việt, both young miners, cherish fleeting moments, knowing that one of them will soon leave for a new life across the sea.
Jazzy (Maltz)
Director: Morrisa Maltz
Stars: Landon Adams, Lily Gladstone, Raymond Lee
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Jazzy navigates the space between childhood and young adulthood. When her best friend moves away, Jazzy experiences both a sense of loss and her first inkling of independence.
Librarians, The (Snyder)
Director: Kim A. Snyder
Stars: Suzette Baker, Weston Brown
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
As an unprecedented wave of book banning is sparked in Texas, Florida, and beyond, librarians under siege join forces as unlikely defenders fighting for intellectual freedom on the front lines of democracy.
Tale of Silyan, The (Kotevska)
Director: Tamara Kotevska
Stars: Nikola Conev, Jana Coneva
Genre: Documentary
Country: North Macedonia, USA
Inspired by the folktale of the boy Siljan, who, after a quarrel with his father, turns into a stork and leaves home, the film is a story about the relationship between a farmer and a white stork.
Nice Indian Boy, A (MacSethiLachlan)
Director: Roshan Sethi
Stars: Jane Levy, Will Pullen, David Strathairn
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Romance
Country: USA
When Naveen brings his fiance Jay home to meet his family, his traditional Indian parents must contend with accepting his white partner and helping them plan the most fabulous same sex Indian wedding the Bay Area has ever seen.
Baltimorons, The (Duplass)
Director: Jay Duplass
Stars: Michael Strassner, Liz Larsen, Olivia Luccardi
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A newly sober man’s Christmas Eve dental emergency leads to an unexpected romance with his older dentist as they explore Baltimore together.
Omaha (Webley)
Director: Cole Webley
Stars: John Magaro, Molly Belle Wright, Wyatt Solis
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A young girl discovers the truth about her family’s seemingly spontaneous road trip.
Pompei: Below the Clouds (Rosi)
Director: Gianfranco Rosi
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Italy
Naples faces dual volcanic threats from Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei. Amid increasing tremors, archaeologists work as residents live anxiously, haunted by Pompeii’s fate while emergency services strain.
Islands (Gerster)
Director: Jan-Ole Gerster
Stars: Sam Riley, Stacy Martin, Jack Farthing
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Germany
Tom, a tennis pro washed up on a holiday island. Now he’s the coach at a hotel resort, hitting countless balls over the net to tourists. When he crosses paths with a particular tourist family, it seems he’s found an escape of his own.
Becoming Led Zeppelin (MacMahon)
Director: Bernard MacMahon
Stars: Led Zeppelin
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA, UK
The film traces the journeys of the four members of the Stairway To Heaven rockers through the music scene of the 1960s and their meeting in the summer of 1968, culminating in 1970.
East of Wall (Beecroft)
Director: Kate Beecroft
Stars: Tabatha Zimiga, Porshia Zimiga, Scoot McNairy
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
After the death of her husband, Tabatha- a young, tattooed, rebellious horse trainer- wrestles with financial insecurity and unresolved grief while providing refuge for a group of wayward teenagers on her broken-down ranch in the Badlands.
Fucktoys (Sriram)
Director: Annapurna Sriram
Stars: Annapurna Sriram, Sadie Scott, Damian Young
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
A young woman seeks to break a curse by raising $1000 for psychics in a pre-millennium alternate universe. She navigates the seedy underbelly of Trashtown via scooter, encountering bizarre characters along the way.
Man Finds Tape (Jude)
Director: Paul Gandersman, Peter Hall
Stars: Kelsey Pribilski, William Magnuson, John Gholson
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
After finding mysterious video clips, siblings investigate the strange recordings and uncover a disturbing secret spreading through their Texas town.
Kontinental ’25 (Jude)
Director: Radu Jude
Stars: Eszter Tompa, Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanța
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Luxembourg
In the capital of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Orsolya serves as a bailiff. She has to evict a homeless guy from a cellar one day, which has disastrous results and sets off a moral problem that Orsolya must try to resolve.
Rebuilding (Walker-Silverman)
Director: Max Walker-Silverman
Stars: Josh O’Connor, Lily LaTorre, Meghann Fahy
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
After wildfires take his ranch, a cowboy named Dusty winds up in a FEMA camp. He finds community with others who lost homes, while reconnecting with his daughter and ex-wife.
Rose of Nevada (Jenkin)
Director: Mark Jenkin
Stars: George MacKay, Callum Turner, Rosalind Eleazar
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: UK
Mysterious boat returns to a village 30 years after vanishing. Two men join its crew hoping for better fortune. After one voyage, they find themselves transported back in time, mistaken for the original crew.
Love That Remains, The (Pálmason)
Director: Hlynur Pálmason
Stars: Saga Garðarsdóttir, Sverrir Gudnason, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Iceland, Denmark, France, Finland, Sweden
Captures a year in the life of a family as the parents navigate their separation. Through intimate vignettes and strange occurrences, the film explores the complexities of family, love, and the impact of shared memories.
Belén (Fonzi)
Director: Dolores Fonzi
Stars: Dolores Fonzi, Camila Pláate, Laura Paredes
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Argentina
A woman hospitalized for pain discovers she’s pregnant. After a medical emergency, she faces criminal charges. With support from her attorney and women’s rights advocates, she fights for justice in a landmark case that could change lives.
Cutting Through Rocks (Eyni, Khaki)
Director: Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Iran, Qatar, Chile, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, United States
First female councilor in her Iranian village, Sara Shahverdi challenges tradition by teaching girls to ride motorcycles and fighting child marriage, while facing doubts about her motives.
All That’s Left of You (Dabis)
Director: Cherien Dabis
Stars: Saleh Bakri, Cherien Dabis, Mohammad Bakri
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Germany, Cyprus, Palestine, Jordan, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia
After a Palestinian teen gets swept up into a West Bank protest, his mother recounts the family story of hope, courage and relentless struggle that led to this fateful moment.
Silent Friend (Enyedi)
Director: Ildikó Enyedi
Stars: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Luna Wedler, Enzo Brumm
Genre: Biography, History
Country: Germany, France, Hungary
Set in the botanical garden of a medieval town in Germany. Three epochs, three personalities, three sometimes clumsy but sincere attempts to free themselves and to create links with the plants and the world of the garden. An encounter.
Mother of Flies (Adams, Poser, Adams)
Director: Dominik Moll
Stars: John Adams, Toby Poser, Zelda Adams
Genre: Horror
Country: USA
When a young woman faces a deadly diagnosis, she seeks dark magic from a witch in the woods – but every cure has costs.
Case 137 (Moll)
Director: Dominik Moll
Stars: Léa Drucker, Jonathan Turnbull, Mathilde Roehrich
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: France
Case 137 is seemingly just another case for Stéphanie, an investigator at the IGPN, the police of the police. But an unexpected element will trouble Stéphanie and transform case 137 into something more than a simple number.
2000 Meters to Andriivka (Chernov)
Director: Mstyslav Chernov
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Ukraine, USA
A Ukrainian platoon’s mission: traverse a heavily fortified mile of forest to liberate a strategic village from Russian forces. A journalist accompanies them, witnessing the ravages of war and the growing uncertainty about its conclusion.
Magellan (Diaz)
Director: Lav Diaz
Stars: Gael García Bernal, Ronnie Lazaro, Ângela Azevedo
Genre: Adventure, Biography, Drama
Country: Portugal, Spain, Philippines, France, Taiwan
Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan leads a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands in 1519. He quells mutinies, attempts to subjugate indigenous people and ultimately faces death in the Philippines.
Cover-Up (Touzani)
Director: Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus
Stars: Seymour Hersh
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Seymour Hersh has been at the front lines of political journalism in the United States. Hersh’s breakthrough reportage has brought to the public’s attention many of the most damning constitutional wrongdoings and cover-ups.
Threesome, The (Hartigan)
Director: Chad Hartigan
Stars: Zoey Deutch, Jonah Hauer-King, Ruby Cruz
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama
Country: USA
When a young man’s crush leads him into an unexpected threesome, he thinks it’s his ultimate fantasy come true. But when the fantasy ends, all three are left with sobering consequences, forcing them to be responsible for their actions.
One of Them Days (Tsou)
Director: Lawrence Lamont
Stars: Keke Palmer, SZA, Vanessa Bell Calloway
Genre: Comedy
Country: United States
When best friends and roommates Dreux and Alyssa discover Alyssa’s boyfriend has blown their rent money, the duo finds themselves going to extremes in a race against the clock to avoid eviction and keep their friendship intact.
Neighborhood Watch (Skiles)
Director: Duncan Skiles
Stars: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jack Quaid, Cecile Cubiló
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Country: USA
When a mentally ill young man thinks he witnesses an abduction and the police refuse to believe him, he reluctantly turns to his next-door neighbor, a bitter and retired security guard, to help him find the missing person.
President’s Cake, The (Hadi)
Director: Hasan Hadi
Stars: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Sajad Mohamad Qasem, Waheed Thabet Khreibat
Genre: Drama
Country: Iraq, Qatar, USA
In 1990s Iraq, 9-year-old Lamia must bake the President’s birthday cake. She scrambles to find ingredients for this compulsory task while facing potential punishment if she fails.
Last Viking, The (Jensen)
Director: Anders Thomas Jensen
Stars: Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Mads Mikkelsen, Sofie Gråbøl
Genre: Crime, Drama, Comedy
Country: Denmark, Sweden
A bank robber released from jail must unlock his traumatised brother’s memory to recover stolen loot.
Alabama Solution, The (Jarecki, Kaufman)
Director: LAndrew Jarecki, Charlotte Kaufman
Stars: Robert Earl Council, Melvin Ray
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Incarcerated men defy the odds to expose a cover-up in one of the United States’ deadliest prison systems.
Voice of Hind Rajab, The (Hania)
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Stars: Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel
Genre: Drama
Country: Tunisia, France
Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 6-year old girl is trapped in a car under IDF fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her.
Honey Bunch (Sims-Fewer, Mancinelli)
Director: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli
Stars: Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie. Jason Isaacs
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA, Canada
When Diana wakes from a coma with memory loss, she and her husband seek experimental treatments at a remote facility. As the procedures intensify, their marriage is put to the test and Diana begins to question her husband’s true motives.
Smashing Machine, The (Safdie)
Director: Benny Safdie
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader
Genre: Action, Biography, Drama, Sports
Country: USA
The story of mixed-martial arts and UFC champion, Mark Kerr.
House of Dynamite, A (Bigelow)
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Stars: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (Johnson)
Director: Matt Johnson
Stars: Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol
Genre: Comedy, Adventure
Country: Canada
When their plan to book a show at the Rivoli goes horribly wrong, Matt and Jay accidentally travel back to the year 2008.
Die My Love (Ramsay)
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
A father, accompanied by his son, goes looking for his missing daughter in North Africa.
Is This Thing On? (Cooper)
Director: Bradley Cooper
Stars: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA
As their marriage unravels, Alex faces middle age and divorce, seeking new purpose in the New York comedy scene. Meanwhile, his wife Tess confronts sacrifices made for their family, forcing them to navigate co-parenting and identities.
My Love Affair with Marriage (Baumane)
Director: Signe Baumane
Stars: Dagmara Dominczyk, Michele Pawk, Matthew Modine
Genre: Animation
Country: Latvia, Luxembourg, USA
From an early age, songs and fairytales convinced Zelma that Love would solve all her problems as long as she abided by societal expectations of how a girl should act. But as she grew older something didn’t seem right with the concept of love: the more she tried to conform, the more her body resisted. A story about the acceptance of the inner female rebellion.
Walk Up (Sang-soo)
Director: Hong Sang-soo
Stars: Kwon Hae-hyo, Lee Hye-young, Song Sun-mi, Cho Yun-hee
Genre: Drama
Country: South Korea
A series of interactions take place between an established film director, his estranged daughter interested in interior design, an interior designer, and others inside a multi-story commercial and residential building.
Unknown Country, The (Maltz)
Director: Morrisa Maltz
Stars: Lily Gladstone, Raymond Lee, Richard Ray Whitman
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A grieving woman embarks on an unexpected road trip as she grapples with the pain of her recent loss and seeks to understand her place in the world.
Blaze (Barton)
Director: Del Kathryn Barton
Stars: Julia Savage, Simon Baker, Yael Stone, Josh Lawson
Genre: Fantasy, Crime, Drama
Country: Australia
After a young girl witnesses a violent crime, she summons an imaginary dragon to help process her anger and protect her on her journey into womanhood.
Like & Share (Noer)
Director: Gina S. Noer
Stars: Aurora Ribero, Arawinda Kirana, Aulia Sarah
Genre: Drama
Country: Indonesia
Two best friends who create ASMR content together discover a world of personal exploration that leads them both toward harrowing outcomes.
Worst Ones, The (Akoka, Gueret)
Director: Lise Akoka, Romane Gueret
Stars: Mallory Wanecque, Timéo Mahaut, Johan Heldenbergh
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, USA
The story centres on a group of teenagers street cast in their neighbourhood and selected to play in a feature film during the summer. The film tells the story of this film shoot and of the connections that will be formed during it.
Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis (Corbijn)
Director: Anton Corbijn
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK
In 1968, art students Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell made a trippy photo collage for their musician friends Syd, David and Roger. The resulting album and album cover, A Saucerful of Secrets, helped launch two careers: that of Pink Floyd, one of the 70s megabands, and of Hipgnosis, which, over the course of the next 25 years, designed a stream of iconic album covers.
Love According to Dalva (Nicot)
Director: Emmanuelle Nicot
Stars: Zelda Samson, Alexis Manenti, Fanta Guirassy
Genre: Drama
Country: Belgium, France
One evening, Dalva is suddenly taken away from her father’s house. Dumbfounded and outraged at first, she later meets Jayden, a social worker, and Samia, a teen with a temper. A new life seems to start for Dalva, that of a girl her age.
Rose (Oplev)
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Stars: Sofie Gråbøl, Lene Maria Christensen, Anders W. Berthelsen
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: Denmark
Over the course of a week, sisters Inger and Ellen find their relationship challenged on a highly anticipated coach trip to Paris. Inger reveals her struggles with schizophrenia to the group, receiving both pity and discrimination. On arrival, it soon becomes clear that Inger has a hidden agenda concerning a figure from her past, ultimately involving the entire group in her hunt for answers.
House Made of Splinters, A (Wilmont)
Director: Simon Lereng Wilmont
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Ukraine
A temporary house for abandoned children near the front line in eastern Ukraine is run by a small group of social workers determined to provide comfort and safety. It may be humble and somewhat run-down, but this house is filled with love and offers up to nine months of refuge to kids whose fate will be determined by the system. During this short time, the caretakers try to nurture within them a sense of stability and normalcy.
Immediate Family (Tedesco)
Director: Denny Tedesco
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
If you listen to 1970s pop music, you’ve undoubtedly heard these guys play, but do you know their names? This documentary highlights five talented men—Danny, Leland, Rus, Waddy, and Steve— who shunned the spotlight for themselves yet enjoyed decades of success as session musicians on iconic tracks. Interviewees include their collaborators James Taylor, Don Henley, Lyle Lovett, Jackson Browne, Phil Collins, Carole King, Stevie Nicks, Keith Richards, Steve Jordan, and dozens more who take us behind the scenes on the songs that shaped an era.
To Kill a Tiger (Pahuja)
Director: Nisha Pahuja
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Canada, USA
Ranjit, a farmer in India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. His decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.
I Like Movies (Levack)
Director: Chandler Levack
Stars: Isaiah Lehtinen Romina D’Ugo Krista Bridges
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada
Socially inept 17-year-old cinephile Lawrence Kweller gets a job at a video store, where he forms a complicated friendship with his older female manager.
Falcon Lake (Le Bon)
Director: Charlotte Le Bon
Stars: Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri, Arthur Igual
Genre: Drama, Romance, Mystery
Country: Canada, France
A shy teenager on a summer vacation experiences the joy and pain of young adulthood when he forges an unlikely bond with an older girl.
Linoleum (West)
Director: Colin West
Stars: Jim Gaffigan, Rhea Seehorn, Katelyn Nacon, Gabriel Rush
Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction, Drama
Country: USA
When the host of a failing children’s science show tries to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut by building a rocket ship in his garage, a series of bizarre events occur that cause him to question his own reality.
God’s Country (Higgins)
Director: Julian Higgins
Stars: Thandiwe Newton, Jeremy Bobb, Jefferson White
Genre: Mystery, Drama, Western, Thriller
Country: USA
When a grieving college professor confronts two hunters she catches trespassing on her property, she’s drawn into an escalating battle of wills with catastrophic consequences.
Luxembourg, Luxembourg (Lukich)
Director: Antonio Lukich
Stars: Amil Nasirov, Ramil Nasirov, Nataliia Hnitii
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Ukraine
Kolya and Vasylii learn that their father, who left them when they were children, is dying in Luxembourg, far away from them. One of them wants to go and find his father, while the other one does everything he can to prevent the first from leaving the country. As a result, they both go to Luxembourg in search of their dad: Kolya considers him a hero, while Vasylii thinks he is a scoundrel.
R.M.N. (Mungiu)
Director: Cristian Mungiu
Stars: Marin Grigore, Judith State, Macrina Bârlădeanu
Genre: Drama
Country: Belgium, France, Romania, Sweden
A few days before Christmas, having quit his job in Germany, Matthias returns to his Transylvanian village. He wishes to involve himself more in the education of his son, Rudi, left for too long in the care of his mother, Ana, and to rid him of the unresolved fears that have gripped him. He’s also eager to see his ex-lover Csilla and preoccupied about his old father, Otto. When a few new workers are hired at the small factory that Csilla manages, the peace of the community is disturbed, underlying fears grip the adults, and frustrations, conflicts and passions erupt through the thin sliver of apparent understanding and calm.
Blue Caftan, The (Touzani)
Director: Maryam Touzani
Stars: Lubna Azabal, Saleh Bakri, Ayoub Messioui, Zakaria Atifi
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Belgium, Denmark, France, Morocco
Halim has been married to Mina for a long time, with whom he runs a traditional caftan store in the medina (old town) of Salé, Morocco. The couple has always lived with Halim’s secret – his homosexuality – about which he has learned to keep quiet. However, Mina’s illness and the arrival of a young apprentice upsets this balance. United in their love, each will help the other face his fears.
