Hedd Wyn

The surprise contender for this year's foreign-language Oscar, Paul Turner's Welsh-language feature Hedd Wyn is an assured and engrossing portrait of the largely unknown war poet Ellis Evans. The film opens with Ellis lying on a World War I battlefield, dying from a shrapnel wound. Amid the mud, he relives his life as a farmer's son who dreams of winning the poetry prize at the national Eisteddfod, the main arts festival celebrating Welsh language and culture. Evans received the prize posthumously, but remains relatively unknown. This film is a fitting memorial.