The 2018 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or-winning film from visionary director Kore-eda Hirokazu is a critically-acclaimed portrait of a family in Japan.

After another successful shoplifting spree, Osamu and his son come across a little girl in the freezing cold and invite her home with them. Osamu's wife Nobuyo reluctantly agrees to shelter her after learning of the hardships she faces. Although the family is poor, relying on petty crime alongside their part-time jobs and inadequate incomes, they seem to live happily together - until an unforeseen incident upsets the delicate balance the family have created, revealing long-buried secrets.

(Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA nominations for: Best Foreign Language Film. )

Set in the glamour of the 1950's post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock and his sister Cyril are at the center of the British fashion scene, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock.

Women come and go through Woodcock's life until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma, who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by the scariest curse of all… love. And so begins a Gothic Romance of twists, turns and power struggles of "pure, delicious pleasure"!

(Academy Award winner for: Best Costume Design. Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Music Score)

Loving Vincent is a biographical drama film about the life of painter Vincent van Gogh.

It is the world's first fully oil painted animated film and brings his artwork to life in an exploration of the death of one of history's most celebrated artists.

A true labour of love, written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, each of the film's 65,000 frames is an oil painting on canvas, using the same technique as Van Gogh, created by a team of 115 painters.

(Academy Award nomination for: Best Animated Picture)

The world’s most renowned female director, Claire Denis (Beau Travail, White Material), delivers a refreshingly honest tale of a middle-aged woman’s quest for love in her witty and heart-warming new film.

Isabelle is a stylish and accomplished artist living in Paris. Divorced and looking to find true love at last, she meets a handsome, kind and intelligent younger man who she thinks might finally be the one. But when he calls their affair a mistake and returns to his wife, Isabelle must again face the issue of mid-life loneliness.

Sifting through former lovers, new admirers, jealous friends and chance encounters, will she find a fulfilling match? Or will she discover a new path to happiness along the way?

Led by an outstanding performance by the incomparable Juliette Binoche, and featuring a scene-stealing appearance by Gérard Depardieu, Let The Sunshine In is a truly unique, touching and beautifully relatable piece of cinema from one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers.

Two French acting greats, Catherine Deneuve and Catherine Frot, share the screen for the very first time in The Midwife, a bright and charming drama about old acquaintances and new beginnings from celebrated director Martin Provost (Séraphine, Violette).

Conscientious, inhibited and perhaps a little self-righteous, midwife Claire is stuck in a rut. After years of placing other people before herself, she’s worried she might have been left behind. One day, however, an unexpected phone call changes everything. The call is from her father’s former mistress, Béatrice, a capricious free spirit who’s been off-grid since she walked out on them over three decades ago.

As circumstances reunite these two polar-opposites, flighty Béatrice is forced to consider her responsibilities, while uptight Claire finally learns to let go of her troubles. Sparkling with humour, tenderness and mischievous charm, Provost’s film provides a perfect canvas for its tour-de-force lead performances.

A bold and buoyant two-hander, The Midwife is a bewitching and unapologetic celebration of life’s loves, losses and endless fresh surprises.

The tempestuous romance that inspired one of Gothic literature’s most influential works is brought to life in Mary Shelley, a luscious and moving period drama starring Elle Fanning as the radical young writer.

When 16 year old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin runs away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, her family are horrified. Young and passionately in love, at first she relishes life amongst the radical Romantics. But as time goes on, Percy’s betrayals and indiscretions begin to test their relationship. One day, on a trip to Lord Byron’s mansion in Geneva, Mary is challenged to write a ghost story. Drawing on her experiences of heartbreak and the dark side of humanity, she creates ‘Frankenstein’, a work that will shape the literary world for centuries.

With a strong ensemble cast, this rousing and exquisite biopic balances sumptuous period detail with a timely feminist message. Directed by Saudi Arabia’s first female filmmaker, Haifaa al-Mansour, it’s a vivid tribute to Shelley’s passion, courage and craft – and a reminder of her enduring relevance today.

