Following a celebrated performance piece about creative evolution, Zia Anger turns narrative cinema inside out with this meta-fiction, starring Odessa Young and Devon Ross. Transforming failure into rituals of rebirth, this poignant film captures the zeitgeist and comes straight from the heart.

Making commanding use of his imposing height and heft, Vince Vaughn gives a performance of coiled intensity in this noir-inflected descent into the American penal system. A brutally effective dose of neo-grindhouse, Brawl in Cell Block 99 unfolds with a methodical clarity worthy of John Carpenter.

With echoes of Get Out (not least in casting Caleb Landry Jones), Sebastián Silva’s anxiety-inducing seventh feature turns racially charged microaggressions into high drama. Heightened by unnerving hand-held camerawork and brilliantly cringy performances, Tyrel is a pure social nightmare.