Equally ambitious in scope as his 900min ode to cinema The Story of Film: An Odyssey, Mark Cousins’ latest work, Women Make Film, is a fourteen-hour exploration of the work of female film directors down the decades.
Only those who really love you can deliver the hard truths, and for filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey, that one love is romantic comedies. Better known as one half of band Summer Camp, Sankey is a self-confessed romcom expert, having watched nearly every film from the 80s onwards.
After Robert Altman re-established his critical reputation with The Player in 1992, he directed nine more films – including two of his most ambitious multiple-character works, Short-Cuts (1993) and Gosford Park (2001).
Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-born French filmmaker, has a reputation that precedes her. Her upbringing was the subject of the acclaimed films Persepolis (2007) and Chicken With Plums (2011). Persepolis won the Cannes Jury Prize, two César awards and was nominated for an Oscar. Satrapi adapted and co-directed both films. She also wrote and illustrated the comic books on which they were based.
It may offer veteran French star Catherine Deneuve as substantial and engaging a role as she has enjoyed in years, but the real surprise of The Truth is that it’s the work of Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda.
The final sequence of Levan Akin’s coming-of-age drama And Then We Danced is as gloriously defiant a piece of dance action as anything you’ll remember falling for in Billy Elliot.
There’s a lot of plucky British charm to Military Wives, from Peter Cattaneo, the director who won the nation's heart with his debut film The Full Monty over two decades ago.
Back in 2017, writer-director Eliza Hittman won over audiences with her beautiful coming-of-age drama Beach Rats. Her latest film, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, is a more quietly devastating drama, shifting the focus away from sexual awakenings to a more politically charged arena.