Dir: Andrea Arnold UK 2009 Colour 124 minutes
Cast: Katie Jarvis, Rebecca Griffifiths, Michael Fassbender

After stunning the world with her directorial debut Red Road, Andrea Arnold once again surprises with this Jury Prize winner at Cannes. Fish Tank is both a kitchen sink drama and a coming-of-age tale, with the housing projects as a social backdrop. It sensitively chronicles rebellious Mia’s prickly relationship with her family, which includes her single mother and her sharp-tongued younger sister. But when mum brings home a charming Irish boyfriend (Hunger’s Michael Fassbender), it gradually and irrevocably alters the family’s dynamics.

Dir: Guo Xiaolu UK/France/Germany 2009 Colour 98 minutes
Cast: Huang Lu, Wei Yi Bo, Geoffrey Hutchings

Acclaimed novelist Guo Xiaolu branches successfully into film directing with her second feature, which won the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival. She, a Chinese follows Mei, a typical Chinese teen from a rural village. But her pop/punk odyssey would lead her from being a gangster’s girlfriend in Chongqing to becoming an illegal immigrant stranded on the banks of the River Thames. Structured into chapters like a novel, the film is less a character study of youthful ennui than a portrayal of nation-less globalisation

Dir: Jane Campion UK Colour 2009 119 minutes
Cast: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider

The Piano director’s long-awaited new film is a lush biographical romance between the great poet John Keats and his fiancee, Fanny Brawne. Keats died of tuberculosis when he was just 25, but his love for Brawne is etched into history with the poem Bright Star, also the title of the film. Taking place in 1818 Hampstead, the film begins with the first meeting between Keats and Brawne. Soon they form a chaste yet secret relationship, one that is under constant threat due to illness as well as the intervention of Keats’ friend Charles Brown.

Dir: R. Lemkin, T. Sambath UK/Cambodia 2009 Colour 94 minutes

The 30-year-long silence by the Khmer Rouge has finally ended with this melancholic, effective documentary, a personal mission for co-director Thet Sambeth, senior reporter for the Phnom Penh Post. After losing his family members to the Killing Fields, Sambeth spent years befriending members of the Khmer Rouge, from foot soldiers to Pol Pot’s second-in-command, Nuon Chea. The trust building was crucial, as it allows, for the first time, the party’s members to open up about their roles in one of the world’s worst massacres in history.

Dir: Daniel Barber UK 2009 Colour 97 minutes
Cast: Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Iain Glen

Batman’s butler finally gets his chance to show his spirits in Harry Brown, a dark, menacing thriller that could be described as a cross between Death Wish and Gran Torino. With a truly grim view of modern England’s social decay, the London housing estate where the titular protagonist resides is teeming with gangs, drug dealers and other low-life denizens. A former Royal Marine, Harry lives a quiet life until the day his friend is murdered. The inimitable Michael Caine is expectedly superb as a wrathful avenger.

Dir: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger UK 1948 Colour 135 minutes
Cast: Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring

A most beloved classic and cited as an all-time favourite by Martin Scorsese, The Red Shoes is the seminal film about the magic of ballet that still enchants to this day. This brand new restoration vividly highlights the magnificent cinematography by Jack Cardiff, especially in the sumptuous dance scenes. A tragic and deeply romantic contemporary fable, it follows the travails of a young ballerina (Moira Shearer), torn between her love for a man and her love of dance, who joins an established company and becomes the lead in an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale The Red Shoes.