★★★★☆ Nabil Ayouch’s Casablanca Beats takes as its template a dozen or so Hollywood dramas and comedies aimed at instilling the positive value of inspirational education. From Dead Poets Society to School of Rock, the pitch and the arc are fairly similar even as circumstances change.
★★★★☆ French director Audrey Diwan adapts Annie Erwaux’s 2001 autobiographical book about her traumatic experience of an abortion in 1963 France. Happening is a naturalistic, heart-breaking and relentless account of the multiple traumas and injustices that cascade when women are denied their basic bodily autonomy.
★★★★★ For most children, school is a frightening wilderness of social injustice and unchecked danger. With her first feature, Playground – part of last year’s Un Certain Regard lineup – Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel captures this universal ordeal with a masterful sense of perspective and empathy.
★★★☆☆ Afro-Latin percussionist and multiple Grammy award nominee John Santos is the worthy subject of filmmaker Kathryn Golden’s first feature-length documentary, a lively and often compelling portrait of the man and his music.
★★★★☆ Based on the life of 17th century nun Benedetta Carlini (Virginie Efira) who enters into a relationship with fellow nun Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia), Benedetta has all the religious symbolism, violence and nudity that we have come to expect from Dutch master Paul Verhoeven.
★★★☆☆ Based on the Norse myth that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Robert Eggers’ third film is a rollocking, rampaging Viking romp. The Northman is Eggers’ most ambitious project to date, but for all its howling spectacle and ultra-violent elemental machismo it is also his least successful.
★★★☆☆ In the early 1940s, with the world at war and Europe hopelessly divided, everyone was writing a spy story. Or at least, that’s what Operation Mincemeat will have you believe: a true tale of ingenious falsehood, where the boundaries between espionage and paperback fiction begin to blur.
Netflix is one of the best-known video streaming platforms, a comprehensive portal where you can watch numerous TV shows and movies. According to recent statistics, the platform offers more than 7,000 movies and series for its subscribers, one of the largest collections on the market.
★★★★★ In a remote rural Mexican village a war wages between a drug cartel and the authorities. The villagers are inevitably caught up in the middle, their lives eroded and destroyed in unimaginable ways. Tatiana Huezo’s narrative debut is a harrowing account of lives held hostage by exterior forces.
★★★★☆ Agata (Celeste Cescutti) is a young woman who gives birth to a stillborn child. She lives on the coast of Veneto in North East Italy in a deeply religious community where the priest assures her that the unbaptised baby is now in limbo where she will stay for eternity.
★★★★☆ 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.
