Childhood may seem like an endless kingdom of wonder in Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, fantastically shifting with the vivid imagination of its young protagonist, yet so too does the inevitable discovery of its own transience awaken a soft, bittersweet sorrow.
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.
One Battle After Another is set for some big wins among the major categories, though Sinners could potentially pull off some major upsets.
Confined to an emergency call centre, The Voice of Hind Rajab narrows in on the conversations between dispatch personnel and a young girl trapped in the Israeli assault on Gaza, using authentic audio recordings to anchor its dramatisation within a procedural, visceral reality.
Table tennis superstar Marty Mauser is unlikeable a sports movie antihero as they come, and through Josh Safdie’s abrasive illustration of a self-serving quest for glory, Marty Supreme propels his morally dubious ventures forward on waves of frantic, pulsating momentum.
