Eight-year-old Zachary has, so far, enjoyed life as his father's favourite son, as the possessor of a gift for healing and as younger sibling to a tearaway, a jock and a bookworm, but this relatively idyllic childhood in Québec is cast under the shadow of his dad's suspicions when he is discovered wearing a dress. Seven years on it's 1975 and Zac is in thrall to Ziggy Stardust and his cousin's boyfriend, a confusing situation for him, made more complicated by a history of trying to satisfy his d find out more...

Set in Johannesburg (more than a welcome change to the usual formulaic Hollywood paradigm whereby LA or New York are not only the backdrop for disaster but act too as the centre-point of planet Earth), An ominous mothership hovers above Johannesburg containing an alien race of insectoid refugees. Derogatively referred to as 'Prawns' by humans they are cordoned off in an apartheid-esque fashion and forced to live a desolate and slum-like existence in the titular District 9. While forcibly relocat find out more...

Bobby Sands was the IRA member who led the 1981 Long Kesh hunger strike as part of a campaign to achieve the status of political prisoners and not that of criminals. The first section of film deals with daily prison life, the 'dirty' protest and the violence, the second is a long discussion on the meaning of life with a sympathetic priest and the third depicts the last weeks and death of a man voluntarily dying of starvation. find out more...

A generic, but nevertheless, reasonably good warts and all biopic of Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka The Notorious B.I.G., from a drug dealing chilhood in a Brooklyn ghetto, through arrest, prison, his relationship problems, basic criminality and on to his success as a rap artist before his 1997 murder. find out more...

A wonderful tale of a girl's passage from childhood to adulthood, a time that coincided with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and his replacement by the tyranny of a fundamentalist theocracy. find out more...

Back in England, in the early 80s, bullied at school and mourning his father, recently dead in Thatcher's heroic Falklands War, lonely 12-year-old Shaun finds solace with a gang of older youths in the ska influenced skinhead subculture, a culture that was about to be hijacked by a nasty and virulent form of white power nationalism. Largely based round Shane Meadows' own experiences growing up on an impoverished Nottingham housing estate. Strongly recommended. find out more...

"Josephine Decker has created a new style of thriller that employs allegory, incorporates touches of David Lynch as well as Magritte -esque imagery. Decker's setting of a remote farm feels like a metaphor for what turns out to be hell. The raw and emotional (and yes, sometimes funny) dialog tells a story that can seem familiar at points but really is meant to keep you guessing and off balance. I really enjoyed how the undertones of this film came to life through her very deft contrast of the find out more...

One night in a bar an old friend tells director Ari Folman about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs; every night the same number, and though he knows the immediate reason, which relates to the Israeli / Lebanese war of the early 1980s, he is no less haunted. Intrigued by his friend's riddle and tormented by his own lack of memory Ari embarks upon a quest to find all those involved in the battle; now spread across the world, to bring light to a dark and shameful event find out more...

Set in an alternative America of the 1980s, at a time when the US and the USSR seemed set for an apocalyptic war, a group of retired Masked Heroes reunite after one of their number is murdered. What they uncover seems to point toward a greater, more sinister plot. find out more...