Huesera: The Bone Woman (Cervera)
Director: Michelle Garza Cervera
Stars: Natalia Solián, Alfonso Dosal, Mayra Batalla
Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Country: Mexico, Peru
Valeria’s joy at becoming a first-time mother is quickly taken away when she’s cursed by a sinister entity. As danger closes in, she’s forced deeper into a chilling world of dark magic that threatens to consume her.
Joyland (Sadiq)
Director: Saim Sadiq
Stars: Ali Junejo, Rasti Farooq, Alina Khan, Sarwat Gilani
Genre: Romance, Drama
Country: Pakistan, USA
As a patriarchal family yearns for the birth of a son to continue their family line, their youngest son secretly joins an erotic dance theatre and falls for its transgender starlet.
Inside the Mind of a Cat (Mitchell)
Director: Andy Mitchell
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Turkey, USA
Cat experts dive into the mind of the feline to reveal the true capabilities of the pouncing pet in this captivating and cuddly documentary.
Emily (O’Connor)
Director: Frances O’Connor
Stars: Emma Mackey, Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen
Genre: Romance, Drama, History
Country: Australia, UK
The imagined life of one of the world’s most famous authors, Emily Brontë, as she finds her voice and writes the literary classic Wuthering Heights. Explore the relationships that inspired her – her raw, passionate sisterhood with Charlotte and Anne; her first aching, forbidden love for Weightman and her care for her maverick brother whom she idolises.
Night of the 12th, The (Moll)
Director: Dominik Moll
Stars: Bastien Bouillon, Bouli Lanners, Anouk Grinberg
Genre: Drama, Crime, Mystery
Country: Belgium, France, USA
Young and ambitious Captain Vivés has just been appointed group leader at the Grenoble Criminal Squad when Clara’s murder case lands on his desk. Vivés and his team investigate Clara’s complex life and relations, but what starts as a professional and methodical immersion into the victim’s life soon turns into a haunting obsession.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Goldhaber)
Director: Daniel Goldhaber
Stars: Ariela Barer, Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage, Forrest Goodluck
Genre: Thriller, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
A crew of young environmental activists execute a daring mission to sabotage an oil pipeline.
Leila’s Brothers (Roustaee)
Director: Saeed Roustaee
Stars: Taraneh Alidoosti, Saeed Poursamimi
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran
At the age of 40, Leila has spent her entire life caring for her parents and four brothers. A family that is constantly arguing and under pressure from various debts in the face of sanctions against Iran. While her brothers are struggling to make ends meet, Leila makes a plan.
Sick of Myself (Borgli)
Director: Kristoffer Borgli
Stars: Kristine Kujath Thorp Eirik Sæther Fanny Vaager
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: Norway, Sweden
Increasingly overshadowed by her boyfriend’s recent rise to fame as a contemporary artist creating sculptures from stolen furniture, Signe hatches a vicious plan to reclaim her rightfully deserved attention within the milieu of Oslo’s cultural elite.
Suzume (Shinkai)
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Stars: Nanoka Hara, Hokuto Matsumura, Eri Fukatsu
Genre: Animation
Country: Japan
Suzume, 17, lost her mother as a little girl. On her way to school, she meets a mysterious young man. But her curiosity unleashes a calamity that endangers the entire population of Japan, and so Suzume embarks on a journey to set things right.
Wildcat (Frost, Lesh)
Director: Trevor Beck Frost, Melissa Lesh
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Back from war in Afghanistan, a young British soldier struggling with depression and PTSD finds a second chance in the Amazon rainforest when he meets an American scientist, and together they foster an orphaned baby ocelot.
Prey (Trachtenberg)
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Stars: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Michelle Thrush
Genre: Science Fiction, Action, Thriller
Country: USA
When danger threatens her camp, the fierce and highly skilled Comanche warrior Naru sets out to protect her people. But the prey she stalks turns out to be a highly evolved alien predator with a technically advanced arsenal.
African Desperate, The (Syms)
Director: Martine Syms
Stars: Diamond Stingily, Erin Leland, Cammisa Buerhaus
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
It’s MFA grad Palace Bryant’s final 24 hours in art school, and she is not going to the graduation party! She needs to get back home to Chicago from Upstate New York, but that means surviving a hazy, hilarious, and hallucinatory odyssey, stumbling from academic critiques to backseat hookups.
Emergency (Williams)
Director: Carey Williams
Stars: Donald Watkins, RJ Cyler, Sebastian Chacon
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Thriller
Country: USA
Ready for a night of legendary partying, three college students must weigh the pros and cons of calling the police when faced with an unexpected situation.
Stranger, The (Wright)
Director: Thomas M. Wright
Stars: Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Jada Alberts, Fletcher Humphrys
Genre: Thriller, Drama, Crime
Country: Australia, UK, USA
Two strangers strike up a conversation on a long journey. One is a suspect in an unsolved missing person’s case and the other an undercover operative on his trail. Their uneasy friendship becomes the core of this tightly wrought thriller, which is based on the true story of one of the largest investigations and undercover operations in Australia.
Incredible But True (Dupieux)
Director: Quentin Dupieux
Stars: Alain Chabat, Léa Drucker, Anaïs Demoustier
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Comedy
Country: France
Alain and Marie moved to the suburb house of their dreams. But the real estate agent warned them: what is in the basement may well change their lives forever.
Something in the Dirt (Benson, Moorhead)
Director: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Stars: Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson, Sarah Adina Smith
Genre: Science Fiction, Comedy, Horror, Mystery
Country: USA
When neighbors John and Levi witness supernatural events in their LA apartment building, they realize documenting the paranormal could inject some fame and fortune into their wasted lives.
Broker (Kore-eda)
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Stars: Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Bae Doona, IU
Genre: Drama, Crime, Comedy
Country: South Korea
Sang-hyun is always struggling from debt, and Dong-soo works at a baby box facility. On a rainy night, they steal the baby Woo-sung, who was left in the baby box, to sell him at a good price. Meanwhile, detectives were watching, and they quietly track them down to capture the crucial evidence.
Love Song, A (Walker-Silverman)
Director: Max Walker-Silverman
Stars: Dale Dickey, Wes Studi, Michelle Wilson, Benja K. Thomas
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Two childhood sweethearts, now both widowed, share a night by a lake in the mountains.
We Met in Virtual Reality (Hunting)
Director: Joe Hunting
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary, Animation
Country: USA, UK
Filmed entirely inside the world of virtual reality (VR), this immersive and revealing documentary roots itself in several unique communities within VR Chat, a burgeoning virtual reality platform. Through observational scenes captured in real-time, in true documentary style, the film reveals the growing power and intimacy of several relationships formed in the virtual world, many of which began during the COVID-19 lockdown, while so many in the physical world were facing intense isolation.
Argentina 1985 (Mitre)
Director: Santiago Mitre
Stars: Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani, Alejandra Flechner
Genre: History, Crime, Drama
Country: Argentina, UK
In the 1980s, a team of lawyers takes on the heads of Argentina’s bloody military dictatorship in a battle against odds and a race against time.
Speak No Evil (Tafdrup)
Director: Christian Tafdrup
Stars: Morten Burian, Sidsel Siem Koch, Fedja van Huêt
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Drama
Country: Denmark, Netherlands
A Danish family visits a Dutch family they met on a holiday. What was supposed to be an idyllic weekend slowly starts unraveling as the Danes try to stay polite in the face of unpleasantness.
Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues (Jenkins)
Director: Sacha Jenkins
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
An intimate and revealing look at the world-changing musician, presented through a lens of archival footage and never-before-heard home recordings and personal conversations. This definitive documentary honors Armstrong’s legacy as a founding father of jazz, one of the first internationally known and beloved stars, and a cultural ambassador of the United States.
Janes, The (Lessin, Pildes)
Director: Tia Lessin, Emma Pildes
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Defying the state legislature that outlawed abortion, the Catholic Church that condemned it, and the Chicago Mob that was profiting from it, the members of “Jane” risked their personal and professional lives to support women with unwanted pregnancies. In the pre-Roe v. Wade era — a time when abortion was a crime in most states and even circulating information about abortion was a felony in Illinois — the Janes provided low-cost and free abortions to an estimated 11,000 women.
Master of Light (Boesten)
Director: Rosa Ruth Boesten
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Netherlands, USA
George Anthony Morton, a classical painter who spent ten years in federal prison, travels to his hometown to paint his family members. Going back forces George to face his past in his quest to rewrite the script of his life.
Navalny (Roher)
Director: Daniel Roher
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Follows the man who survived an assassination attempt by poisoning with a lethal nerve agent in August 2020. During his months-long recovery, he makes shocking discoveries about the attempt on his life and decides to return home.
To Leslie (Morris)
Director: Michael Morris
Stars: Andrea Riseborough, Marc Maron, Andre Royo
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A West Texas single mother wins the lottery and squanders it just as fast, leaving behind a world of heartbreak. Years later, with her charm running out and nowhere to go, she fights to rebuild her life and find redemption.
Aftershock (Lee, Eiselt)
Director: Tonya Lewis Lee, Paula Eiselt
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
An alarmingly disproportionate number of Black women are failed every year by the U.S. maternal health system. Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac were vibrant, excited mothers-to-be whose deaths due to childbirth complications were preventable. Now, their partners and families are determined to sound a rallying cry around this chilling yet largely ignored crisis.
Fair Play (Domont)
Director: Chloe Domont
Stars: Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich, Eddie Marsan
Genre: Thriller, Romance, Drama
Country: USA
An unexpected promotion at a cutthroat hedge fund pushes a young couple’s relationship to the brink, threatening to unravel not only their recent engagement but their lives.
Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV
Director: Amanda Kim
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA, South Korea
The quixotic journey of Nam June Paik, one of the most famous Asian artists of the 20th century, who revolutionized the use of technology as an artistic canvas and prophesied both the fascist tendencies and intercultural understanding that would arise from the interconnected metaverse of today’s world.
Mami Wata (Obasi)
Director: C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi
Stars: Evelyne Ily Juhen, Uzoamaka Aniunoh, Emeka Amakeze
Genre: Thriller, Fantasy, Drama
Country: France, Nigeria
In the oceanside village of Iyi, the revered Mama Efe acts as an intermediary between the people and the all-powerful water deity Mami Wata. But when a young boy is lost to a virus, Efe’s devoted but rebellious daughter Zinwe and skeptical protégé Prisca warn Efe about unrest among the villagers. With the sudden arrival of a mysterious rebel deserter named Jasper, a conflict erupts, leading to a violent clash of ideologies and a crisis of faith for the people of Iyi.
Songs of Earth (Olin)
Director: Margreth Olin
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Norway
With Olin’s 85-year-old father as guide, we experience Norway’s most adventurous valley, Oldedalen in Nordfjord. He grew up here, and here generations before him have lived in balance with nature.
On the Adamant (Philibert)
Director: Nicolas Philibert
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: France, Japan
The Adamant is a unique day-care centre. A floating structure located on the Seine in the heart of Paris, it welcomes adults suffering from mental disorders, offering the kind of care that grounds them in time and space and helps them to recover or keep up their spirits. The team running it tries to resist the deterioration and dehumanisation of psychiatry as best as they can.
We Grown Now (Baig)
Director: Minhal Baig
Stars: Blake Cameron James, Gian Knight Ramirez
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
In 1992 Chicago, a story of two young legends in their own right begins. As wide-eyed and imaginative best friends Malik and Eric traverse the city, looking to escape the mundaneness of school and the hardships of growing up in public housing, their unbreakable bond is challenged when tragedy shakes their community just as they are learning to fly.
Earth Mama (Leaf)
Director: Savanah Leaf
Stars: Tia Nomore, Erika Alexander, Keta Price, Doechii
Genre: Drama
Country: USA, UK
A pregnant single mother, with two children in foster care, embraces her Bay Area community as she fights to reclaim her family.
Hoard (Carmoon)
Director: Luna Carmoon
Stars: Saura Lightfoot, Leon Joseph Quinn, Hayley Squires
Genre: Romance, Drama
Country: UK
The story follows Maria – a teenager whose mother used to be a hoarder. Now (set in the 90s) she lives in a foster home where a previous resident, Michael, inspires her to revisit the childhood memories and passions that she has repressed.
Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, The (Arnow)
Director: Joanna Arnow
Stars: Joanna Arnow, Scott Cohen, Babak Tafti, Peter Vack
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
A mosaic-style comedy following the life of a woman as time passes in her long-term casual BDSM relationship, low-level corporate job, and quarrelsome Jewish family.
When It Melts (Baetens)
Director: Veerle Baetens
Stars: Charlotte De Bruyne, Rosa Marchant, Sebastien Dewaele
Genre: Drama
Country: Belgium, Netherlands
Many years after a sweltering summer that spun out of control, Eva returns to the village she grew up in with an ice block in the back of her car. In the dead of winter, she confronts her past and faces up to her tormentors.
Kokomo City (Smith)
Director: D. Smith
Stars: Daniella Carter, Dominique Silver, Koko Da Doll
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Four Black transgender sex workers in Atlanta and New York City break down the walls of their profession.
Skunk (Mortier)
Director: Koen Mortier
Stars: Thibaud Dooms, Natali Broods, Boris Van Severen
Genre: Drama
Country: Netherlands, Antilles, Belgium, Netherlands
The story of Liam, a neglected teenager who lives in a family where alcohol, violence and sex play the main role. He grows up to be a confused youngster which ends in a very aggressive act to break with his past.
Vourdalak, The (Beau)
Director: Adrien Beau
Stars: Ariane Labed, Kacey Mottet Klein, Grégoire Colin
Genre: Horror, Fantasy, Drama
Country: France
Lost in a hostile forest, the Marquis d’Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, finds refuge in the home of a strange family.
Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate (Cantu)
Director: Benjamin Cantu
Stars: Walter Arlen, Howard Myers, Klaus Mueller, Morgan M. Page
Genre: Documentary
Country: Germany
A glittery nightclub in 1920s Berlin becomes a haven for the queer community in this documentary exploring the freedoms lost amid Hitler’s rise to power.
Time Still Turns the Pages (Cheuk)
Director: Nick Cheuk
Stars: Lo Chun-Yip, Ronald Cheng Chung-Kei, Sean Wong Tsz-Lok
Genre: Drama
Country: Hong Kong, Singapore
High school teacher Cheng looks back to his repressed childhood memories, as he finds an anonymous suicide note in the classroom. He strives hard to prevent another tragedy from happening, meanwhile facing a series of family problems, his wife is divorcing him, and his father is dying.
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Ân)
Director: Phạm Thiên Ân
Stars: Le Phong Vu, Nguyen Thinh, Nguyen Thi Truc Quynh
Genre: Drama
Country: France, Singapore, Spain, Vietnam
After a Vietnamese woman dies in a car crash in Saigon, her brother-in-law and her young son transport her body back to the former’s hometown in rural Vietnam, where they plan to give her a funeral.
Little Richard: I Am Everything (Cortés)
Director: Lisa Cortés
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
The story of the Black queer origins of rock n’ roll. It explodes the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard’s complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon’s life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions.
Great Photo, Lovely Life (Mustard, Anderson)
Director: Amanda Mustard, Rachel Beth Anderson
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A photojournalist turns her lens on the decades of sexual abuse her family and community experienced at the hands of her grandfather in this unflinching portrait of intergenerational trauma, family secrets, and redemption.
Pictures of Ghosts (Filho)
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Brazil
Downtown Recife’s classic movie palaces from the 20th century are mostly gone. That city area is now an archaeological site of sorts that reveals aspects of life in society which have been lost. And that’s just part of the story.
Restore Point (Hloz)
Director: Robert Hloz
Stars: Andrea Mohylová, Matěj Hádek, Václav Neužil, Milan Ondrík
Genre: Science Fiction, Crime, Thriller
Country: Czechia, Poland
It’s 2041 and the gaps in social and economic inequality have left the world on the brink. A breakthrough in science has given humanity the ability to bring victims of a violent crime back to life by backing up their brain every 2 days. This allows an ambitious, young detective the opportunity to solve a case of a murdered couple when the restoration team is able to bring one of them back.
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Hints)
Director: Anna Hints
Stars: Kadi Kivilo, Maria Meresaar, Elsa Saks, Marianne Liiv
Genre: Documentary
Country: Estonia, France, Iceland
Women share their innermost secrets and intimate experiences inside an Estonian smoke sauna. Cleansing their bodies and baring their souls, they embrace the healing power of sisterhood.
Goldman Case, The (Kahn)
Director: Cédric Kahn
Stars: Arieh Worthalter, Arthur Harari, Stéphan Guérin-Tillié
Genre: Crime, History, Drama
Country: France
A second trial begins in November 1975 against French left-wing revolutionary Pierre Goldman, accused of several armed robberies and the death of two chemists.
Nature of Love, The (Chokri)
Director: Monia Chokri
Stars: Magalie Lépine-Blondeau, Pierre-Yves Cardinal
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama
Country: Canada, France
Sophia is a philosophy professor in Montreal and has lived as a couple with Xavier for 10 years. Sylvain is a carpenter in the Laurentians and must renovate their country house. When Sophia meets Sylvain for the first time, it’s love at first sight. Opposites attract, but can it last?
Fremont (Jalali)
Director: Babak Jalali
Stars: Anaita Wali, Zada Jeremy Allen White, Gregg Turkington
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Donya, a lonely Afghan refugee and former translator, spends her twenties drifting through a meager existence in Fremont, California. Shuttling between her job writing fortunes for a fortune cookie factory and sessions with her eccentric therapist, Donya suffers from insomnia and survivor’s guilt over those still left behind in Kabul as she desperately searches for love.
Fancy Dance (Tremblay)
Director: Erica Tremblay
Stars: Lily Gladstone, Isabel Deroy-Olson, Ryan Begay
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Following her sister’s disappearance, Jax and her niece Roki must stick together. Desperate to keep what’s left of their family intact, Jax and Roki defy the law and hit the road on a journey to the Grand Nation Powwow in Oklahoma City.
