Festival Favourites

Lynne Ramsay journeys with Joaquin Phoenix into the mind of an ex-soldier gun-for-hire whose own demons are as brutal as the actions of his adversaries.

Andrey Zvyagintsev (Elena, Leviathan) delivers a masterpiece in this caustic look at contemporary Russian society, a failed marriage and the disappearance of a child. A major prize winner at both Cannes and BFI London Film Festival.

The ravishing fourth feature from Andrew Haigh (45 Years, Weekend) sees a boy and a horse embark on a Huckleberry Finn-esque journey across America in search of home.

Winner of the 2017 Oscar for Best Picture (eventually!), Barry Jenkins’ intoxicating drama follows the furtive life of a gay black boy through 80s Miami.

Being scared has never been this much fun, as Martin Freeman, Andy Nyman and Paul Whitehouse bring the chilling London stage play to the screen.

Naomi Kawase’s visually ravishing, beautifully composed film tells the story of two youths growing up and falling in love on a Japanese island.

Following some unexpected revelations, a celebration quickly takes a turn for the worse in Sally Potter's razor-sharp comedy.

Sam Claflin, Paul Bettany and Asa Butterfield bring R C Sherriff’s acclaimed First World War play to the screen, in this new adaptation from director Saul Dibb.

The first ever fully painted feature film takes us through the last days of Vincent van Gogh.

Tangerine director Sean Baker presents another visionary take on the wild ups and dangerous downs of life in America’s underbelly, featuring an Oscar-nominated turn from Willem Dafoe.

Julian Barratt is hilarious as the washed-up actor forced to reprise his 80s TV role as a sleuth with a robotic truth-telling eye, to help catch a deranged killer.

Annette Bening and Jamie Bell bring to life the true story of the love affair between Gloria Grahame and young, Liverpudlian actor Peter Turner.

Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams shine in this devastating, Oscar-winning drama from Kenneth Lonergan about a man’s painful hometown return.

Gemma Arterton sparkles in this witty drama set in the world of propaganda filmmaking during WWII, from director Lone Scherfig (The Riot Club, An Education).

Cate Blanchett gives a tour-de-force performance in this kaleidoscopic trip through the art manifestos of the 20th century.

A lonely prankster upends the life of his high-powered daughter in a riotous comedy, deep and sharp.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone channel old-school Hollywood glamour in this bright and playful romantic musical from director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash).

Amma Assante (Belle) directs this impassioned drama starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike depicting an interracial romance that changed the world.

Spike Lee’s bold and vivacious hip-hop musical restages an ancient Greek battle-of-the-sexes in 21st-century Chicago.

Terence Davies' elegant and deeply moving biopic of poet Emily Dickinson, played with sensitivity and rebellious spirit by Cynthia Nixon.

Legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog explores the past, present and future of the Internet in this extraordinary documentary.

A punk band becomes besieged in the backstage hideaway of a hideous neo-Nazi club, in this gloriously tense shocker from the director of Blue Ruin.

Russell Tovey stars as a Premier League footballer who shares a fumbled pass (of the sexual kind) with a teammate (Arinzé Kene), changing everything - both on and off the pitch.

Michael Caine scintillates as a curmudgeonly composer in Paolo Sorrentino’s deliciously bittersweet drama.

Ben Wheatley’s (High-Rise, Sightseers) all-guns-blazing bullet opera, starring Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy and Armie Hammer.

Brendan Gleeson and Michael Fassbender are the father and son outlaws in this exhilarating crime drama with a Chemical Brothers soundtrack.

Jake Gyllenhaal excels in a rousing story of strength and survival, from the acclaimed director of Prince Avalanche and George Washington.

Louis Theroux investigates the secretive world of the Church of Scientology, armed with his characteristic deadpan wit.

Adam Driver excels in this effortlessly charming tale of a bus driver poet in New Jersey, filmed with typically groovy elan by Jim Jarmusch.

Pablo Larraín’s Berlin prize-winner is a typically stylish, darkly witty tale of corruption, concealment and conspiracy in Chile’s Catholic church.

Ben Wheatley's savage and brilliant adaptation of JG Ballard's dystopian satire, starring Tom Hiddleston.

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara illuminate Todd Haynes’ intoxicating adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s beloved novel.

Brie Larson’s Oscar-winning performance is the beating heart of Lenny Abrahamson’s extraordinarily moving drama.

Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle play a young, married couple struggling to physically connect in this sensitive adaptation of Ian McEwan’s acclaimed novel.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s mesmerising, visually stunning tale of love and honour was Sight and Sound magazine’s best film of 2015.

Michael Winterbottom’s sexy and idiosyncratic tour film follows 2018 Mercury Prize winners Wolf Alice, merging thrilling live footage with a fictional backstage romance.

As typhoons buffet Tokyo, Hirokazu Koreeda examines a broken family and the father’s dogged attempts to glue it back together.

Pablo Larraín's bold, inventive detective thriller offers an electrifying contemplation of the Chilean poet's life on the run in the late 1940s.

Seismic rumblings in the Norwegian fjords threaten to start a chain reaction that will destroy the local area. Can it be stopped in time?

