Western Australia, 1931. On the edge of the Gibson Desert, a rabbit-proof fence bisects Australia from north to south. The fence was built to keep rabbits on one side and pasture on the other. This remote country is home to three spirited Aboriginal girls, Molly, her sister Daisy, and their cousin Gracie. The girls’ white fathers are fence workers who have moved on. Now their only contact with white Australia is the weekly ration day.

In Perth, AO Neville (Kenneth Branagh), the area’s Chief Protector of Aborigines, receives word that the three girls are running wild and orders the removal of Molly, Gracie and Daisy to a grim settlement 1,200 miles from home. The harsh conditions under which they must live shock Molly, and she convinces Daisy and Gracie to run away with her. They begin a grueling three-month journey home, following the rabbit-proof fence that will guide them back to their mother and their rightful home.

Dora is a former school teacher who makes a living by writing letters for illiterate people passing through Rio de Janeiro’s Central Station. Among her clients are Ana and her nine-year-old son Josué, who has a fierce desire to meet his father, whom he has never seen. Dora has become stoically indifferent to her charge, choosing arbitrarily to send some letters and discard others. A sudden accident leaves Josué orphaned at the station and this is when Dora’s life begins to change dramatically. Swayed by a curiously maternal compassion, Dora commits to returning Josué to his father in Brazil’s remote Northeast.

Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) is an aging child star left to care for her wheelchair-bound sister Blanche (Joan Crawford), also a former child actress. Stuck living together in a mansion in old Hollywood, Blanche plots to get even with Jane for the car crash that left her crippled years earlier. But Jane is desperate to keep Blanche imprisoned as she plans a new rise to fame, and tries to hide Blanche’s existence from doctors, visitors and neighbours while she devises a way to get rid of her sister. The intensely bitter Hollywood rivalry between the film’s two stars, Davis and Crawford, was heavily important to the film’s initial success and which, in part, led to the revitalisation of the then-waning careers of the two stars. In the years after release, critics continue to acclaim the film for its psychologically driven black comedy and creation of the “psycho-biddy” subgenre.

Since her teenage years, Ah Tao has worked as a servant for the Leung family. Now, after 60 years of service, she is still looking after Roger, the only member of the family still resident in Hong Kong. One day Roger returns home from work to find that Ah Tao has suffered a stroke. He rushes her to hospital where she announces that she wants to move permanently into a nursing home. Increasingly, giving more and more time and attention to Ah Tao’s needs, Roger comes to realise how much she means to him.

Marina and Orlando are in love and planning for the future. Marina is a young waitress and aspiring singer. Orlando is 30 years older than her, and owns a printing company. After celebrating Marina’s birthday one evening, Orlando falls seriously ill. Marina rushes him to the emergency room, but he passes away just after arriving at the hospital. Instead of being able to mourn her lover, suddenly Marina is treated with suspicion. The doctors and Orlando’s family don’t trust her. A detective investigates Marina to see if she was involved in his death. Orlando’s ex-wife forbids her from attending the funeral and, to make matters worse, Orlando’s son threatens to throw Marina out of the flat she shared with Orlando. Marina is a trans woman and, for most of Orlando’s family, her gender identity is an aberration, a perversion. So Marina struggles for the right to be herself. She battles the very same forces that she has spent a lifetime fighting just to become what she is now – a complex, strong, forthright and fantastic woman.

Frances (Greta Gerwig) lives in New York, but she doesn’t really have an apartment. Frances is an apprentice for a dance company, but she’s not really a dancer. Frances has a best friend named Sophie, but they aren’t really speaking anymore. Frances throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as their possible reality dwindles. Frances wants so much more than she has but lives her life with unaccountable joy and lightness. Frances Ha is a modern comic fable that explores New York, friendship, class, ambition, failure and redemption.

Sonia Kronlund’s engaging documentary focuses on the indomitable Salim Shaheen, who has relentlessly made more than 100 films in war-torn Afghanistan over thirty years. He is the prince of an industry he calls “Nothingwood” – a Hollywood that must make do with nothing at all. His movies have stayed popular even, according to rumour, with Taliban and Islamic State fighters, for whom they were presumably the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

The phrase ‘national treasure’ is, inevitably, an overused one. But Mike Leigh, arguably Britain’s most consistently strong film director of the past 20 years, surely warrants the tag. Another Year is a touching story which follows happily-married couple Tom and Gerri and their friends and family over four seasons. Featuring love and warmth, joy and sadness, hope and despair, companionship and loneliness, a birth and a death …

One of Mike Leigh’s best films featuring his regular associates Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen and Imelda Staunton.

Focussing on life among the Haredi Jewish community in Tel Aviv, Israel. Hadas Yaron stars as Shira Mendelman, an 18-year-old girl who is pressured to marry her older sister’s husband following the death of her sister in childbirth. Graceful, complex and beautifully layered, Fill the Void offers a sympathetic portrait of an insulated culture by exploring universal themes. Several critics have compared the female characters to those in Jane Austen’s novels.

Raised on hip-hop and foster care, defiant city kid Ricky gets a fresh start in the New Zealand countryside. He quickly finds himself at home with his new foster family: the loving Aunt Bella, the cantankerous Uncle Hector (Sam Neill) and dog Tupac. When a tragedy strikes that threatens to ship Ricky to another home, both he and Uncle Hector go on the run in the bush. As a national manhunt ensues, the newly-branded outlaws must face their options: go out in a blaze of glory or overcome their differences and survive as a family.