
The Academy judges uncharacteristically got it right this year awarding top gongs to Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea—two powerful stories about troubled outsiders in

20th Century Women: Dir. Mike Mills

Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening) is a determined single mother, raising her adolescent son Jamie (newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann, in a breakout performance) at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women in Jamie’s upbringing—Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields’ home, and Julie (Elle Fanning), a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour.

Isabelle Huppert is Michèle LeBlanc; founder and CEO of a successful video game company, who is attacked in her own home. Taking what appears to be a desire to shrug off the terrifying incident, she locks the door after her attacker and refuses to tell the police—then Michèle begins to track down her assailant, and soon they are both drawn into a curious and thrilling game, one that at any moment may spiral out of control. A gripping multi-layered psychological noir thriller from filmmaker Paul Verhoeven that recalls Hitchcock & Polanski.
Frantz: Dir. François Ozon
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