Japa/Ger  2024  124 mins  PG

Wim Wenders gives us a story celebrating the hidden joys and minutiae of Japanese culture. Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho), a contemplative middle-aged man with a passion for music and the arts, lives a life of routine, modesty and serenity, spending his days as part of a team of caretakers of Tokyo’s public toilets. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveals the past that conceals his otherwise contented and harmonious life. A shimmering and life-affirming reflection on finding beauty in the everyday, and an unusual view of Japan’s capital city, underscored with a soundtrack of iconic hits from the 60s to the 80s including Nina Simone, Patti Smith and Lou Reed. (S)

Georgia  2023  110 mins  15

48-year-old Etero, single by choice, lives in a small Georgian village. Intelligent and possessed of a dry wit she cherishes her freedom as much as the mille-feuilles in her local cafe. While minding her toiletries store, Etero receives fresh stock from a new and flirtatious delivery driver, Murman, and she is soon enjoying a gloriously passionate and thrillingly secret affair. Now, suddenly, she’s faced with deciding whether or not to pursue a relationship or continue a life of independence. Beautifully played by Eka Chavleishvili, Etero must grapple with her feelings as she determines how to find her own path to happiness. A tender story of loneliness and love. (S)

Iceland  2024  112 mins  12A

A quirky road movie, set in contemporary Iceland and shot in black and white. One night, sour-faced Mamma, played by Kristbjörg Kjeld, dies. Her son, Jón (Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson), feels obliged to honour her last wishes to dress her corpse in her finest clothes, apply heavy make-up and drive her to her burial on the other side of Iceland where she was born. They set out in his rather tired car, accompanied by a dog called Bresnef. Mamma may be dead but on the way that doesn’t stop her having conversations with Jón, and criticising his life choices, like the time he fell in love with a girl named Bergdis. A happy-sad comedy-drama that hovers on the emotional edge of both. (S)

Ita/Fra/Swi/Tur  2023  130 mins  15

Alice Rohrwacher’s (Happy as Lazzaro, The Wonders) film is a beguiling fantasy-comedy of lost love: customarily garrulous, uproarious and celebratory in her absolutely distinctive style. A grief-stricken Englishman (played by The Crown’s Josh O’Connor) recently released from prison and yearning for his dead lover, falls back in with a group of Fellini-esque grave-robbers seeking Etruscan artefacts to sell on the black market. But then he finds himself drawn to Italia, a former maid to his dead girlfriend’s mother (played with gusto by Isabella Rossellini). It’s a heady mix of gritty social drama and magical realism, a spellbinding tale of intrigue set in 80s Tuscany. (S)

Japan  2024  127 mins  12A

Filmed in his native Japan, director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters) has made a wondrous and heartbreaking humanistic tale. The reputation of a schoolteacher, Mr Hori, is questioned when a local fire triggers the circulation of scandalous rumours. Meanwhile, single mother Saori despairs when her son Minato, a student in Hori’s class, comes home from school injured and visibly disturbed, yet unable to share what has happened. However, not all is as it seems, in this compelling drama and mystery that evolves as a non-linear portrait of community, friendship and family. An exquisitely layered conundrum, both coming-of-age film and thriller. (S)

UK  2024  100 mins  15

A chance to catch two of British cinema’s punchiest actresses, Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley, in a delightful comedy that tells the true story of small-town neighbours – devout spinster Edith and sweary Irish newcomer Rose – caught up in the bitchiness of an anonymous poison-pen campaign. The authorities inevitably get involved in this pre-internet equivalent of trolling, with an opportunity for the script to prod at the sexist antics of the male police force as a female constable homes in on the author of those wicked letters, and a cast of eccentric locals in the 1920s-set seaside town bring Ealing-comedy wit and lightness of touch to Thea Sharrock’s playful satire.

Ita/Bel/Fra  2023  121 mins  15

In Matteo Garrone’s multi-award-winning drama, two Senegalese teenagers, Seydou and Moussawho leave Dakar to travel to Europe where they believe they will make a fortune as music stars. It’s a journey neither could have imagined as they face the dangers and the beauty of the desert, detention centres in Libya, and the perils of the sea in their pursuit of a better life. It’s an epic story that offers a deeply human perspective on the migrant crisis, but a journey that ultimately becomes uplifting. The film is partly an adventure story and partly a window into the mechanisms of modern slavery that are driven by the age-old forces of geopolitics and the market. (S)

UK  2024  75 mins  PG

Miracles of nature can happen, and the earth around us can start to heal, or so this documentary promises. Living proof is now demonstrated at the pioneering 3500-acre Knepp Estate in West Sussex, where the exhausted land has been allowed to renew and rebuild itself after a rejection of intensive farming methods and chemicals. The film follows conservationist and writer Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell as they relive the 20-year challenge of reversing their land’s decline, removing fences and allowing newly introduced horses, cattle, pigs and beavers to roam free. It’s inspiring, but for farmers/consumers the film perhaps also raises as many questions as it answers.