Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 31/12/2015)

Although there are still a few marquee names knocking around, the film star is increasingly becoming an endangered species. According to Forbes, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise are among the 10 most overpaid actors in Hollywood, as the box-office returns for their pictures no longer justify their exorbitant fees. By contrast, Chris Evans has become the year's most bankable actor by virtue of his appearance in comic-book franchises aimed at adolescents of all ages. It is also noticeable that the list of commercially viable stars is dominated by actresses like Mila Kunis, Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence. Yet the overall quality of roles for women remains moderate, outside those tailored for Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep.

While once mighty stars can no longer be relied upon to open a movie, the same is becoming true of A list directors. The likes of Steven Spielberg still command critical respect, but audience enthusiasm can no longer be guaranteed and subject matter and spectacle are much more likely to generate buzz than a glimpse at the credits. As a consequence, a growing number of film-makers are seeking refuge on the small screen, although digital interlopers like Netflix and Amazon are now as likely to offer greater creative freedom and budgetary latitude than the established television networks.

Things have scarcely been better in the arthouse sector in 2015, as audience figures for foreign-language and independent features remain dispiritingly low. It has hardly been a memorable year for French cinema (which is the staple of all middlebrow viewing), while the ongoing global downturn continues to impact upon smaller industries across the continent. Yet, rather than experiment with world cinema, exhibitors have filled their programmes with live transmissions of plays, ballets, operas and pop concerts. This vogue for event cinema might make economic sense, but it feels like a betrayal, as it puts the squeeze on non-European pictures at a time when most London-based festivals have ceased to sponsor touring packages, as they get so few takers among provincial venues like The Phoenix and The Ultimate Picture Palace. One hopes (but without much expectation) that the proposed boutique cinema in the revamped Westgate will be more adventurous in its selections.

Turning cinema screens into the cultural equivalent of fan parks has been an unwelcome development over the past 12 months. Even more regrettable, however, is the deluge of sub-standard pictures that have managed to secure a theatrical release in order to benefit from a tax perk. A fair number of these execrable offerings have opened and closed on the same day. Yet their presence on the schedule means they have to be reviewed, even though the majority are a complete waste of the critic's and the reader's time. It's bad enough that smaller distributors clutter the listings with titles they want publicising before their immediate transfer to DVD or Blu-ray. But they should not expect video-on-demand launches to be accorded a spot among the theatrical reviews and the same should go for the fly-by-night efforts that do little but expose the derivative nature of much British film-making and the dearth of genuine talent among the aspiring neophytes.

Rather than assess the year by genre, theme or bracket, we shall content ourselves with a month-by-month checklist to jog memories before looking a little more closely at the Top 10 fictional features of 2015. As in previous years, reissues will be excluded from the pick of the year, even though nothing produced this year can match the quality of some of the oldies that have returned to our screens since the last annual round-up.

JANUARY.

Mainstream: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's Birdman; James Marsh's The Theory of Everything; Tom Harper's The Woman in Black: Angel of Death; Paul Schrader's Dying of the Light; Olivier Megaton's Taken 3; Peter Berger and Charlotte Purdy's Erebus: Into the Unknown; Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher; Rob Marshall's Into the Woods; Clint Eastwood's American Sniper; James Kent's Testament of Youth; Damien Chazelle's Whiplash; Jean-Marc Vallée's Wild; Gilles Pacquet-Brenner's Dark Places; Alex Garland's Ex-Machina; Rupert Wyatt's The Gambler; David Koepp's Mortdecai; JC Chandor's A Most Violent Year; Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Secret Service; Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice.

Animation: Don Hall and Chris Williams's Big Hero 6.

Independent: Denis Villeneuve's Enemy; Iram Haq's I Am Yours; Julius Avery's Son of a Gun.

Foreign: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy; Vincent Lannoo's Paper Souls; Mariana Rondón's Pelo Malo.

Reissues: Eric Rohmer's The Green Ray; Leo McCarey's Duck Soup; Louis Malle's Au Revoir les Enfants.

FEBRUARY.

Mainstream: Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen's The Interview; Andy and Lana Wachowski's Jupiter Ascending; Ava DuVernay's Selma; Sam Taylor-Johnson's Fifty Shades of Grey; Michael Mann's Blackhat; Daniel Barnz's Cake; Michael Spierig's Predestination; Dean Israelite's Project Almanac; Jeremy Garelick's The Wedding Ringer; John Madden's The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel; Rob Cohen's The Boy Next Door; Glen Ficarra and John Requa's Focus; David Robert Mitchell's It Follows.

Animation: Richard Starzak and Mark Burton's Shaun the Sheep Movie; Boris Aljinovic and Harald Siepermann's Fairytale: Story of the Seven Dwarves.

Independent: Uberto Pasolini's Still Life; Mia Wasikowska, Justin Kurzel and David Wenham's The Turning; Ira Sachs's Love Is Strange; Andrew Hulme's Snow In Paradise; Max Nichols's Two Night Stand; Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy; David and Nathan Zellner's Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter; Daniel and Matthew Wolfe's Catch Me Daddy; Harry MacQueen's Hinterland.

Foreign: Jessica Hausner's Amour Fou; Teddy Chan's Kung Fu Killer; Kornél Mundruczó's White God.

Reissues: George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story; Michael Curtiz's Casablanca; Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann,

Also Rans: Daniel Simpson's The Rendlesham UFO Incident; James Ward Byrkit's Coherence; Andres Dussan's Down Dog; Tristan Loraine's A Dark Reflection.

MARCH.

Mainstream: Neill Blomkamp's Chappie; Michael Cuesta's Kill the Messenger; Steven Conrad's Unfinished Business; Jaume Collet-Serra's Run All Night; Paul Solet's Dark Summer; Robert Schwentke's The Divergent Series: Insurgent; Pierre Morel's The Gunman; Simon West's Wild Card; Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella; Etan Cohen's Get Hard; Sergei Bodrov Seventh Son.

Animation: Tim Johnson's Home; Isao Takahata's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya; Paul Tibbitt's The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.

Independent: Desiree Akhavan's Appropriate Behaviour; James Gillingham and Jimmy Hay's High Tide; Gerard Johnson's Hyena; Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's Still Alice; Gregg Araki's White Bird in a Blizzard; Saul Dibb Suite Française; Morgan Matthews's X + Y; Marjane Satrapi's The Voices; Sarah Frankcom and Margaret Williams's Maxine Peake As Hamlet; Michael Winterbottom's The Face of an Angel; Jon Wright's Robot Overlords; William Eubank's The Signal; Rob Brown's Sixteen.

Foreign: André Semenza and Fernanda Lippi's Sea Without Shore; Zereseneay Mehari's Difret; Alain Resnais's Life of Riley; Jeanne Herry's Elle L'Adore; Julian Neel's Lou!; Xavier Dolan's Mommy; Susanne Bier's A Second Chance; Damián Szifrón's Wild Tales.

Reissues: John Schlesinger's Far From the Madding Crowd.

APRIL.

Mainstream: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner: The Final Cut; James Wan's Fast & Furious 7; Frank Berry's I Used To Live Here; Daniel Alfredson's Kidnapping Freddy Heineken; Russell Crowe's The Water Diviner; Noah Baumbach's While We're Young; Steve Pink's Hot Tub Time Machine 2; Chad Stahelski's John Wick; Ryan Gosling's Lost River; Andy Fickman's Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2; Simon Curtis's Woman in Gold; Daniel Espinosa's Child 44; Richard Lagravenese's The Last Five Years; Kazuaki Kiriya's Last Knights; Kristian Levring's The Salvation; Joss Whedon's The Avengers: Age of Ultron; Philippe Falardeau's The Good Lie; Brad Anderson's Stonehearst Asylum.

Independent: James Napier Robertson's The Dark Horse; Ari Sandel's The Duff; Duane Hopkins's Bypass; Andrew Niccol's Good Kill; Atul Malhotra's Amar Akbar & Tony; Gerard Barrett's Glassland; Alan Rickman's A Little Chaos; Bill Scott's Tin; Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's The Town That Dreaded Sundown; Carol Morley's The Falling.

Foreign: Ester Martin Bergsmark's Something Must Break; Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure; Franco Lolli's Gente de Bien; Victor Gonçalves's The Invisible Life; Robert Glinski's Stones For the Rampart: The Battle For Warsaw; Koji Fukada's Au Revoir L'été; Hsinag Chienn Exit; Jean-Charles Hue's The Dorkels.

Reissues: Robert Siodmak's Cry of the City.

Also Rans: Chris Bouchard's Hackney's Finest; John M. Walker's Amityville Playhouse; Juno Mak's Rigor Mortis; Peter Domankiewicz's Tea & Sangria.

MAY.

Mainstream: Thomas Vinterberg's Far From the Madding Crowd; Levan Gabriadze's Unfriended; Josh Lawson's A Funny Kind of Death; Lee Toland Krieger's The Age of Adeline; Jalmari Helander's Big Game; Bharut Nalluri's Spooks: The Greater Good; Chris Rock's Top Five; John Williams's The Beat Beneath My Feet; George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road; Elizabeth Banks's Pitch Perfect 2; Gil Kenan's Poltergeist; Brad Bird's Tomorrowland; Dan Fogelman's Danny Collins; Brad Peyton's San Andreas; Scot Armstrong's Search Party.

Animation: Toby Genkel and Sean McCormack's Two By Two: Ooops...The Ark Has Gone; Xavier Picard's The Moomins on the Riviera.

Independent: Tom Green's Monsters: Dark Continent; Michael Radford's Elsa & Fred; Ivan Kavanagh's The Canal; Rebecca Johnson's Honeytrap; Jon Stewart's Rosewater; Simon Blake's Still; Kiah Roache-Turner's Wyrmwood - Road of the Dead; Olivier Assayas's The Clouds of Sils Maria; Julian Jarrold's A Royal Night Out; Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's Spring; Toa Fraser's The Dead Lands; Guy Myhill's The Goob; Ben Palmer's Man Up; Jim Weedon's Sword of Vengeance.

Foreign: Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache's Samba; Karim Ainouz's Futuro Beach; Céline Sciamma's Girlhood; Christian Petzold's Phoenix; Tsai Ming-liang's Stray Dogs; Miroslav Siaboshpitsky's The Tribe; Sion Sono's Tokyo Tribe; Cédric Jimenez's The Connection.

Reissues: Federico Fellini's 8½; Orson Welles's Chimes At Midnight; Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings.

Also Rans: Reg Travis's Anti-Social; Vicky Jewson's Born of War; Fouad Mikati's Return to Sender; John Henderson's Up All Night.

JUNE.

Mainstream: Leigh Whannell's Insidious: Chapter 3; Paul Feig's Spy; James McTeague's Survivor; Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World; Doug Ellis's Entourage; George Tillman, Jr's The Longest Ride; Bill Condon's Mr Holmes; Joe Lynch's Everly; Eli Roth's Knock Knock; Peter Bogdanovich's She's Funny That Way; John Madsen's Slow West.

Animation: Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda's Minions.

Independent: Ian Gabriel's Four Corners; Alex Ross Perry's Listen Up Philip; John Boorman's Queen and Country; Debbie Tucker Green's Second Coming; Rufus Norris's London Road; David O. Russell's Accidental Love; Patrick Brice's The Overnight.

