Made by the city’s Agbajowo Collective, The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos is a cry of protest at evictions

In November 2016, people living in Otodo-Gbame, a fishing shantytown on Nigeria’s Lagos coastline, saw their community partially destroyed by fire. Attempts to get the police to stop the destruction were futile, according to an Amnesty International report . Instead of helping, “the police and a demolition team returned overnight with a bulldozer”.

Much of the blame fell on the Lagos state government, which had publicised plans to remove waterside slums around the city. Still, the government denied responsibility for demolishing the shantytown , even as it noted that it would “prefer to have better development, befitting of a prime area in a mega city” on the land occupied by the community.

A captivating thriller about a man on the run with a baby, and Jake Gyllenhaal has to stop a train from blowing up in a glorious time-loop whodunnit

Devashish Makhija’s new Hindi-language film melds a chase thriller and a topical political drama to exhilarating effect – and throws in a baby for extra pathos. Mumbai construction worker Dasru (Manoj Bajpayee) is forced to go on the run with his three-month-old daughter, Joram, when his wife is killed by unknown assailants. He flees to his home state of Jharkhand, where he has a secret past as a tribal rebel, but the police and powerful local politician Phulo Karma (a superbly chilling Smita Tambe) are on his tail. Between tense pursuits, there is a real sense of a rural community succumbing to “progress” – mining, land grabs, corruption – and a traditional culture buckling under the strain.
Sunday 8 September, 2.10am, Channel 4

He says that acting is a gamble – but is a dead cert to terrify audiences with new film Speak No Evil. The Scottish actor talks about marriage, therapy – and why Ken Loach would never cast him

He is a funny character, James McAvoy. I meet him in one of those fancy Soho hotels where the cast of films that are about to be massive assemble so they can all be interviewed on the same day. And McAvoy’s new psychological thriller, Speak No Evil, will be massive. A remake of the 2022 Danish original , it is just as terrifying, with one difference.

McAvoy, 45, is personable and urbane. He is wearing a suit, but looks like a guy who changes into cargo shorts as soon as he gets home. “I’m really lucky in a lot of ways, mainly that my granny’s all over me,” he says. “I’ve definitely got a large dose of what she has.” His parents divorced when he was 11, and his mother was ill, so he went to live with his grandparents in Drumchapel, Glasgow. Later, considering class, he describes his childhood tangentially, talking about why Ken Loach would never cast him. “I’m too much of an actor. And I’m, like: ‘I grew up on the council estate you shot half your films on!’ But I’m too much of an actor.”

The actor-singer returns to horror as a new mother confronted with the hell of living with her creepy and boundary-crossing mother-in-law

Like the long-outdated wallpaper decorating its titular parlor, The Front Room, the debut feature from twin brothers Max and Sam Eggers (siblings to Robert, director of The Witch , The Northman and the upcoming Nosferatu), is a strange presence, at once bright, odd and menacing. Though billed as a psychological, so-called “elevated” horror film in the vein of Hereditary and Talk To Me (also from A24, as trailers note), The Front Room immediately aims for something more campy and comic; in a pre-taped message played before the screening I attended, the film’s star Brandy Norwood pitched it as a satisfying revenge flick and urged audiences to “please get loud” in the theater.

The Front Room would, and certainly should, attract attention based on Norwood alone, in her first significant horror role since 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer. It is an underwhelming mixed bag of tricks, but Norwood is never less than compelling as Belinda, a heavily pregnant anthropology professor who routinely endures disrespect – from her apathetic students, patronizing administration and greedy academic department – with a soft smile and steel spine. But her capacity for bullshit gets tested when her lawyer husband Norman (a handsome yet rather flat Andrew Burnap) is contacted by his supremely religious and overbearing stepmother Solange (Kathryn Hunter), essentially turning Belinda into an adjunct in her own life.

Shocking violence is tempered by strange, silent sequences in a sophomore feature about an obstetrician under investigation, which has echoes of The Piano Teacher

Dea Kulumbegashvili is the much-admired Georgian director whose feature debut, Beginning , won golden opinions, though I confess to having been agnostic on the grounds of mannerisms that were a little derivative – some resemblances there to Carlos Reygadas and Michael Haneke.

Her follow-up movie, April, is now presented at Venice. That month has never seemed crueller. The high arthouse influences are still detectable, but Kulumbegashvili has mastered and absorbed them and has an evolving film-language of her own, though still involving extended static takes, long shots in which people have inaudible but important conversations in the far distance, and explicit moments of violence whose shock is tempered and complicated by strangely exalted, if bizarre, visionary sequences.

The artist and actor answers your questions about dodging animatronic sharks, hanging out with Al Pacino, his love of Abba and the making of his first album in 11 years

Do you think hip-hop still has the cultural impact it once did when you first arrived on the scene during the Def Jam era? Can it still be considered the “Black CNN”, in the words of Chuck D? Bauhaus66
Hip-hop isn’t underdog music any more. On some levels, people even view it as elitist music now. Whether it’s still the Black CNN depends on the artist. It’s become more of a pop genre and doesn’t have the punk rock, Sex Pistols, Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, LL early 80s energy, but I think it’s more important than ever for artists to write about more than just the trappings of success. As you evolve, you expect someone to meet you where you’re at and if that’s still at the car dealership there’s going to be a disconnect.

Why do so many rappers adapt so well to acting? alexito
Part of being a rap artist is leaning in to a certain aspect of your character. You’re not portraying a role as such – they’re two individual crafts – but there is commonality in the area of speaking in front of people, making a persona bigger and bringing a story to life. Acting is more of a sweet science. Hip-hop is like mixed martial arts: the technical aspects are more fluid.

Ahead of his transformation into an ageing, smelly Henry VIII in new film Firebrand, the twice Oscar-nominated actor is answering your questions

Never say Jude Law doesn’t throw himself into a role. To better inhabit late-stage Henry VIII, he of the rolls of fat, rotting leg and questionable dentistry, Law commissioned a special perfume he’d douse himself in during shooting for new film Firebrand. Its ingredients? An “extraordinary variety of blood, faecal matter and sweat”.

We have questions about this – no doubt you will, too. Perhaps you might like to quiz Law further on the Tudor monarchy or England’s move from Catholicism to the Church of England (with, maybe, a side reference to his role in The Young Pope). In his review of Firebrand, our own Peter Bradshaw writes that “we at one stage get a full-on shot of His Majesty’s pale, fleshy bum as he has conjugal relations with Catherine – like the giant, shaved arse of a sheep. Did Law use a buttock double for this stomach-turning image?” Food for thought there.

Good cop, bad cop, Shakespearean villain – he’s done the lot. To mark the milestone birthday of one of the nicest men in Hollywood, we run down his finest works

Bernardo Bertolucci, deep into his picturesque international film-making phase, portrays the search for a reincarnated lama to insipid effect. But who better to play Siddhartha in the film’s flashbacks than Keanu Reeves, taking kohl and hair extensions in his stride, not to mention repurposing a king cobra for use as an umbrella?

Much-anticipated titles from Mike Leigh and Ron Howard lead lineup with stars such as Amy Adams and Hugh Grant

Last year’s Toronto film festival, a key stop on the fall circuit for some of the season’s biggest new movies, was a subdued edition, the strikes affecting both the films in the lineup as well as the stars who were unable to attend.

But this year, things seem to be back to where they once were, the more commercially minded festival offering A-listers from Amy Adams to Florence Pugh to Hugh Grant as well as welcome returns for Mike Leigh and Pamela Anderson.