In 1930s Shanghai, the layered friendship between Lysanne and Marlène unfolds as their bond evolves over time. In her directorial debut Ombres de soie, Mary Stephen creates a sensual film essay on identity and belonging, exploring the tension between East and West while questioning fixed ideas about culture, gender and colonial legacies through a poetic feminist lens.

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.”

In a village on the border between Lebanon and Syria, two women are forced to leave their home to help quell a blood feud in their community. They face an uncertain future, shaped by a legacy of revenge. This lyrical debut film, shot without a script and with a cast of untrained actors, incisively explores the role of women in times of tension and unspoken conflict.

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.

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.

A mad genius or a genius madman? Director Mariano Llinás delves into the life of his beloved master, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, one of the greatest literary icons of the 20th century. But how do you capture a writer who could conjure entire worlds with a single sentence? Part detective film, part road movie, over five hours long and unmistakably Llinás.

Padraic McKinley’s gripping debut throws Ethan Hawke into a brutal fight for freedom. In 1933, convict Samuel Murphy must smuggle a fortune in gold through unforgiving wilderness to escape prison and save his young daughter from adoption. With a handpicked crew, he faces a nerve-shredding ordeal of distrust, betrayal, violence and exhaustion.

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.