Sight and Sound: the September 2025 issue

In this specially selected list of 50 films, Sight and Sound critics, along with a host of filmmakers from Alice Rohrwacher to Mike Leigh, share vital works that they feel are underseen and overlooked – from little-known features by renowned directors to near impossible-to-see curios, and from Hollywood movies mislaid over time to global arthouse treasures waiting to emerge into the spotlight. We hope that you’ll dive in, discover some fantastic films and, perhaps, end up finding some hidden gems of your own on the journey.

Uncover 50 dazzling gems, including Raskolnikov, Uzhmuri, Lilac, Sylvia Scarlett, Deadline at Dawn, Under the Bridges, Reign of Terror and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Twenty years after Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee is preparing another western, Old Gold Mountain, about a pair of Chinese immigrant sisters during the Californian Gold Rush. With Sense and Sensibility also due to be rereleased in UK cinemas this summer, the director talks to Sam Wigley about his brilliant, eclectic career, the difficulty of making films today and his long-gestating Bruce Lee project. Words by Sam Wigley.

Peter Sellers was an actor blessed with peerless comic timing who was also capable of evoking genuine pathos and loss in his serious dramatic roles. In his centenary year, we look back over a troubled career remembered for a series of unforgettable performances that rank with the greatest of all time. By Andrew Roberts.

Not so long ago, sexualised violence directed against women was an all-too-common spectacle on screens. But some recent American indie films, made by women and nonbinary filmmakers, have fought that trend, exploring the meaning of such violence while refusing to show it. Is it time to celebrate the birth of a cinematic movement – the New Reticence? By B. Ruby Rich

In the masculine, money-grubbing world of exploitation movies in the California of the 1960s and 70s, the writer and director Stephanie Rothman stood out because both on screen and off she challenged clichéd ideas about a woman’s place – and did it with style. As a season of her work kicks off in London, she reminisces about her career. By Beatrice Loayza.

“Deaf representation on screen is still far too low and the situation may not be improved by the fact that the subject of deafness is increasingly prominent in cinema.”

The film presents two couples who at first are unable to communicate with each other, but then use all means available to express themselves, including speech, American Sign Language, pen and paper, chalk and slate, poetry, dance – and the more expressively physical languages of love. By Pamela Hutchinson.

Paul Mazursky’s 1978 classic An Unmarried Woman deftly captures the conflicted emotions of divorce. 

The entirety of An Unmarried Woman feels confessional, with a lightness in the dark moments that suggests the characters are finding themselves as you’re watching them. By Nicole Flattery.

Lauren Greenfield’s doc series Social Studies offers a fascinating exploration of social media use among Gen Z. By Andrew Male.

A rare long-form investigation of Israel’s war in Gaza reveals its targeting of healthcare workers. The filmmakers behind it detail the challenges they faced, not only in making a film in a warzone where no foreign journalists are allowed, but also in bringing it to broadcast. By Nick Bradshaw.

Films by Louise Stern, YouTuber Kane Parsons, Paul McCartney, Shofela Coker and Nadia Darries, Georgia Oakley, and Ishtar Currie-Wilson. By Hope Rangaswami.

Following on from the breakthrough success of their debut Talk to Me, the Australian brothers return with Bring Her Back, a grief-powered horror film given a depth of darkness by Sally Hawkins’s manipulative counsellor. By Lou Thomas.

With its devotion to restoration and its rich programme of both rarities and classics, often screened outdoors to take advantage of the Italian summer, the annual celebration of cinema’s past can leave you feeling that you’ve glimpsed the whole history of humanity. By Christina Newland.

Using high-contrast colours and geometric forms, Josep Renau’s designs dazzle the eye. By Alonso Aguilar.

“Contemporary independent film should be dealing with what life is like in Britain today. So much drama on television is dire – sentimental and nostalgic. I wanted to do something hard.”

Hanif Kureishi on his blistering script for My Beautiful Laundrette and why writers need to live in the real world.

Questionable investment in culture is rife, and the bonds between brands and audiences are being profoundly challenged. By Mike Williams.

The quintessential product of 80s New York, Sheila McLaughlin’s witty, fantastical story of lesbian desire and jealousy, with meta inflections and echoes of Hitchcock, might be ready to find its place in the canon. By B. Ruby Rich.

With hallucinatory visuals and a euphoric soundtrack, Darren Emerson’s immersive art installation In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats uses virtual reality to take participants back to an all-night rave in late 1980s Coventry. By Stephen Dalton.

Films

Our critics reviews: The Life of Chuck, Together, The Kingdom, Pavements, Little Trouble Girls, Late Shift, Materialists, Savages, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, Superman, Gazer, Motherboard, Friendship, Bring Her Back. 

Books

Our critics reviews: The Archival Impermanence Project: Film Restoration Poetics, Case Studies, and Histories, Cockfight: Fable of Failure.

DVD and Blu-ray

Our critics reviews: Terror in the Fog: The Wallace Krimi at CCC, Midnight, Chantal Akerman Collection: Volume 2 – 1982-2015, She Must Be Seeing Things, Divine Love, Hard Day’s Night, Twentyfourseven, La Terra Trema, The Box Man, Palindromes.