2020s

Humanity has never looked as simultaneously kind and cruel as it does through the eyes of the world’s lowliest beast in EO, as Jerzy Skolimowski’s elliptical direction effortlessly drifts us along one donkey’s nomadic odyssey, unveiling profoundly graceful meditations on our most fundamental nature.

Although young Cáit comes from an abusive home in The Quiet Girl, Colm Bairéad’s tender reflection on emotional healing proves to be a film of gentle repose, establishing a symbiotic harmony between broken children and adults alike that graciously alleviates their parallel traumas.

As the chilly mist clears across Scott Cooper’s frozen landscapes in The Pale Blue Eye, an intriguing murder mystery of occult horror and dark family secrets emerges, conceiving what Gothic evils and melancholy regrets might have given birth to the morbid imagination of Edgar Allen Poe.

Living’s cultural transplant of Akira Kurosawa’s deeply contemplative Ikiru may struggle with originality at times, but in shifting this mid-century tale of one dying man’s enlightenment from Japan to London, Olivier Hermanus still summons a revitalised freshness, imbuing it with a whole new context of soul-sucking social customs and spiritual inspiration.

Ti West’s horror prequel Pearl is just as much a warped product of the classical Hollywood dream machine as the aspiring actress, murderess, and housewife at its centre, relishing the superficial splendour of lush Technicolor stylings that only barely conceals an uglier, malevolent truth.

Across three Kafkaesque fables set in the past, present, and apocalyptic future of a single residence, The House unfurls an allegory of whimsical existentialism, unnervingly studying humanity’s descent into material consumption, and delicately infusing its absurdism with the childlike innocence of stop-motion animation.