Limelight

The umpteenth typhoon of the season has trapped a failed author (who recently lost his father) with his mother, ex and son. Leave it to director Kore-eda to meticulously dissect their weaknesses, annoying qualities and loving familiarity using drama and humour.

Pounding music; the youngsters sing, smoke weed, have sex and fight. The ragged Star (scintillating debut from Sasha Lane) falls for Jake (Shia LaBeouf) and jumps in his van to travel with him. A depressing look at the American economy, but an optimistic take on the strength of young people. First American production by British director Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank).

Very hard Korean noir, in which it becomes clear that it’s better not to be too squeamish in local politics. A corrupt, populist mayor stops at nothing in his greedy renovation plans, while his accidental sidekick becomes increasingly stuck between the countless conflicting interests and his extremely ill wife.

Success means doing unpleasant things, that’s what David gets to hear when he tries to find his feet in modern day Israel after 27 years in military service. A tense society that focuses on money and status. This forms the starting point for a series of dubious decisions taken by David and his family.

Poet and activist from Myanmar Maung Aung Pwint has spent large swathes of his life in prison. Now the country is free after 50 years of military dictatorship, he reminisces and struggles with painful memories. A poetic, loving documentary about a country reinventing itself.

A man inherits a property from his grandfather and discovers the latter was a crime lord. The late grandfather’s accomplices are not ready to give up the property. A moody, tense mix of Western, thriller and Romanian New Wave.

In the flat Flemish landscape, along a long straight road, is the brothel Le Ciel Flamand, run by Sylvie and her mother. Sylvie’s six-year-old daughter is fascinated by what goes on inside, but is forbidden to enter. One day something terrible happens. In this complex context, Monsaert paints a gripping and layered portrait.

Daphne is 31, too young to settle, too old to live aimlessly. Long nights, drink and a variety of lovers form a welcome distraction from the question: what do I want? An unexpected event forces her slowly but surely to confront her life. A confrontation with herself is inevitable.

Retro gangsters in glitter jackets and bell-bottoms try to stay alive during an arms deal that gets out of hand in a deserted factory. Ben Wheatley’s cool cast finds itself in a classic shoot-out, with well-aimed bullets and one-liners. Who will survive the battle in this bold action film?

Master swindler Count Fujiwara has taken an interest in the family fortune of Lady Hideko. To rob her, he conspires with her new maid Sook-hee. But a blossoming affair between the two women threatens his plans. An opulently styled erotic thriller by Park Chan-wook, set in 1930s South Korea.

This home invasion thriller masquerades as a family drama about gnawing guilt and revenge. A family reluctantly takes in a mysterious man (Asano Tadanobu) who caused an inexplicable tragedy. Eight years later, old wounds are painfully reopened.

"How many more ‘trials’ are there yet to come?!", wonders Mrs Breed desperately after again being reminded that age brings infirmity. From behind the camera, her daughter, Heleen van Royen, can scarcely bear to watch her mother, confused and inhellish pain. How much can she do, as a daughter and unpaid full-time carer?

“I won’t let you write that down”, Jackie says to her interviewer, a slight smile playing across her face, after getting too personal. However, we see it all, in this first English-language film by Chilean master Pablo Larraín, about Jackie Kennedy in the days after JFK’s assassination. The widely lauded Natalie Portman puts in an intense and intimate performance in the title role.

Widely praised Belgian mockumentary and road movie by IFFR regulars Brosens and Woodworth. A Belgian king hears during a state visit to Turkey that Wallonia has become independent. What follows is a hilarious journey by the king and his entourage through the Balkans, reflecting all possible (cultural) clichés.

In the remote hills of Ningxia, old Ma Zishan lives with his family, who are Islamic Hui Chinese. in line with custom, the family want to sacrifice it’s only bull for the ceremony marking the death of Ma's wife. But both Ma and the bull have other ideas in this beautifully made melancholy fable.

Young Katherine is a prisoner in her own home in Northumberland in 1865 and is thoroughly humiliated by her sadistic husband and his authoritarian father. Living in such a loveless world has to lead to excesses in this powerful costume drama. When Katherine embarks on a all-consuming affair with a servant, things really go wrong.