Recently deceased, a white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to console his bereft wife, only to find that in his spectral state he has become unstuck in time, forced to watch passively as the life he knew and the woman he loves slowly slip away.

Increasingly unmoored, the ghost embarks on a cosmic journey through memory and history, confronting life’s ineffable questions and the enormity of existence.

Marine Vacth plays Chloé, a young woman who falls in love with her psychoanalyst Paul. When they decide to move in together, everything seems perfect until a series of discoveries lead her to suspect that he may be living a double life.

As she searches for the truth, Chloé s investigations plunge her into a dark and bewildering world of smoke, mirrors and doppelgangers where nothing is as it seems, and no one can be trusted.

Acclaimed director François Ozon returns with L'Amant Double, a sleek but gleefully irreverent erotic thriller that sees the prolific French auteur ramping up the sexual tension while keeping his tongue firmly in his cheek. Combining Hitchcockian intrigue with nods to Brian de Palma and David Cronenberg, this is a theatre of excess that delights in keeping its audience guessing. A whirlwind of heightened senses and amped-up drama, L'Amant Double is filthy, flamboyant and a whole lot of fun.

The animated Isle Of Dogs tells the story of Atari Kobayashi, 12-year-old ward to corrupt Mayor Kobayashi. When, by Executive Decree, all the canine pets of Megasaki City are exiled to a vast garbage-dump called Trash Island, Atari sets off alone in a miniature Junior-Turbo Prop and flies across the river in search of his bodyguard-dog, Spots.

There, with the assistance of a pack of newly-found mongrel friends, he begins an epic journey that will decide the fate and future of the entire Prefecture.

(Academy Award nominations for: Best Animated Film, Best Musical Score)

Sebastián Lelio returns with a groundbreaking, deeply humane and Academy Award-winning story about a transgender woman’s fight for acceptance. Anchored by a powerhouse central performance from rising star Daniela Vega, this Oscar-winning film is an urgent call for compassion towards a community that faces bigotry and hostility on a daily basis.

Vega plays Marina Vidal, a young singer whose life is thrown into turmoil following the sudden death of her partner, Orlando. Met with suspicion from the police and contempt from her lover’s relatives, Marina finds herself placed under intense scrutiny, with no regard for her privacy, or her grief. As tensions rise between Marina and Orlando’s family, she is evicted from their shared home and banned from attending his funeral. But faced with the threat of losing everything, Marina finds the strength to fight back.

From the producers of Jackie, Spotlight and Toni Erdmann, A Fantastic Woman is an outstanding, timely work that recalls the very best films of Pedro Almodóvar. Soaked in luminous visuals and elevated by elegant flights of surrealism, it is a courageous, audacious and defiant declaration of Marina’s status as a woman – and a fantastic one, at that.

(Academy Award winner for: Best Foreign Language Film)

Cold War is a passionate love story between a man and a woman who meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatefully mismatched and yet condemned to each other.

Set against the background of the Cold War in 1950s Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris, it’s the tale of a couple separated by politics, character flaws and unfortunate twists of fate — an impossible love story in impossible times.

(Academy Award nominations for: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography)

Starring iconic actress Isabelle Huppert in a career-defining role, Elle is already one of the most acclaimed films of the year and earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress as well as an Oscar nomination.

Huppert is Michèle LeBlanc; founder and CEO of a successful video game company, who is attacked and raped in her own home. She shrugs off the terrifying incident, locks the door after her attacker leaves and refuses to tell the police. Upending our expectations, Michèle begins to track down her assailant, and soon they are both drawn into a curious and thrilling game, one that at any moment may spiral out of control. From legendary filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, Elle is a gripping psychological noir thriller. Exhilarating and multi-layered, the film recalls the ambience of Hitchcock, De Palma and Polanski, with a thrilling cerebral edge.