David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived (Hartley)
Director: Dan Hartley
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK, USA
As Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in the Harry Potter films, David Holmes’ work has been seen worldwide by millions of people. Tragically an on-set accident ended what David calls “the best job in the world,” leaving him paralyzed. Like the on-screen character he helped bring to life, David is determined to continue seeking adventure and living life to the fullest despite mounting obstacles.
20,000 Species of Bees (Solaguren)
Director: Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren
Stars: Sofía Otero, Patricia López Arnaiz, Ane Gabarain
Genre: Drama
Country: Spain
Lucía is an eight-year-old girl, who sometimes struggles as the world tries to catch up with the fact that she is trans. As the summer holidays pass, she explores her femininity alongside the women of her family who at the same time reflect on their own femininity.
Master and Margarita, The (Lockshin)
Director: Michael Lockshin
Stars: Yevgeni Tsyganov, Yuliya Snigir, August Diehl
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Russia
Moscow, 1930s. A prominent writer’s works are suddenly censored by the Soviet state and the premiere of his theatrical play about Pontius Pilate is canceled. He’s kicked out of the Soviet Writer’s Union, and quickly turns into an outcast with no means to survive. Inspired by Margarita – his lover, he begins working on a new novel in which all the characters are satirically reinterpreted from his life. The novel’s central character is Woland – a mystical dark force who visits Moscow to revenge all those who caused the writer’s downfall. As the Master sinks himself deeper and deeper into his novel, adding himself and Margarita as characters, he gradually stops noticing as the border between reality and his imagination fades away.
Sleep (Yu)
Director: Jason Yu
Stars: Jung Yu-mi, Lee Sun-kyun, Kim Kuk-hee, Lee Kyung-jin
Genre: Thriller, Horror, Mystery
Country: South Korea
Hyun-su and Soo-jin have just gotten married. Seemingly out of nowhere, he starts talking in his sleep. ‘Someone’s inside.’ From that night forward, whenever he falls asleep, he transforms into someone else with no recollection of the night before. Soo-jin is overwhelmed with anxiety that he’d hurt her family while she sleeps and can barely sleep a wink because of this irrational fear. Despite sleep treatment, Hyun-su’s sleepwalking only intensifies, and she begins to feel that her unborn child may be in danger…
Crime Is Mine, The (Ozon)
Director: François Ozon
Stars: Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder, Isabelle Huppert
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Mystery, Crime
Country: France
In 1930s Paris, Madeleine, a pretty, young, penniless, and talentless actress, is accused of murdering a famous producer. Helped by her best friend, Pauline, a young, unemployed lawyer, she is acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. A new life of fame and success begins, until the truth comes out.
Scrapper (Regan)
Director: Charlotte Regan
Stars: Lola Campbell, Harris Dickinson, Alin Uzun, Laura Aikman
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
A resourceful 12-year-old, who secretly lives alone in her flat in a working-class suburb of London, makes money stealing bikes with her best friend Ali and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. But when her estranged father turns up out of the blue, she’s forced to confront reality.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Louis-Seize)
Director: Ariane Louis-Seize
Stars: Sara Montpetit, Félix-Antoine Bénard, Steve Laplante
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
Country: Canada
Sasha is a young vampire with a serious problem: she’s too sensitive to kill. When her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply, Sasha’s life is in jeopardy. Luckily, she meets Paul, a lonely teenager with suicidal tendencies who is willing to give his life to save hers. But their friendly agreement soon becomes a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul’s last wishes before day breaks.
You’ll Never Find Me (Bell, Allen)
Director: Indianna Bell, Josiah Allen
Stars: Brendan Rock, Jordan Cowan, Elena Carapetis
Genre: Thriller, Horror
Country: Australia
Patrick, a strange and lonely resident, lives in a mobile home at the back of an isolated caravan park. After a violent thunderstorm erupts, a mysterious young woman appears at his door, seeking shelter from the weather. The longer the night wears on and the more the young woman discovers about Patrick, the more difficult she finds it to leave. Soon she begins to question Patrick’s intentions, while Patrick begins to question his own grip on reality…
Flora and Son (Carney)
Director: John Carney
Stars: Eve Hewson, Orén Kinlan, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jack Reynor
Genre: Music, Comedy, Drama
Country: Ireland, USA
Single mom Flora is at a loss about what to do with her rebellious teenage son, Max. Her efforts to keep him out of trouble lead to a beat-up acoustic guitar, a washed-up LA musician, and harmony for this frayed Dublin family.
20 Days in Mariupol (Chernov)
Director: Mstyslav Chernov
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war’s atrocities.
Promised Land, The (Arcel)
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Amanda Collin, Simon Bennebjerg
Genre: History, Drama, Action
Country: Denmark, Germany, Sweden
Denmark, 1755. Captain Ludvig Kahlen sets out to conquer a Danish heath reputed to be uncultivable, with an impossible goal: to establish a colony in the name of the king, in exchange for a royal title. A single-minded ambition that the ruthless lord of the region will relentlessly seek to put down. Kahlen’s fate hangs in the balance: will his endevours bring him wealth and honour, or cost him his life…?
BlackBerry (Johnson)
Director: Matt Johnson
Stars: Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Matt Johnson, Rich Sommer
Genre: Comedy
Country: Canada, Finland, USA
Two mismatched entrepreneurs – egghead innovator Mike Lazaridis and cut-throat businessman Jim Balsillie – joined forces in an endeavour that was to become a worldwide hit in little more than a decade. The story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world’s first smartphone.
Maestro (Cooper)
Director: Bradley Cooper
Stars: Carey Mulligan, Bradley Cooper, Matt Bomer
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: USA
A towering and fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship between Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. A love letter to life and art, Maestro at its core is an emotionally epic portrayal of family and love.
American Fiction (Jefferson)
Director: Cord Jefferson
Stars: Jeffrey Wright, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
A novelist fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.
Frida (Gutierrez)
Director: Carla Gutierrez
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Norway
An intimately raw and magical journey through the life, mind, and heart of iconic artist Frida Kahlo. Told through her own words for the very first time — drawn from her diary, revealing letters, essays, and print interviews — and brought vividly to life by lyrical animation inspired by her unforgettable artwork.
Exhibiting Forgiveness (Kaphar)
Director: Titus Kaphar
Stars: André Holland, Andra Day, John Earl Jelks
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Utilizing his paintings to find freedom from his past, a Black artist on the path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, a recovering addict desperate to reconcile. Together, they learn that forgetting might be a greater challenge than forgiving.
Caught by the Tides (Zhang-ke)
Director: Jia Zhang-ke
Stars: Zhao Tao, Zhubin Li, Pan Jianlin, Zhou Lan, Zhou You
Genre: Drama
Country: China, France, Japan
Years after her boyfriend left her for the big city and promised to bring her there after he’s settled down, a Chinese woman sets out on a journey to be reunited with him.
When the Light Breaks (Rúnarsson)
Director: Rúnar Rúnarsson
Stars: Elín Hall, Mikael Kaaber, Katla Njálsdóttir
Genre: Drama
Country: Croatia, France, Iceland, Netherlands
When the light breaks on a long summer’s day in Iceland. From one sunset to another, Una, a young art student, encounters love, friendship, sorrow and beauty.
To a Land Unknown (Fleifel)
Director: Mahdi Fleifel
Stars: Mahmood Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Angeliki Papoulia
Genre: Thriller, Drama, Crime
Country: Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, France, Greece, Netherlands, UK, State of Palestine
The stakes couldn’t be higher for displaced Palestinian refugees Chatila and Reda in this knife-edge drama. The cousins are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens, but when Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan to pose as smugglers in an attempt to get them out of their desperate situation before it is too late.
Great Lillian Hall, The (Cristofer)
Director: Michael Cristofer
Stars: Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Jesse Williams, Lily Rabe
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Lillian Hall, a Broadway actress, has never missed a performance throughout her long, illustrious career. Yet in the rehearsals her confidence is challenged. People and events conspire to take away her ability to do what she loves most.
Santosh (Suri)
Director: Sandhya Suri
Stars: Shahana Goswami, Sunita Rajwar, Naval Shukla
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Drama
Country: France, Germany, UK
A government scheme sees newly widowed Santosh inherit her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a low-caste girl is found raped and murdered, she is pulled into the investigation under the wing of charismatic feminist inspector Sharma.
Between the Temples (Silver)
Director: Nathan Silver
Stars: Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Dolly de Leon
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA
A grief-stricken cantor in a crisis of faith finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher re-enters his life as his new adult Bat Mitzvah student. The two forlorn souls develop a special connection.
Love in the Big City (E.oni)
Director: E.oni
Stars: Kim Go-eun, Steve Sanghyun Noh, Jung Whee, Oh Dong-min
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: South Korea
Free-spirit Jae-hee and closeted Heung-soo deeply connect over being misfits and begin living together. The pair ceaselessly rely on each other as they navigate the complexities of love and romance in the big city of Seoul.
Souleymane’s Story (Lojkine)
Director: Boris Lojkine
Stars: Abou Sangare, Nina Meurisse, Alpha Oumar Sow
Genre: Drama
Country: France
As he pedals through the streets of Paris to deliver meals, Souleymane repeats his story. In two days, he has to go through his asylum application interview, the key to obtaining papers, but Souleymane is not ready.
Babes (Adlon)
Director: Pamela Adlon
Stars: Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau, John Carroll Lynch, Oliver Platt
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
After getting pregnant from a one-night stand, a single woman leans on her married best friend and mother of two to guide her through gestation and beyond.
In the Summers (Lacorazza)
Director: Alessandra Lacorazza
Stars: Residente, Sasha Calle, Lio Mehiel, Dreya Renae Castillo
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
On a journey that spans the formative years of their lives, two sisters navigate their loving but volatile father during their yearly summer visits to his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Bonhôte, Ettedgui)
Director: Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui
Stars: Christopher Reeve, Dana Reeve, Matthew Reeve, Will Reeve
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA, UK
Christopher Reeve portrayed the Man of Steel in four Superman films and played dozens of other roles that displayed his talent and range as an actor, before being injured in a near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed from the neck down. After becoming a quadriplegic, he became a charismatic leader and activist in the quest to find a cure for spinal cord injuries, as well as a passionate advocate for disability rights and care.
Girls Will Be Girls (Talati)
Director: Shuchi Talati
Stars: Preeti Panigrahi, Kani Kusruti, Kesav Binoy Kiron
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France, India, Norway, USA
In a strict boarding school nestled in the Himalayas, 16-year-old Mira discovers desire and romance. But her sexual, rebellious awakening is disrupted by her mother who never got to come of age herself.
House on Fire, A (de la Orden)
Director: Dani de la Orden
Stars: Emma Vilarasau, Enric Auquer, Maria Rodríguez Soto
Genre: Comedy
Country: Spain, Italy
Montse, divorced and with two children who have long ignored her, prepares for a family reunion at her home on the Costa Brava.
Out of My Mind (Sealey)
Director: Amber Sealey
Stars: Phoebe-Rae Taylor, Jennifer Aniston, Rosemarie DeWitt
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Melody Brooks, a sixth grader with cerebral palsy, has a quick wit and a sharp mind, but because she is non-verbal and uses a wheelchair, she is not given the same opportunities as her classmates. When a young educator notices her student’s untapped potential and Melody starts to participate in mainstream education, Melody shows that what she has to say is more important than how she says it.
Touch (Kormákur)
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Stars: Egill Ólafsson, Kōki, Pálmi Kormákur Baltasarsson
Genre: Romance, Drama
Country: Iceland, UK
Soon after the break of the pandemic and realizing that his clock is ticking, Kristofer gets the urge to embark on a journey to try to find out what really happened when his Japanese girlfriend mysteriously vanished without a trace from London fifty years earlier.
Exhuma (Jae-hyun)
Director: Jang Jae-hyun
Stars: Choi Min-sik, Kim Go-eun, Yoo Hai-jin, Lee Do-hyun
Genre: Thriller, Horror, Mystery
Country: South Korea
After tracing the origin of a disturbing supernatural affliction to a wealthy family’s ancestral gravesite, a team of paranormal experts relocates the remains—and soon discovers what happens to those who dare to mess with the wrong grave.
Thelma (Margolin)
Director: Josh Margolin
Stars: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Comedy, Action
Country: Switzerland, USA
When 93-year-old Thelma Post gets duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, she sets out on a treacherous quest across the city to reclaim what was taken from her.
Blitz (McQueen)
Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: Elliott Heffernan, Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: USA, UK
In World War II London, nine-year-old George is evacuated to the countryside by his mother, Rita, to escape the bombings. Defiant and determined to return to his family, George embarks on an epic, perilous journey back home as Rita searches for him.
Kneecap (Peppiatt)
Director: Rich Peppiatt
Stars: Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara, DJ Próvaí, Josie Walker
Genre: Drama, Music, Comedy
Country: Ireland, UK
When fate brings Belfast teacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed ‘low life scum’ Naoise and Liam Og, the needle drops on a hip hop act like no other. Rapping in their native Irish, they lead a movement to save their mother tongue.
Challengers (Guadagnino)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Stars: Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor, Zendaya
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Italy, USA
Tashi, a former tennis prodigy turned coach, transformed her husband into a champion. But to overcome a recent losing streak and redeem himself, he’ll need to face off against his former best friend and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend.
Presence (Soderbergh)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang
Genre: Horror, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
A family becomes convinced they are not alone after moving into their new home in the suburbs.
Carlos (Assayas)
Director: Olivier Assayas
Stars: Edgar Ramírez, Alexander Scheer, Nora Waldstätten
Genre: Thriller, History, Drama, Crime
Country: Germany, France
The story of Venezuelan revolutionary, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who founded a worldwide terrorist organization and raided the OPEC headquarters in 1975 before being caught by the French police.
Biutiful (Iñárritu)
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Stars: Javier Bardem, Maricel Álvarez, Hanaa Bouchaib
Genre: Drama
Country: Mexico, Spain, USA
This is a story of a man in free fall. On the road to redemption, darkness lights his way. Connected with the afterlife, Uxbal is a tragic hero and father of two who’s sensing the danger of death. He struggles with a tainted reality and a fate that works against him in order to forgive, for love, and forever.
Samsara (Fricke)
Director: Ron Fricke
Stars: Johannes Zeiler, Anton Adasinsky, Isolda Dychauk
Genre: Documentary
Country: Brazil, China, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, USA
Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.
You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Resnais)
Director: Alain Resnais
Stars: Lambert Wilson, Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany, France
From beyond the grave, celebrated playwright Antoine d’Anthac gathers together all his friends who have appeared over the years in his play “Eurydice.” These actors watch a recording of the work performed by a young acting company, La Compagnie de la Colombe. Do love, life, death and love after death still have any place on a theater stage? It’s up to them to decide. And the surprises have only just begun…
Human Capital (Virzì)
Director: Paolo Virzì
Stars: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Valeria Golino
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy
The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.
Still the Water (Kawase)
Director: Naomi Kawase
Stars: Nijiro Murakami, Junko Abe, Miyuki Matsuda, Tetta Sugimoto
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Japan
On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.
Jersey Boys (Eastwood)
Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: John Lloyd Young, Vincent Piazza, Michael Lomenda
Genre: Drama, Biopic
Country: USA
A musical biopic of the Four Seasons—the rise, the tough times and personal clashes, and the ultimate triumph of a group of friends whose music became symbolic of a generation. Far from a mere tribute concert, it gets to the heart of the relationships at the centre of the group, with a special focus on frontman Frankie Valli, the small kid with the big falsetto.
Youth (Sorrentino)
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Stars: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Italy, Switzerland, UK
Two lifelong friends bond whilst vacationing in a luxury Swiss Alps lodge as they ponder retirement. While Fred has no plans to resume his musical career despite the urging of his loving daughter Lena, Mick is intent on finishing the screenplay for what may be his last important film for his muse Brenda. And where will inspiration lead their younger friend Jimmy, an actor grasping to make sense of his next performance?
Untitled (Human Mask) (Huyghe)
Director: Pierre Huyghe
Stars: N/A
Genre: Experimental, Art
Country: USA
The ‘Human Mask’ film is inspired by a real situation in Japan, in which a monkey – wearing the mask of a young woman – has been trained to work as a waitress. The film opens with footage of the deserted site of Fukushima in 2011, the camera functioning as a drone scaling the wreckage. This is followed by scenes of the monkey alone in her habitat, silhouetted against the empty, dark restaurant.
Remainder (Fast)
Director: Omer Fast
Stars: Ed Speleers, Tom Sturridge, Cush Jumbo, Nicholas Farrell
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany, UK
A London man who loses his memory when he’s struck by a falling object develops a way to reconstruct his past.
Magic Mike XXL (Jacobs)
Director: Gregory Jacobs
Stars: Channing Tatum, Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA
Three years after Mike bowed out of the stripper life at the top of his game, he and the remaining Kings of Tampa hit the road to Myrtle Beach to put on one last blow-out performance.
By the Time It Gets Dark (Suwichakornpong)
Director: Anocha Suwichakornpong
Stars: Visra Vichit-Vadakan, Arak Amornsupasiri, Atchara Suwan
Genre: Drama
Country: Thailand, Netherlands, France, Qatar
A film director and her muse who was a student activist in the 1970s, a waitress who keeps changing jobs, an actor and an actress, all live loosely connected to each other by almost invisible threads. The narrative sheds its skin several times to reveal layer upon layer of the complexities that make up the characters’ lives.
Paddington 2 (King)
Director: Paul King
Stars: Ben Whishaw, Sally Hawkins, Hugh Bonneville, Hugh Grant
Genre: Adventure, Comedy
Country: France, UK
Paddington, now happily settled with the Browns, picks up a series of odd jobs to buy the perfect present for his Aunt Lucy, but it is stolen.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties (Mitchell)
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Stars: Elle Fanning, Alex Sharp, Nicole Kidman, Matt Lucas
Genre: Science Fiction, Romance, Musical, Comedy
Country: USA, UK
In 1970s London, a teenage outsider named Enn falls in love with a rebellious alien girl named Zan, who has come to Earth for a party. Together, they navigate the complexities of intergalactic culture and the trials of first love.
