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Nightcrawler
A pulse-pounding thriller set in the nocturnal underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles. Lou Bloom is a driven young man desperate for work who discovers the high-speed world of L.A. crime journalism. Joining a group of freelance camera crews who specialize in filming crashes, fires, murder and other mayhem, known as nightcrawlers, Lou muscles into the
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Theeb
It’s World War One and a young Bedouin boy helps guide a mysterious British officer to a rendezvous in the Hijaz desert. Their plans swiftly unravel. The film pays critical homage to David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia, but ultimately this is about a boy finding his way in an adult world, rather than an
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Marshland
In post-Franco Spain two detectives with conflicting political ideologies pair up to solve a murder case in a remote wetland area in the south of Spain. Their mutual mistrust is mirrored by the cold reception from reactionary locals. Brilliant edge-of-your seat detective thriller. Sight & Sound. 41 awards.
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Tangerine
An independent ground-breaking comedy-drama that proved a big hit at the Sundance Festival in 2015. Two transgender sex-workers in LA look for a pimp that did one of them wrong. The film was shot using 3 iPhone 5S smartphones instead of traditional cameras. The money saved on equipment was used to pay for locations and
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Mandariinid
An Estonian-Georgian co-production, Mandariniid (Estonia for tangerines) is set amidst the 1992–1993 War in Abkhazia as the conflict closes in on a tangerine farm in a now nearly depopulated ethnic Estonian village. The farmer simply wants to harvest his crop when two wounded soldiers – nominal enemies – appear on his doorstep. The film’s themes
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The Second Mother
Val is housemaid to a wealthy Sao Paolo family. She mothers the son of the house more than her distracted employer. When Val’s aspirational daughter comes to stay, in order to apply for university in Sao Paolo, tensions emerge both between mother and daughter and between the pair of them and Val’s other “family”. An
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The Assassin
The film centres on Nie Yinniang, an assassin who is directed to slay corrupt government officials by her master, Jiaxin, a nun who raised her from the age of ten. When Yinniang displays mercy by failing to kill during her duties, Jiaxin punishes her with a ruthless assignment designed to test Yinniang’s resolve: she is
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Youth
Sorrentino’s follow up to The Great Beauty sees an ageing conductor with his old friend in an Alpine spa. Together they reflect on life while fending off an envoy from the Queen to stage a royal gala. “A beautiful ode to music and cinema. … There are elements of Fellini and Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero
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Dheepan
A Tamil fighter flees Sri Lanka claiming asylum with two strangers to create a family and ease the asylum process. But life in Paris is violent too – will old fighting ways become necessary to protect his new family? Dheepan is Jacques Audiard’s most Scorsese-like film, and all the better for it. It’s critical elevation
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Victoria
Shot in a snigle, continuous tahe, Victoria tells the tale of a Spanish woman, new to the city of Berlin, who meets two men at a club and gets mixed up in a bank robbery. There are echoes of the French New Wave in the premise, but the style of the film is much more










