Western review – pastoral culture clash makes for year’s best film
Valeska Grisebach’s striking drama – about foreign construction workers angling for trouble in rural Bulgaria – constantly subverts genre expectations
From Nosferatu to The General – why the 1920s is my favourite film decade
Chaplin and Keaton made millions laugh, but silent cinema’s greatest classics were the fruit of wild European fancy … and then Hollywood invented the talkies
Cake review – Karachi sister act ditches melodrama for real life
Asim Abbasi’s assured debut about a pair of siblings reunited around their father’s sickbed is richly realised
From The Naked City to Double Indemnity – why the 1940s is my favourite film decade
War changed everything, destroying whole film industries and heralding a new era of realism, grit and shoots on location
Have a Nice Day review – unsparing portrait of post-communist society
Dark comedy meets violence in this Chinese animation about a ragbag of characters linked by a stolen bag of cash
Have a Nice Day review – elegantly animated gangster lowlife
Telling detail and offbeat humour abound in Liu Jian’s wittily drawn, Tarantino-esque flick
I Got Life! review – French heart-warmer explores a mother’s lot
A thread of optimism runs through this comedy starring Agnès Jaoui, in which the travails of Aurore resolve somewhat predictably
Sajjan Singh Rangroot review – Sikh first world war drama has mud and guts
A commemoration of British Indian army soldiers directed by Pankaj Batra is solid if undemanding viewing
My Golden Days review – rich, fluent exploration of student love
Arnaud Desplechin’s film about the unbearably sweet nature of remembered youth only now finds a UK release
The Divine Order review – Swiss suffragettes on the march in feelgood comedy
The humour may be broad, but there’s no denying the power of this story in which a housewife finds liberation in 1970s Switzerland
A Fantastic Woman wins best foreign language film at Oscars 2018
The Chilean drama, featuring transgender actor Daniela Vega, prevailed at the Academy Awards over Swedish entry The Square and Russian drama Loveless
The Nile Hilton Incident review – satirical, Cairo-set noir thriller
Inspired by the real-life murder of an Egyptian singer, Tarik Saleh’s drama is also an anatomy of the corruption that led to the Tahrir Square uprising
A Fantastic Woman review – sublime study of love, loss and the trans experience
Daniela Vega is wonderful as a young trans woman whose life is turned upside down when her older cis lover dies in ambiguous circumstances
In the Aisles review – Toni Erdmann star graces engrossing workplace drama
Sandra Hüller shines in an intriguing fable about a giant supermarket, in which she plays a sweet counter manager with a fondness for a forklift driver
Mug review – metalhead meets giant Jesus in peculiar Polish comedy
A hard-rocking Polish builder is injured while working on a towering statue of Christ in a scabrous and strangely affecting drama