Festival Favourites

Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle play a young, married couple struggling to physically connect in this sensitive adaptation of Ian McEwan’s acclaimed novel.

Harry Dean Stanton gives the performance of a lifetime as an irascible nonagenarian maverick grappling with his mortality.

The exhilarating, no holds-barred story of Mo'Wax records founder James Lavelle, one of the most enigmatic yet influential figures in British music culture.

Lynne Ramsay journeys with Joaquin Phoenix into the mind of an ex-soldier gun-for-hire whose own demons are as brutal as the actions of his adversaries.

The ravishing fourth feature from Andrew Haigh (45 Years, Weekend) sees a boy and a horse embark on a Huckleberry Finn-esque journey across America in search of home.

Being scared has never been this much fun, as Martin Freeman, Andy Nyman and Paul Whitehouse bring the chilling London stage play to the screen.

Maxine Peake plays a woman who rises above abusive relationships and crass sexist audiences of the 1970s to become a female stand-up comedian.

Following some unexpected revelations, a celebration quickly takes a turn for the worse in Sally Potter's razor-sharp comedy.

Sam Claflin, Paul Bettany and Asa Butterfield bring R C Sherriff’s acclaimed First World War play to the screen, in this new adaptation from director Saul Dibb.

The first ever fully painted feature film takes us through the last days of Vincent van Gogh.

Tangerine director Sean Baker presents another visionary take on the wild ups and dangerous downs of life in America’s underbelly, featuring an Oscar-nominated turn from Willem Dafoe.

Julian Barratt is hilarious as the washed-up actor forced to reprise his 80s TV role as a sleuth with a robotic truth-telling eye, to help catch a deranged killer.

Annette Bening and Jamie Bell bring to life the true story of the love affair between Gloria Grahame and young, Liverpudlian actor Peter Turner.

Gemma Arterton sparkles in this witty drama set in the world of propaganda filmmaking during WWII, from director Lone Scherfig (The Riot Club, An Education).

Cate Blanchett gives a tour-de-force performance in this kaleidoscopic trip through the art manifestos of the 20th century.

Winner of the 2017 Oscar for Best Picture (eventually!), Barry Jenkins’ intoxicating drama follows the furtive life of a gay black boy through 80s Miami.

Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams shine in this devastating, Oscar-winning drama from Kenneth Lonergan about a man’s painful hometown return.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone channel old-school Hollywood glamour in this bright and playful romantic musical from director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash).

A lonely prankster upends the life of his high-powered daughter in a riotous comedy, deep and sharp.

JA Bayona's visually inventive and deeply moving story about a boy who draws on his expansive imagination to come to terms with impending loss, adapted from Patrick Ness’ hugely popular book.

Amma Assante (Belle) directs this impassioned drama starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike depicting an interracial romance that changed the world.

Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner star as the humans who make first contact with extra-terrestrial visitors in this richly textured sci-fi from director Denis Villeneuve.

Legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog explores the past, present and future of the Internet in this extraordinary documentary.

A punk band becomes besieged in the backstage hideaway of a hideous neo-Nazi club, in this gloriously tense shocker from the director of Blue Ruin.

Louis Theroux investigates the secretive world of the Church of Scientology, armed with his characteristic deadpan wit.

Athina Rachel Tsangari's biting and hilarious dissection of the male ego was awarded Best Film at the 2015 BFI London Film Festival.

Adam Driver excels in this effortlessly charming tale of a bus driver poet in New Jersey, filmed with typically groovy elan by Jim Jarmusch.

Terence Davies' elegant and deeply moving biopic of poet Emily Dickinson, played with sensitivity and rebellious spirit by Cynthia Nixon.

Isabelle Huppert gives an unforgettable performance in Paul Verhoeven’s provocative thriller about one woman’s response to a violent attack.

Brendan Gleeson and Michael Fassbender are the father and son outlaws in this exhilarating crime drama with a Chemical Brothers soundtrack.

Ben Wheatley’s (High-Rise, Sightseers) all-guns-blazing bullet opera, starring Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy and Armie Hammer.

Gael García Bernal stars in Jonás Cuarón's edge-of-the-seat thriller set on the Mexican/American border.

Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Argo) gives a cracking performance as Dalton Trumbo, the Oscar-winning screenwriter who became a Hollywood outcast.

Michael Caine scintillates as a curmudgeonly composer in Paolo Sorrentino’s deliciously bittersweet drama.

Russell Tovey stars as a Premier League footballer who shares a fumbled pass (of the sexual kind) with a teammate (Arinzé Kene), changing everything - both on and off the pitch.

Spike Lee’s bold and vivacious hip-hop musical restages an ancient Greek battle-of-the-sexes in 21st-century Chicago.

Seismic rumblings in the Norwegian fjords threaten to start a chain reaction that will destroy the local area. Can it be stopped in time?

Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s mesmerising, visually stunning tale of love and honour was Sight and Sound magazine’s best film of 2015.

Ralph Fiennes delivers a sensational performance as one of four passionate souls sharing a villa in the Sicilian sunshine, with jealousy, intrigue and violence simmering beneath the surface.

Jacques Audiard’s soul-stirring Palme d’Or winner tells of a veteran Tamil Tiger guerrilla who finds fresh violence in his new life in Paris.

Brie Larson’s Oscar-winning performance is the beating heart of Lenny Abrahamson’s extraordinarily moving drama.

Ben Wheatley's savage and brilliant adaptation of JG Ballard's dystopian satire, starring Tom Hiddleston.

Pablo Larraín’s Berlin prize-winner is a typically stylish, darkly witty tale of corruption, concealment and conspiracy in Chile’s Catholic church.

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara illuminate Todd Haynes’ intoxicating adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s beloved novel.

The Moomins sample the delights of high society with a Riviera holiday, bringing mayhem with them.

The time is now for factory worker Maud (Carey Mulligan) as she joins the campaign movement for women’s votes, in Sarah Gavron’s stirring social history.

Ben Foster is Lance Armstrong in this kinetic account of the cyclist who fell from grace, from acclaimed director Stephen Frears.

Colin Farrell, Ben Whishaw and Rachel Weisz star in this bleakly hilarious dystopian drama from Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth).

Alicia Vikander brings to life the extraordinary life of Vera Brittain, whose affair with a dashing friend (Kit Harington) is cruelly cut short by the onset of war.

Saoirse Ronan shines as a woman who journeys from post-war small-town Ireland to New York, in Nick Hornby’s adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s best-selling novel.

As typhoons buffet Tokyo, Hirokazu Koreeda examines a broken family and the father’s dogged attempts to glue it back together.

Pablo Larraín's bold, inventive detective thriller offers an electrifying contemplation of the Chilean poet's life on the run in the late 1940s.

Jia Zhangke delivers another ambitious, astute and humane drama, spanning the early days of Chinese capitalism to a vision of 2025.

In the tough suburbs of Paris, sixteen-year-old Marieme decides to reinvent herself when she joins a girl gang.

Agyness Deyn stars in Terence Davies’ moving drama about a strong young woman facing many adversities in the run up to WWI.

Tomm Moore’s Oscar-nominated animation follows the magical journey of Ben and his sister Saoirse, the last Seal-child.

Naomi Kawase’s visually ravishing, beautifully composed film tells the story of two youths growing up and falling in love on a Japanese island.

Nina Hoss is superb as concentration camp survivor who assumes a new identity, in Christian Petzold’s intricate post-WWII thriller.

If you only see one Iranian vampire western this year, make sure it’s this one. A female vampire stalks a ghost town in Ana Lily Amirpour’s arresting debut.

Winner of the 2014 Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, a bold and visceral tale of canine uprising.

Ira Sachs’s refined Manhattan-set drama sees Alfred Molina’s Ben and John Lithgow’s George in the latter days of a tender, loving 39-year relationship.

Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in this adaptation of Claire Tomalin’s book about the long-standing affair between Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan.

A documentary love letter to the golden of exploitation cinema and the output of Cannon Films, the cut-price studio that challenged Hollywood.

With stylish and charged intensity, Xavier Dolan charts the fractious relationship between an uncontrollable teen and his fun-loving mother.

