Germany

Art, fun, folly, fairytales, folkstories and more feature in this collection of animation for ages four to seven.

Carlos Reygadas’ spectacularly grandiose follow-up to the startling Japón turns the struggle for the soul of its protagonist into an epic art-porn critique on the role of religion in Mexican life.

Filmmakers survey Beijings’s surprising underground punk rock scene in a celebration of gutter trash wannabes, throat-singing rockers and all-girl expletive-ridden riff magnets.

Director of Oscar-nominated The Story of the Weeping Camel follows up with an enchanting fable woven from the real lives of a nomad family on Mongolia’s grassy plains.

Norwegian director of Kitchen Stories gives a lovely doleful glow to beat poet Charles Bukowski’s autobiographical account of his early life as a low-life slob. Starring Matt Dillon.

A 14-year-old boy adjusts to the horrors of life in a Nazi death camp. “The eerie beauty of Lajos Koltai’s child’s-eye view of the Holocaust as it sank its teeth into Hungary in 1944 is profound." — The Times

A return visit from Thomas Köner, who accompanies his haunting video-cycle images of becalmed suburbia with a live music mix.

A young Indian doctor immigrates to England in 1965, leaving behind his distraught family. Forty years later, his daughter tells their moving story, using period Super-8 footage.

German documentary about Roman Catholic monks who barely utter a word runs to 162 engrossing, entrancing, enlivening minutes. “A masterful object of contemplation.” — Slant Magazine

The simplest love story on earth, about a man truly in love with two women, becomes a wonderfully lucid mix of vérité and eternity, a radiant little masterpiece set in small hamlet near Berlin.

Experimental feature by acclaimed German film alchemist who draws spectacular effects from decaying film stock. “One does not so much watch a Jürgen Reble film as become immersed in it.” — senses of cinema

In this true story a deeply religious and troubled young woman believes her epilepsy is a sign of saintly suffering and the Church sanctions exorcism. Electrifying main performance won Best Actress at Berlin.

Documentary portrait of a small Kyrgyz mountain village makes for a comedy as politically acute and socially affectionate as those emanating from the Czech new wave in the late 60s.

The amazingly true romantic adventure of a Swiss woman who marries a Massai warrior and lives with him in his mud hut in the Kenyan bush.

Werner Herzog fashions a sci-fi fantasy of paradise lost around actor Brad Dourif, recutting amazing NASA footage and gorgeous submarine imagery. An unclassifiable oddity.

British social realist Ken Loach picked up the Cannes Palme d’Or for this provocative drama set in County Cork between 1920 and 1922, a dangerous period before the outbreak of civil war in Ireland. “Staggeringly powerful… The Wind That Shakes the Barley had more to say about the world of today than any other film screening in Cannes.” — Scott Foundas, LA Weekly

The world’s most horrible, life-endangering jobs are the subject of Austrian Michael Glawogger’s superbly cinematic, confrontingly aestheticised documentary.