(Academy Award nomination for: Best Actress)

Once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, and a gifted horse trainer, young cowboy Brady is warned that his riding days are over, after a horse crushes his skull at a rodeo.

Back home on the Pine Ridge Reservation, with little desire or alternatives for a different way of life, Brady’s sense of inadequacy mounts as he is unable to ride or rodeo – the essentials of being a cowboy. In an attempt to regain control of his own fate, Brady undertakes a search for new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.

From visionary director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy and Stoker) comes The Handmaiden, a sumptuous and exhilarating period thriller inspired by Sarah Waters’ best-selling novel Fingersmith.

Set during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1930s, a young handmaiden named Sookee is hired by Lady Hideko, a reclusive heiress who lives in a sprawling mansion under the watchful eye of her domineering Uncle Kouzuki. But Sookee harbours a secret: she has been recruited by Fujiwara, a scheming con artist posing as a Japanese Count, to trick Hideko into entrusting him with her fortune. However, when Sookee and Hideko begin to develop unexpected emotions for each other, they start putting together a plan of their own.

With breathtaking visuals, grandiose set design and frenzied humour, The Handmaiden is one of the year’s most anticipated films - an opulent and labyrinthine tale of deception, romance and triple-crossing that marks a career high for one of modern cinema’s most thrilling auteurs.

Pedro Almodóvar directs this Spanish drama based on the short stories 'Chance', 'Soon' and 'Silence' from Alice Munro's book 'Runaway'.

When recently widowed Julieta discovers that her 18-year-old daughter Antía has run away, she vows to put aside her grief for her late husband and do everything she can to find her daughter. The more she searches, however, the more Julieta realises she doesn't know Antía very well at all.

In Spanish with English subtitles.

Based on the novel by renowned South African author, Zakes Mda.

The seaside village of Hermanus is overrun with whale-watchers; foreign tourists determined to see whales in their natural habitat. But when the tourists have gone home, the Whale Caller lingers at the shoreline, wooing a whale he has named Sharisha with cries from a kelp horn. When Sharisha fails to appear for weeks on end, the whale caller frets like a jealous lover, oblivious to the fact that the town drunk, Saluni, a woman who wears a silk dress and red stiletto heels, is infatuated with him.

The two misfits eventually fall in love. But each of them is ill equipped for romance, and their relationship suggests the deeper concern is not so much the fragility of love, but the fragility of life itself when one surrenders wholly to the foolish heart.

The animated Isle Of Dogs tells the story of Atari Kobayashi, 12-year-old ward to corrupt Mayor Kobayashi. When, by Executive Decree, all the canine pets of Megasaki City are exiled to a vast garbage-dump called Trash Island, Atari sets off alone in a miniature Junior-Turbo Prop and flies across the river in search of his bodyguard-dog, Spots.

There, with the assistance of a pack of newly-found mongrel friends, he begins an epic journey that will decide the fate and future of the entire Prefecture.

Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson fights against (but is exactly like) her wildly loving, deeply opinionated and strong-willed mom, a nurse working tirelessly to keep her family afloat after Lady Bird's father loses his job.

Set in Sacramento, California in 2002, amidst a rapidly shifting American economic landscape, Lady Bird is an affecting look at the relationships that shape us, the beliefs that define us, and the unmatched beauty of a place called home.

(Academy Award nominations for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay)

Meet Ove, an isolated retiree with strict principles and a short fuse - the quintessential angry old man next door. Having entirely given up on life, his days are spent in a constant monotony of enforcing housing association rules and visiting his beloved wife Sonja’s grave.

Ove’s somewhat content existence is disrupted, however, with the arrival of a boisterous young family who move in next door. Heavily pregnant Parvaneh and her lively children are the complete antithesis of what ill-tempered Ove thinks he needs. Yet, from this unhappy beginning an unlikely friendship blooms and Ove’s past happiness and heartbreaks come to light.

Based on the international bestselling novel by Fredrik Backman, the Oscar-nominated A Man Called Ove is a wistful, heartwarming tale of unreliable first impressions and a wonderful reminder that life is sweeter when it’s shared.

