The Small Back Room

Ian McKellen is in delicious form as London's most vicious critic, who strikes a Faustian pact with a struggling actor (Gemma Arterton).

A desperate delivery driver gets caught up in the dark underworld of Riyadh in Ali Kalthami’s gripping, pitch-black satire.

Gripping political thriller with Keira Knightley as the intelligence officer who discovers a plot to rig a UN vote on the eve of the Iraq war.

Mark Ruffalo plays an attorney trying to uncover the corporate scandal of a chemical company poisoning a local community, in this searching ecological drama from Todd Haynes (Safe, Carol).

Three Billboards' director Martin McDonagh spins an epic and twisted tale of pets and gangsters, with an all-star cast.

Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman (in his last role) play the military commanders caught in the ethical crosshairs of drone warfare, in Gavin Hood’s gripping military thriller.

Tensions grow when a group of nuns open a convent in the Himalayas in Powell and Pressburger’s remarkable melodrama, starring Deborah Kerr.

Powell and Pressburger's most personal film combines a Chaucer-inspired pilgrimage with a war-time celebration of English landscape and values to create a gem of British cinema.

Powell and Pressburger’s masterpiece follows the rise and fall of a career soldier, from dashing and brave young officer in the Boer War to a pompous and old-fashioned Colonel by the time of World War Two.

A masterful thriller with true flair, The Spy In Black has a much larger importance: it threw Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger together for the first time.

Powell and Pressburger’s heady romantic masterpiece has never looked or sounded finer than in this revelatory restoration from the BFI National Archive.

Hop aboard for a choppy Channel crossing with this bleak, bullet-spattered sea-smuggling crime drama.

Michael Powell's 'society drama’ involving suspicion, clandestine romance and presumed murder, and glorious comic double-act from Googie Withers and John Lurie.

Michael Powell’s earliest existing film is a twisty thriller crafted with a bold visual style that is unmistakeably influenced by Fritz Lang.

Music hall veteran Jerry Verno stars as a lowly clerk who gets more than he bargained for when he inherits a hotel, in Michael Powell's charming comedy.

Michael Powell’s fun stage adaptation about a murder at a society party, with characterful performances from its fine ensemble cast.

Like the gloriously camp, all-singing, all-dancing cousin of The Third Man, the Archers’ take on Strauss’s operetta of infidelity is as frothy as the champagne it celebrates.

Michael Powell’s dark, disturbing, once controversial tale of a shy camera technician who films women as he kills them is now rightly deemed a classic.

Sleepwalking into submerged depths of memory, a mother’s dream and a daughter’s beckoning, this fascinating film tenderly untangles the knots of the past.

Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia's unsettling drama-documentary delivers a powerful commentary on the state of the world today… and tomorrow.

A striking portrait of an artist deserving of greater recognition, directed by Mark Cousins (A Story of Film).

Johan Grimonprez’s involving film essay, anchored by the rhythm of American jazz, reveals disturbing truths about the decolonial struggle between global political powers.

This powerful documentary from a Palestinian-Israeli collective might be one of the most important films of this year.

Shujun Wei's slow-burn noir draws us inexorably into its mysterious psychological journey.