Transit (Petzold)
Director: Christian Petzold
Stars: Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese, Lilien Batman
Genre: Drama
Country:France, Germany
In an attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead author but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with Maria, a young woman searching for her missing husband.
Suspiria (Guadagnino)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Stars: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Angela Winkler
Genre: Mystery, Drama, Horror
Country: Italy, USA
Young American dancer Susie Bannion arrives in 1970s Berlin to audition for the world-renowned Helena Markos Dance Company. When she vaults to the role of lead dancer, the woman she replaces breaks down and accuses the company’s female directors of witchcraft. Meanwhile, an inquisitive psychotherapist and a member of the troupe uncover dark and sinister secrets as they probe the depths of the studio’s hidden underground chambers.
Support the Girls (Bujalski)
Director: Andrew Bujalski
Stars: Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Shayna McHayle
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA
Lisa Conroy is general manager at a highway-side ‘sports bar with curves’, Double Whammies. She nurtures and protects her employees fiercely – but over the course of one trying day, her optimism is battered from every direction. Double Whammies sells a big, weird American fantasy, but what happens when reality pokes a bunch of holes in it?
Blindspotting (Blindspotting)
Director: Blindspotting
Stars: Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Crime
Country: USA
Collin must make it through his final three days of probation for a chance at a new beginning. He and his troublemaking childhood best friend, Miles, work as movers, and when Collin witnesses a police shooting, the two men’s friendship is tested as they grapple with identity and their changed realities in the rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood they grew up in.
Martin Eden (Marcello)
Director: Pietro Marcello
Stars: Luca Marinelli, Jessica Cressy, Carlo Cecchi
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France, Germany, Italy
The tale of an individualist proletarian in a time marked by the rise of mass political movements. In early 20th-century Italy, illiterate sailor Martin Eden seeks fame as a writer while torn between the love of a bourgeois girl and allegiance to his social class.
One Night in Miami… (King)
Director: Regina King
Stars: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr.
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
In the aftermath of Cassius Clay’s defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964, the boxer meets with Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown to change the course of history in the segregated South.
Woman Who Ran, The (Sang-soo)
Director: Hong Sang-soo
Stars: Kim Min-hee, Seo Young-hwa, Song Sun-mi, Kim Sae-byuk
Genre: Drama
Country: South Korea
While her husband is on a business trip, Gam-hee meets three of her friends on the outskirts of Seoul.
Inheritance, The (Asili)
Director: Ephraim Asili
Stars: Chris Jarell, Eric Lockley, Nyabel Lual, Nozipho McLean
Genre: Drama, Documentary
Country: USA
Based on real events, the film’s protagonist inherits a house in West Philadelphia that becomes home to an urban collective for activists of color. The increasingly claustrophobic drama unfolds as the group attempts to live together and find consensus through Black political discourse and social philosophy.
Pacifiction (Serra)
Director: Albert Serra
Stars: Benoît Magimel, Pahoa Mahagafanau, Marc Susini
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Country: France, French Polynesia, Germany, Portugal, Spain
Island of Tahiti. French government official De Roller is a calculating man with impeccable manners, capable of dealing with both high society and the locals he frequents in shady joints.
Novelist’s Film, The (Sang-soo)
Director: Hong Sang-soo
Stars: Lee Hye-young, Kim Min-hee, Seo Young-hwa, Park Mi-so
Genre: Drama
Country: South Korea
A novelist visits a bookstore run by a young colleague who’s been out of touch, then takes a walk with a film director and his wife. She meets an actress and tries to convince her to make a film together.
Corsage (Kreutzer)
Director: Marie Kreutzer
Stars: Vicky Krieps, Florian Teichtmeister, Katharina Lorenz
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Austria, France, Germany, Luxembourg
A fictional account of one year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. On Christmas Eve 1877, Elisabeth, once idolized for her beauty, turns 40 and is officially deemed an old woman; she starts trying to maintain her public image.
Unrest (Schäublin)
Director: Cyril Schäublin
Stars: Clara Gostynski, Alexei Evstratov, Monika Stalder
Genre: Drama, History
Country: German
In 1877, in a watch factory in a valley in north-western Switzerland, Josephine produces balance spindles, tiny parts that ensure the agitation movement (“unrueh”) of the mechanical watches. She soon grows uneasy with the organisation of work and possession in the village and its factory and joins the anarchist worker movement of the local watchmakers.
Armageddon Time (Gray)
Director: James Gray
Stars: Banks Repeta, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Jaylin Webb, Anthony Hopkins
Genre: Drama
Country: Brazil, USA
In 1980, Queens, New York, a young Jewish boy befriends a rebellious African-American classmate to the disapproval of his privileged family and begins to reckon with growing up in a world of inequality and prejudice.
Bones and All (Guadagnino)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Stars: Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance
Genre: Horror, Drama, Romance
Country: Italy, USA
Abandoned by her father, a young woman embarks on a thousand-mile odyssey through the backroads of America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their otherness.
Fire of Love (Dosa)
Director: Sara Dosa
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Canada, USA
A doomed love triangle between intrepid French scientists Katia and Maurice Krafft, and their beloved volcanoes.
She Said (Schrader)
Director: Maria Schrader
Stars: Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan, Patricia Clarkson
Genre: Drama, History
Country: USA
New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor break one of the most important stories in a generation — a story that helped launch the #MeToo movement and shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood.
All That Breathes (Sen)
Director: Shaunak Sen
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: India, UK, USA
Against the darkening backdrop of New Delhi’s apocalyptic air and escalating violence, two brothers devote their lives to protecting one casualty of the turbulent times: the bird known as the black kite.
Funny Pages (Kline)
Director: Owen Kline
Stars: Daniel Zolghadri, Matthew Maher, Miles Emanuel
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
Thirteen-year-old Mei is experiencing the awkwardness of being a teenager with a twist – when she gets too excited, she transforms into a giant red panda.
Turning Red (Shi)
Director: Domee Shi
Stars: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Ava Morse, Hyein Park
Genre: Animation
Country: USA
Thirteen-year-old Mei is experiencing the awkwardness of being a teenager with a twist – when she gets too excited, she transforms into a giant red panda.
Fairytale (Sokurov)
Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
Stars: Alexander Sagabashi, Vakhtang Kuchava, Fabio Mastrangelo
Genre: Drama, Animation, Fantasy
Country: Belgium, Russia
A civil and artistic statement about those who determined the fate of the planet: Stalin, Churchill, Mussolini, Hitler, according to a Russian newspaper.
Oppenheimer (Nolan)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh
Genre: History, Drama
Country: UK, USA
The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.
Delinquents, The (Moreno)
Director: Rodrigo Moreno
Stars: Daniel Elías, Esteban Bigliardi, Margarita Molfino
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Luxembourg,
Morán works as a clerk in a bank in Buenos Aires. He is as good as invisible to his colleagues. Over dinner with his colleague Román, Morán tells him that he stole exactly $650,000, which is exactly double what he would have made until his retirement. He plans to turn himself in, but not before offering Román to split the money if agrees to hide it for the duration of his incarceration.
Music (Schanelec)
Director: Angela Schanelec
Stars: Aliocha Schneider, Agathe Bonitzer, Marissa Triantafyllidou
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany, France, Greece, Serbia
Abandoned at birth in the Greek mountains on a stormy night, Jon is taken in and adopted, without having known his father or mother. As a young man, he meets Iro, a warden in the prison where he is incarcerated after a deadly tragic accident. She seems to seek out his presence, takes care of him, records music for him. Jon’s eyesight begins to fail … From then on, for every loss he suffers, he will gain something in return.
Menus-Plaisirs, les Troisgros (Wiseman)
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Stars: Jean-Pierre Troisgros, Marie Badaut, Jean Troisgrois, Pierre Troisgros
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA, France
Founded in 1930, Troisgros has held three Michelin stars for 55 years. The children of the fourth generation, Marie-Pierre and Michel’s sons are continuing the family business: César runs the Michelin-starred restaurant, “Le Bois sans feuilles” (“The Leafless Wood”), and Léo is in charge of one of the other two Troisgros restaurants, “La Colline du colombier” (“The Dovecote Hill”).
Taste of Things, The (Hùng)
Director: Trần Anh Hùng
Stars: Benoît Magimel, Juliette Binoche, Patrick d’Assumçao
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Belgium, France
Set in 1889 France, Dodin Bouffant is a chef living with his personal cook and lover Eugénie. They share a long history of gastronomy and love but Eugénie refuses to marry Dodin, so the food lover decides to do something he has never done before: cook for her.
Eureka (Alonso)
Director: Lisandro Alonso
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Chiara Mastroianni, Alaina Clifford
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina, France, Germany, Mexico, Portugal
A cowboy arrives in a village in search of his daughter, a native policewoman arrests various offenders in a snowy landscape, while her niece, a basketball coach, reunites with her grandfather for a decisive journey that will shape her future, a bird flies through time and space and begins to enter the minds and dreams of a native tribe in a the Amazon forest.
That They May Face the Rising Sun (Collins)
Director: Pat Collins
Stars: Barry Ward, Anna Bederke, Lalor Roddy, Sean McGinley
Genre: Drama
Country: Ireland, UK
Joe and Kate Ruttledge have returned from London to live and work among the small, close-knit community near to where Joe grew up. Now deeply embedded in life around the lake, the drama of a year in their lives and those of the memorable characters around them unfolds through the rituals of work, play and the passing seasons as this enclosed world becomes an everywhere.
Only the River Flows (Shujun)
Director: Wei Shujun
Stars: Zhu Yilong, Chloe Maayan, Hou Tianlai, Tong Linkai
Genre: Thriller, Crime, Drama
Country: China
1990s, Banpo Town, rural China. A woman’s body is found by the river. Ma Zhe, Chief of the Criminal Police, heads up the murder investigation that leads to an obvious arrest. His superiors hurry to congratulate him, but several clues push Ma Zhe to delve deeper into the hidden behaviour of his fellow citizens.
Killer, The (Fincher)
Director: David Fincher
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell
Genre: Thriller, Crime
Country: USA
This film was shot between 2014 and 2019 in the town of Zhili, a district of Huzhou City in Zhejiang province, China. Zhili is home to over 18,000 privately-run workshops producing children’s clothes, mostly for the domestic market, but some also for export. The workshops employ around 300,000 migrant workers, chiefly from the rural provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan and Jiangsu.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Jackson)
Director: Raven Jackson
Stars: Kaylee Nicole Johnson, Chris Chalk, Jaya Henry
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place.
Thousand and One, A (Rockwell)
Director: A.V. Rockwell
Stars: Teyana Taylor, William Catlett, Josiah Cross, Aven Courtney
Genre: Drama, Crime
Country: USA
Struggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.
In Water (Sang-soo)
Director: Hong Sang-soo
Stars: Shin Seok-ho, Ha Seong-guk, Kim Seung-yun, Kim Min-hee
Genre: Drama
Country: South Korea
A director, a cinematographer, and an actress spend the days leading up to a movie shoot together on-location, waiting for the director to come up with an idea for what the film will be about.
Babygirl (Reijn)
Director: Halina Reijn
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas
Genre: Drama
Country: USA | Netherlands
A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern.
Grand Tour (Gomes)
Director: Miguel Gomes
Stars: Gonçalo Waddington, Crista Alfaiate, Cláudio da Silva
Genre: Drama, Adventure
Country: China | France | Germany | Italy | Japan | Portugal
In 1917 Burma (now Myanmar), a British diplomat is set to marry his fiancée, but after a sudden panic, escapes to Singapore, sending her on what evolves into a chase across Asia.
Queer (Guadagnino)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Stars: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Italy | USA
1950. William Lee, an American expat in Mexico City, spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community. His encounter with Eugene Allerton, an expat former soldier, new to the city, shows him, for the first time, that it might be finally possible to establish an intimate connection with somebody.
Universal Language (Rankin)
Director: Matthew Rankin
Stars: Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Matthew Rankin
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada
Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Negin and Nazgol find a sum of money frozen deep within the sidewalk ice and try to find a way to get it out. Massoud leads a group of befuddled tourists upon an increasingly-strange walking tour of Winnipeg historic sites. Matthew leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks upon a mysterious journey to visit his estranged mother.
Black Dog (Hu)
Director: Guan Hu
Stars: Eddie Peng, Tong Liya, Jia Zhang-ke, Zhou You
Genre: Drama
Country: China
On the edge of the Gobi desert in Northwest China, Lang returns to his hometown after being released from jail. While working for the local dog patrol team to clear the town of stray dogs before the Olympic Games, he strikes up an unlikely connection with a black dog. These two lonely souls embark on a journey together.
Will & Harper (Greenbaum)
Director: Josh Greenbaum
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
When Will Ferrell’s good friend Harper comes out as a trans woman, they take a road trip to bond and reintroduce Harper to the country as her true self.
Ghostlight (Thompson, O’Sullivan)
Director: Alex Thompson, Kelly O’Sullivan
Stars: Keith Kupferer, Katherine Mallen, Kupferer Tara Mallen
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA
When a construction worker unexpectedly joins a local theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet alongside his estranged teenage daughter, the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life.
Black Box Diaries (Itō)
Director: Shiori Itō
Stars: Shiori Itō, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, Shinzo Abe
Genre: Documentary
Country: Japan | UK | USA
Journalist Shiori Itō embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s outdated judicial and societal systems.
Young Hearts (Schatteman)
Director: Anthony Schatteman
Stars: Lou Goossens, Marius De Saeger, Geert Van Rampelberg
Genre: Romance, Drama
Country: Belgium | Netherlands
Fourteen-year-old Elias increasingly feels like an outsider in his village. When he meets his new neighbour of the same age, Alexander, Elias is confronted with his burgeoning sexuality.
Waves (Mádl)
Director: Jiří Mádl
Stars: Vojtěch Vodochodský, Ondrej Stupka, Tatiana Pauhofová
Genre: Documentary
Country: Czechia | Slovakia
In the heady days of the 1968 Prague Spring, a group of Czechoslovak Radio journalists risk not just their careers but their lives to distribute independent news amidst national and regional tumult. Orphaned brothers Tomáš and Pája are caught in the struggle for freedom.
I’m Not Everything I Want to Be (Tasovská)
Director: Klára Tasovská
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Austria | Czechia | France | Germany | Slovakia
After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Libuše Jarcovjáková, a young female photographer, strives to break free from the constraints of Czechoslovak normalization and embarks on a wild journey towards freedom, capturing her experiences on thousands of subjective photographs.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’État (Grimonprez)
Director: Johan Grimonprez
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: Belgium, France, Netherlands
In 1960, United Nations: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe denouncing America’s color bar, while the U.S. dispatches jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from its first African post-colonial coup.
Daughters (Patton, Rae)
Director: Angela Patton, Natalie Rae
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C., jail.
President, The (Dreyer)
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Stars: Richard Christensen, Christian Engelstoft, Hallander Helleman, Halvard Hoff
Genre: Drama, Silent
Country: Denmark
The judge in a Danish town sees his illegitimate daughter facing a trial for the murder of her newborn child, and is rather sure that she will be sentenced to death. She became pregnant from an aristocrat who didn’t want to marry her.
J’accuse! (Gance)
Director: Abel Gance
Stars: Romuald Joubé, Maxime Desjardins, Séverin-Mars, Angèle Guys
Genre: Drama, Horror, War, Silent
Country: France
The story of two men, one married, the other the lover of the other’s wife, who meet in the trenches of the First World War, and how their tale becomes a microcosm for the horrors of war.
Outlaw and His Wife, The (Sjöström)
Director: Victor Sjöström
Stars: Victor Sjöström, Edith Erastoff, John Ekman, Nils Aréhn
Genre: Drama, Silent
Country: Sweden
A stranger comes to work at widow Halla’s farm.
Shoulder Arms (Chaplin)
Director: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Syd Chaplin, Loyal Underwood
Genre: Short, Comedy, War, Silent
Country: USA
Charlie is a boot camp private who has a dream of being a hero who goes on a daring mission behind enemy lines.
Dog’s Life, A (Chaplin)
Director: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Dave Anderson, Bert Appling
Genre: Short, Comedy, Drama, Silent
Country: USA
The Little Tramp and his dog companion struggle to survive in the inner city.
Satan’s Rhapsody (Oxilia)
Director: Nino Oxilia
Stars: Lyda Borelli, Andrea Habay, Ugo Bazzini, Giovanni Cini
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Silent
Country: Italy
A Faustian tale about an old woman who makes a pact with Mephisto to regain her youth, in return she must stay away from love. After the deal she meets two brothers who fall in love with her.
Satan Triumphant (Protazanov)
Director: Yakov Protazanov
Stars: Ivan Mozzhukhin, Nathalie Lissenko, Polycarpe Pavloff, Aleksandr Chabrov
Genre: Drama, Silent
Country: Russia
Pastor Talnox furiously urges the flock to fight temptations, but he himself becomes a victim of temptation. In his house appears Satan, pushing the hero to theft and spiritual fall.
Immigrant, The (Feuillade)
Director: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Albert Austin
Genre: Short, Comedy, Drama, Silent
Country: USA
Charlie is an immigrant who endures a challenging voyage and gets into trouble as soon as he arrives in America.
Judex (Feuillade)
Director: Louis Feuillade
Stars: René Cresté, Musidora, René Poyen, Édouard Mathé
Genre: Adventure, Crime, Silent
Country: France
A twelve-part serial following the adventures of the masked vigilante Judex as he fights against criminals led by the corrupt banker Favrauxom.
Tramp, The (Chaplin)
Director: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Billy Armstrong, Lloyd Bacon, Bud Jamison
Genre: Short, Comedy, Silent
Country: USA
The Little Fellow finds the girl of his dreams and work on a family farm.
Fantomas: The Man in Black (Feuillade)
Director: Louis Feuillade
Stars: René Navarre, Edmund Breon, Georges Melchior, Renée Carl
Genre: Crime, Drama, Silent
Country: France
In Part Two of Louis Feuillade’s 5 1/2-hour epic follows FantÃ’mas, the criminal lord of Paris, master of disguise, the creeping assassin in black, as he is pursued by the equally resourceful Inspector Juve.
