Dragging us through dust, heat, and excruciating tension of the Moroccan desert, Sirāt navigates one man’s attempts to find his daughter within its hallucinatory rave culture, relentlessly pushing him ever closer to the brink of his own physical and psychological limits.
Hell is a condition of being for souls lost to compulsion in Ballad of a Small Player, and one that Edward Berger blurs into a gilded convergence of superstition, lighting up the global gambling capital as a dazzling, ghostly underworld of endless consumption.
Kristoffer Borgli hinges The Drama upon a twisted secret, luring audiences into one of the funniest, messiest, and darkest romantic comedies of recent years, as he dismantles a couple’s mutual trust in the week leading up to their wedding.
Although the Christianity of medieval Europe encroaches upon a primordial pagan world in Marketa Lazarová, František Vláčil does not grant moral authority to any single religion, but rather dissolves historical certainty into a fragmented, mythic haze.
It takes more than brute strength to defeat a creature as viciously powerful as a Predator, and as Dan Trachtenberg studies history’s greatest warriors through Viking battles, samurai duels, and modern warfare, Killer of Killers honours the resilient heart of a people born to survive.
Through the haunting elegance of The Music Room’s floating camerawork, Satyajit Ray settles an auspicious haze and stirring musical transcendence over the downfall of a proud noble, casting him within a mythic fable of envy, ego, and the Indian aristocracy’s self-inflicted ruin.
The tragedy of innocence persevering through historical turmoil underpins the vulnerable heart of Orphan, as through László Nemes’ intimate, subjective camerawork, one young boy grapples with the dissonance between an imagined father and reality in postwar Budapest.
The greatest films of all time, from the early days of silent cinema to 21st century masterpieces.
Through a high-stakes mission and an unorthodox companionship formed in the depths of outer space, Project Hail Mary strikes a remarkable tonal balance, as Phil Lord and Chris Miller realise the emotional scope of epic and personal narrative stakes through inventive visual designs.
Far from mythologising Mark Kerr’s contributions to mixed martial arts, Benny Safdie treats his body as both an instrument and casualty of the sport’s formation in The Smashing Machine, illustrating its personal cost in intensely tactile, psychological terms.
