If you suffer from lepidopterophobia, this film will either cure your fear of moths or push you over the edge. Warning: the screen is often filled with moths of every shape, size, colour and pattern while the sound of flapping, fluttering and girating wings fills the air to the point where you feel bombarded by the flying, furry creatures.

“Shoot, Jim, shooot!” Simon Callow does a fine impression of producer Ismail Merchant desperately trying to get director James Ivory to bring urgency to the proceedings.

The received wisdom was that Ismael thought Jim was going to bankrupt Merchant Ivory Productions commercially by insisting on perfection, while Jim was sure that Ismael would bankrupt it artistically by insisting on every possible economy.

On July 4, 2022, one of the most unusual performances in Hamlet’s lengthy and much travelled CV took place: an in-game stream for players of the blockbuster Grand Theft Auto (GTA).

Rachel Yoder says she wrote her debut novel Nightbitch as a reaction to Donald Trump’s first term as President, with what she saw as its consequent mood-shift in America towards “traditional values and women staying home, taking care of the kids.”

It must have seemed such a delicious premise – a Buñuel-esque comedy about world leaders trapped at a luxury retreat as the apocalypse looms. With cult director and installation artist Guy Maddin directing alongside his regular collaborators Galen and Evan Johnson, one can understand why Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, and the rest of the starry cast signed up for Rumours. Unfortunately, it all wears a little thin.

The writer-director of 2017’s I Am Not a Witch, Rungano Nyoni, has come up with another scorcher, this time taking aim at Zambia’s social structures, in which women’s power can become petty tyranny. Nyoni’s Zambian scenarios are populated with “aunties” and “uncles” and the occasional “grandma”. These titles designate the elders of the kinship group, the leaders who speak for the rest. In the case of our heroine’s Auntie Christine, that means a non-stop stream of aggressive accusations.

“You either got faith or you got unbelief, and there ain’t no neutral ground,” as Bob Dylan sang, but Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) isn’t finding it quite that simple.

The Indian writer-director Payal Kapadia scored this year’s Cannes Grand Prix with her first fiction film, All We Imagine as Light, which follows three women trying to make a living in modern Mumbai. It’s a deserving winner, both exquisitely delicate and formally bold.

From James I’s campaign to wipe out witchery to the feuding sister sorceresses of The Wizard of Oz and the new film musical Wicked, spellcasting by supposedly wayward women has never been able to avoid persecution and misunderstanding.

"No one mourns the wicked," we're told during the immediately arresting beginning to Wicked, which concludes two hours 40 minutes later with the words, "to be continued" flashed up on the screen. Will filmgoers mourn that they have to wait an entire year to see the second part of this supercharged screen adaptation of the stage musical blockbuster that London and New York audiences can currently absorb in a single sitting? (Not for nothing has the show taken up seemingly permanent residency at Broadway's largest theatre, the Gershwin.)