What could the cinema do for us, in a year as violent and divided as ? Cinema has always been the fastest way to travel. There are more female than male directors in the top ten, a feat that has only happened once before, in the pandemic year of , when there were seven women listed β this year finds six. Find all our round-ups in Sight and Sound: the Winter issue.
Dea Kulumbegashvili follows up her stunning debut, Beginning , with an unflinching, excoriating story of a Georgian obstetrician whose career is threatened by her reputation as an abortionist. An ex-convict tasked with cleaning up a desert town in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics forms an unlikely bond with a dog in this surprising crime drama that mixes noir moodiness with slapstick absurdity.
Read the full review: Black Dog: enigmatic Chinese drama tells a story of loss, redemption and canine love. Read the full review: Dune: Part Two: an impressive sci-fi war saga. Read the full review: Green Border: Agnieszka Holland explores human behaviour within a broken system in a nightmarish refugee drama.
Read the full review: The Holdovers: this high-school heartwarmer is no ordinary throwback. A fictional restaging of the real-life disappearance of engineer Rubens Paiva Selton Mello in at the hands of the Brazilian dictatorship, with his wife Eunice Fernanda Torres movingly devoting her life to discovering the truth of what happened to him.
French director Alain Guiraudie is one of the most unique and transgressive voices in cinema, and this fabulously compelling rural melodrama, steeped in dark desires, again reveals his penchant for genre-hopping and narrative unpredictability. A Georgian woman goes in search of her estranged trans niece in this elegant, politically resonant feature by SwedishGeorgian director Levan Akin. Read the full review: Crossing: an emotionally rich journey through Istanbul. Read the full review: Kneecap: a biopic is only the beginning for this anarchic Belfast hip hop trio.