Foreign: Christian Schwochow's West; Pablo Fendrik's The Burning; Thomas Calley's Les Combattants; Lee Chatametikool's Concrete Clouds; Thomas Lilti's Hippocrates.

Reissues: Tod Browning's Freaks; John Huston's The Misfits; John Mackenzie's The Long Good Friday; Carol Reed's The Third Man.

Also Rans: Andrew Jones's A Haunting at the Rectory; James Erskine's Shooting for Socrates; Neil Jones's Age of Kill; Russell England's Unhallowed Ground; Davie Fairbanks and Marc Small's Legacy; Jones's Everyone's Going to Die; Joseph Bull and Luke Seomore's Blood Cells.

JULY.

Mainstream: Alan Taylor's Terminator Genisys; Gregory Jacobs's Magic Mike XXL; Seth MacFarlane's Ted 2; Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy; Peyton Reed's Ant-Man; Chris Lofing and Trans Cluff's The Gallows; Tarsem Singh's Self/less; Rupert Goold's True Story; Antoine Fuqua's Southpaw; Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation; Anne Fletcher's Hot Pursuit.

Animation: Tomm Moore's Song of the Sea; Phil Docter's Inside Out.

Independent: Sam Esmail's Comet; Gerard Johnstone's Housebound; François Girard's The Choir; Justin Simien's Dear White People; Oliver Hirschbiegel's 13 Minutes; Robert Carlyle's The Legend of Barney Thompson; Henry Hobson's Maggie; Richard Loncraine's Ruth & Alex; Jean-Baptiste Leonetti's Beyond the Reach.

Foreign: Naomi Kawase's Still the Water; Bruno Dumont's P'Tit Quinquin; Alice Rohrwacher's The Wonders; Mia Hansen-Løve's Eden; Jonas Govaerts's Cub.

Reissues: Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe; Orson Welles's Touch of Evil.

Also Rans: Grigorij Richters's 51 Degrees North; Thomas Meadmore's How to Lose Jobs and Alienate Girlfriends; Tom Six's The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence); Mark Noonan's You're Ugly Too; James Kibbey's The Last Sparks of Sundown.

AUGUST.

Mainstream: Josh Trank's Fantastic Four; Marielle Heller's The Diary of a Teenage Girl; Joel Edgerton's The Gift; Boaz Yakin's Max; Chris Columbus's Pixels; Terry Jones's Absolutely Everything; Guy Ritchie's The Man From UNCLE; Noah Baumbach's Mistress America; Judd Apatow's Trainwreck; Jake Schreier's Paper Towns; Ron Scalpello's Pressure; Ciaran Foy's Sinister 2; Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis D'Angelo's Vacation; Alexander Bach's Hitman: Agent 47; Max Joseph's We Are Your Friends; Kyle Newman's Barely Lethal; F. Gary Gray's Straight Outta Compton.

Animation: Gary Rydstrom's Strange Magic.

Independent: Sophie Hyte 52 Tuesdays; David Gordon Green's Manglehorn; Tom Harper's War Book; Justin Hardy's Captain Webb; Kenton Hall's A Dozen Summers; Andrea De Stefano's Escobar: Paradise Lost; Henrik Ruben Genz's Good People; Andrew Haigh's 45 Years.

Foreign: Alexei German's How to Be a God; Alberto Rodriguez's Marshland; Naji Abu Nowar's Theeb; Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dance of Reality; Andrew Mudge's The Forgotten Kingdom; Anne Fontaine's Gemma Bovery; Mohsen Makhmalbaf's The President; Hans Herbots's The Treatment; Denis Dercourt's En Equilibre.

Reissues: Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse.

Also Rans: Mike Doxford's Pleasure Island; Elliot Hegarty's The Bad Education Movie.

SEPTEMBER.

Mainstream: Nima Nourizadeh's American Ultra; Rick Famuyiwa's Dope; Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's Me and Earl and the Dying Girl; John Erick Dowdle's No Escape; Jonathan Demme's Ricki and the Flash; Camille Delamar's The Transporter Refuelled; Brian Helgeland's Legend; Wes Ball's The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials; Woody Allen's Irrational Man; M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit; Richard Bracewell's Bill; Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul's The D Train; Baltasar Kormakur's Everest; Ken Kwapis's A Walk in the Woods; Jerry Jameson's Captive; Anton Corbijn's Life; Niko Caro's McFarland; Catherine Hardwicke's Miss You Already; Afonso Poyart's Solace; Ridley Scott's The Martian.

Independent: Dominic Brunt's Bait; Remy Bennett and Emilie Richard- Froozan's Buttercup Bill; Liv Ullmann's Miss Julie; Tony Britten's Draw on Sweet Night; Mahesh Pailoor's Brahmin Bulls; Neil Mcenery-West's Containment; Abel Ferrara's Pasolini; Peter Nicholson's Dartmoor Killing; Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes; Craig Roberts's Just Jim.

Foreign: Jafar Panahi's Closed Curtains; Anna Muylaert's The Second Mother; Eric Lartigau's La Famille Belier; July Jung's A Girl At My Door; Vinko Brešan's The Priest's Children; Zaza Urushadze's Tangerines; Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre.

Reissues: Richard Brookss's In Cold Blood; Buster Keaton and Charles Reisner's Steamboat Bill, Jr..

Also Rans: Shane Abbess's Infini; David Blair's The Messenger; Tom Vaughn's Lessons in Love; Justin Trefgarne's Narcopolis.

OCTOBER.

Mainstream: Nancy Myers's The Intern; Denis Villeneuve's Sicario; Alejandro Amenabar's Regression; Robert Zemeckis's The Walk; Sarah Gavron's Suffragette; Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak; Joe Wright's Pan; Breck Eisner's The Last Witch Hunter; Gregory Plotkin's Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension; Robert Connolly's Paper Planes; Sam Mendes's Spectre.

Animation: Jean-Christophe Lie and Rémi Bezançon's Zarafa; Genndy Tartakovsky's Hotel Transylvania 2; Neville Astley and Mark Baker's The Big Knights; Alexs Stadermann's Maya the Bee.

Independent: Andrew Kötting's By Our Selves; Keri Collins's Convenience; Justin Kurzel's Macbeth; Sarah Warren's MLE; Henk Pretorious's Leading Lady; Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's Mississippi Grind; Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster; Stephen Frears's The Program; Kevin Allen's Under Milk Wood.

Foreign: Lucie Borleteau's Fidelio: Alicia's Journey; Jérôme Cornuau's Chic!; Pierre Salvadori's Dans la Cour; Francesco Munzi's Black Souls; Alex Lutz's Le Talent de Mes Amis.

Reissues: Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam's Monty Python and the Holy Grail; James W. Horne's Way Out West.

Also Rans: Tobi Baumann's Ghosthunters on Icy Trails; Jamie Babbit's Addicted to Fresno; :Phil Wurtzel's A Haunting in Cawdor; Alistair Legrand's The Diabolical; Paul Hyett's Howl; Steven Nesbit's North vs South; Owen Carey-Jones's Rough Cut; Jon Drever's SuperBob; Constant Herve and James Marquand's Between Two Worlds; JM Cravioto's Bound to Vengeance; Mark Veveldine's Vatican Tapes.

NOVEMBER

Mainstream: John Crowley's Brooklyn; John Wells's Burnt; Owen Harris's Kill Your Friends; Austin Stark's The Runner; Christopher Landon's Scouts' Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse; Gabriele Muccino's Fathers and Daughters; Nicholas Hytner's The Lady in the Van; Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs; Francis Lawrence's Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2; Jocelyn Moorhouse's The Dressmaker; Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies; Scott Cooper's Black Mass.

Animation: Peter Sohn's The Good Dinosaur.

Independent: Richard Elson's A Christmas Star; Corin Hardy's The Hallow; Sean Baker's Tangerine; David M Rosenthal's The Perfect Guy; Todd Haynes's Carol; Tom Browne's Radiator; Nae Caranfil's Closer to the Moon.

Foreign: Elie Wajeman's Les Anarchistes; Michel Gondry's Microbe & Gasoline; Bruno Podalydès's The Sweet Escape; Jean-Pierre Améris's Une Famille à Louer; Alonso Ruizpalacios's Güeros; Gaspar Noé's Love; Jérôme Bonnell's All About Them; Yann Gozlan's Un Homme Ideal; Sanna Lenken's My Skinny Sister.

Reissues: David Lean's Brief Encounter; David Lean's Dr Zhivago.

DECEMBER.

Mainstream: Jessie Nelson's Christmas With the Coopers; Paul McGuigan's Victor Frankenstein; Michael Dougherty's Krampus; Jonathan Levine's The Night Before; Angelina Jolie's By the Sea; Paul Weitz's Grandma; Jason Moore's Sisters; JJ Abrams's Star Wars: The Force Awakens; Sean Anders's Daddy's Home; Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea.

Animation: Steve Martino's Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie.

Independent: Terence Davies's Sunset Song; Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson's The Forbidden Room; Jake Gavin's Hector.

Reissues: Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally....

Foreign: Kristina Groseva and Petar Valchanov's The Lesson; Christian Duguay's Belle and Sebastian: The Adventure Continues.

Also Rans: Mike Fraser's The Honourable Rebel; Colin Kennedy's Swung; Gavin Boyter's Sparks & Embers.

That little lot should keep you going when choosing what to watch in the myriad formats now available to the armchair film fan. But, while Tangerines, Tangerine, Mia Madre and Minions can all count themselves unlucky to miss out, 10 titles have stood out from the rest and it is worth exploring them in a little more detail:-

10) A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT.

The avenging angel is enigmatic and menacing in Ana Lily Amirpour's outstanding debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which transplants the vampire story to an Iranian oil town that is beset with the kind of social problems that occur the world over. Filmed on specially constructed sets in California, this is diasporic cinema at its most subversive. Yet, while the action turns around drugs, prostitution, theft and murder, this is also a disarmingly witty and romantic tale that drips with a monochrome style that retains its own personality despite referencing a range of cinematic antecedents from the French and Iranian new waves to Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray, Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch.

Lingering on a street corner in Bad City, Arash Marandi steals a cat from an unlocked house and walks home past the oil derricks grinding away on the outskirts. He lives with his father, Marshall Manesh, a hopeless junkie who injects between his toes and fritters away the pittance Maandi earns as a handyman on gambling and hookers. Indeed, he has run up such a substantial debt that dealer-cum-pimp Dominic Rains comes to the house to demand immediate repayment. He taunts the cat before taking the keys to Marandi's prized 1950s motor car and Marandi is so frustrated at allowing himself to be exploited that he punches a wall and fractures his hand.

Marandi works for wealthy party girl Rome Shadanloo, who summons him from the garden to improve the reception on the television in her bedroom. He pretends that it is unseemly for him to be alone with her in such a private place, but uses her departure to steal a pair of valuable earrings that he hopes Rains will accept in place of his automobile. However, Rains is enjoying cruising his patch in a trendy vehicle and he delights in taunting working girl Mozhan Marno about being past her prime after he orders her into the front seat and forces her into pleasuring him after withholding her cut from the week's takings. As he reclines, however, he catches sight of Sheila Vand in the rear-view mirror. Wearing a chador over a Breton sweatshirt and jeans, she motionlessly fixes her gaze on him and Rains is so disconcerted that he throws Marno out of the car and drives away.

