As wrenching and related a movie as any you’re prone to see this 12 months, Italy’s entry, Io Capitano, tells the story of two Senegalese youngsters making the treacherous journey from Dakar to Italy in the hunt for a greater life. Filmmaker Matteo Garrone (greatest identified for 2008’s vivid and gritty crime drama Gomorrah) shot alongside the route taken by so many West African migrants—together with by the forbidding Saharan desert—and his movie combines an air of vérité authenticity with attractive flights of mournful fantasy. The true discovery of Io Capitano, which will be laborious to look at, but additionally lifts you up with its imaginative and prescient of resilience and survival, is its magnetic younger star, newcomer Seydou Sarr, making his characteristic movie debut. The ending sequence, aboard a ramshackle boat crossing the Mediterranean, is a heart-stopper.

Io Capitano opens in restricted theaters on February 23.

The Crowd-Pleaser: Society of the Snow

Is it bizarre to name a film that depicts cannibalism a crowd-pleaser? Spain’s submission, Society of the Snow, tells the true story of the 1970 Uruguayan rugby staff, whose flight crashed within the Andes. A number of survived for an unimaginable 72 days earlier than they had been rescued—and, sure, they subsisted on the our bodies of their fallen teammates, however that isn’t the main focus of this fantastically shot, technically dazzling survival movie. It is a film, earnest and palpably respectful, concerning the energy of the human spirit and the love these younger males had for one another. It’s harrowing in locations (the airplane crash particularly), but additionally engineered to go away you virtually cheering by the top.