Films in Dare
In-your-face, up-front and arresting: films that take you out of your comfort zone.
Dare gala
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Judy & Punch
Dir-Scr Mirrah Foulkes | Australia
Writer/Director Mirrah Foulkes delivers an audaciously brilliant first feature, with Mia Wasikowska splendid in this fairy tale with a feminist twist.
Feature films
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Beanpole
Dir Kantemir Balagov | Russia
Two women who survive active service in the Second World War try to reconstruct their lives in post-war Leningrad, in Kantemir Balagov’s extraordinary award-winning second feature.
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Burning Cane
Dir-Scr Phillip Youmans | USA
Winner of the top prize at the Tribeca Film Festival, contemporary Southern gothic Burning Cane heralds 19-year-old director Phillip Youmans as a serious new talent.
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Divine Love
Dir Gabriel Mascaro | Brazil-Uruguay-Chile-Denmark-Norway-Sweden
An evangelical group fight to uphold the sanctity of marriage in this altogether different kind of science fiction story.
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Dogs Don’t Wear Pants
Dir J-P Valkeapää | Finland-Latvia
A dominatrix offers an emotionally paralysed widower an unexpected chance for sexual and psychological release in this playful dark comedy.
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Don’t Look Down
Dir-Scr Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau | France
Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau return with an elegant and intimate drama about love and revenge, crafted with dramatic intensity and visual dazzle.
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Eternal Beauty
Dir-Scr Craig Roberts | UK
Sally Hawkins is a schizophrenic woman coping with a hallucinatory existence in Craig Roberts’ bold, sometimes hilarious and disturbing exploration of mental illness.
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Family Romance, LLC
Dir-Scr Werner Herzog | USA
Werner Herzog is on typically thought-provoking form, dramatising the work of a ‘rent-a-relative’ service, in this Tokyo-set meditation on contemporary alienation.
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Fire Will Come
Dir Oliver Laxe | Spain-France-Luxembourg
A pyromaniac returns to his mother’s farm in Oliver Laxe’s visually jaw-dropping study of the Galician landscape.
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Ghost Town Anthology
Dir-Scr Denis Côté | Canada
Denis Coté’s latest uses superb camerawork, imaginative sound and pleasing narrative ambiguities to explore a community’s response to a local’s death.
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I Lost My Body
Dir Jérémy Clapin | France
A severed hand searches for its owner in this striking animation, which grabbed the Grand Prize at the Cannes Critics' Week.
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Little Joe
Dir Jessica Hausner | Austria-UK-Germany
Jessica Hausner’s first English-language feature is a pleasingly cool, witty and unsettling story of the pitfalls of placing too much trust in everyday science.
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Love Me Tender
Dir Klaudia Reynicke | Switzerland
Klaudia Reynicke’s second feature is a portrait of a rebellious young woman who must push her limits to gain freedom and independence.
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The Man Who Cuts Tattoos
Dir-Scr Michael Omonua | Nigeria
Across two crucial periods in Nigerian history, two young women must ponder the painful sacrifices they are forced to make for love.
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The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea
Dir Syllas Tzoumerkas | Greece-Germany-Netherlands-Sweden
Greek Weird Wave auteur Syllas Tzoumerkas returns with a visually dazzling, narratively dizzying and genre-defying murder mystery set in a depressed seaside town.
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The Painted Bird
Dir-Prod-Scr Václav Marhoul | Czech Republic-Slovakia-Ukraine
Based on Jerzy Kosiński’s 1965 novel and a long time in the making, Václav Marhoul’s extraordinary The Painted Bird finds a lone Jewish boy on a dark odyssey towards home during wartime.
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The Sharks
Dir-Scr Lucía Garibaldi | Uruguay-Argentina-Spain
An intriguing coming-of-age tale is presented through the allegorical prism of an environmental incident.
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System Crasher
Dir-Scr Nora Fingscheidt | Germany
An intensive drama about a pre-pubescent girl who actually crashes Germany’s child and welfare system whilst on her quest for love and security.
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This Is Not Berlin
Dir Hari Sama | Mexico
A young man’s life is turned upside down when he discovers the underground club scene of Mexico City.
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Tlamess
Dir-Scr Ala Eddine Slim | Tunisia-France
Ala Eddine Slim’s mesmerising second feature is as bold in its audio-visual wonder as it is audacious in its challenge to conventional narratives.
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Tremors
Dir-Scr Jayro Bustamante | Guatemala-France-Luxembourg
Award-winning director Jayro Bustamante (whose La Llorona also features in the Official Competition) presents a complex and provocative portrait of queer identity in Guatemala.
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Vitalina Varela
Dir Pedro Costa | Portugal
Portuguese maestro Pedro Costa returns with another poetic portrait of Lisbon’s Cape Verdean community, focusing on one woman’s sorrows and survivor spirit.
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Waves
Dir-Scr Trey Edward Shults | USA
Following Krisha and It Comes at Night, Trey Edward Shultz continues to impress with one of the year's most dazzling cinematic achievements, a study of a family's dramatic unravelling and redemption.
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A White, White Day
Dir-Scr Hlynur Pálmason | Iceland-Denmark-Sweden
Iceland’s finest actor Ingvar Sigurðsson gives a heart-breaking and Cannes award-winning performance as widowed cop who becomes increasingly obsessed with his wife’s death.
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Zombi Child
Dir-Scr Bertrand Bonello | France
The latest provocation from Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama, LFF 2016) splices Haitian history and folklore with contemporary life at an elite girls’ boarding school in Paris.