Later that night, Vand and Rains cross paths on a deserted street and he is sufficiently intrigued to chase after her and invite her back to his apartment. Although his taste is somewhat gaudy, Rains has clearly done well from his nefarious enterprises and he snorts cocaine to trendy music while urging Vand to make herself comfortable. She remains impassive as he approaches her and tantalisingly sucks on his finger. But, much to his surprise, she bites it off and smears blood over his lips before feasting on his neck under the cover of her veil.

Having drained her victim, Vand steals his Rolex and other jewellery and gives Marandi a meaningful glare as she passes him at the front gate. He has come to negotiate the return of his car. But, seeing Rains dead on the floor, he takes back the keys and purloins the case containing the dealer's stash and cash to set himself up in business. Wangling an invitation to a fancy dress party, Marandi turns up in a homemade Dracula costume and smiles wryly, as he sells drugs to Shadanloo and her friend, Ana Lily Amirpour. The former teases him about going up in the world and slips an ecstasy tablet on to his tongue. He swallows reluctantly and is soon so deeply under the influence that he makes a clumsy play for Shandaloo, who rejects him with haughty distaste.

Meanwhile, Vand is stalking Manesh, who has pumped himself full of his son's merchandise and is keen to spend some time with Marno. However, Vand keeps him at a distance and unnerves him by mimicking his walk and gestures of frustration. Eventually, she chases him off into the night and turns her attention to street urchin Milad Eghbali, who stops riding his skateboard to unwrap a sweet. He is terrified when Vand suddenly materialises in front of him and starts asking repeatedly whether he has been a good boy. She warns him that she will haunt him forever to ensure he never does anything bad and sends him packing without his skateboard.

Alone in the night, Vand climbs on the board and glides through the empty streets with her chador fluttering on the airless breeze. Straying away from the shabby environs of the oil refinery, Vand finds herself on an unfamiliar row of houses. She spots Marandi slumped on the pavement and he admits sheepishly that he is lost and stoned. Vand wheels him home on the skateboard and he slowly regains his senses on her sofa, as he listens to the soothing sounds she plays him from her record collection. He is curiously smitten by her and she feels sufficiently drawn to him to allow him to leave unharmed and she finds an alternative source of nourishment in a homeless man cowering in an alley.

His corpse is dumped in a ditch outside the city, but no one bothers to investigate the crime. Marandi is certainly unconcerned and makes a date to meet with Vand by the refinery fence after dark. He offers her the earrings he stole from Shadanloo and is disappointed to discover that Vand does not have pierced ears. She offers him a sharp object and asks him to pierce her lobes and she winces with exquisite pain as he makes the bloodless holes and she shows off how much the earrings suit her. Yet, Vand doesn't keep the jewellery she took from Rains and gives it to Marno as back pay. Indeed, she continues to protect Marno and disapproves when Manesh descends on her after Marandi evicts him (and the cat) for stealing from his stockpile. But, when he forces her to shoot up, Vand exacts pitiless retribution and the wide-eyed Eghbali looks on as Vand and Marno dump the old man's body in the street.

Keen to find Vand, Marandi tracks her down to Marno's place. He realises she must have killed his father when the cat slinks into the room. But, instead of being angry, he drives her back to her flat and orders her to pack a bag because they are going to escape Bad City together. Vand gathers some CDs and they speed off in his car with the cat perched on her knee. Outside the city limits, Marandi pulls to the side of the road and gets out to smoke a cigarette and prowl in the headlights. Yet, whatever misgivings he might have had soon subside and he gets back into the car to exchange a knowing look with Vand, as the cat sits between them on the back of the front seat.

This is an exciting time for female Iranian-American film-makers, as Amirpour's impeccably composed critique of the role of women in Islamic society arrives just a few months after Desiree Akhavan's comic take on the same theme, Appropriate Behaviour. This is a much more notable achievement, however, with Amirpour's script being much tauter and her sense of cinematic style being infinitely more assured. The combination of laconic deadpan delivery and glossily chic social realism should work against the grim setting and the gruesome subject matter. But Amirpour uses the moments of droll humour to make the matter-of-fact instances of savage violence all the more unsettling. There are no scares here, as one might expect of a traditional horror film. But the fact that it's impossible to predict what might happen next keeps the audience on the edge of its seats.

Espousing a message of equality rather then female empowerment, Amirpour studs the picture with self-reflexive imagery. Marandi and Vlad are made to resemble James Dean and Anna Karina, while the chubby-cheeked Eghbali forges a link between the streetwise cherubs of both Italian neo-realism and Iranian cinema either side of the Islamic Revolution. In addition to the aforementioned influences, the name of Aki Kaurismäki has to be added, as Amirpour shares his delight in juxtaposing moments of startling drama with throwaway gags. This cine-mischievousness even extends to the soundtrack, which contains diegetic and accompanying songs by such diverse artists as Iranian underground bands Radio Tehran and Kiosk, Arabic fusion outfit Bei Ru and the American combo Federale, whose twanging guitar sound recalls the Spaghetti Western motifs of Ennio Morricone.

Equally evocative is Jay Nierenberg's sound design, which makes the fizzle of each inhaled cigarette sound as dramatic as the clang of the oil drills and pumps and the mournful rumbling of the passing trains. Forever flaring with anamorphic ethereality, Lyle Vincent's velvety photography is also exceptional, as are Alex O'Flynn's steady editing and Sergio de la Vega's atmospheric production design, whose debt to Frank Miller's Sin City is somewhat reinforced by the fact that Amirpour has produced a graphic novel of her own to complement the film. Her direction is bold in its restraint and her shifts in tone are adroitly handled by a fine ensemble.

Seemingly inspired by the Madonna poster on her wall, Vlad stands out for her conflicted mix of impassive malevolence and compassion, but Marandi pouts and preens to good effect (before lapsing into pathetic vulnerability while under the influence) and Rains camps it up splendidly as the hissable chauvinist villain, who has the word `Sex' tattooed across his throat. But the most compelling performance is given by Masuka, the tabby-and-white cat who remains vigilant while frequently acting as the viewer's focal point.

9) BLACK COAL, THIN ICE.

The criminal investigation is leisurely and anything but expert in Diao Yinan's Black Coal, Thin Ice, an overdue follow-up to the equally minimalist and mannered Uniform (2003) and Night Train (2007). The action is sometimes a touch too capriciously confusing, while the episodic structure prevents the Diao from sustaining either momentum or suspense. But, by borrowing liberally from a range of film noir classics, he gives this teasingly gruesome psychodrama a cutting chill to match the evocative snowscapes captured in the depths of a northern Chinese winter by cinematographer Dong Jinsong.

When body parts are found in 1999 on a coal mine conveyor belt in the province of Heilongjiang, detective Liao Fan is assigned the case and quickly ascertains that victim Wang Xuebing was cut into pieces and dispatched by delivery lorries to sites within a 100km radius of his home. Widow Gwei Lun-mei works for dry cleaner Wang Jingchun and betrays little emotion on hearing the news of her husband's demise. But, as he has just been through a painful divorce with Ni Jingyang, Liao allows himself to become intrigued by her and keeps finding excuses to visit the little corner shop in a quiet part of town.

Eventually, Liao narrows the suspect list down to two brothers, who work at the pit and have access to the trucks. However, when he tries to ambush them at a barber's shop, there is a shootout that culminates in the deaths of two cops, as well as the siblings, while Liao himself is badly wounded.

Five years later, Liao is employed as a security guard in a local factory. He drinks heavily and is feeling low after the theft of his moped when he bumps into old cop pal Yu Ailei. Rousing himself from his lethargy, Liao is intrigued to learn that two more butchered corpses have turned up and that the clues link back to Gwei, who had been dating the victims before they disappeared. Each man was found wearing ice skates and Liao is unable to resist snooping round the Rong Rong laundry. He rescues Gwei when Wang makes a lustful lunge at her and tends to the burn she receives while trying to fend off her boss with a hot iron.

Ignoring Yu's warning not to get himself involved with a femme fatale, Liao persuades Gwei to go skating at an outdoor rink. He falls over as they glide to `The Blue Danube' blaring out on the tannoy, but he follows Gwei when she slips off down an icy path by herself and they kiss when Liao pulls her to the ground. Yu tries to follow, but cannot make out what is happening in the darkness before all three are admonished over the loudspeaker by the owner for leaving the rink in hired skates.

Gwei and Liao return home in a taxi and seem oblivious to the fact they are being followed by a white van. Yu follows at a discrete distance and, when Liao and Gwei go to the Red Star Theatre to watch a 3-D film entitled Lucky 13 in a kung-fu festival, he trails the driver into a narrow alleyway. He orders the man to stop and is about to handcuff him, when he slashes the cop across the face with a razor-sharp skate and proceeds to stab him mercilessly with the glistening blade.

Distraught at losing a friend, Liao finds a number on a pad in Yu's car and boards a bus with the same registration. It's crowded and he is pushing along the standing area when he sees someone with skates over their shoulder. Liao gets off at the stranger' stop and they eat in the same café. When the skater goes to a dancing club, Liao tags along and waltzes distractedly with a lonely woman before following his quarry through a maze of corridors. However, he opts not to pursue him up a staircase and decides to bide his time.

Some time later, Liao sees the suspect making ice delivery with his van and tails him to a remote spot. The perp carries something shrouded in a sheet on to a railway bridge and Liao watches dispassionately as he tosses Yu's severed limbs into a coal truck passing below. Realising the identity of the killer, Liao returns to the ice rink and has the owner page Wang Xuebing. However, he skates off too quickly for Liao to catch him and he contents himself with paying Gwei a visit to ask what she knows about her undead spouse. She reveals that Wang killed a man during a bungled robbery and decided to fake his own death. However, he was unable to stay away from her and started murdering any man who showed an interest in her.

As she feels trapped, Gwei agrees to betray Wang and he is gunned down in an ambush that also claims the life of a cop. Liao is hurt when Gwei ignores him at the funeral home when she comes to claims her husband's ashes and he confronts her on the railway bridge near her home. He asks if she kept the ashes she had claimed were Wang back in 1999 and she insists she threw them in the river. But Liao recalls Yu saying that she had buried them under a tree outside the Rong Rong and he wonders whether Gwei is as innocent as she claims.

His focus falls on a leather coat that had proved key to the case five years earlier and tracks it down to internet café owner, Chang Kaining. He directs Liao to the Daylight Fireworks Club, where the female owner recognises the coat and says her husband was wearing it when he abandoned her for his mistress. She climbs into a bathtub fully clothed and cackles as she avers she would recognise the woman anywhere. Convinced he is on the right lines, Liao arranges to meet Gwei at an amusement park. They ride the Ferris wheel and he notes her reaction when she sees the Daylight's neon sign glowing in the darkness. Liao tells Gwei to confide in him and they clumsily make love before going for soup and dumplings at a nearby café.

She promises to see him later, as she has to open the laundry. But, much as he is smitten, Liao has to do his duty as a former policeman. That night, therefore, he shows Gwei the incriminating jacket and she confesses that she killed its owner after he became a nuisance. She also reveals that Wang tried to cover up for her and then became jealous when she started seeing other men following his `death'. Liao gets out of the car and trudges through the snow, as Gwei is driven away. He goes to the dancing club and throws himself into some energetic gyrations in a bid to work through his frustration and regret.

