German

A film shoot sparks fear and anger when a holy book is desecrated in the name of art in this intense German thriller, fanning the flames of contemporary conflict into a taut and tangly blaze.

Plunging through the corridors of a surgical ward, this frantic Swiss drama charts the pulse-racing worklife of an overstretched, underappreciated nursing professional.

In the wake of a traumatic incident, a young woman forms a surrogate mother-daughter relationship with her rescuer. As emotional walls come down, doubts arise: is there more to the care offered than simple kindness?

Mattias spends his days pretending to be someone else, offering companionship to strangers in need. Bernhard Wenger’s unsettling drama quietly dissects loneliness, identity and the cost of always performing.

German cinema celebrated the arrival of a bold new auteur in Cannes, as Mascha Schilinski unveiled her ghostly epic of women in one house visited by catastrophe and its echoes over generations.

Panic around a new digital Big Brother era underpins a clever, absurdist send-up of bourgeois hypocrisy, as a married couple are put on the spot by their daughter’s all-pervasive telepathy.