Selected by De Morgen

Jazz pianist Bill Evans goes through a dark period in this contemplative drama. Warm music and stunning black-and-white cinematography combine to create an impressionistic portrait of a tormented genius. Anders Danielsen Lie, a regular in Joachim Trier’s films, brings a sense of restrained melancholy to the role of Evans.

With Paper Tiger, James Gray has delivered his strongest film in years. All the recurring themes from his earlier work are back: blood ties, organised crime and the police. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson pull out all the stops with their thickest New York accents.

Cristian Mungiu won his second Palme d’Or at Cannes for Fjord, a drama based on true events starring Renate Reinsve, about a deeply religious family that finds itself at odds with the Norwegian child protection services. Provocative and controversial.

An Alzheimer’s drama unlike any you’ve seen before. Should a woman with dementia still be allowed to have sex? Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall grapple with this and other pressing questions in a gripping film about care and responsibility.

Every now and then, a film comes along that makes you see the world in a different light. Soudain, the new little masterpiece by Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car), is one such film. A tender, conversational film that invites you to slow down and questions the system in which we live.

A year after Sirāt, Spain has once again landed a high-profile Oscar contender. “Los Javis”, the former couple who co-directed La bola negra, were the revelation of Cannes with this majestic, ingenious and generous exploration of queerness through the ages.

A few years ago, the Russian master Andrei Zvyagintsev fell seriously ill and fled his homeland. In his first film since going into exile, he pulls out all the stops: Minotaur is a chilling, overwhelming thriller about power in wartime.
 

This film about a school trip to Pompeii that goes off the rails took Cannes by storm with the force of a volcanic eruption: Marine Atlan received unanimously rave reviews and won the Grand Prix at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes.

According to our crystal ball, John Malkovich could be in line for an Oscar nomination for the first time in over thirty years. In Martin McDonagh’s tragicomedy Wild Horse Nine, he plays a sick CIA agent with a dark past.

After almost ten years, Rundskop director Michaël R. Roskam is finally returning to the cinema with Le Faux Soir: a unique slice of war history, about a group of resistance fighters who circumvented Nazi censorship with typically Belgian humour.