A few days later, Gwei is taken under police guard to the tenement where she used to live. A couple expecting a baby let them in and watch as Gwei describes how she killed the coat owner with a knife in the bedroom. She is made to point to different parts of the room for video evidence. But, as she leaves, fireworks rain down from an upper room of a building opposite and she half smiles as she is led away. The fire brigade arrives and, although the camera remains a distant observer, it seems clear that the display was Liao's way of showing Gwei that he cared while bidding her farewell.

Stuffed with auteurist flourishes and eccentric digressions (such as the visit to a landlady troubled by a horse roaming the corridors of her property), this is a disarming thriller that keeps threatening to grip only to slacken off or become unnecessarily convoluted. The sequences at the dance club (the second of which appears to culminate in a homage to Claire Denis's Beau Travail, 1999) are a case in point, although the entire strand with the leather coat is rather awkwardly handled, considering its significance to the plot. However, there is something satisfyingly labyrinthine about proceedings that are allowed to develop in their own good time.

The performances of Liao Fan and Taiwanese star Gwei Lunmei are excellent, with his shabby shamus and her enigmatic black widow being solidly supported by Yu Ailei as the world-weary inspector and Wang Jingchun as the lecherous laundry owner, whose devotion to Gwei sees him bring her a scarf as she is about to be driven off to jail. But the characterisation is rather sketchy and Diao often seems more intent on alluding to Hollywood gems and curios than he does on generating tension. However, the vein of bleak humour is subtly sustained, while the use of the industrial landscape and the rundown backstreets is exemplary. Hard-boiled aficionados will be hooked, as will those seeking a little political allegory about the price China has paid for its economic advancement. But this would always occupy the lower half of a double bill with Jia Zhang-ke's A Touch of Sin (2013).

8) BLIND.

The mind of a writer is very much to the fore in Norwegian Eskil Vogt's directorial debut, Blind. Having forged a solid reputation as a scenarist with compatriot Joachim Trier's Reprise (2004) and Oslo, August 31st (2011), he proves that he has a visual sense to match his way with words in a teasing tale about disability, identity, perception and imagination that will challenge and excite everyone fortunate enough to be able to see it.

Thirty year-old Ellen Dorrit Petersen had to give up teaching when she suddenly lost her sight because of a rare genetic condition. Now, she spends her days in her Oslo apartment coming to terms with her incapacity and struggling to process the visual memories she retains from her past. Architect husband Henrik Rafaelsen has spared no expense in providing Petersen with mod cons, from talking microwaves to a wand that declares the colour of everything it touches. However, she sometimes has the feeling that he stays home to watch her after he's supposedly gone to work. Moreover, she suspects that he may be betraying her with a lover online.

In order to pass the time, Petersen starts writing a story on her laptop that centres around Vera Vitali, a Swede who has remained in Norway because she has joint custody with ex-husband Jacob Young of their 10 year-old daughter, Stella Kvam Young. She knows few people in the city, but has attracted the attention of neighbour Marius Kolbenstvedt, who is addicted to depraved internet pornography and spies on Vitali at every opportunity.

As the line begins to blur between the world Petersen inhabits and the one she concocts, it transpires that Rafaelsen and Kolbenstvedt are old college pals who haven't seen each other in ages. They meet up and discuss the obscure 1970 portmanteau picture Days From 1000 Years, which contains vignettes directed by Anja Breien, Egil Kolstø and Espen Thorstenson. Such is the fluid nature of the narrative, however, that the backdrop to the conversation changes from a café to a bus and a subway train without the interlocutors pausing for breath.

One day, when Vitali is sitting in a café, she loses her sight. However, when she sleeps with Kolbenstvedt, she tells him that she was blinded by a piece of falling ice. He sneaks into her flat without her knowing and feigns surprise when they bump into each other in the lobby of their building and he tries to turn on the charm. But he is not the only man in Vitali's life, as her daughter has strangely turned into a son, Isak Nikolai Møller. Moreover, Rafaelsen is also interested in her and he invites her to a party to celebrate the completion of an important project.

Vitali wears a new dress to the function, but it turns into something inappropriately revealing before Rafaelsens eyes. What's more, Vitali transforms into Petersen and she burns with embarrassment as she sense the other guests pointing and laughing at her. As she tries to maintain her composure, the venue morphs into an abandoned building whose empty expanses only serve to further expose Petersen and her sense of inadequacy. However, she realises that she has reached her lowest ebb and, having faced up to her worst nightmares, she decides she is ready to venture outside again and rejoin the real world.

There is so much to admire in this remarkable film, which blurs narrative lines so frequently and adroitly that it is often impossible to gauge exactly where the action is taking place. But this is no Charlie Kaufman knock-off, as Vogt is not just interested in the creative process and how it reflects and impinges upon daily life. He is also intrigued by the challenge involved in overcoming incapacity and each item within the ever-shifting mise-en-scène is used so precisely in close-up and within the overall design of the confining interior to convey the limitations and frustrations of being disabled.

The opening sequences are superbly choreographed to familiarise the viewer with the layout of the apartment and the various obstacles that Petersen has to navigate during the course of a day. But, while she seems in control of her surroundings, the struggle to make a cup of tea becomes almost soul destroying and there is real anguish in the moment she strips naked and presses herself against the window, so that the world can see her, even if she can no longer see it.

Whether musing on Petersen's perceived handicap and creative methodology or lingering on Kolbenstvedt peeping through Vitali's window while watching the same TV programme and munching an identical snack, these set-pieces could easily seem tacky or trite. But Vogt works intelligently with Greek cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis to use close-ups to approximate Petersen's gaze, as she feels her way around Jørgen Stangebye Larsen's superbly designed interiors. Editor Jens Christian Fodstad and special effects supervisor Torgeir Busch also team well to make the inter- and intra-scene transitions as seamless as possible. They are aided by Gisle Tveito's evocative sound design and Henk Hofstede's brisk piano score, which help unite and distinguish the locals with impeccable craftsmanship.

The performances are also admirable, with Petersen inhabiting her character completely to suggest vulnerability (but never helplessness) and resourcefulness, as she explores the fictional milieu she has invented to help her regain her confidence in quotidian reality. Vitali is also suitably brittle as her alter ego, while Rafaelsen and Kolbenstvedt slip so easily into the roles that Petersen and Vogt demand of them that it's difficult to know which is the more despicable or misunderstood.

Some will dismiss this as meta-slick, self-reflexive nonsense that spends more time admiring its own ingenuity than creating credible characters in plausible situations. Others will aver that a story that depends so heavily upon voice-over narration has failed as a film. But anyone who has experienced a period of enforced confinement will recognise how the mind works to compensate for physical restriction and how vital such thought processes are to accepting a new set of circumstances and finding ways to normalise them. Life may not always be so sensual, witty and touching, but cinema isn't usually this insightful, innovative or playful, either. And what better way could there be to pay tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy?

7) JAUJA.

As befits a master of `slow cinema', Lisandro Alonso has steadily been building a reputation for elliptical, enigmatic pictures, in which narrative plays a tertiary role behind character and landscape. In his feature debut, La Libertad (2001), he focused assiduously on the daily routine of woodcutter Misael Saavedra, who, in an unexpected twist, turned out to be an actor. He similarly gave little away in Los Muertos (2004), in which Argentino Vargas released from prison for killing his younger brother goes in search of his estranged daughter, while Juan Fernández in Liverpool (2008) crosses Patagonia to be reunited with his mother and the psychologically disturbed girl who might be his child. But, as he demonstrated with Fantasma (2006) - in which Saavedra and Vargas wander through the Cinemateca Argentina in Buenos Aires as their films screen in empty theatres - Alonso can be deceptively mischievous. And he makes countless demands on the audiences imagination and patience in Jauja, his first venture into costume drama and his first collaboration with another writer and a marquee star.

Danish engineer Viggo Mortensen has travelled to Patagonia in 1882 to help the Argentine army complete the genocidal Conquest of the Desert that necessitates the removal of the indigenous population. Travelling with him is his 15 year-old daughter, Viilbjørk Malling Agger, who has attracted the lascivious glances of Adrián Fondari, a cruelly uncouth middle-aged lieutenant who is first seen masturbating into a rock pool on the seal-infested seashore. However, Agger only has eyes for raw recruit Misael Saavedra and Mortensen is thrown into a panic when the couple elope in the middle of the night.

While anxious for his daughter's reputation, Mortensen also fears for her safety, as a renegade officer with supposedly superhuman powers and a private army of what Fondari called `coconut heads' is conducting a reign of terror in the wilderness and his unpredictability makes him a fearsome opponent. Making his excuses to the aristocratic leader of the expedition, Esteban Bigliardi, Mortensen sets off in pursuit in full uniform. However, he loses both his horse and his rifle in a scuffle with Saavedra and he also has encounters with the dastardly deserter (or is it?) disguised in female form (Ghita Nørby) and a canine with mystical powers before he makes a hideously bloodied discovery. But, a toy soldier provides a curious link to the present, where it turns out a sleeping Agger (or possibly someone else) might well have dreamt the entire story.

Meticulously made and mesmerisingly obscurantist, this is the kind of film that obstinately refuses to give up all its secrets in spite of repeated viewings. Its influences are many and varied and seem to include Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, as well as such features as John Ford's The Searchers (1956), Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970), Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995). But, even though he claimed he wished to depart from the languid odysseys with which he made his name, Alonso has still borrowed from Los Muertos in shaping his narrative with poet and novelist Fabián Casas.

Viewers will probably debate the exact itinerary and import of Mortensen's trek long after the picture is over. But every interpretation would seem to be equally valid, as Alonso has never been one to impose meaning upon his audience. The title refers to the Inca conception of a land of milk and honey (`país de Jauja') and this connection and the presence of an underage daughter closely links Mortensen's increasingly deranged anti-hero with Klaus Kinski's egomaniacal conquistador in Herzog's Conradian treatise on the crimes of imperialism and the corrupted legacy of European expansionism. Yet it is also possible to see flashes of John Wayne's bigoted uncle in the increasingly demented searcher, who has not only lost his map, but also his moral compass.

The hallucinations in the desert invite comparison with Jodorowsky and Jarsmusch's trippy expeditions, while the daring twist contains echoes Kubrick's audacious cut across time. By all accounts, Alonso and Casas were also influenced by two 19th-century tomes, future president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's Civilisation and Barbarism (1845) and Lucio V. Mansilla's An Expedition to the Ranquel Indians (1870). But this is much more than a mere exercise in self-reflexivity, as Alonso plays mystical and metaphysical games with species, gender, race, landscape and the very laws of space and time. It's tempting to suggest that he is only marginally more certain than Mortensen and the spectator where the line between illusion and reality demarcates.

But even those who take little pleasure from trying to second guess inscrutable auteurs can still enjoy the potent bravura of the Argentina-raised Mortensen's performance, the enveloping eeriness of Catriel Vildosola's sound design, the quirkiness of the score composed by Mortensen and Brian `Buckethead' Carroll, and the sheer brilliance of the imagery fashioned by Aki Kaurismäki regular Timo Salminen, who not only shoots in a 4:3 aspect ratio (complete with rounded frame edges) to evoke the photographic style of the period, but who also makes sublime use of long shots, close-ups and a dazzlingly rich palette of heightened colours that leaves one wondering questioning the credentials of those who overlooked this astonishing film while drawing up the shortlist for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

6) HORSE MONEY.

