Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler

Kenneth Lonergan's beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama about how a death in the family forces a small-town New Englander to confront a past tragedy anew. Scratching out a living as a handyman in Boston, Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is suddenly called back to his home town on the Massachusetts coast because of the death of his brother (Kyle Chandler). This loss returns him to the scene of an even greater grief, threatening to tip him over the edge for good.

“Masterfully told and beautifully acted, Manchester by the Sea is a shattering yet graceful elegy of loss and grief.” (Phil De Semlyen - Empire)

Director: Chan-wook Park
Cast: Min-hee Kim, Jung-woo Ha, Jin-woong Jo

This brilliant adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel “Fingersmith” is a beautifully filmed erotic drama of passion and betrayal set in 1930’s Japan and Korea.

It is the story of a beautiful young Japanese lady living on an isolated estate with her eccentric guardian. A young Korean woman is hired to serve her as her handmaiden but she is in fact a part of a confidence trick to defraud her of her large inheritance. The twist at the end is both surprising and satisfying.

“A complex and wonderfully decadent erotic melodrama” (Geoffrey McNab – The Independent)

Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Ville Virtanen, Sherwan Haji, Kati Outinen

This cuttingly poignant comedy, begins with a young Syrian asylum seeker emerging from a coal pile in Helsinki’s industrial port. Khaled (Sherwan Haji) has wound up here by accident, after escaping violent persecution by jumping aboard a freighter in Eastern Europe. Khaled, wanting to do things by the book, hands himself in as an illegal migrant, he checks in to a Reception Centre and is grilled about his journey to Finland from the rubble of Aleppo. Kaurismäki manages to bring a smile back to our faces, let alone the torrents of laughter, later on, that his film manages to unleash.

“Aki Kaurismaki’s tale ... mines the deadpan humour he’s famous for while refusing to flinch from heartbreak and hardship.” (The Guardian)

Director: Roy Andersson
Cast: Holger Andersson, Nils Westblom, Viktor Gyllenberg

The pigeon in question is dead. It is in the first scene of this remarkable film sitting stuffed on a branch in a glass case

The film revolves loosely around two desolate figures trying to sell joke shop novelties, without much success.

It is entirely unique but could be described as an absurdist black comedy. It consists of a series of dreamlike episodes each depicting aspects of the human condition, often sad and sometimes hilariously funny.

“Anderson’s films take the pigeon’s eye view. It is heaven” (Robbie Collin - Telegraph)

Director: Lone Scherfig
Cast: Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin, Bill Nighy

1940s London. Writer Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) gets a job at the Ministry of Information. Cole’s sharp mind and writing talents catch the eye of head writer Tom (Sam Claflin) and earn her a chance to shine when she is asked to work on a feature film about two sisters who piloted their drunken father’s boat from Southend to Dunkirk to bring wounded British Tommies home. As an up and coming woman in the ‘40s she faces a battle against sexism, bureaucracy and hammy British actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy). Catrin discovers her story has been massively over- exaggerated and she is faced with the dilemma to write the truth or legend.

“Anchored by a superb Gemma Arterton, ‘Their Finest is a funny, winning, beautifully acted ode to working women and cinema.” (Ian Freer - Empire)

Director: Ciro Guerra
Cast: Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet, Antonio Bolivar

Although inspired by real-life journals this haunting and beautifully shot film transports us into the realm of the mystical and surreal.

In the early 1900’s a young shaman in the Columbian Amazon helps a sick German explorer and his local guide search for a rare healing plant. Decades later another European botanist returns on a similar quest and finds the place and the people much changed. He meets the original shaman who claims he has forgotten all his traditional knowledge, but eventually agrees to help him.

“A gripping and absorbing piece of work” (Peter Bradshaw - Guardian)

Director: William Oldroyd
Cast: Florence Pugh, Cosmo Jarvis, Christopher Fairbank

Northumberland, 1865. Resenting her arranged marriage to older colliery heir Alexander (Paul Hilton), 17-year-old Katherine (Florence Pugh) embarks upon an affair with stable groom Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis) and resorts to murder when their romance is discovered. Although she has been sold into marriage to meet a family debt, Katherine is never a distressed damsel in a Gothic fairy tale. She may be rejected on her wedding night, but she also spurns the sympathy of her near-mute black maid, Anna (Naomi Ackie), and begins flaunting her affair with the uncouth groom. Moreover, when reprimanded for her reckless adultery, Katherine turns to murder, revealing the full extent of her scorned fury.

“A brilliantly chilling subversion of a classic” (The Guardian)

Director: Nicolas Philibert
Cast: Georges Lopez, Alizé, Axel Thouvenin

This charming fly- on -the -wall documentary is a sensitive and moving portrait of a school teacher and his young students.

It chronicles an academic year in the lives of 12 pupils, aged 4 to 10, who are taught every subject from maths to gym by one dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, in a village school in deepest rural France.

As the seasons pass Lopez must keep his students disciplined while preparing the older children for the exams that will determine their educational future.

“A wonderful work” (Mark Kermode - Guardian)