Elegance Bratton made his name as a filmmaker whose work in documentaries, short films, and television has focused on exploring the lives of vulnerable Black queer and trans young people in New York. With his feature film debut, he tells a lightly fictionalized version of his own troubled youth. Kicked out of his home at age sixteen by a staunchly homophobic mother, Bratton navigated homelessness for nearly a decade until a decision to enlist in the Marines helped him to find new purpose in his life. It’s a deeply personal story, but lyrically rendered with clear eyes, it’s also universally accessible.

Luca Guadagnino has never shied away from heightened depictions of the pleasures or torments of the flesh. With his adaptation of Bones and All he confronts an entirely different sort of misunderstood passion and hunger in the form of a cannibal love story.

In many ways, She Said fits the mold of a classic investigative journalism thriller. Two reporters toil tirelessly against very powerful forces to nail down a story that will take down a very bad guy. Further, anyone with any awareness of the course of the last half-decade’s recognition of sexual misconduct in the workplace almost certainly knows what became of Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s efforts to bring the abuses of Harvey Weinstein to light in the pages of America’s newspaper of record. Knowing how something turns out, however, isn’t necessarily an obstacle to crafting a film this that revels in the process of getting the big story.

With his prestige television background, including an Emmy for Succession, director Mark Mylod has a keen eye for the foibles of the ridiculously rich and powerful. In his feature film debut that crackles with humor and wild surprises, he applies that perspective to concoct a wild and biting commentary on the dark undercurrents of and frivolities of the high-end food world and those who patronize it.

Ryan Coogler’s first Black Panther film was the first (and only) Marvel to crack the Oscar ceiling for a best picture nomination. The much-anticipated return to Wakanda reconciles with the sad reality of the real world: the 2020 death of Chadwick Boseman and Wakanda’s loss of its beloved king and protector.

A pervasive sadness lingers around the corners of Aftersun, Charlotte Wells’s deeply accomplished recollection of a father-daughter summer holiday in Turkey.

Martin McDonagh revisits 1920s Ireland with a stirring dark comedy of an abruptly severed friendship on a tiny island of sad boring men.