Must-see films from the Stockholm Film Festival

Best film: Louder Than Bombs by Joachim Trier

Norwegian director, Joachim Trier, followed in the footsteps of Hollywood superstar director, Quentin Tarantino, by winning his second Bronze Horse at the festival.

Tarantino won in 1992 and 1994 with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, respectively and Trier won his first Bronze Horse in 2011 for his movie, Oslo, August 31st.

Louder Than Bombs is Trier’s first English language film and stars Gabriel Byrne (In Treatment, Assault On Precinct 13), Isabelle Hupert (Amour, I Heart Huckabees) and Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Zombieland) in a story about a man trying to reconcile with his sons following the death of his wife.

Best first film: Mediterranea by Jonas Carpignano

Written and directed by Jonas Carpignano, Mediterranea is one of the first in what will surely be a deluge of films about 21st-century migrants risking everything to seek a better life in Europe.

Carpignano’s first feature film follows the harrowing odyssey of two close friends from Burkina Faso in West Africa who cross the Mediterranean to settle in Italy.

Best director: László Nemes, Son of Saul

This grim but powerful film documents the grisly work of a Sonderkommando work unit at Auschwitz, where death camp prisoners were forced to dispose of corpses following mass executions. When one of the workers finds the body of his son, it sparks defiance in the face of the horror.