World cinema

The Bicycle Thief (Ladri di Biciclette) is a film that hardly makes a bad move. It is often thought of as an art film and has influenced lots of serious directors, but it is as easy to watch as classic Steven Spielberg. This is a movie that knows exactly how to pull at the heartstrings. Released in 1948...

This latest offering from veteran director Luc Besson is, well, surprising, to say the least. Perhaps I've been exposed to a disproportionate number of French art-house films, or perhaps it was because the only image I'd previously seen of Louise Bourgoin's Adèle was that of her stood semi-naked,...

A fugitive on the run can easily become a man without identity. After all, it is our relationships that tend to define us, and if we also cannot speak or interact with our fellow man, we could be almost anyone. The escapee in Essential Killing could be anyone, although he happens to be a Taliban...

If someone asked if you to want to watch a film with 70 different women talking in it and nothing else, you may be a little apprehensive. But this is exactly what Ken Wardrop has done with his latest documentary His and Hers. Wardrop first came to the forefront with his short film Undressing My Mother, a six...

If you want to know what life is like under one of the Middle Eastern countries where people are taking to the streets in protests about their authoritarian governments, The Hunter might be a good place to start. Like the film's brooding electronic soundtrack, it pulses with alienated sorrow and fury. Some...

We all know about cop movies - they follow a certain formula. There are crimes, an investigation and, hopefully, a resolution. Police, Adjective, directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, is a Romanian film about a policeman and his enquiry that is about as different from a normal cop movie as it is possible to get. This...

The Living and the Dead is the first feature film to come from Croatian director Kristijan Milic. The film follows the parallel stories of soldiers fighting in both World War II and in the modern-day Yugoslavian Civil War, giving a chilling representation of how those who do not learn from their pasts are...

The heroes in Red and White fight the Dutch colonial powers for the red and white of the new Indonesian flag. Red stands for the blood of courage and white for their lofty ideal - two qualities eulogised in this movie. You might end up feeling that the praise for the heroes of the war of independence is just a...

Cinema gangsters used to come from Italy, or perhaps the East End. Not any more, the nastiest mafia in the movies nowadays mostly come from Russia. The Assassin Next Door is set in Israel, but the gangsters are brutal, hatchet-faced Russians. Galia (Olga Kurylenko) is a young Russian woman whose child...

Biutiful is an exhausting portrayal of the complex webs we weave in life, and then struggle desperately to untangle in the wake of a crisis. That's not to say it's not worth watching, but it's probably not one for someone who's feeling a little bit...fragile. Biutiful has been nominated for this year's...