Based on a graphic novel, this dazzling sapphic fable is a whimsical ode to the power of storytelling.

A hand-drawn wonder brimming with imagination and warmth, Arco is the kind of film that reminds you of the joy of discovery.

A ferocious Javier Bardem performance headlines Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s tense and unsettling family filmmaking drama, about the fraught relationship between a controversial filmmaker and his estranged actress daughter.

Premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Paloma Schneideman’s coming-of-age debut launches our festival with a tender portrait of 14-year-old Sid, as she tentatively traverses insecurity, identity and desire during the summer of 2006.

An intricate nesting doll structure provides Spain’s most iconic auteur a lens with which to reflect on his own creative foibles, in frequently scathing terms, in this lacerating self-portrait.

A queer epic spanning 85 years of Spanish history, inspired by an unfinished work by poet Federico García Lorca and brought to the screen with breathtaking ambition — The Black Ball left Cannes audiences on their feet for 16 minutes, and it's easy to understand why.

An intimate and warm story of a life entwined with a deep-rooted sense of belonging, and the inconvenience of aging in a world that continues to move at pace.

Drunk actors, cursed props, clashing egos and a Macbeth that refuses to come together… a gloriously chaotic love letter to theatre and everyone mad enough to make it.

A tender love story set against the most desolate backdrop imaginable, Coward is an inspirational tale about choosing one's own fate, against all odds.

After a seven year hiatus, Gus Van Sant is back behind the camera with this star-studded true-crime thriller, earning an 11-minute standing ovation after its premiere in Venice.

Indie cinema’s long-time King of Cool Jim Jarmusch finds mystery and melancholy alike in this triptych of family short stories, each grappling with the weight of shared history.

A pristine masterpiece from Polish Academy Award winner Paweł Pawlikowski, reflecting on history and its shadows on the present, as well as on the undying bond of family ties.

A divisive talking point at Cannes even before it took its top award, Cristian Mungiu’s story of a conservative immigrant family under institutional suspicion is a barbed interrogation of liberal Nordic attitudes.

As a young boy searches for answers, he is aided by an unlikely individual in this modest and affectionate take on an intergenerational friendship, combining droll humour and neorealism.

40 years ago, New Zealand’s most loved cartoon strip was adapted into our first-ever animated feature and the result broke the box office and captured the hearts of a far more innocent nation.

High priest of American buffoonery David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) returns with his latest irresistibly silly slice of nonsense, a Wizard of Oz-aping Hollywood odyssey about a small-town girl with a very particular mission.

A bullied 14-year-old sends farewell letters to his classmates and vanishes, but when a girl from his school spots him wandering the streets at night, the two begin to build a fragile, secret world of their own.

Beyond the confines of a factory farm, a heroic hen finds a new lease on life in a crumbling restaurant's courtyard. Feathers are ruffled and jokes are cracked in this egg-cellent adventure.

ohn Wilson gives his inimitably magpie-ish style of documentary-making the big screen treatment in this endlessly digressive investigation into a hilariously mundane topic.

Provocative and horny as ever, New Queer Cinema icon Gregg Araki’s first film in over a decade is a riotous antidote to the Gen Z sex recession.

A filmmaker balances her outspoken father and a boundary-pushing teenager while working on her latest screenplay that only she believes in, in Sophie Hyde's heartfelt, queer family drama.

Gerd Pohlmann offers a timely doc tribute to politician Jim Anderton as a long-haul fighter for Labour’s welfare-based values, against a wave of neoliberal deregulation that fundamentally changed New Zealand politics.

Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee bring heart and realness to this wistful, unromantic comedy about the fragility of creative ambition and a bygone, bohemian New York lost to a consumerist era of gentrification and influencers.

Amélie loves exploring everything her world has to offer, guided by her friend, Nishio-san, but everything changes when, on her third birthday, an event changes the course of her life forever.

Rugby's first global superstar was also one of its most private — a shy, gentle giant caught between two worlds, whose story mirrors Aotearoa's own coming of age.

A classic French psychosexual thriller about infidelity is expertly reimagined within a modern Russia of citizens feeding an inhuman war machine, in director-in-exile Andrei Zvyagintsev’s taut, chilling Cannes winner.

Dunedin’s Robert Sarkies ventured into weightier territory after Scarfies, reckoning with a defining tragedy of gun violence that rocked Aotearoa’s sense of security in his chilling but sensitively measured sophomore feature.

A heartrending, austere portrait of a physically and spiritually scarred woman returning to her postwar hometown in the 1600s, posing as a male soldier.

Sci-fi strangeness meets working-class struggle in Cornish director Mark Jenkin’s haunting vision, meticulously crafted with analogue methods, of a fishing boat lost decades ago that claims a new crew from the present.

Kore-eda's nuanced exploration of how grief manifests is distinctly Japanese yet universally resonant, in this empathetic consideration of how technology may serve as a vehicle for healing.

Coming off a win for Best Film at the San Sebastián Film Festival, Sundays is a coming-of-age drama with the fragility of family and faith at its forefront.

As a maven of pop-culture detritus, American director Jane Schoenbrun’s campground of twisted delights is a heady, horny headtrip of the highest order.

As Iceland's ancient glaciers start to vanish, one family's extensive archive becomes a portrait of a disappearing landscape through the passage of a century.

With the last words of a five-year-old girl, Kaouther Ben Hania's devastating documentary puts a single, unbearable human story at the heart of an ongoing catastrophe.

Blending stunning wildlife footage with generational storytelling, Whispers in the Woods invites the audience to be immersed in an untouched world shrouded in mist, where nature reigns supreme.

The competitive world of musical whistling takes centre stage in this humorous documentary that showcases the weird and wonderful lives that have devoted themselves to the art.

Actors Jude Law and Paul Dano star as Putin and his propagandist in an epic political thriller by Olivier Assayas, that shows how brutal repression in Russia is puppet-mastered behind a veil of manufactured illusion.

A celebrated Turkish theatre couple are suddenly targeted by the state and stripped of their livelihoods, leading to their marriage, their ideals and their sense of self being pushed to breaking point. Winner of the Golden Bear (the Berlin Film Festival's top prize), this is a riveting and urgently relevant political drama.