Chronovisor, the daring indie debut by Kevin Walker and Jack Auen, is an armchair mystery about a reclusive scholar and a device that can reveal the past. Blending science fiction, history and investigation, the film draws on the legend of the chronovisor - a machine said to make the past visible - and features music by Gustav Holst.

Hope keeps one going, but it can also hold captive. In the South African docu-fiction hybrid Variations on a Theme, nearly eighty-year-old Hettie is still waiting for compensation for her father's military service, despite being lied to time and again. Who can blame her for continuing to dream? Directors Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar, recognised as rising talents at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, paint a serene portrait, rooted in the landscape and local community. Recurring imagery gently recounts its own, unfinished story, full of bittersweet poetry. As the South African-raised crooner Al Bowlly sings during the closing credits: “Dreaming the lonely night through.”

What happens when the music suddenly stops? In 1961, jazz pianist Bill Evans loses his bassist and closest musical companion, Scott LaFaro. Evans stops playing too. Grant Gee turns that silence into the starting point for an unconventional biopic, led by a phenomenal Anders Danielsen Lie as the brilliant yet troubled pianist. Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director.

In Un bon petit soldat, Stéphane Brizé returns to one of his favourite battlegrounds: the modern workplace. Alba Rohrwacher is superb as Carla, the newly appointed HR manager of a major insurance company, tasked with reconciling employee wellbeing with relentless performance targets. When she uncovers a case of toxic management, her faith in the corporate playbook begins to crack. In a claustrophobic world of employer branding, happiness workshops and endless targets, Brizé dissects the human cost of a system in which even wellbeing is expected to deliver results.

The destructive nature of dementia has been a source of inspiration for many a filmmaker, but perhaps never quite as unvarnished, carnal and discomforting as in Lance Hammer’s Queen At Sea. Eighteen years after his lauded debut Ballast, the independent director returns with a gut-wrenching drama that questions our understanding of intimacy and sexuality, agency and care. In it, a family’s life is upended by the rapidly declining health of Leslie, a dementia-stricken artist. She’s tended to by both her husband and daughter, but the two caregivers butt heads over Leslie’s best interests. This deeply touching drama was awarded with the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the Berlinale.