British filmmaker Andrew Haigh is a jewel: a uniquely measured dramatist profoundly concerned with the inner lives of his characters. We adore his breakout feature, taking place over a stretched-out weekend, for its tender, sensual and poignantly realized evocation of the bliss of falling in love.

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.