★★★★☆ Compartment No. 6 is a love story deeper and more affecting than any conventional meet-cute. Setting his film largely on the dingy confines of an overnight train, Kuosmanen kindles a tender love story between two lost souls.
★★★★☆ In his third feature, filmmaker Einari Paakkanen turns his attention to the phenomenon of Finnish karaoke and its capacity to bring disparate people together. Karaoke Paradise is a charming, insightful and often moving study of normal people’s lives through the medium of belting out great tunes.
★★★☆☆ Seasoned science and nature documentary director Lars Ostenfeld makes the jump into film with Into the Ice, a beautiful, gripping and ultimately terrifying journey into the impacts of climate change on the Greenland ice sheet.
★★★★☆ Victoria Fiore’s debut feature sees its international premiere at this year’s CPH:DOX. Nascondino, or Hide and Seek, is a heart-breaking, naturalistic study of 10-year-old Entoni as he grows up in the Spanish quarter of Naples, an area where organised crime is endemic.
★★★★☆ Impressing last year with art mystery The Lost Leonardo, director Andreas Koefoed returns with altogether different piece of work. Far from the globe-trotting scope of his previous film, The Fall is an intimate and sensitive portrait of adolescence.
★★★★☆ Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia’s debut feature A Night of Knowing Nothing blends documentary and narrative fiction to examine political activism, rebellion and cinephilia under the right-wing rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
★★★★☆ Ryu Seung-wan is a veteran of this kind of picture – his previous film, The Battleship Island, had a similar ‘escape from’ premise in a period setting – so it’s no surprise that Escape from Mogadishu is a rollicking masterclass in escalating tension.
★★★☆☆ When the legend becomes truth, print the legend. So goes Matt Eskey’s directorial debut, The Mojo Manifesto, a documentary in thrall to its subject. Luckily for us, its subject is Mojo Nixon (née Neill Kirby McMillan), the cartoonishly raucous musician and one of cow-punk’s leading proponents.
★★★☆☆ How do we balance modern faith with the often unsavoury legacies of religion, and how are those legacies used to excuse immoral behaviour in the present? Filmmaker Mariana Bastos gestures at these questions in her second feature (her first as solo director), a compelling magical realist drama.
★★★☆☆ In her debut feature, Canadian filmmaker Elizabeth Ayiku has a crafted a thoughtful and tender drama. Marshalling an excellent performance from A’Keyah Dasia Williams as protagonist Mya, Me Little Me is moving, if a little disjointed in its construction.
★★☆☆☆ Bill Posley’s debut feature sees its world premiere at this year’s festival. With its stylistic flourishes, one eye on social commentary and a solid genre premise, Bitch Ass shows potential for the writer-actor turned director.
★★★★☆ Jacques Audiard’s first feature since 2018’s The Sisters Brothers sees the acclaimed director return to his home town with a gorgeous, funny and tender romantic comedy, shot in luscious black and white. Paris, 13th District is a paean to the freedoms, the heartaches and the confusion of singledom.
