4: Um, womanhood

A contemplative, mournful but richly imagined movie about a retiring Italian President (Toni Servillo from The Great Beauty) facing two thorny ethical decisions that may define his legacy.

Image: © Andrea Pirrello

Regularly cited as the greatest Spanish film ever made, Berlanga's masterpiece is a pitch black comedy about an undertaker lined up by the state executioner to marry his beautiful daughter -- but he'll also have to inherit the old man's job.

Writer-director Eva Libertad has made a revealing, compassionate film about the fears and anxieties of a deaf woman (played by Libertad's sister, deaf actress Miriam Garlo) who is about to have a baby.

Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.

At a water polo camp, Ben is plunged into the deep end of toxic peer pressure. Terrified of incurring his campmates’ wrath, he joins them in tormenting a kid whose skin rash has been branded “the plague”. But then he experiences a breakout of his own...

Winner of the Goya Award for Best Documentary, this is an exquisite and surprisingly intimate portrait of the brilliant young guitarist Yerai Cortés, preceded by an hour of passionate flamenco music, song and dance performed by Flamenco Rosario.