Fantômas: The Dead Man Who Killed (Feuillade)
Director: Louis Feuillade
Stars: René Navarre, Edmund Breon, Georges Melchior, André Luguet
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Silent
Country: France
After a body disappears from inside the prison, a series of crimes take place, all seemingly by the dead man. With Juve presumed dead, Fandor must investigate alone. Will Fantomas finally be brought to justice?
Unseen Enemy, An (Griffith)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Stars: Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Elmer Booth, Robert Harron
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Silent
Country: USA
The physician’s death orphans his two adolescent daughters. Their older brother is able to convert some of the doctor’s small estate to cash. But it is late in the day, and with the banks closed he stores the money in his father’s household safe. The slatternly housekeeper, aware of the money, enlists a criminal acquaintance to crack the safe. She attempts to get into the adjacent room where the sisters tremble in fear, but finds that the door is locked. The drunken housekeeper menaces them by brandishing a gun through a hole in the wall. But the resourceful girls use the telephone to call their brother who has returned to town. He gets the message and organizes a rescue party.
Musketeers of Pig Alley, The (Griffith)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Stars: Elmer Booth, Lillian Gish, Clara T. Bracy, Walter Miller
Genre: Crime, Drama, Short, Silent
Country: USA
A tender young woman and her musician husband attempt to eke out a living in the slums of New York City, but find themselves caught in the crossfires of gang violence.
Fantasy, A (Cohl)
Director: Émile Cohl
Stars: N/A
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Short, Silent
Country: France
The first all-animated film in history, a series of scenes without much narrative structure, but morphing into each other.
Golden Beetle, The (de Chomón, Zecca)
Director: Segundo de Chomón, Ferdinand Zecca
Stars: N/A
Genre: Fantasy, Short, Silent
Country: France
A sorcerer tosses an iridescent little beetle into a flaming ceremonial cauldron, and much to his amazement, a six-winged fairy in the body of a beautiful young woman emerges. Is his sorcery potent enough to tame her?
Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire, A (N/A)
Director: N/A
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary, Short, Silent
Country: USA
From the front of a cable car, a motion picture camera records a trip down Market Street, San Francisco, California, from a point between 8th & 9th Streets, Eastward to the cable car turnaround at the Ferry Building.
Night Before Christmas, The (Porter)
Director: Edwin S. Porter
Stars: N/A
Genre: Animation, Short, Silent
Country: USA
It’s December 24th, and ‘Santa Claus’ is busy feeding his reindeer and finishing up the toys that he will soon deliver. Meanwhile, the children in a large family hang their stockings over the fireplace, and then are put to bed.
Black Imp, The (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès
Genre: Fantasy, Comedy, Short, Silent
Country: France
A traveler at an inn is harassed by a mischievous devil in his room.
Mermaid, The (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès
Genre: Fantasy, Short, Silent
Country: France
A magician conjures up a mermaid while fishing.
Voyage Across the Impossible, The (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès, Fernande Albany, Jehanne d’Alcy, May de Lavergne
Genre: Action, Adventure, Short, Silent
Country: France
Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.
Gulliver’s Travels (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès
Genre: Fantasy, Short, Silent
Country: France
Gulliver washes ashore on Lilliput, the inhabitants of which are no more than six inches tall. He later travels to Brobdingnag, a country populated by giants.
President McKinley Taking the Oath (N/A)
Director: N/A
Stars: William McKinley, Joseph Garney Cannon, John Dalzell, George Dewey
Genre: Documentary, Short, Silent
Country: USA
Short film which documents William McKinley’s presidential inauguration.
Bluebeard (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès, Jehanne d’Alcy, Bleuette Bernon, Thomas White
Genre: Short, Horror, Silent
Country: France
A young woman becomes the eighth wife of the wealthy Bluebeard, whose first seven wives have died under mysterious circumstances.
Let Me Dream Again (Smith)
Director: George Albert Smith
Stars: Tom Green, Laura Bayley
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Short, Silent
Country: UK
Possibly the first film to utilize the technique of focus pulling. A man kisses a beautiful and lively woman, then the image blurs and dissolves into a clear image of the man waking up to his nagging wife.
Joan of Arc (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Bleuette Bernon, Georges Méliès, Jehanne d’Alcy
Genre: Drama, History, Short, Silent
Country: France
A divinely inspired peasant woman becomes an army captain for France and then is martyred after she is captured.
Grandma’s Reading Glass (Smith)
Director: George Albert Smith
Stars: Harold Smith
Genre: Drama, Short, Silent
Country: UK
A child borrows his grandmother’s magnifying glass to look at a newspaper ad for Bovril, at a watch, and then at a bird. The child shows grandma what he is doing. The child looks next at grandma’s eye, then at a kitten.
As Seen Through a Telescope (Smith)
Director: George Albert Smith
Stars: N/A
Genre: Comedy, Short, Silent
Country: UK
An elderly gentleman in a silk hat sits on a stool in front of a store on the main street of town. He has a telescope that focuses on the ankle of a young woman who is a short distance away. Her husband catches the gent looking. What will the two men do now?
One-Man Band, The (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy Short, Silent
Country: France
A band-leader has arranged seven chairs for the members of his band. When he sits down in the first chair, a cymbal player appears in the same chair, then rises and sits in the next chair.
Mysterious Portrait, The (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès
Genre: Fantasy, Short, Silent
Country: France
A magician produces a living portrait of himself.
X-Ray Fiend, The (Smith)
Director: George Albert Smith
Stars: Laura Bayley, Tom Green
Genre: Comedy, Horror, Short, Silent
Country: UK
A romantic couple are transformed into skeletons via X-Rays. The film combines two very recent innovations: Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of X-rays in 1895, and Georges Méliès’ accidental realisation of the special-effects potential of the jump-cut in 1896.
Cat Trotting, Changing to a Gallop (Muybridge)
Director: Eadweard Muybridge
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary, Short, Silent
Country: USA
Individual photographs of a cat trotting then changing to a gallop shown in quick succession.
Annie Oakley (Dickson, Heise)
Director: William K.L. Dickson, William Heise
Stars: Annie Oakley
Genre: Documentary, Short, Silent
Country: USA
Annie Oakley was probably the most famous marksman/woman in the world when this short clip was produced in Edison’s Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey.
Mosquinha (Marey)
Director: Étienne-Jules Marey
Stars: Jehanne d’Alcy, Georges Méliès
Genre: Documentary, Short, Silent
Country: France
Shot of the flight of a fly.
Musician Monkey, The (Reynaud)
Director: Émile Reynaud
Stars: François Clerc Benoît Duval
Genre: Animation, Short, Silent
Country: France
A pre-cinematograph colour animation of the monkey playing his violin.
Snowball Fight (Lumière)
Director: Louis Lumière
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary, Comedy, Short, Silent
Country: France
Wintertime in Lyon. About a dozen people, men and women, are having a snowball fight in the middle of a tree-lined street.
Kiss in the Tunnel, The (Smith)
Director: George Albert Smith
Stars: Laura Bayley, George Albert Smith
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Short, Silent
Country: UK
A humorous subject intended to be run as a part of a railroad scene during the period in which the train is passing through a tunnel.
Astronomer’s Dream; or, the Man in the Moon, The (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Jehanne d’Alcy, Georges Méliès
Genre: Short, Comedy, Fantasy
Country: France
An astronomer falls asleep and has a strange dream involving a fairy queen and the Moon.
Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (Muybridge)
Director: Eadweard Muybridge
Stars: Gilbert Domm, Sallie Gardner
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: USA
The clip shows a jockey, Domm, riding a horse, Sally Gardner. The clip is not filmed but instead consists of 24 individual photographs shot in rapid succession, making a moving picture when using a zoopraxiscope.
Four Heads Are Better Than One (Méliès)
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès
Genre: Short, Comedy
Country: France
Much to our amazement, an elegant and masterful illusionist detaches his own head effortlessly from his shoulders for a once-in-a-lifetime performance.
Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics (McCay, Blackton)
Director: Winsor McCay, J. Stuart Blackton
Stars: Winsor McCay, John Bunny, Maurice Costello, George McManus
Genre: Animation, Short, Comedy
Country: USA
Cartoon figures announce, via comic strip balloons, that they will move – and move they do, in a wildly exaggerated style.
Balance, A (Harumoto)
Director: Yûjirô Harumoto
Stars: Yumi Kawai, Ken Mitsuishi, Kumi Takiuchi, Masahiro Umeda
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
While documenting a controversial tragedy that shook her community, a filmmaker must put her morals to the test when a perverse secret in her own life is revealed.
You Cannot Kill David Arquette (Darg, James)
Director: David Darg, Price James
Stars: David Arquette, Christina McLarty Arquette, Patricia Arquette, Rosanna Arquette
Genre: Documentary, Sport
Country: USA
Actor David Arquette attempts a rocky return to the sport that stalled his promising Hollywood career.
Wojnarowicz (McKim)
Director: Chris McKim
Stars: Alan Barrows, Barry Blinderman, Bono, William Dannemeyer
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A controversial artist blazes a trail for other gay image makers in New York ‘s 1980s scene, only to perish at the end of the decade from the AIDS virus.
Welcome to Chechnya (Jude)
Director: David France
Stars: Olga Baranova, David Isteev, Ramzan Kadyrov, Maxim Lapunov
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA, UK
A group of activists risk their lives fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in Chechnya.
Uppercase Print (Jude)
Director: Radu Jude
Stars: Serban Lazarovici, Bogdan Zamfir, Ioana Iacob, Serban Pavlu
Genre: Drama
Country: Romania
The story of Mugur Calinescu, a Romanian teenager who wrote graffiti messages of protest against the regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and was subsequently apprehended, interrogated, and ultimately crushed by the secret police.
Windermere Children, The (Samuels)
Director: Michael Samuels
Stars: Thomas Kretschmann, Romola Garai, Iain Glen, Tim McInnerny
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Germany, UK
This is the stark, moving, and ultimately redemptive story of the bonds these children make with one another, and of how the friendships forged at Windermere become a lifeline to a fruitful future.
Truffle Hunters, The (Dweck, Kershaw)
Director: Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw
Stars: Piero Botto, Sergio Cauda, Maria Cicciù, Aurelio Conterno
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA, Italy, Greece
Deep in the forests of Piedmont, Italy, a handful of men, seventy or eighty years old, hunt for the rare and expensive white Alba truffle-which to date has resisted all of modern science’s efforts at cultivation.
Meaning of Hitler, The (Epperlein, Tucker)
Director: Petra Epperlein, Michael Tucker
Stars: Matilda Tucker, Martin Amis, Adolf Hitler, Mike Taibbi
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
An inquiry into decades of cultural fascination with the Nazi leader, and the ramifications of such a fascination on present day politics.
Go-Go’s, The (Ellwood)
Director: Alison Ellwood
Stars: The Go-Go’s, Charlotte Caffey, Elissa Bello, Belinda Carlisle
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA
The Go-Go’s are the most successful female rock band of all time. This documentary chronicles the meteoric rise of a band born of the LA punk scene that not only captured but created a zeitgeist.
Earth Is Blue as an Orange, The (Tsilyk)
Director: Iryna Tsilyk
Stars: Ganna Gladka, Stanislav Gladky, Anastasiia Trofymchuk, Myroslava Trofymchuk
Genre: Documentary, War
Country: Ukraine, Lithuania
To cope with the daily trauma of living in a war-zone, Anna and her children are making a film together about their life in the most surreal surroundings.
Sylvie’s Love (Ashe)
Director: Eugene Ashe
Stars: Tessa Thompson, Nnamdi Asomugha, Eva Longoria, Aja Naomi King
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: USA
When a young woman meets an aspiring saxophonist in her father’s record shop in 1950s Harlem, their love ignites a sweeping romance that transcends changing times, geography, and professional success.
Spontaneous (Duffield)
Director: Brian Duffield
Stars: Katherine Langford, Charlie Plummer, Yvonne Orji, Hayley Law
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Horror
Country: USA
Get ready for the outrageous coming-of-age love story about growing up…and blowing up. When students in their school begin exploding (literally), seniors Mara and Dylan struggle to survive in a world where each moment may be their last.
Some Kind of Heaven (Oppenheim)
Director: Lance Oppenheim
Stars: Dennis Dean, Lynn Henry, Anne Kincer, Reggie Kincer
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Behind the gates of a palm tree-lined fantasyland, four residents of America’s largest retirement community, The Villages, FL, strive to find solace and meaning.
Sisters with Transistors (Rovner)
Director: Lisa Rovner
Stars: Laurie Anderson, Wendy Carlos, Delia Derbyshire, Suzanne Ciani
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: UK, France, USA
Follows the story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today.
Identifying Features (Valadez)
Director: Fernanda Valadez
Stars: Mercedes Hernández, David Illescas, Juan Jesús Varela, Ana Laura Rodríguez
Genre: Drama
Country: Mexico, Spain
A mother travels across Mexico in search for her son whom authorities say died while trying to cross the borders into the United States.
Shithouse (Raiff)
Director: Cooper Raiff
Stars: Cooper Raiff, Dylan Gelula, Amy Landecker, Logan Miller
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A lonely college freshman forges a strong connection with his resident assistant during a fraternity party.
Days (Tsai)
Director: Ming-liang Tsai
Stars: Kang-sheng Lee, Anong Houngheuangsy
Genre: Drama
Country: Taiwan, France
Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.
Residue (Gerima)
Director: Merawi Gerima
Stars: Obinna Nwachukwu, Dennis Lindsey, Taline Stewart, Derron Scott
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A young filmmaker returns home after many years away, to write a script about his childhood, only to find his neighborhood unrecognizable and his childhood friends being scattered to the wind.
Pretend That You Love Me (Haver)
Director: Joel Haver
Stars: Joel Haver, Annalisa Noel, Hannah Monsour, Hannah Rose
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Joel attempts to find a romantic connection while in the development of his next film, all the while dealing with his health and other personal issues.
On the Record (Dick, Ziering)
Director: Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering
Stars: Sil Lai Abrams, Joe Biden, Tarana Burke, Kimberle Crenshaw
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A former hip hop executive decides whether to make public her rape by one of the most powerful men in the music industry.
News of the World (Greengrass)
Director: Paul Greengrass
Stars: Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Tom Astor, Travis Johnson
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
Country: USA, China
A Civil War veteran agrees to deliver a girl, taken by the Kiowa people years ago, to her aunt and uncle, against her will. They travel hundreds of miles and face grave dangers as they search for a place that either can call home.
My Darling Vivian (Riddlehoover)
Director: Matt Riddlehoover
Stars: Elvis Presley, Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Kristen Wiig
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA
The story of Vivian Liberto, Johnny Cash’s first wife and the mother of his four daughters.
Miss Juneteenth (Peoples)
Director: Channing Godfrey Peoples
Stars: Nicole Beharie, Liz Mikel, Marcus M. Mauldin, Kendrick Sampson
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A former beauty queen and single mom prepares her rebellious teenage daughter for the “Miss Juneteenth” pageant.
Mayor (Osit)
Director: David Osit
Stars: Walaa Eltiti, Yazeed Faruja, Musa Hadid
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA, UK
A look at the life of Musa Hadid, the charismatic mayor of Palestinian city Ramallah, who aspires to lead the city into the future.
Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art (Freedman, Amsellem, Cohen)
Director: Barry Avrich
Stars: Ann Freedman, M.H. Miller, Perry Amsellem, Patricia Cohen
Genre: Documentary, Crime
Country: Canada
Made You Look is an American crime documentary about the largest art fraud in American history set in the super rich, super obsessed and super fast art world of New York.
Red Moon Tide (Patiño)
Director: Lois Patiño
Stars: Rubio de Camelle, Ana Marra, Carmen Martínez, Pilar Rodlos
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: Spain
In a village where the sea and the moon are near, there was a monster, three witches, many ghosts and a shipwrecked man.
Let Them All Talk (Soderbergh)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: Meryl Streep, Gemma Chan, Dianne Wiest, Christopher Fitzgerald
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
A famous author goes on a cruise trip with her friends and nephew in an effort to find fun and happiness while she comes to terms with her troubled past.
Lapsis (Hutton)
Director: Noah Hutton
Stars: Dean Imperial, Madeline Wise, Babe Howard, Ivory Aquino
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Struggling to support himself and his ailing younger brother, delivery man Ray takes a strange job in a strange new realm of the gig economy.
Painter and the Thief, The (Ree)
Director: Benjamin Ree
Stars: Karl Bertil-Nordland, Barbora Kysilkova, Øystein Stene
Genre: Documentary
Country: Norway, USA
An artist befriends the thief who stole her paintings. She becomes his closest ally when he is severely hurt in a car crash and needs full time care, even if her paintings are not found. But then the tables turn.
Holler (Riegel)
Director: Nicole Riegel
Stars: Pamela Adlon, Austin Amelio, Becky Ann Baker, Jessica Barden
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
To pay for her education, and the chance of a better life, a young woman joins a dangerous scrap metal crew.
Herself (Kail)
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Stars: Molly McCann, Clare Dunne, Ruby Rose O’Hara, Ian Lloyd Anderson
Genre: Drama
Country: Ireland, UK
A young mother escapes her abusive husband and fights back against a broken housing system. She sets out to build her own home and in the process rebuilds her life and re-discovers herself.
Final Account (Holland)
Director: Luke Holland
Stars: N/A
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK, USA
An urgent portrait of the last living generation of Hitler’s Third Reich in never-before-seen interviews raising vital questions about authority, conformity, national identity, and their own roles in the greatest human crimes in history.
Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) (Esiri, Esiri)
Director: Arie Esiri, Chuko Esiri
Stars: Emmanuel Adeji, Mary Agholor, Kemi Lala Akindoju, Ivy Akinyode
Genre: Drama
Country: Nigeria
In Lagos, Nigeria, tragedy and fate intervene as two people try to better the lives of their families.
