The Best Well-acted Movies to Watch on Mubi

There is nothing quite like The Substance right now. It’s unsubtle, it’s provocative, and its satirical humor can be a hit or miss for some viewers, but it strikes at the one thing that’s fundamental to everyone, that can make or break their lives, yet that is rarely given grace and consideration– that is the […]

It’s hard not to watch The Unknown Country and think of Nomadland: along with similarities in their Terrence Malick-inspired visuals, both films follow lone women seeking catharsis on the road as they grieve profound losses. But Morrisa Maltz’s debut feature is a decidedly lower-key, more spiritual affair — and is all the better for it. […]

Aptly for a film partly set in a fortune cookie factory, Fremont deals with luck — specifically, the other side of good luck: survivor’s guilt. Donya (played by real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada) is a former translator for the US Army who fled her home city of Kabul on an emergency evacuation flight when […]

A twitchy, uncomfortable noir film for the digital age, Decision to Leave blends the trappings of a restless police procedural with an obsessive forbidden romance. Here, director Park Chan-wook flips every interrogation and piece of evidence on its head, pulling us away from the whodunit and towards the inherently invasive nature of a criminal investigation. […]

Aspiring writer-director Vita of My First Film is insufferable. When she starts out making her first feature, she’s pleasantly surprised by the people who came to help her, but the repetition of the shoot, the scene not matching the idea in her head, which she tries to put into image and word, but can’t quite […]

It’s heartbreaking to realize that Happening, a film set in 1960s France tracking a young woman’s journey to dangerously and desperately terminating her pregnancy, is still very much relevant and relatable to this day. Around the world, abortion is still inaccessible, if not completely illegal, and women still struggle to lay full claim to their […]

It can be very frustrating to watch something, hoping that the show, play, or film would be worth watching, and find yourself feeling worse after the experience. Most of us end up just changing the channel, leaving the theater, or finding something else to watch, but instead of doing any of this, Yannick depicts the […]

Other People’s Children wrestles with some very tricky life experiences: bonding with a partner’s child in the agonizing knowledge that that attachment is entirely contingent on the fate of your romantic relationship; being a woman of a certain age and wanting a child but becoming keenly aware of the ticking of your body clock. For […]

There’s much to despair at in Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s drama set in Chad, where abortion is illegal, female genital mutilation isn’t, and single mothers are ostracised. Amina’s (Achouackh Abakar) 15-year-old daughter Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio) has just been expelled from school because she’s pregnant. Like Amina, Maria has been abandoned by the child’s father — but, […]

Dedicated to his father, director Christopher Honoré’s most recent film contemplates the loss of a parent. This endeavor is a deeply personal one. Honoré’s approach acknowledges this– he starts and interjects throughout the whole film with scenes of Lucas confessing his dark emotions. After all, losing one’s father is a difficult theme to talk about, […]

When Émilie finds a new roommate in Camille, she also gains a friend and a lover. Still, the parameters of their relationship are never quite sure, causing a complicated chasm that both divides and arouses them. Eventually, they meet Nora, who brings her own desires and insecurities into the mix. Experimentation ensues as the film […]

A powerful but quiet movie directed by Paul Dano and based on a novel of the same name by Richard Ford. It stars Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal as a couple who move to a new town with their only child during the 1960s. Their relationship transforms after Gyllenhaal’s character loses his job as a […]