Jonathan Romney

Picture book: this year’s festival kicked off with a swirl of controversy and a dud opening night film, before finding its footing with films like Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming, Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case, and others

Ambient environment: dark “plumes,” musical flourishes, and semiotic quandaries abound in Noah Baumbach’s sweetly astringent satire, White Noise

Not dark yet: our man in Cannes weighs in on the fest at the midpoint, highlighting Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave, Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO, Cristian Mungui’s R.M.N., and more

Light touches: this year’s slate was dotted with life-affirming standouts like Claire Denis’s Fire, Mikhaël Hers’s The Passengers of the Night, and more

So may we start: the festival's much-awaited 2021 edition featured a feast of opening premieres, from Leos Carax, Joanna Hogg, Mark Cousins, and more

Primal screen therapy: during the COVID-era, television series provided a coherent purposefulness that was otherwise missing from everyday life

New and important work plucked from festivals and elsewhere

Frozen warnings: Hlynur Pálmason’s Icelandic drama is a stark psychological thriller that unpicks its hero’s troubled soul with forensic coolness

Walls and bridges: Nanni Moretti’s documentary is a straight, though moving, account of the refugees sheltered by the Italian embassy following the 1973 coup in Chile

Trickle-down economics: the class system takes visceral form in a Spanish dystopian horror film

Gather ’round children: Malgorzata Szumowska’s horror flick is presented handsomely but is frustrating in its lack of specificity

Come together: a new documentary about a Catskills summer camp for disabled teenagers is buoyant, illuminating, and very to-the-point

Looking ahead: an overview of the many festivals that have moved their slates to the web

Feet on the ground: Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s free-associative, diaristic debut is worth waiting for

It takes a village: the Brazilian genre mashup is packed with both protest and what seems a prophetic intensity

Talk soup: among Tsai’s narrative features, his latest is certainly the most spare—if there’s a narrative at all

Homebody: David Zonana’s film starts off as a realistic drama before becoming something like an absurdist political parable

Tinderbox: Patricio Guzmán’s latest documentary draws connections between Chile’s geography and the country’s troubled history

Goof troop: the Margot Robbie vehicle serves up the kind of joke-shop bubblegum that comes spiked with hot chili

The killing: Yaron Zilberman's drama retraces the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and looks at the man who committed the murder