Taxi
Jafar Panahi’s latest film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. It’s his third film since the Iranian government banned him from filmmaking – here, he drives a cab throughout the film and uses a dashboard camera to film his conversations with passengers, reflecting on his situation with wit and warmth.
Dheepan
Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet dealt with power struggles between immigrants in a French prison. Dheepan, this year’s Palme D’Or winner at Cannes, considers the plight of Sri Lankan refugees who form a makeshift family in Paris.
Chauthi Koot
Acclaimed but under-the-radar Punjabi director Gurvinder Singh brings his meditative, minimal style to a story of Sikh separatism in the 1980s. The film competed in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.
Mistress America
Actress and writer Greta Gerwig continues to temper director (and partner) Noah Baumbach’s misanthropy: they reunite for another comedy about class anxiety, expectations, and disappointment in New York.
Junun
If you were at the Magnetic Fields festival last year, you may have run into Paul Thomas Anderson (director of There Will Be Blood) and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood filming this documentary about Israeli artist Shye Ben Tzur’s collaboration with Indian musicians. Anderson brings his distinctive visual style, full of long pans and wide shots, to the Rajasthani landscape.
99 Homes
This film about the moral struggle of a single father (Andrew Garfield, ladies) trying to recover his home after the 2008 financial crash is directed by Ramin Bahrani, who Roger Ebert once called “the director of the decade.”
The Assassin
Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsaio-Hsien has redirected his focus from intimate, personal dramas to a large-scale wuxia (martial arts) film, which is nonetheless marked by textured period realism. Get ready for some art house action.
Mountains May Depart
Jia Zhangke has always brought a critical eye to his native China, even when working with government approval. His new film is a sprawling family epic that takes place in three time periods, ending with a vision of what the country’s future may be.
The Lobster
Sci-fi black comedy? Sold. Grecian Yorgos Lanthimos directs this highly original film about single people who are mandated by their government to find a partner in 45 days, or else turn into the animal of their choice. Starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz.
Youth
At 45, Paolo Sorrentino is a little young to be preoccupied with the fates of old men, but he returns to the subject he explored so stylishly (and a little surreally) in The Great Beauty. Michael Caine plays a composer who regrets his past and is unsure about his future. The film also features Harvey Keitel and Rachel Weisz.
Honourable mentions: the Agnes Varda tribute, Pablo Lorrain’s The Club, Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights, Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years, Terence Davies’ Sunset Song, Hong Sang-soo’s Right Now, Wrong Then, and the Criterion Collection’s luminous restoration of Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy.
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