The past both shapes and haunts the action in Pedro Costa's Horse Money, which is set in the long-demolished Fontainhas slum district of Lisbon that had also featured in the Portuguese auteur's earlier works, Ossos (1997), In Vanda's Room (2000) and Colossal Youth (2006). Working on high-definition video for the first time, Costa makes a concession towards screen classicism by shooting in the Academy ratio and all-but dispensing with colour. But, while his distinctive brand of poetic realism feels more stylisedly spartan than ever, this is less epic and enigmatic than previous outings and may prompt newcomers to seek out the aforementioned collaborations with the construction worker muse, José Tavares Borges, who is known only as Ventura.

Opening with a montage of Jacob Riis photographs of the New York tenement dwellers of a century ago, the action slips from a painting of a black man to follow Ventura, a septuagenarian labourer from Cape Verde, as he descends a staircase and passes through a heavy metal door into a building that could be a hospital, an asylum or a prison. It could also be a figment of his imagination, as he wanders along a long, straight corridor wearing nothing but a pair of flat cap and a pair red underpants. An orderly finds him some clothes and he is put to bed in a private room, where he is visited by a group of friends who share his zombie-like gaze, as a chap sitting on the bed reminds Ventura of the past misdeeds they sometimes had to commit to make ends meet. One sold drugs and became hooked himself. Another fell from the third storey of a building site, while another became so desperate that he torched his house with his family trapped inside.

When summoned to a doctor's office, Ventura is asked how he got to the hospital when he is clearly disorientated and struggling to control a tremor in his hand, he replies that he is 19 years old and was escorted by members of the Movimento das Forças Armadas, the left-leaning cabal of army officers that brought about the Carnation Revolution in 1974. As he recovers, Ventura wanders the corridors and reads in his room, whose appearance imperceptibly changes to suggests he is as much in prison as he is a hospital.

He is joined by Vitalina Varela, a Cape Verdean woman of his own age dressed in black leather, who informs him that she has come to Portugal for her husband's funeral. He asks about the fate of Fogo Serra and Dinheiro, the donkey and horse he left behind to come to Europe, and she confirms their demise. This leads her to reflect upon the life of her late husband and draws on the formal language of birth, marriage and death certificates to chronicle his existence.

She reminds Ventura of a knife fight he had in his youth that resulted in him wounding a fellow migrant and running from the police. A flashback shows the young Varela in the woods and this segues into a musical montage, as static tableaux of Fontainha's residents occupy the screen, while a mournful song about the hardships they endure plays on the soundtrack. The interlude ends with a man in red underwear (possibly the younger Ventura) being stopped in a narrow street by some soldiers and a tank.

Leaving the hospital, Ventura goes to the premises of the construction company for which he used to work. The warehouse and the offices are deserted, but he bumps into his godson, who claims he hasn't been paid for 20 years and describes in grim detail how a workmate was crushed by a malfunctioning machine before the owner absconded with the cash and everything that wasn't nailed down. Ventura also catches up with Vitalina. She gives him a reassuring smile before disappearing into the darkness.

Back at the hospital, Ventura sees a man in a red frilly shirt hobbling on a crutch along the corridor and he wonders whether he is the adversary with whom he fought all those years before. He gets into a lift in his pyjamas and finds himself standing beside the statue of a soldier (played by Antonio Santos). The pose of the metallic trooper changes throughout the sequence, as Ventura tries to engage him in conversation amidst a hallucinatory cacophony of voices that includes the warrior's own, as he recalls such key dates in recent Portuguese history as the 25 April 1974, when Estado Novo's dictatorial regime was overthrown, and 11 March 1975, when the new government suppressed an attempted right-wing coup.

Ventura becomes so agitated as he thinks back about things he could have done differently that he comes to doubt whether he matured into adulthood and, if he did, whether he did anything worthwhile with his life. Alone in the large hospital cafeteria, he feeds soup to the red-shirted man. He informs him that he has been discharged and dons a white ruffled shirt before shaking hands with an orderly and wandering into the night. The closing shot shows a row of knives superimposed over the cobbles of the street, where Ventura's boots come to a halt. They appear to be as shadowy as the blades and leave the impression that Ventura has been a spectre all along.

Intense and deeply personal, this restless, but reflective odyssey is structured like a fragmented dream, in which Ventura travels by corridor, elevator and abrupt scene transition through various aspects of his own life, recent Portuguese history and the general experience of the Cape Verdean exile. Costa borrows his sense of discontinuity from the works of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, but imposes the curious logic of the sleepwalker on to proceedings that intrigue without surrendering all of their meaning.

Essentially, this is a study in loss, as not only has Ventura been parted from his homeland, but the Fontainhas colony has been bulldozed and his memory and sense of identity are slowly slipping away with his last remaining days. Ironically, the projects suffered a loss of its own, as Gil Scott-Heron died before he could compose the song for the neighbourhood sequence. But there is a compensatory addition, as a version of the soldier in the lift scene had previously been seen in the `Sweet Exorcism' segment of the 2012 portmanteau feature, Centro Historico, which also included contributions from Aki Kaurismäki, Manoel de Oliveira and Victor Erice.

The sound design of Olivier Blanc and Branko Neskov is crucial to the eerie efficacy of this unsettling interlude, which also epitomises the eclectic framing strategy that Costa and co-cinematographer Leonardo Simões employ throughout the picture (although this scene is much more brightly lit than much of the remainder, which uses key lights to contrast skin tones with the heavy shadows of the interiors). But everything about this elusively cryptic exercise in cinematic stream of consciousness seems designed to delight the eye, while troubling the soul.

5) THE NEW GIRLFRIEND.

Ruth Rendell passed away on 2 May at the age of 85 and a fond tribute came in the form of The New Girlfriend, François Ozon's adaptation of a 1985 short story that ranks as one of the best screen adaptations from her writings under her own name and as Barbara Vine. Some of the finest French film-makers have been drawn to Rendell, with Claude Chabrol scoring notable successes with La Cérémonie (1995) and The Bridesmaid (2004), while Claude Miller's Alias Betty (2001), Gilles Bourdos's A Sight for Sore Eyes (2003) and Pascal Thomas's Valentin Valentin (2014) caught the mix of mischief and malevolence that made Rendell the perfect fit for Pedro Almodóvar, who relished shattering the taboos surrounding disability and sex in Live Flesh (1997). The Spaniard would also have done justice to this equally audacious insight into forbidden desire. But, by adding a dash of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) and a hint of Howard Hawks's screwball comedy, I Was a Male War Bride (1949), Ozon manages to raise the odd smile while casting a quizzical eye over the laws of desire.

Since meeting at the age of seven, Laura (Mayline Dubois) and Claire (Anna Monedière) were inseparable. As an opening wordless montage reveals, they made a blood pact and carved their names into tree trunks before they started dating boys. Sharing everything, they even became brides around the same time, with Laura (Isild Le Besco) marrying David (Romain Duris) and Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) wedding Gilles (Raphaël Personnaz). But, shortly after she gives birth to her daughter, Lucie, Laura dies and a heartbroken Claire vows at her funeral to take care of her best friend's family.

Despite her promise, Claire finds it hard to return to Laura's house and Gilles has to coax her into checking up on David and her goddaughter. When she arrives, however, Claire finds the front door open and, on wandering inside, she is aghast to discover David nursing his child in one of his wife's old dresses. Claire accuses him of being a pervert, but David explains that Claire knew about his cross-dressing and never felt threatened by it because he was so deeply in love with her that he rarely needed the reassurance of feeling like a woman.

Having convinced Claire that he is neither warped nor homosexual, David reveals that Lucie appears to feel more contented when he wears Laura's outfits. So, Claire agrees to keep David's secret and even names his alter ego, Virgina. She hides the truth from Gilles, however, and seeks to allay any suspicions by informing him that David has come out as gay. Ozon teases the audience in this regard by having Claire teach David how to dress more tastefully and discard his preferred pinks for subtler reds and burgundies. She also helps with his make-up and wigs and agrees to accompany him when he fulfils a long-cherished desire to go out in public as a woman. Indeed, as Claire often opts for rather mannish attire, it is Virginia who gets the admiring looks (along with several more perplexed glances) and David quickly comes to feel more comfortable in his new persona.

Detecting traits of her lost friend in David's gestures and mannerisms, Claire begins to feel close to him in each of his guises. Consequently, during a tennis match organised by Gilles, she confesses to David that she misses Laura and likes having Virginia around. They kiss, but are hesitant about taking things further. One night, they go to a gay bar and watch drag artiste Eva Carlton (Bruno Pérard) lip-synch to Nicole Croiselle song `Une Femme avec toi' and Claire is touched when the lyrics bring a tear to David's eye. But her sense of confusion is exacerbated when a lesbian tries to pick her up on the dance floor and, when she finally feels confident enough to agree to an assignation in a hotel, she is so unnerved by the sight of Virginia's penis that she flees the room in some distress.

Equally hurt, Virginia rushes through the lobby after Claire and is struck by an oncoming car in the street outside. She hears from Laura's parents, Liz (Aurore Clément) and Robert (Jean-Claude Bolle-Reddat) that David is in a coma and she spends long hours at his bedside. However, he remains insensible and it is only when Claire starts dressing him in Virginia's clothes that he begins to show any response. Eventually, he wakes and Claire realises that she loves David and Virginia and tells Gilles that their marriage is over. As the film ends, seven years into the future, Virginia and a heavily pregnant Claire collect Lucie (Brune Kalnykow) from school.

Closer in tone to Highsmith than high camp, this is a finely judged thriller that flecks its action with moments of melodrama and farce. The sequence, for example, in which Romain Duris forgets to wipe off the lipstick after hurriedly changing out of Virginia's clothes on receiving an unexpected visitor feels like something out of a Carry On comedy. A similar moment arise when he fails to lock a limp wrist. But Ozon never pokes fun at the identity crisis or its underlying causes. Indeed, Duris is not alone in being confronted by home truths, as Anaïs Demoustier also comes to recognise that she is able to sublimate her yearning for her departed friend by romancing her spouse in female form.

This complex concept could easily have become cheap or coy in the hands of a lesser director. But Ozon is extremely fortunate in being able to call on a performer as skilled and courageous as Demoustier, who continues to suggest she is the best actress of her generation with a thoughtful display that slips between fond timidity and self-possessed abandon, as she comes to accept a suppressed side of her nature that eventually manifests itself when she takes control in the bedroom. Despite the transgressive hints at necrophilia, her transformation is less showy than Duris's, but it is no less effective as she starts to abandon the boyish styles she wears initially and starts to embrace a more feminine look.

The contribution of costume designer Pascaline Chavanne is crucial here, as clothes maketh both Demoustier and Duris. The outfits produced for the latter range from an amusing pink bed jacket that screams Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959) to classier ensembles that might have suited Kim Novak in Vertigo. There has always been a touch of Jaggeresque androgyny about Duris and he had already demonstrated his femme fatality by Anouk Aimée's famous cabaret number from Jacques Demy's Lola (1961) in Christophe Honoré's Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard (2002). But he resists the temptation to be fey, as he allows himself to become the kind of woman Demoustier requires.