In Swedish language with English subtitles.

Siblings Thulani and Zanele journey through life knowing that they have no one but each other to lean on. With Alexandra Township in South Africa serving as a vibrant backdrop, the siblings escape one tragedy and build a life together where big brother Thulani is over protective of his younger sister.

As we witness Zanele’s coming of age story in a neighbourhood where there seems to be no escape, she starts making decisions that put her in harm’s way. As a result, the two share a very strained relationship and Zanele is driven into the arms of an older man, as her way to rebel and escape what she thinks is a bleak future.

Thulani, determined to put an end to this relationship is overcome by rage and this leads him to make a decision that has serious repercussions.

In Zulu with English subtitles.

Lars von Trier's bold, brilliant and controversial film finally arrives in its fully fleshed-out form – the only version personally approved by the director - with over 80 minutes of unseen footage.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stacy Martin play Joe, a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac who one night is found beaten up in an alley by a gentle old bachelor. After taking her to his flat he cares for her wounds and asks how she got herself into such a situation; thus Joe begins recounting the dark, lusty and labyrinthine story of her life.

Audiences can now experience the definitive and completely uncensored cut of this profoundly moving and viscerally shocking landmark film in two parts.

PLEASE BE AWARE: This is a mainstream movie, but with an artistic element, and the scenes depicted are of an extremely graphic nature.

From acclaimed director Pawel Pawlikowski (Last Resort, My Summer of Love) comes Ida, a poignant and powerfully told drama about 18-year-old Anna, a sheltered orphan raised in a convent, who is preparing to become a nun when she discovers that her real name is Ida and her Jewish parents were murdered during the Nazi occupation.

This revelation triggers a heart-wrenching journey into the countryside, to the family house and into the secrets of the repressed past, evoking the haunting legacy of the Holocaust and the realities of postwar Communism.

Powerfully written and eloquently shot, Ida is a masterly evocation of a time, a dilemma, and a defining historical moment.

(2015 Oscar winner for: Best Foreign Language Film. Also nominated for Best Cinematography)

Kate Mercer is planning a party to celebrate her 45th wedding anniversary. One week before the celebration, however, a letter arrives for her husband, Geoff, containing news that reawakens troubling and long-hidden memories.

Though Kate continues to prepare for the anniversary, she becomes increasingly concerned by Geoff's preoccupation with the letter and the ensuing revelations about his past. By the time the party comes round, there may not be a marriage left to celebrate.

Anchored by sensational performances from Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, 45 Years is an intimate, moving and beautifully restrained portrait of a marriage shaken to its core by things left unspoken. Winning Best Actor and Best Actress awards at this year's Berlinale Film Festival, Andrew Haigh's 45 Years is British filmmaking at its very best.

(Academy Award nomination for: Best Actress)

The critically-acclaimed drama about Ben, an unconventional man who raises his six children in the forest of the Pacific Northwest, isolated from society.

When he is forced to bring his family out of seclusion and into the world, this leads to a confrontation with his father-in-law, who wants his grandchildren to have a normal life. Now Ben must question if his methods are the best for his family.

(Academy Award nomination for: Best Actor)

The winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, Blue Is The Warmest Colour is the stunning portrait of a relationship, detailed in its portrayal yet exploring emotions and situations universal to us all, this is a towering achievement in cinema.

15-year-old Adèle (a spine-tingling performance from Adèle Exarchopoulos) feels like an average teenager, with school, friends, parents and boys taking up most of her time and thoughts. That is until a chance encounter with a beguiling blue-haired girl (a luminescent Léa Seydoux) turns her world upside down, forcing her to question her desires and assert herself as a woman and as an adult.

Jaw-droppingly frank in its sexual content, mesmerisingly beautiful as an artistic accomplishment and utterly compelling from start to finish, this is gripping, engrossing cinema in its rawest, purest form and one of the most celebrated and talked-about films of the year.