In his tense, Cannes’ Best Director winning third feature, arthouse favourite Amat Escalante tackles the rising underworld of Mexico’s drug cartels. With a stunning visual style and an air of quasi-documentary naturalism, Heli is confrontational, heart-pounding cinema at its very best.

Carlos Reygadas’s cinema is one of meticulous observation and grandiose revelations. Casting himself and his real-life wife, the Mexican auteur boldly explores—with spellbinding visuals—the dark corners of relationships, dissecting patriarchy along the way. A domestic drama of majestic proportions.

Startling stories of cartel crime and class tension in Mexico are deftly, elliptically interwoven in this exceptional debut from Natalia López Gallardo. Previously an editor for Lisandro Alonso and Carlos Reygadas, she won the Silver Bear Jury Prize in Berlin for this urgent, unshakeable drama.

Remarkably bold filmmaking from Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso, the enigmatic Jauja is a postcolonial political allegory rendered in witty shots dazzlingly colored and composed. A film hypnotic and transfixing, minimalist and expressionistic. Starring Viggo Mortensen.