Life’s natural humour and the most profound thoughts and feelings captured in small, still moments and quiet exchanges are hallmarks of director Kore-eda Hirokazu, deftly shown in this story of a divorced father, scraping by as a private detective, who ends up stuck at his mother’s house along with his son and ex-wife as they sit out a typhoon.
A beautifully woven and uplifting tapestry of wonderful absurdist humour alongside heartache and loss, this is the fish-out-of-water story of Syrian musician Omar and three other asylum-seekers marking time on a remote Scottish island while their applications are assessed.
Based on the true story of how gay activists ended up supporting striking Welsh coal miners in 1984, it will make you laugh a lot, and likely shed a tear too. The stacked cast includes Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, and Andrew Scott.
Beautiful, universally relatable capturing of hopes, dreams, love found and love lost through the lives of nurses who have come from small towns to Mumbai, where privacy is a luxury and loneliness is found throughout.
On a WA wheat farm in 1968, Ed (Xavier Samuel) and Paddy (Clarence Ryan) are best mates despite steep social inequalities, but new laws change their world. Roger Mason’s dreamlike score complements visuals that pay homage to Terrence Malick.
At first this seems like a straightforward Nat Geo-style portrait of endearing census-taker Amber, asking people about their happiness in Bhutan, famed for its Gross National Happiness. But the filmmakers have tapped into something much deeper and more affecting.
This based-on-a-true-story Mexican drama, about an unorthodox teacher who joins a school in a dangerous, impoverished town and refuses to accept that its kids have no futures, hits all the familiar notes of the genre — and is no less powerful for doing so.
