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.
The journey that one nameless black cat and its assorted companions set out on through flood waters makes for a minimalist narrative in Flow, yet within Gints Zilbalodis’ immersive, fluid animation, the organic cycles of this ever-changing ecosystem fall into soothing harmony.
RaMell Ross’ avant-garde instincts come fully formed in the first-person camerawork and impressionistic montages of Nickel Boys, explicitly adopting the perspectives of two friends living in a 1960s reform school, and internalising a shared resilience that leads communities into the fight for civil rights.
As two amusingly dissimilar cousins reconnect to their Jewish ancestry in Poland, A Real Pain also sensitively examines their reconnection with each other, binding polar opposites together through humour, compassion, and generations of unresolved trauma.
When Brazil’s plague of forced disappearances reaches a beloved father in I’m Still Here, it is up to his resilient wife to keep the shattered pieces of her family’s lives together, transforming her sorrow and trauma into a testament of selfless, compassionate resistance.
Opera singer Maria Callas’ astonishing talent is both her greatest gift and curse in Pablo Larraín’s impressionistic, melancholy biopic, simultaneously giving her reason to live and eroding her tormented soul as she wanders through the final week of her extraordinary life.
The three-way race between Anora, The Brutalist, and Emilia Pérez has begun to widen in the final weeks of the awards race, while the competition stays hot in below-the-line categories.
The unity of art and politics was not exactly a new concept in the 1960s, but Bob Dylan’s refreshing brand of celebrity that is both radically outspoken and mysteriously private inspires awe in A Complete Unknown, soulfully capturing the countercultural icon’s elusive, inscrutable essence.
What unfolds behind the closed doors of the Sistine Chapel in the wake of a pope’s death makes for a tantalising source of intrigue in Conclave, yet Edward Berger brings a solemn gravity to his staging of this suspenseful political thriller, exposing the secrets and moral weaknesses of those who vie for that newly vacant position of power.