Duris has the lithe physique to carry off his couture, but make-up artist Gill Robillard wisely avoids making him too pretty as Virginia and, in the process, adroitly sustains the ambiguity that moils beneath the perfect haute bourgeois surfaces designed by Michel Barthélémy and photographed with gliding elegance by Pascal Marti. Ozon indulges in the odd throwaway gag, like Personnaz having a thing for borrowing Demoustier's underwear. Moreover, he allows composer Philipe Rombi to toy with audience expectations with musical cues that deceptively reinforce the transitions from the playful to the perverse. But, even though he allows the tension to dissipate at times - most notably during the ill-judged reveries in which Demoustier imagines Duris and Personnaz together - Ozon moves and amuses with a suggestive ambiguity that prevents this from ever lapsing into poor taste.

4) TIMBUKTU.

Born in Mauritania, but raised in Mali, Abderrahmane Sissako trained at the famous VGIK school in Moscow and has steadily been building a reputation as one of the finest film-makers in Africa since making his feature bow with La Vie sur Terre in 1998. Acclaimed at Cannes for drawing on personal experience to consider nomadic alienation and displacement in Waiting for Happiness (2002), Sissako exposed the pernicious influence of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on African society in Bamako (2006). However, he has turned to an even more contentious theme in Timbuktu, which arrived in UK cinemas garlanded with an Oscar nomination and Césars for Best Film, Direction and Original Screenplay. Given the current strategy being pursued by Islamic State in its campaigns in Syria and Iraq, this measured, fact-based blend of censure and satire is bound to provoke debate. But, as always with Sissako, the intelligence and insight of his approach means that there are no easy answers to what appear on the surface to be straightforward questions.

Harking back to 2012 and opening with shots of the foreign insurgents machine-gunning tribal masks and statuettes that stand for the sacred and cultural heritage sites that were destroyed by the invaders, Sissako shows Malian imam Adel Mahmoud Cherif trying to reason with Ansar Dine leader Salem Dendou and his hot-headed acolytes. But their demand for the instant imposition of Sharia Law is upheld, even though the citizens of the ancient capital and revered seat of learning are predominantly pious.

The jihadists come from many different cultures and find it almost impossible to communicate without a translator. But, what they lack in organisational prowess, they more than make up for in zeal and, while Oumar Haidara rides around the streets on a scooter denouncing smoking through a tannoy, others broadcast the suppression of football and song. Another warrior tries to record a recruitment video for the Internet, but keeps frustrating himself and infuriating his comrades by muffing his lines. When they are off duty, the French members of the unit chat animatedly about the respective merits of Zinedine Zidane and Lionel Messi. But the moment a ball bounces down some steps, the youth chasing it is arrested for illicit enjoyment.

All of this would be amusing if it wasn't for the fact that the occupiers are ignorant thugs who start inventing misdemeanours to justify the callous fury of their random chauvinism and intolerance. Reduced to taking pot shots at statues with exposed female body parts and chasing a defenceless gazelle in a jeep, they are clearly bullies hoping to provoke innocents into indiscretion in order to show off the power they claim from a deity whose law they cannot possibly be honouring. Indeed, such is their desperation to demonstrate their superiority and inflict unnecessary violence that they reprimand a female fishmonger for not handling her wares with gloves, while worshippers at the mosque are upbraided for wearing excessively long trousers. Indeed, one man strips to his shorts in annoyance at not being able to keep his new regulation turn-ups in place. But Mahmoud Cherif remonstrates with Dendou in vain, as he has no respect for religious authority and cares only for exercising his random control in banning `any old thing in a public place'.

As those residents of Timbuktu who are able to leave start to flee, Tuareg herdsman Ibrahim Ahmed tends to his small herd of eight cattle in the desert beyond. He lives in a traditional nomadic tent with his wife, Toulou Kiki, their 12 year-old daughter, Layla Walet Mohamed, and orphan boy Mehdi Ag Mohamed, who helps with the livestock. But the guitar-playing Ahmed becomes concerned when Libyan jihadist Abel Jafri takes an interest in Kiki and begins mooching around the tent with his driver, Cheik Ag. Emakni.

Keener on enforcing the law than abiding by it, Jafri likes to sneak away from his comrades for a crafty cigarette and clearly feels no shame in openly lusting after another man's wife. But Kiki refuses to cover her head when he snaps at her because she is inside her own home and accuses him of being the transgressor for looking where his eyes should not linger. As they drive away, Emakni praises Kiki for her virtue and the frustrated Jafri fires his machine-gun at some tufts of grass growing between two undulating dunes. The symbolism could not be more damning.

Back in the city, a group of boys taunt their tormentors by running into a donkey field to play a cunningly choreographed game of football without a ball. But Dendou grows tired of what he considers a softly softly approach and sends his minions to break up an informal musical evening and administer 80 lashes to singer Fatoumata Diawara (who courageously continues to sing the proscribed refrains as the punishment is carried out). The guests are also admonished for failing to observe the proper segregation of the sexes. But it is only the women who are subjected to the whip and any sense that the interlopers are intent on protecting the morals of the female population is shattered when one of the jihadists coerces a young girl into marrying him in spite of the protests of her mother and the imam.

Only the beribboned and colourfully dressed Kettly Noël offers any sort of resistance. But she is rumoured to be a witch or a madwoman (or possibly both) and no one is willing to follow her example of volubly defying the self-righteous guardians of morality, who bury a co-habiting couple up to their necks in the sand in order to stone them to death. As the rocks rain down, Sissako cuts to one of the jihadists on his knees in prayer, as though to emphasise the difference between faith and fanaticism. However, for all his piety, he is also a hypocrite, as he starts to dance as he rises and gyrates around Noël, who is alone with him and has her head uncovered.

Away from the barbarism, young Mohamed take their cows to the river to water them. Unfortunately, he allows his favourite animal (a pregnant heifer nicknamed GPS) to stray into fisherman Amadou Haidara's nets and it causes so much damage in trying to free itself that Haidara kills it with a spear. Mohamed returns to the camp and tells Ahmed what has transpired and he slips a pistol into his pocket before going to confront Haidara. As their argument intensifies, the pair begin to struggle by the water's edge and the gun goes off. Haidara is killed. But Sissako (who has filmed the entire fracas in long shot) uses a jump cut to keep his death off screen, as this is the kind of crime that should be considered unacceptable rather than any trumped-up act of immodesty.

Moreover, Sissako refuses to flinch from the punishment the community deems fitting for murder, as when Ahmed concedes that he is unable to pay blood money compensation to Haidara's family, he is sentenced to death by judge Weli Cleib. The distraught Kiki comes to witness her husband's demise and Ahmed sees her through the crowd. As they run towards each other for a last embrace, the Islamists mistake their distraught affection for a clumsy bid to escape and gun the couple down where they stand.

Conveying indignant despair without lapsing into melodramatic outrage, Sissako and co-scenarist Kessen Tall lament the suppression of cultural heritage and diversity with a melancholic nuance that is all the more potent for its humanist compassion. Sissako and cinematographer Sofiane El Fani make sublime use of the Mauritanian cities of Oualata and Nema and the surrounding wilderness to contrast the beauty of nature with the corrupted innocence of mankind. The jihadists are depicted with as much pity as spite, as the younger ones have been led astray by leaders who have allowed power to blight their piety. But it's difficult not to view the senseless destruction of artefacts, Diawara's whipping and the stoning without a growing sense of revulsion.

Although they cloak their acts of pillage, rape and murder with scriptural rectitude, the Ansar Dine rabble is nothing more than a barbarian horde and Sissako allows them to condemn themselves in the audience's eyes. But he also damns them through the behaviour of those they persecute, as they live the faith these casual monsters claim to defend. The performances are crucial to Sissako's conceit and the largely non-professional cast rises to the challenge with mesmeric power. Although the victims convey an innate dignity, the villains are perhaps more impressively played, as they seem so ordinary and yet are capable of such abhorrent deeds. Eschewing Hollywood stereotypes, Sissako succeeds in making fundamentalism seem more terrifying because it is rooted in banality. But what sets this compelling picture apart is the way in which it shifts mood so deftly and uses its visual poetry to expose the enormity of the threat posed by Islamic imperialism.

3) A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE.

The prize for the best title of the year was never in doubt, as nothing was ever going to pip Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence to the top slot in the annual round-up, as this deadpan saga in 39 tableaux vivants is quite simply superb and it makes a more than fitting conclusion to the `trilogy on being a human being' that started with Songs From the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2007). Exposing our most natural and unnatural urges, this is a drolly melancholic reflection on defeats and retreats and debts and regrets that keeps seeking to reassure the audience that, no matter how bad it gets, life is always worth living. As always with Andersson, the absurdity of existence takes precedence over gravitas. Consequently, while it makes several trenchant points about mortality, cruelty, exploitation and injustice, this is primarily an affirmational meditation that, given the speed at which Andersson works, could well contain a certain valedictory undercurrent.

Having opened with a static shot of a man staring at a stuffed pigeon sitting on a branch in a glass case in a Gothenburg museum (while a dinosaur peeks in from the adjoining room), Andersson presents the viewer with three brief vignettes. In the first, a man has a heart attack while opening a bottle of wine in his living room, while his wife continues to cook supper in the kitchen. The second centres on an old lady in a hospital ward fretting to her sons that she won't be able to take a bag containing her jewellery with her into the afterlife, while the last takes place on a ferryboat and shows a man collapse at the canteen counter having just paid for his lunch. The cashier offers the plate for free, but one is left to ponder whether anyone will accept a dead man's last meal.

The skipper of the boat (Ola Stensson) appears to take a new job as a barber, but his sole customer walks out when he learns that his only prior experience was in the military. At a nearby dance studio, a flamenco teacher (Lotti Törnros) tries to control her crush on one of her students (Oscar Salomonsson). Outside, a cleaning lady chats on the phone and informs the other caller, `I'm happy to hear you're doing fine.' The dance class also catches the eye of an old soldier (Jonas Gerholm), who sits in a restaurant and wonders when the lecture on strategic withdrawals is going to start. He makes a call and apologises for having got his timings wrong.

Oblivious to the world around them, novelty salesmen Jonathan (Holger Andersson) and Sam (Nils Westblom) schlepp around the city trying to interest customers in a set of plastic vampire fangs, a laughing bag and a rubber mask of an old man called One-Tooth Pete. The goods are cheap and shoddy and there seems little wonder that the duo have to live in a rundown hostel and struggle to coerce their clients into settling their accounts. It also seems inevitable that they have superiors on their case about their poor collection record and, when the pair meet up in a bar to discuss their woes, they quickly start bickering. Around them, however, the discussion centres on a regular who has been drinking in the bar owned by Limping Lotta (Charlotta Larsson) for decades and the action suddenly switches back to 1943, as he sits in a corner and watches soldiers and sailors trading kisses for booze, as a singsong develops into a full-scale musical number.

At various places around Gothenburg, a man sits by the kitchen window while his wife chats on the phone and enthuses `I'm happy to hear you're doing fine.' Two young girls blow bubbles on the edge of a high balcony of an apartment block, while a mother fusses over her baby in its pram and a couple kiss on a beach. A young girl with learning difficulties stands up at the school talent show to recite a poem about a pigeon that has no money. But Sam and Jonathan are no more polished as they deliver their sales patter and one shopkeeper shoos them away, as though they were pesky birds that had fluttered into his shop.

