2022 Golden Globe Awards

“I know this one takes place in Colombia but you are right, it really represents what is going on around the world and America. ”With those words, John Leguizamo summed up Dark Blood, Colombian director Harold Trompetero’s drama about a man who copes with his new life of abuse and humiliation in prison while dealing with tragedy, sorrow and the repercussions of his crimes on his family.

Somalia’s capital Djibouti serves as the backdrop of this love story about Guled, a gravedigger, and his wife Nasra, a woman dealing with chronic kidney disease. They have a teenage son, Mahad and are struggling to make ends meet.

Unclenching the Fists is only the second feature film by an aspiring Russian filmmaker, Kira Kovalenko. Co-written with Anton Yarush and Liubov Mulmenko, this 97-minute drama received the grand prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2021.

Let it Be Morning addresses the Israeli Arab community and the ways in which they deal with life and its challenges when they find themselves under siege on occasion and without warning. The film is directed by Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin (2007s The Band’s Visit, later adapted as a Broadway musical; 2016s Beyond the Mountains and Hills), who deftly adapts the book by Palestinian writer Sayed Kashua, on which Let it Be Morning is based.

Faith, stigmata, religious patriarchy, forbidden desires, self-flagellation, suffering, punishment, power plays: Catholicism has it all. Nothing gives us as many story components as this religious institution, which has more scandals and a more colorful history than any other.

Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian Tale of Cancel Culture.

2021’s Playground is an important film by talented Belgian writer-director Laura Wandel and marks her first feature-length movie. From the first shot of the film, viewers are thrown headlong into the deep end of the painful issue of bullying in elementary schools.

Amira is a lively and creative teen conceived via artificial insemination from a father who is detained in an Israeli prison. Immensely proud of her father, Amira lives with the hope of meeting the man, spending her time photoshopping him into her arms and her mother’s arms in the pictures she takes with her professional camera.

South Korea’s political action thriller Escape from Mogadishu is set in Somalia during the 1991 Somali civil war. Two South Korean diplomats, played by Han Shin-sung (Kim Yoon-seok) and Kang Dae-jin (Zo In-sung), who had been sent to the region in 1987, prepare to evacuate their embassy along with their employees, gathering family members as they make a desperate attempt to flee the country to safety.

Director-writer Pedro Almodóvar tackles the nightmare of every mother – to have their newborn babies switched at the maternity ward in his latest Spanish drama. Parallel Mothers (Madres Paralelas) deals with the trauma and complications when the switch happens not only with the women involved but also with the people close to them.