Hidden Life of Trees, The (Adolph, Haft)
Director: Jörg Adolph, Jan Haft
Stars: Peter Wohlleben, Achim Bogdahn, Markus Lanz, Hubertus Meyer-Burckhardt
Genre: Documentary
Country: Germany
When Peter Wohlleben published his book “The Hidden Life of Trees” in 2015, he quickly entered bestseller lists. The forester wrote vividly about his experience that trees are able to communicate with each other, a thesis explored here.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Woliner)
Director: Jason Woliner
Stars: Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova, Tom Hanks, Dani Popescu
Genre: Comedy
Country: UK, USA
Borat returns from Kazakhstan to America and this time he reveals more about the American culture, the COVID-19 pandemic and the political elections.
Beans (Deer)
Director: Tracey Deer
Stars: Kiawentiio, Violah Beauvais, Rainbow Dickerson, Joel Montgrand
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada
Based on true events, Tracey Deer’s debut feature chronicles the 78-day standoff between two Mohawk communities and government forces in 1990 in Quebec.
Lost Bullet (Pierret)
Director: Guillaume Pierret
Stars: Alban Lenoir, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Ramzy Bedia, Stéfi Celma
Genre: Documentary, Crime, Sport
Country: France
A small time delinquent, turned police mechanic for a go fast task force, is forced to defend his innocence when his mentor is killed by dirty cops.
Asia (Pribar)
Director: Ruthy Pribar
Stars: Alena Yiv, Shira Haas, Tamir Mula, Gera Sandler
Genre: Drama
Country: Israel
Despite living together, Asia barely interacts with her daughter Vika. Their routine is shaken when Vika’s health deteriorates rapidly. Asia must step in and become the mother Vika so desperately needs
Alone (Hyams)
Director: John Hyams
Stars: Jules Willcox, Marc Menchaca, Anthony Heald, Jonathan Rosenthal
Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Country: USA
A recently widowed traveler is kidnapped by a cold blooded killer, only to escape into the wilderness where she is forced to battle against the elements as her pursuer closes in on her.
After Love (Khan)
Director: Aleem Khan
Stars: Joanna Scanlan, Nathalie Richard, Talid Ariss, Nasser Memarzia
Genre: Drama
Country: UK
Set in the port town of Dover, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.
‘Til Kingdom Come (Zinshtein)
Director: Maya Zinshtein
Stars: Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Johnnie Moore Jr., Yechiel Eckstein
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK, Israel, Norway
An in-depth look into the unique bond between Evangelical Christianity and the Jewish State.
Thousand Cuts, A (Diaz)
Director: Ramona S. Diaz
Stars: Amal Clooney, Ronaldo ‘Bato’ Dela Rosa, Rodrigo R. Duterte, Patricia Evangelista
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA, Philippines
A look at how Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte uses social media to spread disinformation.
A Chiara (Carpignano)
Director: Jonas Carpignano
Stars: Swamy Rotolo, Pio Amato, Leonardo Bevilacqua, Susanna Amato
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy, France
Follows the story of 15-year-old Chiara whose close-knit family falls apart after her father abandons them in Calabria.
Night of Knowing Nothing, A (Kapadia)
Director: Payal Kapadia
Stars: Bhumisuta Das
Genre: Documentary
Country: France, India
L writes letters to her estranged lover. Through these letters, we get a glimpse into the drastic changes taking place around her. Merging reality with fiction, dreams, memories, fantasies and anxieties, an amorphous narrative unfolds.
Ali & Ava (Barnard)
Director: Clio Barnard
Stars: Adeel Akhtar, Claire Rushbrook, Ellora Torchia, Shaun Thomas
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: UK
ALI and AVA, both lonely for different reasons, meet and sparks fly. Over a lunar month a deep connection begins to grow, despite the legacy of AVA’s past relationship, and ALI’s emotional turmoil at the breakdown of his marriage.
All Light, Everywhere (Anthony)
Director: Theo Anthony
Stars: Theo Anthony, Keaver Brenai, Robert Cunniff, Ross McNutt
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A far-ranging look at the biases in how we see things, focusing on the use of police body cameras.
Azor (Fontana)
Director: Andreas Fontana
Stars: Fabrizio Rongione, Stéphanie Cléau, Carmen Iriondo, Juan Trench
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: Switzerland, France, Argentina
Yvan De Wiel, a private banker from Geneva, goes to Argentina in the midst of a dictatorship to replace his partner, the object of the most worrying rumours, who disappeared overnight.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Jude)
Director: Radu Jude
Stars: Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Nicodim Ungureanu, Olimpia Malai
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Romania, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Croatia, Switzerland, United Kingdom
Emi, a school teacher, finds her career and reputation under threat after a personal sex tape is leaked on the Internet. Forced to meet the parents demanding her dismissal, Emi refuses to surrender to their pressure.
Black Art: In the Absence of Light (Pollard)
Director: Sam Pollard
Stars: Kerry James Marshall, Kehinde Wiley, Carrie Mae Weems, Amy Sherald
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
An in-depth look at the works of up-and-coming Black visual artists.
Found (Lipitz)
Director: Amanda Lipitz
Stars: Lily Bolka, Chloe Lipitz, Sadie Mangelsdorf, Liu Hao
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Country: USA
The story of three American teenage girls-each adopted from China-who discover they are blood-related cousins on 23andMe. Their online meeting inspires the young women to confront the burning questions they have about their lost history.
Great Freedom (Meise)
Director: Sebastian Meise
Stars: Franz Rogowski, Georg Friedrich, Anton von Lucke, Thomas Prenn
Genre: Drama
Country: Austria, Germany
In post-war Germany, liberation by the Allies does not mean freedom for everyone. Hans is repeatedly imprisoned under Paragraph 175, which criminalizes homosexuality. Over the decades, he develops an unlikely bond with his cellmate Viktor.
I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) (Kali, Molina)
Director: Kelley Kali, Angelique Molina
Stars: Wesley Moss, Kelley Kali, Dominique Molina, Lucas Byrd
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
When a recently widowed mother becomes houseless, she convinces her 8-year-old daughter that they are only camping for fun while working to get them off of the streets.
Mad Women’s Ball, The (Laurent)
Director: Mélanie Laurent
Stars: Lou de Laâge, Mélanie Laurent, Emmanuelle Bercot, Benjamin Voisin
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: France
A woman who is unfairly institutionalized at Paris asylum plots to escape with the help of one of its nurses. Based on the novel ‘Le bal des folles’ by Victoria Mas.
Summit of the Gods, The (Imbert)
Director: Patrick Imbert
Stars: Lazare Herson-Macarel, Eric Herson-Macarel, Damien Boisseau, Elisabeth Ventura
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Drama
Country: Luxembourg, France
A photojournalist’s obsessive quest for the truth about the first expedition to Mt. Everest leads him to search for an esteemed climber who went missing.
Restless, The (Lafosse)
Director: Joachim Lafosse
Stars: Leïla Bekhti, Damien Bonnard, Gabriel Merz Chammah, Patrick Descamps
Genre: Drama
Country: France, Belgium, Luxembourg
Leila and Damien struggle with his bipolar disorder.
Listening to Kenny G (Lane)
Director: Penny Lane
Stars: Clive Davis, Craig Ferguson, Kenny G, James Gardiner
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA
An examination of the most popular instrumentalist of all time, Kenny G, and why he is polarizing to so many.
Mad God (Tippett)
Director: Phil Tippett
Stars: Alex Cox, Niketa Roman, Satish Ratakonda, Harper Taylor
Genre: Animation, Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA
The Assassin travels through a nightmare underworld of tortured souls, ruined cities and wretched monstrosities forged from the primordial horrors of the unconscious mind of Phil Tippett, the world’s preeminent stop-motion animator.
Memory Box (Hadjithomas, Joreige)
Director: Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige
Stars: Rim Turki, Manal Issa, Paloma Vauthier, Clémence Sabbagh
Genre: Drama
Country: Lebanon, Canada, France, Qatar
The lives of three women are connected by a box that resurfaces containing notebooks, photographs and audiotapes.
Montana Story (McGehee, Siegel)
Director: Scott McGehee, David Siegel
Stars: Haley Lu Richardson, Owen Teague, Gilbert Owuor, Kimberly Guerrero
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Two estranged siblings return home to the sprawling ranch they once knew and loved, confronting a deep and bitter family legacy against a mythic American backdrop.
No Sudden Move (Soderbergh)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, David Harbour, Jon Hamm
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: USA
A group of criminals are brought together under mysterious circumstances and have to work together to uncover what’s really going on when their simple job goes completely sideways.
Prayers for the Stolen (Huezo)
Director: Tatiana Huezo
Stars: Guillermo Villegas, Mayra Batalla, Eileen Yañez, Alejandra Camacho
Genre: Drama
Country: Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Switzerland, USA
Life in a town at war seen through the eyes of three young girls on the path to adolescence.
Not Going Quietly (Bruckman)
Director: Nicholas Bruckman
Stars: Ady Barkan, Cory Booker, Tracey Corder, Kamala Harris
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Ady Barkan’s life is upended when he is diagnosed with ALS, but a confrontation with a powerful senator catapults him to national fame and ignites a once-in-a-generation political movement.
Olga (Grappe)
Director: Elie Grappe
Stars: Anastasiia Budiashkina, Sabrina Rubtsova, Caterina Barloggio, Théa Brogli
Genre: Drama, Sport
Country: Switzerland, France, UK
A 15-year-old Ukrainian gymnast exiled in Switzerland, who is working to secure a place at the country’s National Sports Center. When the Euromaiden revolt breaks out in the country, anxieties rise as her family gets involved.
Small Body (Samani)
Director: Laura Samani
Stars: Celeste Cescutti, Ondina Quadri
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy, France, Slovenia
Italy, 1900. Agata is a young woman who embarks herself on a desperate journey to reach a mysterious sanctuary to save her daughter’s soul from the eternal damnation of Limbo.
Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story (Aitken)
Director: Sally Aitken
Stars: Valerie Taylor, Jeremiah S. Sullivan, Ron Taylor, Rodney Fox
Genre: Documentary, Adventure
Country: USA
Pioneering scuba diver Valerie Taylor, who has dedicated her life to exposing the myth surrounding our fear of sharks.
President (Nielsson)
Director: Camilla Nielsson
Stars: Nelson Chamisa
Genre: Documentary
Country: Denmark, Norway, United States, United Kingdom
A young and charismatic leader takes on the corrupt ruling party in Zimbabwe’s 2018 presidential election.
Rebel Dykes (Shanahan, Williams)
Director: Harri Shanahan, Siân A. Williams
Stars: Indigo Azidahaka, Karen Fisch
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK
REBEL DYKES is a full-length documentary about the explosion that happened when punk met feminism, told through the lives of a gang of lesbians in the riotous London of the 1980s.
Rehana Maryam Noor (Saad)
Director: Abdullah Mohammed Saad
Stars: Azmeri Haque Badhon, Afia Jahin Jaima, Kazi Sami Hassan, Afia Tabassum Borno
Genre: Drama
Country: Bangladesh, Singapore, Qatar
An assistant professor at a local medical college, finds herself in a difficult position after witnessing a sexual assault where she knows both the victim and the perpetrator.
Zero Fucks Given (Lecoustre, Marre)
Director: Julie Lecoustre, Emmanuel Marre
Stars: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Alexandre Perrier, Mara Taquin, Arthur Egloff
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Belgium
A young flight attendant loses her job at a low-cost airline.
Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It (Riera)
Director: Mariem Pérez Riera
Stars: Marlon Brando, Morgan Freeman, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Whoopi Goldberg
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA
A look at the life and work of Rita Moreno from her humble beginnings in Puerto Rico to her success on Broadway and in Hollywood.
Saloum (Herbulot)
Director: Jean Luc Herbulot
Stars: Yann Gael, Evelyne Ily Juhen, Roger Sallah, Mentor Ba
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Country: Senegal
2003, three mercenaries extracting a druglord out of Guinea-Bissau are forced to hide in the mystical region of Saloum, Senegal.
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street (Agrelo)
Director: Marilyn Agrelo
Stars: Frank Biondo, Linda Bove, Fran Brill, Northern Calloway
Genre: Documentary, Family, History
Country: USA
Take a stroll down Sesame Street and witness the birth of the most impactful children’s series in TV history. From the iconic furry characters to the songs you know by heart, learn how a gang of visionary creators changed our world.
Stuck in the Groove (Golonka)
Director: Taylor Golonka
Stars: Aki Abe, Rusty Apper, Sharone Bechor, Pilak Bhatt
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: USA
A documentary film exploring the history and evolution of vinyl records. Featuring Interviews with the experts, musicians and fans alike, ‘Stuck in the Groove’ takes you on a journey of vinyl-mania, music and nostalgia.
Sundown (Franco)
Director: Michel Franco
Stars: Tim Roth, Albertine Kotting McMillan, Samuel Bottomley, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Genre: Drama
Country: France, Mexico, Sweden
Neil and Alice Bennett are the core of a wealthy family on vacation in Mexico until a distant emergency cuts their trip short. When one relative disrupts the family’s tight-knit order, simmering tensions rise to the fore.
Auschwitz Report, The (Bebjak)
Director: Peter Bebjak
Stars: Noel Czuczor, Peter Ondrejicka, John Hannah
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Germany
This is the true story of Freddy and Walter–two young Slovak Jews, who were deported to Auschwitz in 1942. On 10 April 1944, after meticulous planning, and with the help and resilience of their inmates, they manage to escape. While the inmates they had left behind, courageously stand their ground against Nazi officers, the two men are driven on by the hope that their evidence can save lives.
Shadow in My Eye, The (Bornedal)
Director: Ole Bornedal
Stars: Alex Høgh Andersen, Caspar Phillipson, Danica Curcic, Susse Wold
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: Denmark
The fates of several Copenhagen residents collide when a WWII bombing mission accidentally targets a school full of children.
First Wave, The (Heineman)
Director: Matthew Heineman
Stars: Nathalie Douge
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A documentary following nurses, doctors, and administrators as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hunt for Planet B, The (Kahn)
Director: Nathaniel Kahn
Stars: Janet Arenberg, Jon Arenberg, Natalie Batalha, Natasha Batalha
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Taking us behind the scenes with NASA’s high-stakes Webb Space Telescope, The Hunt for Planet B follows a pioneering group of scientists – many of them women – on their quest to find another Earth among the stars.
Last Cruise, The (Olson)
Director: Hannah Olson
Stars: Kent N. Frasure, Rebecca Frasure, Jerri Jorgensen, Mark Jorgensen
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: USA
A terrifying origin story of the pandemic, DIAMOND PRINCESS chronicles the first and largest outbreak of the novel coronavirus outside China: the Diamond Princess cruise liner.
Many Saints of Newark, The (Taylor)
Director: Alan Taylor
Stars: Alessandro Nivola, Leslie Odom Jr., Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Witness the making of Tony Soprano. The story that reveals the humanity behind Tony’s struggles and the influence his family – especially his uncle, Dickie Moltisanti – had over him becoming the most iconic mob boss of all time.
Novice, The (Hadaway)
Director: Lauren Hadaway
Stars: Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsyth, Dilone, Jonathan Cherry
Genre: Drama, Sport, Thriller
Country: USA
A college freshman joins her university’s rowing team and undertakes an obsessive physical and psychological journey to make it to the top varsity boat, no matter the cost.
Pedal Movie, The (Lux, Orkin)
Director: Michael Lux, Daniel Orkin
Stars: Oliver Ackermann, Steve Albini, Juan Alderete, Craig Anderton
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A Documentary about the history, culture, and sound of guitar effects pedals, told by the builders who build them and the artists who use them.
Rescue, The (Chin, Vasarheyli)
Director: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Stars: Bancha Duriyapunt, Apakorn Youkongkaew, Anan Surawan, Woranan Ratrawiphukkun
Genre: Documentary, Action, Mystery
Country: UK, USA
A chronicle of the enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand.
White Tiger, The (Bahrani)
Director: Ramin Bahrani
Stars: Adarsh Gourav, Rajkummar Rao, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Vedant Sinha
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: India, USA
An ambitious Indian driver uses his wit and cunning to escape from poverty and rise to the top. An epic journey based on the New York Times bestseller.
Torn (Lowe)
Director: Max Lowe
Stars: Conrad Anker, Jennifer Lowe-Anker, Alex Lowe, Sam Lowe
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Alex Lowe’s ill-fated climb and his son’s arduous journey to return to the spot where his father perished.
Try Harder! (Lum)
Director: Debbie Lum
Stars: Alvan Cai, Shealand Fairchild, Rachael Schmidt, Richard Shapiro
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Seniors at one the best public high schools in the country face the pressure of applying to elite colleges.
Val (Poo, Scott)
Director: Ting Poo, Leo Scott
Stars: Val Kilmer, Jack Kilmer, Mercedes Kilmer, Joanne Whalley
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA
Documentary centering on the daily life of actor Val Kilmer featuring never-before-seen footage spanning 40 years.
Most Beautiful Boy in the World, The (Lindström, Petri)
Director: Kristina Lindström, Kristian Petri
Stars: Kristina Lindström, Luchino Visconti, Mario Tursi, Björn Andrésen
Genre: Documentary, Biography, History
Country: Sweden, Germany, France
In 1971, due to the world premiere of Death in Venice, Italian director Luchino Visconti proclaimed his Tadzio as the world’s most beautiful boy. 50 years later, that shadow still weighs upon Björn Andresen’s life.
West Side Story (Spielberg)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez
Genre: Musical, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
An adaptation of the 1957 musical, West Side Story explores forbidden love and the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds.
What Josiah Saw (Grashaw)
Director: Vincent Grashaw
Stars: Robert Patrick, Nick Stahl, Scott Haze, Kelli Garner
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Country: USA
A family with buried secrets reunite at a farmhouse after two decades to pay for their past sins.
Wood and Water (Bak)
Director: Jonas Bak
Stars: Lena Ackermann, Anke Bak, Theresa Bak, Alexandra Batten
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany
As she enters retirement, a mother leaves behind her solitary life in rural Germany and memories of a once perfect family life and travels to protest-ridden Hong Kong, a place that has kept her son away from her for many years.
