Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Writer Nadia M Oliva tracks the development of the melodrama genre and how it plays out across film, TV and online.

Buried passions boil over in a buttoned-up postwar Britain in Terence Davies acclaimed adaptation of Rattigan's play, starring Rachel Weisz.

Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or-winner, about an octogenarian couple trying to cope when a stroke leaves the wife partly paralysed and speechless.

A cash-strapped student becomes an escort exposing the stark realities of economic exploitation in this uncompromising gritty French drama.

Life begins at 70 for Mahin, who decides to shake her life up in this charming, quietly subversive tale from Iran.

Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning portrait of three women is a transcendent tale of love and sisterhood.

Tilda Swinton and Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous, operatic vision of an aristocratic family disrupted by unstoppable forces of passion.

A troubled young sheep farmer falls for a hired hand in this stunning debut from Francis Lee.

Bullied for her sexuality, Dublin schoolgirl Lily turns to her gay best friend for support in this vibrant coming-out, coming-of-age drama.

Akerman’s debut feature, with its 10-minute lesbian sex scene, revealed its maker to be a radical and uncompromising force in cinema.

Co-written with Céline Sciamma, Noémie Merlant’s bold film follows three friends as they dispose of the body of an abuser they’ve accidentally killed.

A young London-based writer begins a double life as a sex worker to research his debut novel, in this gripping psychological drama.

Hilarious, uplifting tale of an Irish son juggling four very different mothers over one chaotic weekend in Dublin.

Co-written with Céline Sciamma, Noémie Merlant’s bold film follows three friends as they dispose of the body of an abuser they’ve accidentally killed.

An ungainly cockney chauffeur navigates the seedy streets of London, gradually falling for the elegant and mysterious prostitute who is his passenger.

Reviled upon its release, now reclaimed as a cult classic - one can only submit to the trash-tastic delights of Paul Verhoeven's erotic disasterpiece.

Saoirse Ronan gives a bracing performance as a young recovering alcoholic returning home to Orkney in this moving adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoir.

Alan Parker’s elliptical, ethereal adaptation of the acclaimed, ‘unfilmable’ novel by William Wharton, about a boy who dreams of flying.

Anora director Sean Baker's visionary portrait of life in America’s underbelly, featuring an Oscar-nominated turn from Willem Dafoe.

A salesman becomes obsessed by an icy prostitute against the backdrop of a hellish Paris, in this arthouse erotica from Walerian Borowczyk (The Beast)