Sentimental Value 
Nominated for nine Oscars (and winning Best International Feature Film), Sentimental Value follows a fractured family and examines its members’ unresolved resentments and grief. Stellan Skarsgård plays Gustav Borg, an estranged father who suddenly re-enters his daughters’ lives with a plan to make a deeply personal film about his own mother, a resistance fighter tortured during the Nazi occupation.

He wants his daughter, Nora (Renate Reinsve), a stage actress battling stage fright, to play the lead. She refuses, only to watch an American star (Elle Fanning) step into the role, with filming set to take place in their family home. What follows is a simmering, emotionally charged meditation on memory and relationships. 

Director Joachim Trier brings surprising lightness to heavy themes, crafting a film that feels lived-in rather than performed.

Die My Love
A move from New York to rural Montana should feel like a fresh start. But in Die My Love, it marks the beginning of an unravelling.

Jennifer Lawrence delivers a ferocious performance as Grace, a writer and new mother grappling with isolation and post-partum depression. Opposite her, Robert Pattinson plays her distant husband, whose long absences and emotional withdrawal only deepen her spiral. 

Directed by Lynne Ramsay, Die My Love is essentially a visceral descent into a fractured mind. Disorienting and unapologetically intense, it lingers long after the credits roll.

Rental Family 
Brendan Fraser continues his remarkable comeback, following up his Oscar-winning turn in The Whale with a poignant performance in Rental Family, a quietly devastating yet tender story set in Tokyo.

Fraser plays Phillip, an out-of-work actor who takes on an unusual job: performing as a stand-in loved one for strangers. In a society where loneliness runs deep, ‘rental family’ services offer whatever people need — be it a temporary father, friend, or partner. While the story is fictional, it is rooted in a real and growing Japanese phenomenon.

Sceptical at first, Phillip gradually finds purpose in these fleeting connections, discovering something real within the artificial. Fraser brings warmth and vulnerability to a film that’s as comforting as it is bittersweet. It’s a feel-good story, but don’t be surprised if it leaves you in tears.

Eternity 
What if eternity came down to one choice?

In this Apple Original, Elizabeth Olsen plays Joan, who awakens in the afterlife at what looks like a retro-futuristic train station. There, she’s told she must choose one person to spend forever with: her first flame (played by Callum Turner) or her husband of 65 years (Miles Teller).

Part love story, part philosophical thought experiment, the film allows Joan to explore both relationship paths before deciding. With its whimsical, ’60s-inspired setting, Eternity transforms an impossible question into an intimate, humanistic, and surprisingly fun romantic ride.

Train Dreams
Joel Edgerton leads Train Dreams as Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker in the early 20th-century Pacific Northwest. Spanning decades, the film traces his life through love and loss.

On one level, it’s a story about man versus nature — the forests he destroys in the name of building railroads (i.e. technological progress). On another, it’s about unimaginable grief and the slow, resilient act of carrying on.

Deliberately paced and deeply reflective, Train Dreams was a major awards contender this year with multiple Oscar nominations.