Abbas Kiarostami’s first feature made outside his native Iran is this sumptuous, brain-teasing romance, in which a deceptively simple relationship morphs into something more complex—and keeps the audience guessing. Cannes winner Juliette Binoche is enigmatic, vulnerable and perfect in the lead role.

Family traditions are challenged by new attitudes in this restrained, exquisite film from Olivier Assayas: a filmmaker whose cinema covers a diverse range of genres and milieus, collectively transforming modern anxieties into engrossing drama. With the late Edith Scob, and a blonde-haired Binoche!

Some 18 years after Cold Water, Olivier Assayas revisits his own autobiography for this deeply-felt yet unsentimental drama: a rear-view look at his adolescence in the aftermath of May 1968. A poignant portrait of a generation in mourning, coming-of-age in the face of failed revolution.