“Films are about the mystery of fate or the mystery of faith,” proclaims director William Friedkin in Alexandre O. Philippe’s latest documentary, Leap of Faith. At 84 years old, Friedkin proves himself to be a master of storytelling, not only behind the camera but in front of it, spiritedly discussing the genesis of his horror masterpiece with Philippe.

Love triangles rarely feel more truthful or more tender than in No Hard Feelings, a beautiful film that announces debut director Faraz Shariat as a filmmaker worth reckoning with.

Listen to "The Blues are Brewin", "You Better Go Now", or even "I’ll be Seeing You", and you can hear the hurt reverberate in every note Billie Holiday sang. Her voice rang with the wisdom of experience – perhaps too much experience. She lived a wild, impulsive life, until it was cut short by cirrhosis of the liver when she was only 44, handcuffed to a hospital bed with only $700 to her name. 

Adam (Charlie Plummer) is being tested for glaucoma at the start of Words on Bathroom Walls, the director Thor Freudenthal's adaptation of Julia Walton's 2017 Young Adult novel.

If Shakespeare had lived in post-war Britain, he surely would have dramatised the careers of the three towering contemporaneous Scottish football managers whose visions of how football should be played and its importance to ordinary people left a greater impact on the nation’s selfhood than any 20th century political leader, excepting Churchill.

“Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well. Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next.” A cosy scene: Anne (the superb Trine Dyrholm: The Legacy; The Commune; Nico, 1988) is reading Alice in Wonderland to her twin daughters in their stylish Danish family house deep in the woods.

Zeina Durra’s sophomore feature arrives on our screens a decade on from her debut, The Imperialists Are Still Alive! It was worth the wait. Luxor is a subtle, low-key drama that possesses an atmosphere of meditative calm, exploring a life that has seen too much pain and is desperate to find a way to heal. 

The bleak power of the Australian horror movie Relic, Natalie Erika James’s feature debut, derives from its masterful use of a simple metaphor.

 A long shadow looms over Robert Zemeckis’ new take on Roald Dahl’s classic 1980s book The Witches, starring Octavia Spencer, Anne Hathaway and newcomer Jahzir Bruno. That shadow is cast by Nicholas Roeg’s strange and terrifying 1990 adaptation starring Anjelica Huston, which expertly captured the wicked humour of Dahl’s book.  

When Mogul Mowgli was first announced, it was fair to expect something of a realist biopic. After all, you had documentary director Bassam Tariq and actor/musician extraordinaire Riz Ahmed helming a film about a British-Pakistani rapper. Even the title is partially taken from one of Ahmed’s songs (“Half Moghul Half Mowgli” by Swet Shop Boys).