Kalank review – an opulent attempt to save the Bollywood melodrama

Abhishek Varman’s spares no expense in this tale of forbidden love – but heavenly visuals are marred by clunky storytelling

Wheely review – shameless Cars rip-off skids along the hard shoulder

This uninspired animation drives in Pixar’s slipstream and holds an ethos dangerously out of step with the times

Cannes film festival 2019: an intriguing lineup, with big-name clout

Asian auteurs bring exciting new work, Céline Sciamma and Mati Diop bring verve to the festival, seasoned directors from Almodóvar to Elia Suleiman add class, and it could all kick off with Maradona

Cannes 2019: new films from Terrence Malick and Ken Loach – but no Tarantino

Lineup includes usual big-name auteurs including Herzog and the Dardennes brothers, but only four films by women in competition

Loro review – Sorrentino steps into Berlusconi’s heart of darkness

Silvio Berlusconi is the role Toni Servillo was born to play – but Paulo Sorrentino’s dreamlike biopic is perhaps too lenient to the grisly plutocrat

Donbass: true lies from the Ukrainian frontline

Sergey Loznitsa’s absurdist satire of the Russian propaganda machine falls foul of a similar selective storytelling, writes former Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker

Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story review – unflinching biopic of a ballet superstar

This energetic account of the life of the electrifying Cuban never shies away from the truth about his tough upbringing

Happy As Lazzaro review – mesmerising magical realism

Alice Rohrwacher’s third film slips across times and genres with a honeyed beauty

Tsai Ming-liang: master of long takes and watermelon sex

This ‘slow cinema’ legend has now abandoned all dialogue. As the UK Taiwan film festival kicks off, he talks about his latest work – about a man with neck pain who owns a fish

Nervous Translation review – child’s-eye view of a perplexing world

In Shireen Seno’s opaque but beautiful drama, an eight-year-old Filipina finds a pen she believes responds to people’s feelings

Happy As Lazzaro review – magic, enigma and a dark journey

Alice Rohrwacher’s enigmatic drama is an unsettling and moving satire about the unquestioning toil of peasants’ lives

‘Greatest of the great’ – Agnès Varda: the eternally youthful soul of world cinema

Arguably the greatest film-maker of the French New Wave, Varda – who has died – continued making her distinctive brand of wise, personal, accessible cinema into her late 80s

Agnès Varda, beloved French New Wave director, dies aged 90

The veteran film-maker, whose Faces Places earned her a best documentary Oscar nomination in 2018, has died

The Crossing review – Bai Xue’s slowburn gem delivers the goods

This feature debut about a schoolgirl coerced into small-time smuggling is all the more powerful for shunning high drama

The Journey review – supreme acting elevates a humane hostage drama

Zahraa Ghandour is mesmerising as a would-be suicide bomber in Mohamed Al-Daradji’s subtly sympathetic ensemble piece