These extraordinary films all have in common a rare commitment to portraying troubled individuals through fearlessly compassionate means.
They not only open the door to places where empathy exists in spite of stigma or taboo, but ask us to see the world from the eyes of the marginalised and the shamed, reframing their behaviours and our own understanding of where they come from.
Dramatising the turbulence and ambiguity of custody battles with emotional precision and complexity, Charter focuses on a mother’s impulsive decision to abscond with her estranged children to a holiday resort, and the consequences of her actions.
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A young paedophile’s return to society is calmly explored in Belgian director Patrice Toye’s powerful, thought-provoking new film. Based on Inge Schilperoord’s controversial novel Muidhond.
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An ex-con masquerading as a priest works to heal the wounds of a grieving congregation with his unorthodox brand of faith and forgiveness in this darkly compelling Oscar-nominated Polish drama.
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Halina Reijn’s astonishingly assured directorial debut tensely interrogates the fantasises of a veteran therapist (Carice van Houten, Game of Thrones), whose attraction to a sex offender patient escalates into a dangerous cat-and-mouse game.
In this genuinely powerful and illuminating documentary, we step inside an outpatient mental health clinic run by a sympathetic elderly doctor to pull back “the invisible curtain” obscuring the world of Japan’s mentally ill.
This essential follow-up to Soda Kazuhiro’s taboo-breaking documentary on mental illness in Japanese society revisits the pillar of that film, Dr Yamamoto Masatomo, as he prepares to bid his patients farewell and enter into retirement.