To love your enemy may be divine but few could hope to reach the level of compassion towards the troubled and unloved evidenced in these films. From slut shaming and blind eyes turned to sexual assault through to terrorist sympathisers and tortured children, each film challenges the audience to park preconceptions and come to understand the humanity at the core of these problematic individuals.
Films — by Strand
Radical Empathy
Ayukawa: The Weight of a Life
How does a small Japanese whaling town adapt to a post-whaling world? In this sensitive study, local inhabitants reflect on the decline of local industry and the devastating tsunami that hit Ayukawa in 2011.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Babardeală cu bucluc sau porno balamuc
“Radu Jude's tale of a sex tape gone wrong jams two very different movies together for a bold, hilarious take on society's awful state.” — Eric Kohn, Indiewire
I'm Your Man
Ich bin dein Mensch
An archaeologist reluctantly agrees to test-run a humanoid love robot programmed to fulfil her desires in this poignant comedy starring Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens.
The Lost Daughter
Sensual, subversive and sun-drenched, “even mothers make mistakes” (Peter Debruge, Variety) in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s glittering directorial debut, the 2021 Venice Film Festival winner for Best Screenplay.
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
Världens vackraste pojke
As Tadzio in Death in Venice, Björn Andrésen electrified audiences worldwide with his fragile beauty. Fifty years later, his life is still haunted by the fallout from the role that made him recognised, and coveted, across the globe.
The Painted Bird
By equal turns horrifying and beautiful, The Painted Bird sees Czech filmmaker Václav Marhoul put a young boy through every manner of evil that 1940s Eastern Europe can conjure in this war-torn vision of hell.
Rehana Maryam Noor
Seeking justice for a student’s assault becomes an all-consuming vendetta for a college professor in Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s second feature — the first Bangladeshi film to screen at Cannes.
The Return: Life after ISIS
An intimate work of journalism examining the fate of ‘ISIS brides’, women lured to Syria and radicalised by the militant group, who now flounder in a Kurdish-run refugee camp, desperate to return home.