Though self-consciously structured as if a fairy tale or fable, Clio Barnard’s follow-up to the docudrama The Arbor continues the tradition of Britain’s kitchen sink socio-realism. Both devastating and compassionate, The Selfish Giant is a profound film on friendship and the class system.

British one-of-a-kind director Peter Strickland explores a S&M see-sawing power dynamic between two women with piercing psychological insight in this extraordinarily sumptuous feast of image and sound. An increasingly abstract, intoxicating erotic drama lush with pictorial beauty.