Nina Hoss is superb as concentration camp survivor who assumes a new identity, in Christian Petzold’s intricate post-WWII thriller.

Wong Kar-Wai’s lavish martial arts biopic tells the story of Ip Man, the legendary trainer who became Bruce Lee’s mentor.

With stylish and charged intensity, Xavier Dolan charts the fractious relationship between an uncontrollable teen and his fun-loving mother.

Ira Sachs’s refined Manhattan-set drama sees Alfred Molina’s Ben and John Lithgow’s George in the latter days of a tender, loving 39-year relationship.

Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in this adaptation of Claire Tomalin’s book about the long-standing affair between Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan.

A documentary love letter to the golden of exploitation cinema and the output of Cannon Films, the cut-price studio that challenged Hollywood.

The time is now for factory worker Maud (Carey Mulligan) as she joins the campaign movement for women’s votes, in Sarah Gavron’s stirring social history.

If you only see one Iranian vampire western this year, make sure it’s this one. A female vampire stalks a ghost town in Ana Lily Amirpour’s arresting debut.

Ben Foster is Lance Armstrong in this kinetic account of the cyclist who fell from grace, from acclaimed director Stephen Frears.

Colin Farrell, Ben Whishaw and Rachel Weisz star in this bleakly hilarious dystopian drama from Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth).

Alicia Vikander brings to life the extraordinary life of Vera Brittain, whose affair with a dashing friend (Kit Harington) is cruelly cut short by the onset of war.

Saoirse Ronan shines as a woman who journeys from post-war small-town Ireland to New York, in Nick Hornby’s adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s best-selling novel.

The inner workings of London’s National Gallery are laid bare in this absorbing, forensic examination by revered filmmaker Frederick Wiseman.

Three anti-capitalist activists kidnap a wealthy businessman, only to be confounded when he declares his own radical past.

A portrait of the beloved British artist, drawing on his own home-movie footage and with revealing contributions from his friends and colleagues.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s roundly acclaimed performance anchors the incredible, Oscar-winning story of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Set in a Deep South delta, Zeitlin’s feature debut takes a child’s eye view of poverty, adult apathy and ecological crisis. Hallucinatory fare

Cristian Mungiu's scarily plausible drama about a nun's friend suffering for her love in a nunnery; obsession and superstition wreak havoc.

John Boorman’s follow up to Hope and Glory finds 18-year-old Bill called up for National Service against the backdrop of the Korean War.

An essential and explosive documentary about the Ukrainian civil riots and protest movement, from the acclaimed director of In the Fog.

The epic, passionate and strikingly naturalistic Palme d'Or-winning romance.

An illuminating documentary about American cinema’s maverick genius Robert Altman, featuring unseen home movies and extensive interviews.

Richard Ayoade’s stylish and sinister adaptation of Dostoevsky’s story stars Jesse Eisenberg in a dual-role as a timid office clerk confronted by his confident, scheming doppelganger.

Two Yorkshire tearaways struggle with life and friendship in this challenging, compassionate growing-up tale by the director of The Arbor.

A raucous coming-of-age comedy about three schoolgirls who form a punk band in 1982 Stockholm, from director Lukas Moodysson (Show Me Love).

Danny Boyle’s crowdpleaser, based around the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, won the Oscar for best picture.

The Dardennes' powerful, award-winning drama tells of a troubled and volatile young teenager abandoned by his dad and 'adopted' by a hairdresser

Peter Hall’s extraordinary, long-unseen work of sublime poetic realism traces three generations of one Suffolk family and their lives in the farming industry.

Dark psychosexual thriller from prodigious Canadian director Xavier Dolan, following a young man who finds himself embroiled in a dangerous game of deception.

Tragedy befalls a young Indian woman when she falls in love with a rich British man in Michael Winterbottom's sharp Thomas Hardy update.

Jean-Luc Godard’s typically innovative and playful meditation on technology, love and language was acclaimed one of the best films of 2014.

Northern Ireland, 1981. In the Maze prison, Bobby Sands begins a hunger strike to reclaim the status of Republican inmates as political prisoners.

Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Anthony Hopkins lead an ensemble cast in a sleek thriller exploring the way our lives interconnect across the world.

Tilda Swinton gives a BAFTA-nominated performance as the mother of a teenager who commits a high school massacre. With Ezra Miller and John C. Reilly.

Two of the planet’s biggest stars – Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence – align in this extravagant period drama set in depression-era America.

The Coen brothers’ funny, melancholic elegy to early 1960s folk music follows a struggling songwriter through a winter’s worth of misdeeds, mishaps and lost cats.

Pip, a poor blacksmith's apprentice, becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor. A BAFTA-nominated telling of the Dickens' classic.

Francois Ozon’s sly and seductive account of teenage girl’s dalliance with high-class prostitution.

Jessica Biel plays the brash American fiancée who disrupts an upper-class family in this delightful Downton Abbey-esque tale of high-society hijinks.

Agyness Deyn stars in Terence Davies’ moving drama about a strong young woman facing many adversities in the run up to WWI.

Tomm Moore’s Oscar-nominated animation follows the magical journey of Ben and his sister Saoirse, the last Seal-child.