2010s

As recovering drug addict Anders drifts between vestiges of his old life on his first day out of rehab, Joachim Trier unfolds a battle in his mind between the future and oblivion, submitting Oslo, August 31st to the cycle of time that poignantly fades away sentimental memories into a mournful recognition of their widespread irrelevance.

In adeptly translating the inert feeling of grief into a gradually accelerating narrative pace that sees time frustratingly slip away, David Lowery transforms the material world into a quiet limbo of poignant self-reflection, playing out a meditation on loss, history, and existence from the perspective of A Ghost Story’s titular spectre.

For all the beauty of its hypnotic neon sequences and the intrigue built around a mysterious sleeping sickness that is infecting soldiers, Cemetery of Splendour goes down as one of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s more modest efforts, though still effectively crafting a mystical political allegory for the historical subjugation a half-conscious nation under the Thai monarchy.

Although Happy End never quite escapes from under the cloud of Michael Haneke’s previous films, its derivative narrative threads do eventually congeal into a greater point around the suppressed misery and hidden depravity of the bourgeoisie, chillingly hidden behind stoic expressions that only isolate them further from the rest of the world.

Like a folk ballad that keeps returning to the same chorus, Inside Llewyn Davis moves in destitute cycles, as its titular character endlessly searches for musical success and self-sabotages relationships, forming the nomadic foundation of the Coen Brothers’ beautifully tactile portrait of adversity.

The characters of Incendies contain remarkable and shocking depths, hidden not just to others but to themselves as well, and the process of uncovering these by tracing the footsteps of family history through the Middle East makes for a disturbingly revelatory journey delivered with a deft hand by Denis Villeneuve.