Backrooms
When therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) disappears into an endless maze of yellow-lit corridors while searching for her missing patient, she discovers a world where the laws of space no longer apply. Every identical room leads to another, every flickering fluorescent light hints at unseen danger, and escaping becomes increasingly impossible.

Trading cheap jump scares for a slowly suffocating atmosphere, Backrooms turns one of the internet’s most recognisable urban legends into an unnerving psychological horror. Inspired by the viral ‘Backrooms’ creepypasta, the film began life in 2022 as a series of YouTube shorts by then-teenage filmmaker Kane Parsons, whose uncanny vision amassed millions of views online.

A24 eventually handed Parsons the reins to direct the feature, making the now-21-year-old one of the youngest filmmakers ever to helm a major studio-backed horror film. The gamble paid off: Backrooms has become A24’s top-grossing film of all time and has even earned Critics Choice Super Awards nominations.

The Old Man and His Car
Since his wife’s passing, Hock (Lim Kay Tong) has been quietly packing up the life he built in Singapore, giving away possessions, and preparing to join his son in Canada. There’s not a lot keeping him here, since he’s estranged from his daughter and disconnected from his friends. And yet, there’s one thing he can’t bear to part with: his beloved Mercedes.

He polishes it obsessively, meets prospective buyers only to scare them away, and takes one last drive after another as memories of happier family days come flooding back. But when an unexpected delay stalls his departure, Hock is forced to confront the regrets he’s spent years outrunning.

A chance encounter with June (Kristin Tiara), a persistent would-be buyer of the car, changes everything. Initially a thorn in Hock’s flesh, she becomes a catalyst for his healing, steering him towards the reconciliation he never thought possible.

Tender, understated, and deeply human, The Old Man and His Car is a poignant portrait of grief, regret, and second chances. More crucially, it’s a reminder of the importance of human connection and how it doesn’t always have to come from family.

The Drama
What starts as a celebration quickly spirals into something far messier in The Drama, a dark comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as engaged couple Emma and Charlie.

After a night of heavy drinking at their pre-wedding party, the couple decide to confess the worst thing they’ve ever done. Emma’s revelation isn’t about something she did, but something she once intended to do — a secret so shocking that it forces the couple to confront uncomfortable questions about whether people can ever truly know the ones we love.

Exploring the complexities of modern relationships with a balance of black humour and emotional honesty, The Drama is the kind of film that may leave couples turning to each other afterwards and asking: How much of someone’s past are you willing to accept and to what extent could you truly love a person, flaws and all?

Sirāt
In this 2025 Cannes Jury Prize-winning film, Luis (Sergi López) hits the wild, sprawling raves of southern Morocco, not for a party, but to find his vanished daughter. Along for the desperate ride are his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) and their trusty dog. Director Óliver Laxe masterfully captures this frantic quest on gritty 16mm film, turning the Moroccan desert into a character all its own — golden, warm, and gloriously bright, a vibrant backdrop to the escalating tension. Don’t let the stunning visuals fool you, though. While it might have a Mad Max vibe, Sirāt is really an emotional rollercoaster that will leave you breathless.

Hamnet
Chloé Zhao had never read any William Shakespeare before taking on Hamnet. That’s why she doesn’t share the same sort of reverence for the Bard that many have — and this movie is better for it.

The director of Nomadland and The Rider has always gravitated toward lives on the margins, making Agnes Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife, the perfect subject for Hamnet.

Long reduced to a footnote in her husband’s story, and often mischaracterised as unloved, Agnes is reimagined here with striking depth. Zhao, alongside co-writer Maggie O’Farrell, whose novel the film is based on, strips away the assumptions to reveal something far more intimate: a marriage rooted in passion and understanding, before it’s reshaped by the devastating loss of the couple’s 11-year-old son.

At its heart, Hamnet is a tender, aching portrait of grief — but it’s also a reclamation of a marginalised character’s narrative. Under Zhao’s gaze, Agnes is no longer an afterthought, but a fully realised woman whose emotional journey rightly gets the spotlight.

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.