Indeed, they don't even know their patch very well and have to stop off in a bar in the industrial suburbs to ask for directions. As they linger, King Charles XII (Viktor Gyllenberg) marches past at the head of an army heading for a showdown with Peter the Great of Russia. An officer ushers the occupants into the street, as the flamboyant monarch flirts with the barman while ordering a sparkling water. The scene bristles with bravura and it is all the more tragic, therefore, when the defeated rump passes by the window just eight scenes later, after the Swedes have been routed at the 1709 Battle of Poltava that saw Tsar Peter I gain revenge for the humiliating defeat at Narva nine years earlier. As the soldiers trudge along, the wailing of widows can be heard and the melody on the soundtrack that has been associated throughout with jollity takes on a sombre air.

This calamity seems to lower the spirits of Jonathan and Sam, who argue bitterly after being questioned about their shortcomings by their grasping superiors. They make up back at the hostel, as they are aware that they can only rely on each other. The CEO of a small company clearly has nobody, however, as he looks at the gun in his hand and tries to sound cheerful as he declares into the speakerphone, `I'm happy to hear you're doing fine.' The lonely colonel is also alone, as he blames his woes on the rain.

Across the city, a monkey is subjected to electric shocks in a laboratory, as a female scientist looks away and confides to the caller on her phone, `I'm happy to hear you're doing fine.' But this isn't the only barbarism being perpetuated in the city, as a unit of British colonial soldiers in tunics and pith helmets drive some African slaves (including women and children) into a large copper box suspended above a deep pit. A fire is lit beneath the drum and the screams of the dying souls are converted into an eerie form of music that is appreciated by an audience in evening dress.

This shocking scene appears to be a dream, however, but when the slow-witted Jonathan tries to explain it to Sam, he is patronisingly dismissed and told to get ready for another day's grind. In a café, Jonathan is fascinated by the sight of a woman removing a stone from her shoe. But, as Wednesday morning comes around, all that concerns a gaggle of commuters waiting at a bus stop to go to work is the sound of a pigeon cooing somewhere above them.

Four years in the making, Roy Andersson's first feature-length experience with digital photography takes its inspiration from sources as diverse as Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1565 canvas, `The Hunters in the Snow' and Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948). However, it's also hard not to see the lugubrious Sam and Jonathan as the latest in a line of downbeat double acts that runs from Don Quixote and Sancho Panza through such screen couples as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Hollywood Danes Harald `Bivognen' Madsen and Carl `Fyrtaanet' Schenstrom and Swedes Åke Söderblom and Thor Modéen to Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot. Indeed, with their faces coated in white pancake make-up (like the rest of the cast), the pair resemble circus clowns, although they come closer to a Kaurismäkian incarnation than the more traditional Fellini type.

Jonathan and Sam are the closest that Andersson gets to protagonists in this freewheeling odyssey and their deadpan delivery sets the tone for the rest of the cast to follow. But this is very much Andersson's show, as he storyboards every sequence so that the actors know precisely where to move inside the fixed, deep-focus frame. Like Jacques Tati before him, he allows gags to play out in their own time and invites the viewer to scour the screen for small bits of business that are not readily apparent at first glance. Cinematographers István Borbás and Gergely Pálos deserve great credit for their digital compositions, as does the production design team of Ulf Jonsson, Julia Tegström, Nicklas Nilsson, Sandra Parment and Isabel Sjöstrand, as the settings are crucial to binding the time frames into a single cockeyed world, in which 18th-century despots are barely worth looking up from one's drink for.

Times are tough and getting through the day is often a struggle. Andersson is also ready to chastise those who fight wars for vainglorious purposes, conduct inhumane experiments on defenceless creatures and commit atrocities against fellow humans simply because they are different. But he is keen to stress how quickly death can strike and urges his audience to make the most of even the most mundane moment, as it can never be repeated. And, after all, it could be worse.

2) TAXI TEHRAN.

Having defied the ban on cinematic activity imposed by the Iranian government by producing This Is Not a Film (2011) and Closed Curtain (2013) in his own residences, the remarkable Jafar Panahi found a way around being under house arrest to make Taxi Tehran, an unconventional road movie that won the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale. Taking its cue from Abbas Kiarostami's 10 (2002), the feature exploits an even more confined space to stage a series of conversations between Panahi (who is behind the wheel of a yellow cab) and his passengers. The result is both a sly snapshot of daily life in the Iranian capital and a treatise on freedom of expression, the right of an artist to make an honest living and the duty of the younger generation to use their social media devices to exchange ideas that can bring about genuine change within their restrictive society.

Disguised in a flat cap and a pair of glasses, banned film-maker Jafar Panahi takes advantage of the fact that the terms of his house arrest appear to have been relaxed and ventures into the bustling streets of Tehran behind the wheel of a taxi. He has fixed a small camera to the dashboard to record the encounters with his passengers in the hope of providing a window on the Islamic Republic and conveying the attitudes and aspirations of ordinary people going about their everyday business. Panahi knows he is taking a risk in trying to circumvent court impositions. But only a couple of fares recognise him and the majority pay no heed to the blinking eye looking back at them from the windscreen.

The first man to hail Panahi is a pompous conservative with a criminal past. But before he can reveal too much about himself, he is joined by a female teacher who wants to go in the opposite direction. They get into a heated argument about Sharia Law when the shady chap asserts that anyone caught stealing tyres should be hanged in public. However, the teacher snaps back angrily by reminding him that previous executions had failed to prove a deterrent and she berates him for clinging to such outdated views.

As they disappear into the scene forever shifting beyond the cab windows, Panahi is joined by Omid, a DVD bootlegger, who recognises the director, as he has previously sold him copies of Woody Allen and Nuri Bilge Ceylan films. He proudly proclaims that he is fulfilling a vital cultural service by letting his customers sample the delights of everything from Hollywood blockbusters to South Korean arthouse. Sometimes he can even lay his hands on the uncut rushes of works in progress. Panahi questions whether he feels any guilt at depriving film-makers of their profits, but Omid insists he is doing them a favour by risking his own liberty to get their features seen in a country that denounces and dismissed them.

Their discussion is interrupted by a woman asking Panahi to take her husband to hospital. He has been badly injured in a traffic accident and, as Panahi navigates the crowded roads, she asks Omid if he will use his phone to record her spouse confirming his last will and testament to ensure that if he fails to survive she will inherit their possessions rather than his brothers. Shortly afterwards, Panahi is recognised again. This time, a university film student asks for advice on the theme and style he should select for his next assignment, but Panahi is all in favour of him developing his own voice.

Some time later, Panahi stops for a couple of veiled middle-aged women who want to go to Cheshmeh-Ali, or the Spring of Ali. They are carrying a goldfish in a bowl and inform Panahi about a superstition dependent upon releasing the creature into the pool at precisely midday. However, when Panahi has to slam on the brakes, the woman holding the bowl drops it and they have to put some water into a plastic bag in order to save the fish. He is not sorry to drop off the well-meaning, but troublesome pair, as they have made him late in collecting 10 year-old niece Hana Saeidi from school.

She is a chatty character and delights in explaining to her uncle that she is carrying a digital camera because the teacher has instructed the class to make a short film. She complains that he has told them to make it `distributable' by avoiding anything that reflects grim reality. Panahi is amused by her frustration with the tenets laid down by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, as he is in trouble for ignoring such prescriptions. As she prattles about women wearing headscarves and men being barred from sporting ties, Hana spots a street urchin rifling through a bin and wants to film him. But she is so cross when he pockets some money dropped by a groom posing for his wedding video that she bawls at him from the cab to hand over what doesn't belong to him. However, she realises she has compromised the scene by getting involved and curses her folly.

This brush with `sordid reality' contrasts with a conversation Panahi has with an old friend, who tells him about being mugged by a masked man and his wife. He realised during the robbery that he knew the couple from the neighbourhood and didn't feel he could report the crime for fear they would be hanged for such a minor misdemeanour. A red-haired flower seller also warms to the theme of legal excess, as she describes how she has chosen to ignore the fact that she has been expelled from the bar association to continue defending a young girl who has been charged for trying to get into an all-male sporting event. She hisses that the government is forever seeking to make an example of people by detaining them on trumped-up charges and then letting them go free with their reputations permanently stained.

As she shakes her head in dismay, the lawyer sees a purse on the back seat and Panahi concludes it must belong to one of the goldfish women. They head for Ali's Spring. But, no sooner has Panahi left his vehicle unattended than a couple of opportunists steal the camera from the dashboard and the screen goes black - the irony being that two fellow citizens have succeeded where the Islamic regime has failed in being able to silence the resolutely renegade and recklessly courageous film-maker.

Aficionados will recognise the references to such previous Panahi pictures as The White Balloon (1995), The Circle (2000), Crimson Gold (2003) and Offside (2006). But he is in a much better place psychologically than he was in the latter stages of Closed Curtain, which suggested that the walls were starting to crush him and induce an understandable wave of self-pity. Instead, he is ready to debate the state of the nation and the problems facing those trying to get on with their lives in the face of laws that make little sense to anyone other than those imposing and enforcing them. He is also happy to discuss his current status as an Iranian film-maker and the extent to which his plight makes him more valuable as an activist or an artist.

The cast and crew have received no credit to protect them from the authorities, although it is easy to recognise Hana Saeidi, as she collected the Golden Bear on her uncle's behalf. Attempting a sense of real time, Panahi leaves the audience to guess whether they are watching candid camera actuality or cannily conceived improvisation. But there is a clue in Omid's innocent question about whether the feuding pair with whom he briefly shares a ride are actors or non-professionals. There is something almost Godardian about the way Panahi is currently operating and it will be fascinating to where his ingenious self-reflexivity takes him next.

1) HOME FROM HOME: CHRONICLE OF A VISION.

Having taken the original Heimat trilogy from the end of the Great War to the beginning of the new millennium, Edgar Reitz decided not to consider such contemporary themes as the elections of a former East German hausfrau as Chancellor and a onetime Hitlerjunge as Pope or the impact of the credit crunch and the single currency crisis on the rise of Neo-Nazism. Instead, he opted to hark back in time to compare modern attitudes to patriotism, poverty and migration with those of peasants living in the Prussian countryside in the 1840s.

The inspiration for Home From Home: Chronicle of a Vision came from a letter that Reitz received from a nurse in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre informing him that he had the same surname as her boss and from the discovery after his death in 2008 that Reitz's younger brother Guido had been an expert in South American indigenous languages without ever having lived outside the Hunsrück, the rural corner of the Rhineland-Palatinate close to the Luxembourg border where Reitz had set Heimat (1984), Die Zweite Heimat (1992) and Heimat 3 (2004). This triptych in 20 parts runs almost 55 hours, so this 230-minute monochrome saga is something of a miniature by comparison. But, by revisiting the Simon clan and its neighbours, Reitz has been able to cast a unique perspective on the connection between the semi-feudal kingdom still reeling from the humiliations of the Napoleonic Wars and the reunited nation that is seen as the land of milk and honey by economic migrants from every continent.