Hala (Baig)
Director: Minhal Baig
Stars: Geraldine Viswanathan, Jack Kilmer, Gabriel Luna
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Muslim teenager Hala copes with the unraveling of her family as she comes into her own.
Ema (Larraín)
Director: Pablo Larraín
Stars: Mariana Di Girólamo, Gael García Bernal, Santiago Cabrera
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: Chile
A couple deals with the aftermath of an adoption that goes awry as their household falls apart.
Hope (Sødahl)
Director: Maria Sødahl
Stars: Andrea Bræin Hovig, Stellan Skarsgård, Terje Auli
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Norway | Sweden
The relationship between artist-partners Tomas and Anja is put to the test after Anja gets a life-threatening diagnosis.
Tench (Toye)
Director: Patrice Toye
Stars: Line Pillet, Greet Verstraete, Tijmen Govaerts
Genre: Drama
Country: Belgium
A kindhearted twenty-something struggling with his pedophile urges is put to the test when a young girl moves in next door.
Share (Bianco)
Director: Pippa Bianco
Stars: Rhianne Barreto, Charlie Plummer, Poorna Jagannathan
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: USA
After discovering a disturbing video from a night she doesn’t remember, sixteen-year-old Mandy must try to figure out what happened and how to navigate the escalating fallout.
Monos (Landes)
Director: Alejandro Landes
Stars: Sofia Buenaventura, Julián Giraldo, Karen Quintero
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Mystery
Country: Colombia | Argentina | Netherlands | Germany | Sweden | Uruguay | USA | Switzerland | Denmark | France
On a remote mountaintop, eight kids with guns watch over a hostage and a conscripted milk cow.
Colewell (Quinn)
Director: Tom Quinn
Stars: Karen Allen, Kevin J. O’Connor, Hannah Gross
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
For thirty-five years, Nora has been the postmaster of Colewell, when the USPS decides to close her office, she must choose whether to relocate for a new position or face retirement in Colewell.
Synonyms (Lapid)
Director: Nadav Lapid
Stars: Tom Mercier, Quentin Dolmaire, Louise Chevillotte
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France | Israel | Germany
A young Israeli man absconds to Paris to flee his nationality, aided by his trusty Franco-Israeli dictionary.
Jezebel (Perrier)
Director: Numa Perrier
Stars: Tiffany Tenille, Numa Perrier, Brett Gelman
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
In the last days of her mother’s life, 19 year old Tiffany crashes with five family members in a Las Vegas studio apartment. In order to make ends meet, her older sister, a phone sex operator, introduces her to the world of internet fetish cam girls. Tiffany becomes popular as the only “live black model” at the new adult site and soon becomes too close to one of her frequent callers. Dynamics shift in the sister relationship as each woman explores and exploits their sexuality, using their created fantasy worlds as an escape from the realities of their challenging real life circumstances.
Better Days (Tsang)
Director: Derek Tsang
Stars: Dongyu Zhou, Jackson Yee, Fang Yin
Genre: Crime, Drama, Family
Country: China
A bullied teenage girl forms an unlikely friendship with a mysterious young man who protects her from her assailants, all while she copes with the pressures of her final examinations.
Premature (Green)
Director: Rashaad Ernesto Green
Stars: Zora Howard, Joshua Boone, Michelle Wilson
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: USA
Seventeen year-old Ayanna meets handsome and mysterious Isaiah in her path toward self-discovery. Her entire world is turned upside down as she travails on the rigorous terrain of young love in the summer before she leaves for college.
Ad Astra (Gray)
Director: James Gray
Stars: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Mystery
Country: China | USA
Astronaut Roy McBride undertakes a mission across an unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe.
1917 (Mendes)
Director: Sam Mendes
Stars: Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay, Daniel Mays
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA | UK | India | Spain | Canada | China
April 6th, 1917. As a regiment assembles to wage war deep in enemy territory, two soldiers are assigned to race against time and deliver a message that will stop 1,600 men from walking straight into a deadly trap.
VFW (Begos)
Director: Joe Begos
Stars: Stephen Lang, William Sadler, Fred Williamson
Genre: Action, Crime, Horror
Country: USA
A group of old war veterans put their lives on the line to defend a young woman taking shelter in their local VFW post, who’s running from a deranged drug dealer and his relentless army of drug addled punks.
Plagiarists, The (Parlow)
Director: Peter Parlow
Stars: William Michael Payne, Emily Davis, Lucy Kaminsky
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A young couple is shaken by a seemingly fraudulent yet unprovable act that strikes to the core of their cultural pretensions.
Jawline (Mandelup)
Director: Liza Mandelup
Stars: Nick Champa, JJ Hannon, Austyn Tester
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
The film follows 16-year-old Austyn Tester, a rising star in the live-broadcast ecosystem who built his following on wide-eyed optimism and teen girl lust, as he tries to escape a dead-end life in rural Tennessee.
Son, A (Barsaoui)
Director: Mehdi Barsaoui
Stars: Sami Bouajila, Najla Ben Abdallah, Youssef Khemiri
Genre: Drama
Country: Tunisia | France | Lebanon | Qatar
11 year old Aziz needs a liver transplant after being seriously injured during a terrorist ambush while on holiday in 2011. At the hospital a family secret will be revealed.
Sun, A (Chung)
Director: Mong-Hong Chung
Stars: Chien-Ho Wu, Yi-wen Chen, Samantha Shu-Chin Ko
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Taiwan
A family of four fractures under the weight of unmet expectations, unexpected tragedy, and uncompromising pride.
Painted Bird, The (Marhoul)
Director: Václav Marhoul
Stars: Petr Kotlár, Nina Sunevic, Alla Sokolova
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Czech Republic | Slovakia | Ukraine
A young Jewish boy somewhere in Eastern Europe seeks refuge during World War II where he encounters many different characters.
Tremors (Bustamante)
Director: Jayro Bustamante
Stars: Juan Pablo Olyslager, Diane Bathen, Mauricio Armas Zebadúa
Genre: Drama
Country: Guatemala | France | Luxembourg
The coming out of an evangelical father shatters his family, his community and uncovers a profoundly repressive society.
Human Nature (Bolt)
Director: Adam Bolt
Stars: Jennifer Doudna, George Church, Alta Charo
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A breakthrough called CRISPR opens the door to curing diseases, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. A provocative exploration of its far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it.
Ford v Ferrari (Mangold)
Director: James Mangold
Stars: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Jon Bernthal
Genre: Action, Biography, Drama
Country: USA
American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car for Ford in order to defeat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.
Dark Waters (Haynes)
Director: Todd Haynes
Stars: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA
A corporate defense attorney takes on an environmental lawsuit against a chemical company that exposes a lengthy history of pollution.
Clemency (Chukwu)
Director: Chinonye Chukwu
Stars: Alfre Woodard, Richard Schiff, Aldis Hodge
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill.
Waves (Shults)
Director: Trey Edward Shults
Stars: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Lucas Hedges, Taylor Russell
Genre: Drama, Romance, Sport
Country: USA | Canada
Traces the journey of a suburban family – led by a well-intentioned but domineering father – as they navigate love, forgiveness, and coming together in the aftermath of a loss.
Rest of Us, The (Chin-Yee)
Director: Aisling Chin-Yee
Stars: Heather Graham, Sophie Nélisse, Abigail Pniowsky
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada
Two mother-daughter duos must contend with their grief and complicated relationships with one another when the person who connects them dies.
Kingmaker, The (Greenfield)
Director: Lauren Greenfield
Stars: Imelda Marcos, Etta Rosales, Ferdinand Marcos
Genre: Documentary, Biography, History
Country: Denmark | USA
An extraordinary look into the political career of Imelda Marcos, this documentary tells a cautionary tale of a powerful leader whose questionable sense of reality divided a nation.
Wild Goose Lake, The (Diao)
Director: Yi’nan Diao
Stars: Ge Hu, Gwei Lun-Mei, Fan Liao
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: China | France
A gangster on the run sacrifices everything for his family and a woman he meets while on the lam.
Truth, The (Koreeda)
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke
Genre: Drama, Family
Country: France | Japan | Switzerland
A stormy reunion between scriptwriter Lumir with her famous mother and actress, Fabienne, against the backdrop of Fabienne’s autobiographic book and her latest role in a Sci-Fi picture as a mother who never grows old.
Whistlers, The (Porumboiu)
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Stars: Vlad Ivanov, Catrinel Marlon, Rodica Lazar
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: Romania | France | Germany
Not everything is as it seems for Cristi, a policeman who plays both sides of the law. Embarking with the beautiful Gilda on a high-stakes heist, both will have to navigate the twists and turns of corruption, treachery and deception.
Circus of Books (Mason)
Director: Rachel Mason
Stars: Karen Mason, Barry Mason, Micah Mason
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA
In 1976, Karen and Barry Mason had fallen on hard times and were looking for a way to support their young family when they answered an ad in the Los Angeles Times. Larry Flynt was seeking distributors for Hustler Magazine. What was expected to be a brief sideline led to their becoming fully immersed in the LGBT community as they took over a local store, Circus of Books. A decade later, they had become the biggest distributors of gay porn in the US.
Queen & Slim (Matsoukas)
Director: Melina Matsoukas
Stars: Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: USA | Canada
A couple’s first date takes an unexpected turn when a police officer pulls them over.
Midnight Traveler (Fazili)
Director: Hassan Fazili
Stars: Hassan Fazili, Nargis Fazili, Zahra Fazili
Genre: Documentary, War
Country: Qatar | UK | Canada | USA
In the near future, a French submarine finds itself in a crisis situation.
Marona’s Fantastic Tale (Damian)
Director: Anca Damian
Stars: Lizzie Brocheré, Bruno Salomone, Thierry Hancisse
Genre: Animation, Drama, Family
Country: France | Romania | Belgium
After an accident, a little dog remembers all the different masters she’s had successively and loved unconditionally.
End of Sentence (Adalsteins)
Director: Elfar Adalsteins
Stars: John Hawkes, Logan Lerman, Sarah Bolger
Genre: Drama
Country: Iceland | Ireland
After being widowed, Frank Fogle reluctantly embarks on a journey to honor his wife’s last wish of spreading her ashes in a remote lake in her native Ireland and a promise of taking his estranged son, Sean, along for the trip. As Sean steps out of prison the last thing on his mind is a foreign road trip with his alienated father. What he needs is a fresh start in California. But when his travel plans collapse he reluctantly accepts his father’s proposal in return for a ticket to the West Coast and a promise that they never have to see each other again. Between a disconcerting Irish wake, the surfacing of an old flame, the pick up of a pretty hitchhiker and plenty of unresolved issues, the journey becomes a little more than father and son had bargained for.
Apollo 11 (Miller)
Director: Todd Douglas Miller
Stars: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: USA
A look at the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon led by commander Neil Armstrong and pilots Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
16 Shots (Rowley)
Director: Rick Rowley
Stars: Anita Alvarez, Dean Angelo, Alma Benitez
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A documentary examining the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke and the cover-up that ensued.
Ghost Town Anthology (Côté)
Director: Denis Côté
Stars: Robert Naylor, Josée Deschênes, Jean-Michel Anctil
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Canada
In a small and isolated town, Simon Dubé dies in a car accident. The stunned townspeople are reluctant to discuss the circumstances of the tragedy. From that point on time seems to lose all meaning, and the days stretch on without end.
Midnight Family (Lorentzen)
Director: Luke Lorentzen
Stars: Juan Ochoa, Fer Ochoa, Josue Ochoa
Genre: Documentary, Action, Crime
Country: Mexico
In Mexico City’s wealthiest neighborhoods, the Ochoa family runs a private ambulance, competing with other for-profit EMTs for patients in need of urgent help.
High Flying Bird (Soderbergh)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: André Holland, Melvin Gregg, Eddie Tavares
Genre: Drama, Sport
Country: USA
During a pro basketball lockout, a sports agent pitches a rookie basketball client on an intriguing and controversial business proposition.
So Long, My Son (Wang)
Director: Xiaoshuai Wang
Stars: Jingchun Wang, Mei Yong, Xi Qi
Genre: Drama
Country: China
Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.
Corpus Christi (Komasa)
Director: Jan Komasa
Stars: Bartosz Bielenia, Aleksandra Konieczna, Eliza Rycembel
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland | France
Daniel experiences a spiritual transformation in a detention center. Although his criminal record prevents him from applying to the seminary, he has no intention of giving up his dream and decides to minister a small-town parish.
Alice (Mackerras)
Director: Josephine Mackerras
Stars: Emilie Piponnier, Martin Swabey, Chloé Boreham
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: UK | Australia | France
She did everything right, until it all went wrong.
Invisible Life (Aïnouz)
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Stars: Julia Stockler, Carol Duarte, Flávia Gusmão
Genre: Drama
Country: Brazil | Germany
Kept apart by a terrible lie and a conservative society, two sisters born in Rio de Janeiro make their way through life each believing the other is living out her dreams half a world away.
True History of the Kelly Gang (Kurzel)
Director: Justin Kurzel
Stars: George MacKay, Essie Davis, Nicholas Hoult
Genre: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: Australia | UK | France
Based on Peter Carey’s novel. The story of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang as they flee from authorities during the 1870s.
S.S. Swenson, The (Oliveira, Robertson)
Director: Victor G. Oliveira, Jono Robertson
Stars: Evan Brandon, Tucker Bryan, Olga Elliot
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Three degenerates battle the demons of grief in a fantasy-world they’ve built around themselves.
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (Wolf)
Director: Matt Wolf
Stars: Michael Metelits, Marion Stokes
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
For over 30 years, Marion Stokes obsessively and privately recorded American television news 24 hours a day filling 70,000 VHS tapes, capturing wars, talk shows and commercials that show us how television shaped the world of today.
Girl with a Bracelet, The (Demoustier)
Director: Stéphane Demoustier
Stars: Roschdy Zem, Chiara Mastroianni, Melissa Guers
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: France | Belgium
A teenager stands trial for murdering her best friend.
Knock Down the House (Lears)
Director: Rachel Lears
Stars: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, Joe Crowley
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A look at the people involved with various political campaigns during the 2018 U.S. congressional election.
In Search of Darkness (Weiner)
Director: David A. Weiner
Stars: Tom Atkins, Doug Bradley, John Bloom
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK
An exploration of ’80s horror movies through the perspective of the actors, directors, producers and SFX craftspeople who made them, and their impact on contemporary cinema.
Honeyland (Kotevska, Stefanov)
Director: Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov
Stars: Hatidze Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Country: Republic of North Macedonia
The last female bee-hunter in Europe must save the bees and return the natural balance in Honeyland, when a family of nomadic beekeepers invade her land and threaten her livelihood.
Fantastic Fungi (Schwartzberg)
Director: Louie Schwartzberg
Stars: Brie Larson, Andrew Weil, Giuliana Furci
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Fantastic Fungi is a descriptive time-lapse journey about the magical, mysterious and medicinal world of fungi and their power to heal, sustain and contribute to the regeneration of life on Earth that began 3.5 billion years ago.
Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops (McShane)
Director: Jenifer McShane
Stars: Joe Smarro, Ernie Stevens
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A pair of officers with the San Antonio Police Department mental health unit work to divert people away from jail and into mental health treatment.
Atlantis (Vasyanovych)
Director: Valentyn Vasyanovych
Stars: Andriy Rymaruk, Liudmyla Bileka, Vasyl Antoniak
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Ukraine
A soldier suffering from PTSD befriends a young volunteer hoping to restore peaceful energy to a war-torn society.
Advocate (Bellaiche, Jones)
Director: Philippe Bellaiche, Rachel Leah Jones
Stars: Lea Tsemel, Yasser Joubeh, Suheila Dweik
Genre: Documentary
Country: Switzerland | Israel | Canada
A look at the life and work of Jewish-Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel who has represented political prisoners for nearly 50 years.
Zombi Child (Bonello)
Director: Bertrand Bonello
Stars: Louise Labeque, Wislanda Louimat, Katiana Milfort
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: France
A man is brought back from the dead to work in the hell of sugar cane plantations. 55 years later, a Haitian teenager tells her friends her family secret – not suspecting that it will push one of them to commit the irreparable.
We Are Little Zombies (Nagahisa)
Director: Makoto Nagahisa
Stars: Keita Ninomiya, Mondo Okumura, Satoshi Mizuno
Genre: Drama, Music
Country: Japan
Four Japanese orphans form a rock band.
Personal History of David Copperfield, The (Iannucci)
Director: Armando Iannucci
Stars: Dev Patel, Hugh Laurie, Tilda Swinton
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK | USA
A modern take on Charles Dickens’s classic tale of a young orphan who is able to triumph over many obstacles.
Deeper You Dig, The (Adams, Poser)
Director: John Adams, Toby Poser
Stars: John Adams, Toby Poser, Zelda Adams
Genre: Drama, Horror
Country: USA
In the aftermath of a roadside accident, the line between the living and the dead collapses for a mother, a daughter and a stranger.
To the Ends of the Earth (Kurosawa)
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Stars: Atsuko Maeda, Shôta Sometani, Tokio Emoto
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan | Uzbekistan | Qatar
A young Japanese woman named Yoko who finds her cautious and insular nature tested when she travels to Uzbekistan to shoot the latest episode of her travel variety show.
Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins (Engel)
Director: Janice Engel
Stars: Ben Barnes, Paul Begala, Pat Buchanan
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
RAISE HELL: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins tells the story of media firebrand Molly Ivins, six feet of Texas trouble who took on the Good Old Boy corruption wherever she found it. Her razor sharp wit left both sides of the aisle laughing, and craving ink in her columns. She knew the Bill of Rights was in peril, and said “Polarizing people is a good way to win an election and a good way to wreck a country.” Molly’s words have proved prescient. Now it’s up to us to raise hell.
Swallows of Kabul, The (Breitman, Gobbé-Mévellec)
Director: Zabou Breitman, Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec
Stars: Simon Abkarian, Zita Hanrot, Swann Arlaud
Genre: Animation, Drama, War
Country: France | Switzerland | Luxembourg | Monaco
Summer 1998, Kabul in ruins is occupied by the Taliban. In love despite the daily violence and misery, Mohsen and Zunaira want to believe in the future. But a senseless act by Mohsen will upset their lives forever.
