Asghar Farhadi reminds us of how, ultimately, there are countless external factors that determine and alter our lives that we have no control over.

Cinematographer Francesco di Giacomo never lets an amazing shot go to waste, whether in sumptuous interiors or starkly beautiful landscapes. He is a master of chiaroscuro, rich texture, and, above all, framing.

Italian director Laura Bispuri’s debut film follows Mark (Alba Rohrwacher), an Albanian man who had renounced his female gender and taken a vow of chastity as a teen to escape a life of servitude.

Ever wonder what would happen if a chicken and a pig mated and had a baby? This grim tale set in Denmark mixes dark humor with, well, Darwinism.

Depicting a mental disability on film is always tricky, but actress Moran Rosenblatt does a fine job balancing her character’s inherent sweetness with an underlying sense of frustration.

Arnaud Desplechin’s latest film encompasses many lives in one. Like all our parallel lives, some make more sense than others in this rich, thought-provoking, and overstuffed film.

Meryl Streep has recently undertaken to play Florence Foster Jenkins in a film by Stephen Frears that will come out later this year. French writer/director Xavier Giannoli, though, has beaten that production to the punch with his deluxe variation of Jenkins’s biography.

Slapstick meets The Bad Seed in Julie Delpy’s fitfully charming tale, marked by contradictory impulses and abrupt, bewildering shifts in tone.

Within 11 days’ time, New Yorkers can see a significant slice of current French films that have won acclaim at Cannes and earned praise back home.