As he records in his new journal in 1842, Jakob (Jan Dieter Schneider) is the adolescent son of blacksmith Johann Simon (Rüdiger Kriese) and his wife, Margarethe (Marita Breuer). With his older brother Gustav (Maximilian Scheidt) away on conscripted service in the dragoons, he is expected to pull his weight around the forge and help out with the few crops the villagers are able to plant in the fields beyond Schabbach. Completing the household are Johann's mother (Eva Zeidler), clubfooted wait Margotchen (Zoé Wolf) and an elderly uncle (Reinhard Paulus), who hides the books that Jakob is forbidden from reading during working hours.

He is obsessed with the Amazonian tropics and, having seen the long lines of heavily laden wagons heading from the Hunsrück to Hamburg, he has promised himself that he will apply for an emigration permit for Brazil as soon as he is legally able. However, Jakob has also discovered girls and he is reading in the woods when he catches sight of Henriette (aka Jettchen; Antonia Bill) and Florine (Philine Lembeck) rolling naked down a grassy incline because old wives insist that this is a cure for the rash the latter has discovered on her arm. Emerging from his hiding place, Jakob gives Henriette the handsome feather he had been using as a tribal headdress and she hides a smaile as she rushes back the watermill where she lives with her mother Lotte (Barbara Philipp) and father, the gem cutter Fürchtegott Niem (Martin Haberscheidt), who has not uttered a word in the 15 years since the local agate supply gave out. He shows her a red-tinted stone and she is enchanted by its colours.

Florine resides at the nearby tannery with her older brothers (Jan Peter Nowak and Johannes Große) and is delighted when she meets up with Henriette to reveal that her skin condition has cleared up. They are walking through the fields when they see the young baron (Konstantin Buchholz) pass in his buggy and show him the way to Shabbach when a wheel breaks off on a rutted road. The girls flirt with Jakob, but he is more interested in the travel book that the baron is reading and he allows him to keep it, as he is so amused that a youth of such low breeding can read so well and have such an extensive knowledge of the New World.

Johann is furious that his son is shirking his chores and Jakob takes refuge in the fields. He dozes off and wakes to find Lotte searching for her husband. Jakob offers to help and they find Fürchtegott cowering in the water beneath his waterwheel. Reluctant to return home until his father's temper has cooled, Jakob hitches a ride on a river barge to Wolf an der Mosel, where his sister Lena (Mélanie Fouché) lives in a vineyard with her husband, Walter Zeitz (Martin Schleimer). She welcomes Jakob eagerly, as she has been barred from returning home by Johann, who has not forgiven her for marrying a Catholic. Lena is amused that Henriette is so intent on flirting with Jakob that she ignores a warning about drinking too much fresh grape juice and subsequently gets a stomach ache while Jakob is giving her a moonlight lesson in the Brazilian tribal languages discovered by missionary Paulinho Reitz.

While Jakob is away, however, his uncle dies and Gustav comes to bring him home for the funeral. Margarethe finds a louis d'or hidden in his best jacket and she hides it away for an emergency. Shortly after Pastor Wiegand (Andreas Külzer) buries uncle in Shabbach churchyard, the village hosts the Schmierkäse festival, which takes place each November. Henriette and Florine munch on fresh Schmierkäse cake and the latter plays a horn as her siblings provide a comic song in the barn for the amusement of their neighbours. Gustav and Henriette dance to the music and Jakob watches on bashfully. However, the Morsch brothers quickly lose their good humour when the innkeeper (Werner Klockner) informs them that they can only drink win provided by the baron and they cause such a scene in protesting against the inflated prices that one is detained for subversion by the militia. Having seen Henriette and Gustav emerge sheepishly from a dark corner, the heartbroken Jakob has no desire to remain and gets himself arrested for cheeking an officer of the law.

Margarethe risks her fragile health to walk several miles across country to the prison where Jakob is being detained. She offers him the louis d'or to bribe the guards, but he says he is being protected by Franz Olm (Christoph Luser), an engraver who has been jailed for debt. Meanwhile, a comet passes over Shabbach and it is taken as an ill omen when the steam engine that Gustav has been building explodes during a test run. However, he receives more shocking news when Lotte informs him that Henriette is pregnant and she urges him to do the decent thing and ask for her hand before the bump begins to show.

It rains on their wedding day and Pastor Wiegand hurries them into the church for the ceremony. The streets are empty, therefore, when Jakob and Franz arrive after being released and grandmother curses that they should show up today of all days. Seeing his brother and sweetheart together, Jakob runs away and the misfortunes are completed when Lotte gets home from the celebrations to discover Fürchtegott hanging from the rafters in his workshop. The villagers solemnly follow the coffin and Henriette consoles her mother, who is suddenly left alone at the mill.

Meanwhile, Jakob moves in with Franz and his wife and two daughters in their comfortable home in the nearby town. He gives them the golden coin to pay off their debts and convinces them to join him in the Indies. However, he is summoned home when Margarethe falls dangerously ill and he runs the entire way to reach her bedside. Dr Zwimer (Rainer Kühn) tells Johann that his wife's lungs are congested and recommends that she improves her diet and gets plenty of fresh air. Knowing they can only feed her on potatoes, Gustav and Jakob start carrying their mother on a chair into the fields, where reminds them how lucky they are to be alive, as she has buried six other children. The brothers look sombre as she recalls each lost infant and Gustav vows to let nothing happen to his newborn daughter, Mathilde.

Midwife Sophie Gent (Julia Prochnow) keeps an eye on Margarethe and the baby as the cold winter of 1843 begins to bite. Franz receives notification that their passage to Brazil has been confirmed and Jakob is ecstatic at finally being able to leave. But Mathilde succumbs to an outbreak of diphtheria that also claims several other lives in the village and Wiegand orders the coffins to be guarded on the bridge, as the ground is too frozen for the gravediggers to work. The distraught Gustav and Henriette lock themselves in their room and Johann breaks down the door to ensure they haven't done anything foolish. But they have been making plans and they announce their intention to emigrate to Brazil in front of the congregation during the Sunday service.

Having decides against sailing with the Olms, Jakob is furious that Gustav has not only stolen his girl, but also his destiny and they fight in the mud of a thawing field. The need to get their mother into the open means that they soon settle their differences. But Margarethe has a relapse while sitting under a tree and Gustav dashes back to Shabbach for help while Jakob tries to keep her conscious. Sophie leads a deputation into the wilds to treat Margarethe and Johann (who had been delving in a nearby ruin for a fabled stash of highwayman's treasure) is so mightily relieved that she survives that he accepts Lena and Walter when they come to take their farewell of Gustav and Henriette.

As the family spends its last night together, Henriette coaxes Jakob into a quite corner under the stars. She whispers the tribal phrases he taught her all those months ago and he is so touched that he makes no attempt to resist when she seduces him. The following morning, Lotte makes a scene as her daughter climbs aboard the cart for the coast and she pleads with Jakob not to abscond instead of escorting the horses back to the stable. He reassures her that he knows his place and he looks back at his assembled clan as he slowly trots behind the caravan winding along the dusty road.

Shortly afterwards, Margarethe asks Jakob why he has never considered taking Florine for a wife. He tries to protest that he is too busy corresponding with learned men in Berlin, but he marries the comely Florine and she willingly takes over running the household so that her mother-in-law can rest. One day, while Jakob is out with his mother, he receives a visit from the renowned scientist Alexander von Humboldt (Werner Herzog), who is surveying the area with his assistants. Disappointed at not meeting a man of such rare learning, Humboldt leaves a letter that causes Jakob to swell with pride and, suitably inspired, he devises a centrifugal governor that regulates the steam engine so that it can keep running unattended.

Thirteen months have passed since Gustav and Henriette departed and Margarethe grows increasingly anxious for news. She sits under her tree and wishes she could fly to her childhood home in Hennweiler and smiles up at her son. However, she doesn't live long enough to see the postman deliver a missive from the exiles, in which Henriette outlines the hazardous nature of the voyage across the Atlantic and the delays in handing over the tracts of land promised by the emperor, Pedro II, while Gustav reports that they have a new daughter named Jakobine and are raising 40 head of cattle, as well as growing crops. He also passes on news of the Olms and the Morsch brothers and Jakob almost bursts into tears when Henriette laments that there are no natives for her to greet with the phrases he taught her. Florine smiles bravely as she sees the love her husband still bears her old friend and the regret he clearly feels that he is not sharing her home from home. But Jakob knows where his duty lies and he pushes the letters under the foliage on Margarethe's freshly dug grave, as the camera rises above the crosses in the cemetery to the sun peeking through the Hunsrück trees.

Many were concerned that Edgar Reitz's monumental achievement would culminate in the random clutch of outtakes assembled in Heimat Fragments: The Women (2006). But this underrated summation of the key themes of the Heimat series has proved not to be the final word and the 81 year-old Reitz has hinted in interviews that he has plenty of ideas along similar lines in development. Quite whether these will follow German history from the 1848 revolutions through the Bismarck era and up to the outbreak of war in 1914 is anyone's guess. But this non-prequel is as shrewd as it is audacious and, even if Reitz never gets round to following the trail to the dawning of Weimar, he has given devotees the delicious opportunity to speculate and anticipate.

This same coterie will relish the grace notes punctuating Reitz and Gert Heidenreich's screenplay, which provide a poignant sense the communal continuity between this narrative and its predecessors. The presence of Marita Breuer (who played Maria Simon in Heimat) is similarly reassuring and she stands out from an ensemble of professional actors and newcomers. Mainz medical student Jan Dieter Schneider struggles at times to convey the complex emotions that Jakob experiences, but he grows into the role alongside Antonia Bill, Maximilian Scheidt and Philine Lembeck, who all had a degree of prior stage or screen experience. The latter is particularly affecting, as the loyal support she provides to her best friend is deftly transferred to a husband who doesn't really deserve her.

As always with Reitz, the production values are first-rate. Sadly, designer Toni Gerg died shortly after shooting began. But he and Hucky Hornberger worked wonders to recreate a rustic Prussian village from scratch and Esther Amuser's costumes also appear impeccably authentic in the digital monochrome images captured by Gernot Roll (returning to the franchise after missing Heimat 3). However, the occasional flecks of colour used for the piece of agate and the golden coin feel forced and represent a rare miscalculation.

Composer Michael Riessler proves an admirable replacement for the late Nikos Mamangakis, as he alludes to the scores of the previous pictures while remaining true to the period. Some of the subtitles disappoint in this regard, however, as modern locutions are used far too frequently. But, otherwise, Reitz conveys the pace and grind of daily life with typical finesse, with his affinity for the locale being readily evident in the glorious vistas, which are the scene for some subtle, if not entirely successful moments of mystical rather than magic realism. Contrasting with the vast skies and tracts of unspoilt land, the humble interiors filmed in natural light seem both cramped and cosy. But nothing is romanticised, as quotidian tasks are performed according to the changing seasons and the unrelenting cycle of life and death.

The constant rattle of cart wheels along the rocky road out of the Hunsrück also precludes any hint of sentimentality, as Reitz reveals that this idyllic homeland was once a place to leave in order to escape from the petty restrictions imposed by the grasping junker nobility and the sheer arduousness of subsistence. Clearly intended as a plea for greater tolerance of those seeking to make a new life in Germany, this is a bold message and counters accusations that the series to date has exhibited a naive political conservatism. Reitz has stated that `the term Heimat could cover a multitude of stories' and one hopes that he is able to bring some of them to the screen. But, if this beginning does turn out to be the end of the road, this will still have been the most remarkable and compelling journey in cinema history.