My favourite film aged 12: Diva
The stylish French thriller was less of an art film than it looked, but I was hooked by its mix of operatic Parisian settings, elegant menace and moped daredevilry
Take Me Somewhere Nice review – a sultry Bosnian road trip
A bored Dutch teenager searches for identity in her father’s Balkan homeland in writer-director Ena Sendijarević’s stylish feature debut
‘They’re behaving as capitalists’: the film inspired by Iceland’s farming stranglehold
His wry parable Rams won acclaim at Cannes, but for his new film The County, Grímur Hákonarson delves into a shady world of farming co-operatives
The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice review – Ozu’s bittersweet triumph
This portrait of married middle age is deliciously flavoured with mystery and melancholy
The County review – a fierce fight for justice in the Icelandic highlands
A principled woman is rejuvenated by her battle against corruption in Grímur Hákonarson’s stirring drama
Take Me Somewhere Nice review – quirky arthouse road movie
A teenager travels from the Netherlands to Bosnia to meet her father for the first and last time in an amusing, diverting drama
Michel Piccoli: a fierce, strong performer who became the object of cinephile fan-worship
From Godard’s Le Mépris to Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope, Piccoli’s prolific career saw him evolve into a legend of European cinema
Michel Piccoli, renowned French acting veteran, dies aged 94
Actor best known for his collaborations with Luis Bunuel and other major directors was a stalwart of French art cinema
The Orphanage – gritty Afghan drama laced with Bollywood magic
A young boy copes with harsh life in 80s Afghanistan via the joy of cinema in this affecting tale
The Orphanage review – terrific tale of an Afghan teen in trouble
In Shahrbanoo Sadat’s energetic and captivating drama, a movie-mad boy is forced to live in a Soviet-run orphanage during the 1981 occupation
The best films of 2020 so far
Adam Sandler is a gem of jewellery dealer, Dev Patel is inspired casting as David Copperfield, while Keira Knightley disrupts the 1970 Miss World contest in these top picks – listed in date order – from the UK release schedule this year
Sing like a canary! The whistling consultant who taught Romanian noir gangsters a tune
For his latest drama, Corneliu Porumboiu revived a language unique to the valleys of La Gomera in the Canary Islands; a steep learning curve for his actors – and our writer
Sleazy bosses, exploited barmaids: US cinema finally discovers the left behinds
From The Assistant to Support the Girls, American cinema is swapping feelgood escapism for gritty unsettling realism. We talk to the women spearheading this new wave
I’ve never seen … Solaris
Tarkovsky’s mysterious epic – a response to the ‘phoniness’ of 2001: A Space Odyssey – draws you into its melancholic dreamworld superbly
DAU. Degeneration review – shocking, six-hour satire of Soviet science
This monumental drama, shot in a replica of Moscow’s real-life Institute of Physical Problems, is an arthouse freakout