Hysterical, evergreen, screwball comedy. Two struggling musicians witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and are on the run from the mob. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis have to cross-dress and join an all-female band in order to make their escape. In addition to hiding, each has his own problems: one falls for band singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) but can’t divulge his gender to her, and the other has a rich suitor who will not take “No” for an answer.  It was said to be “morally objectionable” by the Roman Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency, which makes it a winner in our book.

Zama, an officer of the Spanish Crown born in South America, waits for a letter from the King granting him a transfer from the town in which he is stagnating, to a better place. His situation is delicate. He must ensure that nothing overshadows his transfer. He is forced to accept submissively every task entrusted to him by successive Governors who come and go while he stays behind. The years go by and the letter from the King never arrives. When Zama realises that everything is lost, he joins a party of soldiers that pursues a dangerous bandit who has troubled the area for many years.

When his only friend dies, Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) moves to an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey, to live the life of a hermit. His attempt at solitude is soon interrupted, however, by interactions with his neighbours, including Olivia (Patricia Clarkson), a struggling artist coping with the recent death of her young son, and Joe (Bobby Cannavale), a thirty-year-old with a talent for cooking and an insatiable hunger for conversation – whether anyone wants to talk to him or not.

Initially set in the Jianghu criminal underworld, the film is less a gangster movie than a melodrama. With a three-part structure, it begins by following the quick-witted Qiao (Zhao Tao) and her mobster boyfriend Bin (Liao Fan) as they stake out their turf against rivals and upstarts in 2001 post-industrial Datong before expanding out into an epic narrative of how abstract forces shape individual lives, and continues Jia Zhangke’s body of work as a record of 21st-century China and its warp-speed transformations. It was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

Set in a small African village, four young girls who face a ritual “purification” flee to the household of Colle’ Ardo Gallo Sy, a strong-willed woman who has managed to shield her own teenage daughter from mutilation. Colle’ invokes the time-honoured custom of moolaadé (sanctuary) to protect the fugitives. Tension mounts as the ensuing stand-off pits Colle’ against a village traditionalists (both male and female) and endangers the prospective marriage of her daughter to the heir-apparent to the tribal throne.

Casey lives with her mother, a recovering addict, in a little-known Midwestern town. Jin, a visitor from the other side of the world, attends to his estranged, dying father. Burdened by the future, they find respite in one another and the modernist buildings that surround them. Beautifully filmed on location in Columbus, Indiana, this tender meditation on love, loss and architecture is the directorial feature debut for South Korean writer / director Kogonada.

Possibly Ingmar Bergman’s greatest film, this profound character study chronicles an automobile trip taken by an elderly medical professor to accept an honorary degree. Incidents and conversations occurring during the journey are intermixed with dreams and memories as the old man comes to terms with the life he has lived. The film was strongly referenced by Woody Allen when he made Deconstructing Harry.

Kalahari bushman Xi (played by genuine bushman N!xau) is as surprised as the rest of his tribe when a Coke bottle, thrown from a passing plane, lands in the middle of their village. This “gift from the gods” proves to be a mixed blessing when the tribesmen fight over it and eventually use it for a weapon. To keep peace in the village, Xi is assigned to take the bottle to “the end of the earth” and throw it back to the gods. Meanwhile, back in urbanised South Africa, Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo) leaves her office job in the city to take a job teaching Kalahari children. Once in the wilderness, she finds herself constantly bumping into clumsy microbiologist Andrew Steyn (Marius Weyers). Originally slated for limited domestic distribution in 1982, The Gods Must Be Crazy was picked up for American consumption by 20th Century-Fox in 1984. Within a few weeks, ‘word of mouth’ transformed it into the biggest foreign box office hit ever released in the U.S.

In a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee, a six-year-old girl exists on the brink of orphanhood. Buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural world is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm changes her reality. Desperate to repair the structure of her world in order to save her ailing father and sinking home, this tiny hero must learn to survive unstoppable catastrophes of epic proportions.

Uncle Boonmee (Who Can Recall His Past Lives) centres on the last days in the life of its title character. Together with his loved ones – including the spirit of his dead wife and his lost son who has returned as a forest spirit – Boonmee explores his previous lives as he contemplates the reasons for his illness, on a rural northern Thailand farm. Languorous and deeply enigmatic, Uncle Boonmee represents an original take on the ghosts that haunt us.