Wong Kar-Wai’s lavish martial arts biopic tells the story of Ip Man, the legendary trainer who became Bruce Lee’s mentor.

John Boorman’s follow up to Hope and Glory finds 18-year-old Bill called up for National Service against the backdrop of the Korean War.

An essential and explosive documentary about the Ukrainian civil riots and protest movement, from the acclaimed director of In the Fog.

Mike Leigh’s Cannes-winning account of the later years of J. M. W. Turner, brilliantly played by Timothy Spall.

The inner workings of London’s National Gallery are laid bare in this absorbing, forensic examination by revered filmmaker Frederick Wiseman.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s roundly acclaimed performance anchors the incredible, Oscar-winning story of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Set in a Deep South delta, Zeitlin’s feature debut takes a child’s eye view of poverty, adult apathy and ecological crisis. Hallucinatory fare

Cristian Mungiu's scarily plausible drama about a nun's friend suffering for her love in a nunnery; obsession and superstition wreak havoc.

The epic, passionate and strikingly naturalistic Palme d'Or-winning romance.

A portrait of the beloved British artist, drawing on his own home-movie footage and with revealing contributions from his friends and colleagues.

Northern Ireland, 1981. In the Maze prison, Bobby Sands begins a hunger strike to reclaim the status of Republican inmates as political prisoners.

Jean-Luc Godard’s typically innovative and playful meditation on technology, love and language was acclaimed one of the best films of 2014.

The Dardennes' powerful, award-winning drama tells of a troubled and volatile young teenager abandoned by his dad and 'adopted' by a hairdresser

An illuminating documentary about American cinema’s maverick genius Robert Altman, featuring unseen home movies and extensive interviews.

Richard Ayoade’s stylish and sinister adaptation of Dostoevsky’s story stars Jesse Eisenberg in a dual-role as a timid office clerk confronted by his confident, scheming doppelganger.

Abbas Kiarostami’s excursion into Japanese filmmaking is a masterly study of duplicity and role play centred around a student and her double life as an escort.

Two Yorkshire tearaways struggle with life and friendship in this challenging, compassionate growing-up tale by the director of The Arbor.

Rust and Bone is as punchy and abrasive as its title suggests – but intensely moving and surprisingly poetic too.

Dark psychosexual thriller from prodigious Canadian director Xavier Dolan, following a young man who finds himself embroiled in a dangerous game of deception.

Tragedy befalls a young Indian woman when she falls in love with a rich British man in Michael Winterbottom's sharp Thomas Hardy update.

A raucous coming-of-age comedy about three schoolgirls who form a punk band in 1982 Stockholm, from director Lukas Moodysson (Show Me Love).

Tilda Swinton gives a BAFTA-nominated performance as the mother of a teenager who commits a high school massacre. With Ezra Miller and John C. Reilly.

The Coen brothers’ funny, melancholic elegy to early 1960s folk music follows a struggling songwriter through a winter’s worth of misdeeds, mishaps and lost cats.

Two of the planet’s biggest stars – Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence – align in this extravagant period drama set in depression-era America.

Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Anthony Hopkins lead an ensemble cast in a sleek thriller exploring the way our lives interconnect across the world.

Mia Wasikowska stars in this inspirational true story about one woman’s extraordinary odyssey through the Australian Outback.

Peter Mullan's forceful drama about a boy who becomes embroiled in gangland life in 1970s Glasgow, peppered throughout with a rich vein of black humour.

Danny Boyle’s crowdpleaser, based around the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, won the Oscar for best picture.

Pip, a poor blacksmith's apprentice, becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor. A BAFTA-nominated telling of the Dickens' classic.

Francois Ozon’s sly and seductive account of teenage girl’s dalliance with high-class prostitution.

The winner of Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 Academy Awards is a rich and intriguing political mystery.

Three anti-capitalist activists kidnap a wealthy businessman, only to be confounded when he declares his own radical past.

Jessica Biel plays the brash American fiancée who disrupts an upper-class family in this delightful Downton Abbey-esque tale of high-society hijinks.

Mike Leigh's drama about contented couple (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) who play host to various friends, each struggling to find happiness.