Multiple Oscar winner Alejandro Iñárritu’s first Mexican feature since his 2000 breakout, Amores Perros, has been dubbed by some observers as his Roma, referring to the childhood memoir of his colleague, Alfonso Cuarón.

This epic serio-comedy chronicles the return home of famed journalist and documentarian, who goes through existential crisis, due to various forces: shifting family relationships, questions of cultural identity, and changes to the country of his birth.

The protagonist is played by the great Mexican actor Daniel Giménez-Cacho, who has been seen to an advantage in two great, still vastly underestimated  films, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria.

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3. Bones and All

Luca Guadagnino reteams with his Call Me by Your Name lead, Timothée Chalamet, starring opposite Waves discovery Taylor Russell in an adaptation of Camille DeAngelis’ novel of first love between two drifters on the road whose odyssey leads them back to confront their terrifying past. Much advance talk has focused on the book’s cannibalism elements, and the teaser contains moments of both lyricism and horror. David Kajganich, who wrote Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash and Suspiria, penned the script; the deluxe supporting cast includes Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny.

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4. The Eternal Daughter

Following her critically adored two-part remembrance of things past, The Souvenir, idiosyncratic British filmmaker Joanna Hogg returns to fiction with this ghost story about parental relationships, in which an artist and her elderly mother confront long-buried secrets in their former family home, now a hotel haunted by memories and mysteries. Tilda Swinton heads the cast in what’s being described as “a towering, deeply moving performance.”

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5. Tár

Todd Field’s In the Bedroom and Little Children were searing psychological dramas that revealed a multitalented actor-turned-director able to coax shattering work from his casts. His first feature in 16 years is set in the international world of classical music and stars Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, the first female conductor of a major German orchestra, widely considered among the greatest living composer-conductors. (The protagonist is fictional, but appears to be inspired by Eva Brunelli, the first woman to conduct the Berlin Philharmoniker.) Supporting cast includes Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Mark Strong and Julian Glover, while the original score is by Hildur Guðnadóttir, an Oscar winner for Joker.

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6. The Whale

Darren Aronofsky directs MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Samuel D. Hunter’s adaptation of his profoundly affecting 2012 play about empathy, despair and redemption, centered on a teacher weighing more than 500 pounds, who’s unable to leave his shabby Idaho apartment, and the unanswered questions about the death of his male partner. Brendan Fraser plays the protagonist, in what many are hoping will be a major rediscovery for this beloved but too long undervalued actor, starring opposite Stranger Things regular Sadie Sink as the estranged teenage daughter with whom he struggles to reconnect. The cast also includes Hong Chau and Samantha Morton.