It’s easy to see metaphors about the status of modern Georgia, once again threatened by the Russian boot, in its recent artistic output. So while there are no overt political allusions in director Dea Kulumbegashshvili’s April, at its core you sense a tacit and urgent debate about how to square your conscience with the “rules” that govern the country’s conduct.

As well as generating a ceaseless stream of albums, whether live, studio or culled from his copious archives, Neil Young has also amassed a fairly hefty body of film work, either as director, star or both. Like his music, his movies are created with a kind of confrontational spontaneity, grabbed on the run with rough edges and non-sequiturs still intact. His directorial debut, 1973’s only fleetingly coherent Journey Through the Past, gave early warning of what to expect.

As if penguins didn’t have enough to fret about with impending tariffs on exporting guano to America, here comes Steve Coogan to ruffle their feathers. The Penguin Lessons is a pretty loose adaptation of a memoir by Tom Michell, about his stint as a young English teacher in an ersatz British boarding school in Argentina.

“I was born with the ability and the demon to write. I have been punished for it constantly.” Written and directed by Sinéad O’Shea, this fascinating documentary is a testimony to Edna O’Brien’s rebellious talent, her prolific output – a novel a year for a while – and her star-studded socialising. It includes archival footage, some of it against the backdrop of Irish politics, as well as final interviews in which she looks frail but still glamorous in a sequined indigo cardigan, recorded by O'Shea not long before O'Brien died last year, aged 93.

In a world of macho super-achievers like Jack Reacher and Ethan Hunt, maybe it’s time to hear it for the nerdy guys. The Amateur (based on a novel by Robert Littell) was made once before, in 1981, starring John Savage and Christopher Plummer and directed by Charles Jarrott. For this sleek remake, the director’s chair is occupied by James Hawes, who, among other things, directed the first series of Apple TV’s Slow Horses.

Director Louise Courvoisier has put herself firmly on the film map with this story of young Totone and his little sister, carving out a living in the modern-day Jura countryside after being orphaned. Think the Dardenne  brothers with more sunshine and less angst, a way of life where young calves are transported to market in the front seat of the family car.

Patrick McGilligan’s biography of Woody Allen weighs in at an eye-popping 800 pages, yet he waits only for the fourth paragraph of his introduction before mentioning the toxic elephant in the room: i.e. the sad fact that, despite never having been charged with – let alone convicted of – any crime, Allen in 2025 is, to all intents and purposes, cancelled.

Many know that the actor Richard Burton began life as a miner’s son called Richard Jenkins. Not so many are aware of the reason he changed his name. This film directed by Marc Evans explains how it came about.