Last Breath (da Costa, Parkinson)
Director: Richard da Costa, Alex Parkinson
Stars: Duncan Allcock, Duncan Allcock, Kjetil Ove Alvestad
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK | Belgium | Sweden
A deep sea diver is stranded on the seabed with 5 minutes of oxygen and no hope of rescue. With access to amazing archive this is the story of one man’s impossible fight for survival.
Tale of Three Sisters, A (Alper)
Director: Emin Alper
Stars: Cemre Ebuzziya, Ece Yüksel, Helin Kandemir
Genre: Drama
Country: Turkey | Germany | Netherlands | Greece
Three young girls are sent back to their father in a poor village in central Anatolia, one after another, after failing in more affluent foster families.
And the Birds Rained Down (Archambault)
Director: Louise Archambault
Stars: Andrée Lachapelle, Gilbert Sicotte, Rémy Girard
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada
Three elderly hermits live in the woods. While wildfires threaten the region, their quiet life is about to be shaken by the arrival of two women – A story of intertwined destinies, where love can happen at any age.
White, White Day, A (Palmason)
Director: Hlynur Palmason
Stars: Ingvar Sigurdsson, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, Hilmir Snær Guðnason
Genre: Drama
Country: Iceland | Denmark | Sweden
An off duty police begins to suspect a local man for having had an affair with his recently dead wife. Gradually his obsession for finding out the truth accumulates and inevitably begins to endanger himself and his loved ones.
Specials, The (Nakache, Toledano)
Director: Olivier Nakache, Éric Toledano
Stars: Vincent Cassel, Reda Kateb, Hélène Vincent
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France | Belgium
The story of two men, educators of children and adolescents with autism.
Hitsville: The Making of Motown (Turner, Turner)
Director: Benjamin Turner, Gabe Turner
Stars: Berry Gordy, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: USA | UK
Documentary film that focuses on the period beginning with the birth of Motown in Detroit in 1958 until its relocation to Los Angeles in the early 1970s.
Give Me Liberty (Mikhanovsky)
Director: Kirill Mikhanovsky
Stars: Chris Galust, Lauren ‘Lolo’ Spencer, Maxim Stoyanov
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
In this freewheeling comedy, medical transport driver Vic risks his job to shuttle a group of rowdy seniors and a Russian boxer to a funeral, dragging clients like Tracy, a young woman with ALS, along for the ride.
Dolemite Is My Name (Brewer)
Director: Craig Brewer
Stars: Eddie Murphy, Keegan-Michael Key, Mike Epps
Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Eddie Murphy portrays real-life legend Rudy Ray Moore, a comedy and rap pioneer who proved naysayers wrong when his hilarious, obscene, kung-fu fighting alter ego, Dolemite, became a 1970s Blaxploitation phenomenon.
Cold Case Hammarskjöld (Brügger)
Director: Mads Brügger
Stars: Mads Brügger, Clarinah Mfengu, Saphir Wenzi Mabanza
Genre: Documentary, Animation, History
Country: Denmark | Norway | Sweden | Belgium
Danish director Mads Brügger and Swedish private investigator Göran Björkdahl are trying to solve the mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjöld. As their investigation closes in, they discover a crime far worse than killing the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson (Gregory)
Director: David Gregory
Stars: Al Adamson, Samuel M. Sherman, Chris Poggiali
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA
Maverick indie filmmaker Al Adamson’s real life was even crazier than one of the 30-plus sex ‘n’ schlock drive-in movies he made in the ’60s and ’70s.
Girl (Dhont)
Director: Lukas Dhont
Stars: Victor Polster, Arieh Worthalter, Oliver Bodart
Genre: Drama
Country: Netherlands | Belgium
A promising teenage dancer enrolls at a prestigious ballet school while grappling with her gender dysphoria.
José (Cheng)
Director: Li Cheng
Stars: Enrique Salanic, Manolo Herrera, Ana Cecilia Mota
Genre: Drama
Country: Guatemala | USA
José lives with his mother in Guatemala. It’s a tough life in one of the most violent and religious countries. When he meets Luis, he’s thrust into new-found passion and pain.
Pity (Makridis)
Director: Babis Makridis
Stars: Yannis Drakopoulos, Evi Saoulidou, Pavlos Makridis
Genre: Drama
Country: Greece | Poland
The story of a man who feels happy only when he is unhappy, a man addicted to sadness, who has such need for pity, he’s willing to do everything to evoke it from others. This is the life of a man in a world not cruel enough for him.
Grass (Hong)
Director: Sang-soo Hong
Stars: Min-hee Kim, Joobong Kee, Jae-hong Ahn
Genre: Drama
Country: South Korea
In a small Café, Min-hee Kim plays a guest who prefers to observe but not interact with the other guests herself.
Jinn (Mumin)
Director: Nijla Mumin
Stars: Simone Missick, Zoe Renee, Hisham Tawfiq
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Summer is a 17-year old carefree black girl, whose world is turned upside down when her mother, a popular meteorologist named Jade Jennings, abruptly converts to Islam and becomes a different person, prompting Summer to reevaluate her identity.
Loveling (Pizzi)
Director: Gustavo Pizzi
Stars: Karine Teles, Otávio Müller, Adriana Esteves
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Brazil | Uruguay | Germany
Irene has only a few days to surpass the anxiety and discover a new strength before sending her eldest son away to the world.
Joy (Mortezai)
Director: Sudabeh Mortezai
Stars: Anwulika Alphonsus, Mariam Sanusi, Angela Ekeleme
Genre: Drama
Country: Austria
Joy, a young Nigerian woman caught in the vicious cycle of sex trafficking, is instructed by her exploiter Madame to supervise Precious, a teenage girl who is not ready to accept her fate.
Cam (Goldhaber)
Director: Daniel Goldhaber
Stars: Madeline Brewer, Patch Darragh, Melora Walters
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
Alice, an ambitious camgirl, wakes up one day to discover she’s been replaced on her show with an exact replica of herself.
3 Faces (Panahi)
Director: Jafar Panahi
Stars: Behnaz Jafari, Jafar Panahi, Marziyeh Rezaei
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Iran
Three actresses at different stages of their career. One from before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, one popular star of today known throughout the country and a young girl longing to attend a drama conservatory.
Holiday (Eklöf)
Director: Isabella Eklöf
Stars: Victoria Carmen Sonne, Lai Yde, Thijs Römer
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Denmark | Netherlands | Sweden
A love triangle featuring the trophy girlfriend of a petty drug lord, caught up in a web of luxury and violence in a modern dark gangster tale set in the beautiful port city of Bodrum on the Turkish Riviera.
Load, The (Glavonic)
Director: Ognjen Glavonic
Stars: Leon Lucev, Pavle Cemerikic, Tamara Krcunovic
Genre: Drama
Country: Serbia | France | Croatia | Iran | Qatar
Vlada works as a truck driver during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Tasked with transporting a mysterious load from Kosovo to Belgrade, he drives through unfamiliar territory, trying to make his way in a country scarred by the war. He knows that once the job is over, he will need to return home and face the consequences of his actions.
Relaxer (Potrykus)
Director: Joel Potrykus
Stars: Joshua Burge, David Dastmalchian, Andre Hyland
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA
With the impending Y2K apocalypse fast approaching, Abbie is faced with the ultimate challenge – the unbeatable level 256 on Pac-Man – and he can’t get off the couch until he conquers it. A survival story set in a living room.
Maiden (Holmes)
Director: Alex Holmes
Stars: Frank Bough, John Chittenden, Bruno Du Bois
Genre: Documentary, Sport
Country: UK
The story of Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook on charter boats, who became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989.
Border (Abbasi)
Director: Ali Abbasi
Stars: Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff, Jörgen Thorsson
Genre: Crime, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Sweden | Denmark
A customs officer who can smell fear develops an unusual attraction to a strange traveler while aiding a police investigation which will call into question her entire existence.
Stan & Ollie (Baird)
Director: Jon S. Baird
Stars: Steve Coogan, John C. Reilly, Shirley Henderson
Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama
Country: UK | Canada | USA
Laurel and Hardy, the world’s most famous comedy duo, attempt to reignite their film careers as they embark on what becomes their swan song – a grueling theatre tour of post-war Britain.
Crystal Swan (Zhuk)
Director: Darya Zhuk
Stars: Alina Nasibullina, Ivan Mulin, Yuriy Borisov
Genre: Drama
Country: Belarus | USA | Germany | Russia
In 1990s Belarus, a wanderlust young DJ is derailed by a typo in a forged US Visa application, forcing her to a backwater village where she is determined to fake her way to the American dream.
Gloria Bell (Lelio)
Director: Sebastián Lelio
Stars: Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Caren Pistorius
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Chile | USA
A free-spirited woman in her 50s seeks out love at L.A. dance clubs.
Dogman (Garrone)
Director: Matteo Garrone
Stars: Marcello Fonte, Edoardo Pesce, Nunzia Schiano
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Italy | France
A timid dog groomer living in a poor suburb sells cocaine on the side and stays out of trouble, while trying to deal with his unstable, violent acquaintance who is a menace to the whole neighborhood.
Number 37 (Dumisa)
Director: Nosipho Dumisa
Stars: Aphinda Afaika, Irshaad Ally, Ben Appolis
Genre: Thriller
Country: South Africa
Entrapped in his apartment, Randal Hendricks, a recent paraplegic, is given a gift of binoculars by his devoted girlfriend, Pam. But Randal is in financial debt to Emmie, a sadistic loan shark, and when he witnesses a powerful criminal, named Lawyer, commit murder while observing his neighbours through binoculars, he initiates a treacherous blackmail scheme.
Love Sonia (Noorani)
Director: Tabrez Noorani
Stars: Abhishek Bharate, Riya Sisodiya, Mrunal Thakur
Genre: Drama
Country: India
Inspired by real life events, Love Sonia is the story of a young girl’s journey to rescue her sister from the dangerous world of international sex trafficking.
Dead Souls (Wang)
Director: Bing Wang
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: Switzerland | France
A dozen aging survivors are interviewed from Jiabiangou, a complex of three work camps in Northwest China where supposed rightists were sent for re-education in the 1950s and 1960s under Mao Zedong.
Unlovable (Yoonessi)
Director: Suzi Yoonessi
Stars: Charlene deGuzman, John Hawkes, Melissa Leo
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Country: USA
A sex and love addicted woman learns what real intimacy is when she starts making music with a reclusive man.
Grand Bizarre, The (Mack)
Director: Jodie Mack
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A playful trip around the world, through its fabrics and textiles and their place in a busy international market.
Nae Pasaran (Sierra)
Director: Felipe Bustos Sierra
Stars: Bob Fulton, Stuart Barrie, John Keenan
Genre: Documentary, Animation, History
Country: UK | Chile
In a Scottish town in 1974, factory workers refuse to carry out repairs on warplane engines in an act of solidarity against the violent military coup in Chile. Four years pass before the engines, left to rust in factory yard, mysteriously disappear in the middle of the night.
Donbass (Loznitsa)
Director: Sergey Loznitsa
Stars: Tamara Yatsenko, Irina Zayarmiuk, Grigory Masliuk
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany | Ukraine | France | Netherlands | Romania | Poland
In eastern Ukraine, society begins to degrade as the effects of propaganda and manipulation begin to surface in this post-truth era.
Guilty, The (Möller)
Director: Gustav Möller
Stars: Jakob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, Omar Shargawi
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Denmark
A police officer assigned alarm dispatch duty enters a race against time when he answers an emergency call from a kidnapped woman.
All About Nina (Vives)
Director: Eva Vives
Stars: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Brodie Reed, Charlotte Newhouse
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Nina is a stand-up comedian who sees her life turned upside down when she meets Rafe.
Winter Flies (Omerzu)
Director: Olmo Omerzu
Stars: Tomás Mrvík, Jan Frantisek Uher, Eliska Krenková
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czech Republic | Slovenia | Poland | Slovakia | France
Two mischievous adolescent boys embark on a journey of imaginative misadventure and coming-of-age self-discovery, in Olmo Omerzu’s road-trip comedy celebrating the need to indulge the innocence, impulsiveness, and irrepressibility of youth.
Museo (Ruizpalacios)
Director: Alonso Ruizpalacios, Alonso Ruizpalacios
Stars: Gael García Bernal, Simon Russell Beale, Ilse Salas
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Mexico
In 1985, a group of criminals mock the security of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City to extract 140 pre-Hispanic pieces from their showcases.
Kusama: Infinity (Lenz)
Director: Heather Lenz
Stars: Yayoi Kusama
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Artist Yayoi Kusama and experts discuss her life and work, from her modest beginnings in Japan to becoming an internationally renowned artist.
Insect (Svankmajer)
Director: Amy Adrion
Stars: Ava DuVernay, Brenda Chapman, Caroline Libresco
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A documentary about discriminatory hiring practices concerning women directors in Hollywood, and an inspiring conversation with those who have succeeded against all odds.
Half the Picture (Adrion)
Director: Amy Adrion
Stars: Ava DuVernay, Brenda Chapman, Caroline Libresco
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
A documentary about discriminatory hiring practices concerning women directors in Hollywood, and an inspiring conversation with those who have succeeded against all odds.
Slut in a Good Way (Lorain)
Director: Sophie Lorain
Stars: Romane Denis, Anthony Therrien, Rose Adam
Genre: Comedy
Country: Canada
One tipsy evening, Charlotte, the recently heartbroken, Megan, the anti-love anarchist, and Aube, the shy romantic, stumble into the ‘Toy Depot’. Charmed by the male employees, the girls fill out a job application and quickly become part of the ‘Toy Depot’ gang. Charlotte has found the guys to be particularly helpful in getting over her heartbreak, to say the least. But has she taken it too far? The film explores teenage girls’ desires, the blurred lines between sex and friendship, and the unfair double standard imposed upon girls. It is a story of desire, self-censorship, and self-assertion.
Becoming Astrid (Christensen)
Director: Pernille Fischer Christensen
Stars: Alba August, Maria Bonnevie, Trine Dyrholm
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: Sweden | Denmark
Biopic of Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, the author of numerous children’s books and creator of Pippi Longstocking.
Price of Everything, The (Kahn)
Director: Nathaniel Kahn
Stars: Jeff Koons, Paul Schimmel, Larry Poons
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
With unprecedented access to pivotal artists and the white-hot market surrounding them, this film dives deep into the contemporary art world, holding a fun-house mirror up to our values and times.
Biggest Little Farm, The (Chester)
Director: John Chester
Stars: John Chester, Molly Chester, Lydia Marie Hicks
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Documentarian John Chester and his wife Molly work to develop a sustainable farm on 200 acres outside of Los Angeles.
Pass Over (Lee, Taymor)
Director: Spike Lee, Danya Taymor
Stars: Jon Michael Hill, Julian Parker, Ryan Hallahan
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Two young men pass the time dreaming of the promised land.
Mouthpiece (Rozema)
Director: Patricia Rozema
Stars: Amy Nostbakken, Norah Sadava, Maev Beaty
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada
Cassandra, who is portrayed by the two women, expresses the opposing voices that exist inside the modern woman’s head, during a 48-hour period as she tries to organize the affairs for her mother’s funeral.
Mercury 13 (Sington, Walsh)
Director: David Sington, Heather Walsh
Stars: Joyce Case, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
This documentary profiles women who were tested in 1961 for spaceflight, but had their dreams dashed when only men were chosen to become astronauts.
Little Woods (DaCosta)
Director: Nia DaCosta
Stars: Tessa Thompson, Lily James, Luke Kirby
Genre: Crime, Drama, Western
Country: USA
A modern Western about two sisters who work outside the law to better their lives.
In My Room (Köhler)
Director: Ulrich Köhler
Stars: Hans Löw, Elena Radonicich, Michael Wittenborn
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Germany | Italy
A bored man suddenly realizes everyone around him has disappeared though he isn’t sure what happened.
Evelyn (von Einsiedel)
Director: Orlando von Einsiedel
Stars: Orlando von Einsiedel
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK
Following his Oscar winning The White Helmets, Orlando von Einsiedel turns his camera on his own family as they attempt to cope with a devastating loss. When his brother, newly diagnosed as schizophrenic and suffering from intense depression, took his own life at 22, Orlando and his other two siblings buried the trauma, rarely talking about it. Over a decade later, the remaining family set out on a hiking tour, visiting landscapes Evelyn liked to walk, to reflect on his life and death. The result is an intensely personal and moving take on the emotional impact of suicide within a family and a powerful account of the benefits of creating safe spaces for emotional communication.
Colette (Westmoreland)
Director: Wash Westmoreland
Stars: Keira Knightley, Fiona Shaw, Dominic West
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: UK | USA | France | Hungary | Netherlands
Colette is pushed by her husband to write novels under his name. Upon their success, she fights to make her talents known, challenging gender norms.
Capernaum (Labaki)
Director: Nadine Labaki
Stars: Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole
Genre: Drama
Country: Lebanon | USA | France | Cyprus | Qatar | UK
While serving a five-year sentence for a violent crime, a 12-year-old boy sues his parents for neglect.
Bisbee ’17 (Greene)
Director: Robert Greene
Stars: Mike Anderson, Charles Bethea, Ken Boe
Genre: Documentary, Western
Country: USA
An old mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border finally reckons with its darkest day: the deportation of 1200 immigrant miners exactly 100 years ago. Locals collaborate to stage recreations of their controversial past.
Aquarela (Kosakovskiy)
Director: Viktor Kosakovskiy
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: UK | Germany | Denmark | USA
Water and ice are shown around the world, in all of their many powerful forms.
Season of the Devil (Diaz)
Director: Lav Diaz
Stars: Piolo Pascual, Shaina Magdayao, Bituin Escalante
Genre: Drama, Musical
Country: Philippines
A young and fearless doctor opens a clinic for a poor community in a remote village of the Phillipines. However, she disappears without a trace. Her husband, a poet and teacher seeks the truth of her vanishing.