Her father fled Mao's Cultural Revolution, going to Hong Kong. Not long after, he joined the great Chinese exodus to the West and started a restaurant in Maastricht. But was his personal story really so closely interwoven with the history of China, Yan Ting Yuen wonders in this family portrait.

Hermann Ullich died in a bunker in World War II. Or did he? Why do all the dead relatives of the industrialist appear on this winter's night in the huge family home? Agatha Christie would love this Austrian whodunnit, in which skeletons from the nation’s past also come out of the cupboard.

If you look back through someone’s life you’ll encounter someone who is perhaps intrinsically the same in every phase of life, but is in some senses also unrecognisable. That’s why the lead, a school director, is here portrayed by four different actresses using an exciting form of narrative that does entail some risk of disorientation.

Paterson (Adam Driver) gets up at six a.m., drives his bus, comes home to his wife Golshifteh Farahani at six p.m., walks the dog and has a beer at his local bar. Every day. In the meantime, he writes poetry. Jarmusch is the loving observer of this loving observer. A small oasis of a film.

After her much lauded role in Clouds of Sils Maria, Olivier Assayas again casts Kristen Stewart as a celebrity’s assistant. This time, her job is an excuse to live in Paris and engage in a supernatural search for her deceased twin brother. Combined horror, drama and thriller.

Memories are hard to pin down in this hyper-romantic, melancholy ode to love. Actor Anton Yelchin, who died in 2016, and actress and model Lucie Lucas philosophise and make love in picturesque Porto. Featuring delightfully melancholy music. Attentive film-lovers will notice the varied and meaningful use of film formats.

The way to the heart is through the stomach. This particularly true for young veterinary student Justine. After the vegetarian is forced to eat raw rabbit during a student initiation, she develops a worrying lust for meat. Already highly lauded, bloody, stomach-turning horror about physical lust in which humans act like animals.

How it works exactly is hard to say. There’s a meteorite. Véronica is overcome, horror film-style, by extreme lust. And she's not the only one. All this in conservative Guanajuato, with its social nightmares of violence and homophobia: for director Escalante (Heli, 2013), Mexico’s brutal reality is never far away.

One person dies and many lives are affected. Everything is related to everyone. What can be decided? Three storylines (with actors like Bouli Lanners, Tahar Rahim and Emmanuelle Seigner) become increasingly intertwined as the clock ticks and a stopped heart may save an unknown life.

Keenly observed drama about the position of Sami – the Laps – in Sweden in the 1930s. In Sami Blood we see through the eyes of a 14-year-old Sami girl (compellingly played by Lene Cecilia Sparrok) how prejudice and racial stereotypes can be gruesome obstacles. Assured debut by half Sami, half Swedish Kernell.

The films of Cristi Puiu, a leading light of the Romanian New Wave since 2001, mercilessly reflect the mood in his country. The same applies to this chaotic, darkly comic family dinner, as conspiracy theories about the outside world, capricious and derailing mutual conflicts and painful revelations abound.

Poetry from an old IFFR friend. Please note this film has no English subtitles.

Filmmaker Léo has to raise the child he had with a shepherdess alone. At the same time, he struggles to find inspiration for his next film. In this surreal rural comedy, Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake) tackles his favorite subject: how desire pushes our boundaries.

Zombies threaten the passengers on a Korean high-speed train in this highly skilled, terrifying cross between Snowpiercer and 28 Days Later. The train travellers – including a workaholic and his young daughter – try to keep the bloodthirsty zombies at bay, while receiving some salutary lessons in empathy and courage.

Moving, ingenious and musical narrative about life after war. When his band is to perform in Europe, blind Lebanese musician Rabih has to get a passport. This leads to a quest for his roots in a country where the civil war has left a trail of lies and loss. Who is really blind here?

Chandra, a Maoist who fought against the regime in Nepal, receives a welcome that is anything but warm when he returns to his village. The ritual in which his recently deceased father has to be carried down the mountain to be cremated at its base exposes the deep scars left by the civil war.

Old traditions, customs and stories live on in a small shepherd community in the mountains of Afghanistan. The experiences of the village children – their friendships and enmities, work and play – expose the relations within the community. An honest, loving portrait with a hint of mysticism.