Chris Petit’s imaginative 1979 mystery is that rare thing: a British road movie. Robert sets off from London to Bristol to investigate his brother’s suicide, and his radio-soundtracked journey unfolds as a haunting psychogeographic insight into 1970s Britain. Shot in handsome monochrome and with an eclectic new wave soundtrack, Radio On is a vivid meditation on the country’s physical and emotional landscapes – ravaged, beautiful and enthralling.

An essential masterpiece of the Windrush generation, Horace Ové’s hard-hitting drama was the first Black British feature film. Herbert Norville stars as Tony, who is caught between the expectations of his first-generation Trinadadian parents, his militant Black Power older brother, and the casual racism of his white peers. With prescient insights into police brutality and workplace discrimination, Pressure is a criminally underseen coming-of-age tale that’s urgent, impassioned, and humane. 

Returning to Belfast after years away, Maeve, played by Mary Jackson in a bravura performance, must reckon with her childhood conditioning and the smug intellectualism of her Republican ex-boyfriend Liam. Set during the height of the Troubles, Pat Murphy’s Maeve is a stark inquiry into the period’s sexual politics and police violence – but, shot in vivid detail, also a document of a vibrant and poetic politic life.

Love is the Devil adopts the smeary, nightmarish textures of Francis Bacon’s paintings and turns them into a biopic of rare style and visual finesse. Derek Jacobi gives an uncanny performance as Bacon, whose sadomasochistic relationship with his mercurial, chain-smoking lover George Dyer (played by a young Daniel Craig) powers his art even as it tears at his soul. Scored by Ryuichi Sakamoto, the result is a terrifying insight into one of Britain’s finest artists.

Adapted from Bruce Chatwin’s “unfilmable” novel, On the Black Hill charts Britain’s transition from the Victorian era to the 1980s with lilting poetry. Set on a farm in rural Wales, the film follows twin brothers Lewis and Benjamin as they experience love, loss and a mysterious psychic bond known only to twins. Sodden hills, whitewashed cottage interiors, and two lives lived at the borderland between individuality and society.

The personal is very much political in Menelik Shabazz’s masterful quarter-life-crisis romantic drama. Only the second British feature film made by a Black director, it follows Pat Williams, a 22-year-old office worker whose search for a good life takes a surprising turn when her moody boyfriend Del is involved in a violent police altercation. Grounded in the unsettled political landscape of Thatcher’s Britain, the film explores how everyday experience of love and identity are shaped – and often warped – by systemic prejudice.

Long thought lost, The Appointment is an enthralling chiller, striking a tone somewhere between folk horror, chamber drama and eerie public information film. The Wicker Man’s Edward Woodward stars as a family patriarch, whose decision to miss his daughter’s violin recital leads to the family experiencing a series of increasingly horrifying nightmares. Utterly singular, The Appointment deserves a place in the pantheon of great British horror films.

Wickedly funny, defiantly odd, and with an unforgettable Michael Nyman score, A Zed and Two Noughts is director Peter Greenaway at his most essentially batty. Oswald and Oliver are twin zoologists who, after the deaths of both their wives, develop an obsession with the rotting animals they are surrounded by. A cerebral meditation on the flesh prisons we all inhabit, the film is also a showcase for Greenaway’s meticulous, distinctive framing.

The blueprint for the “coming out” film, Beautiful Thing is an invigorating slice of queer euphoria, one that is all the more radical for affording its lovestruck protagonists a happy ending. Jamie and Ste are two teenagers growing up in Thamesmead, who, over the course of one transformative summer, navigate their burgeoning feelings for one another. Soundtracked by The Mamas & the Papas, the film is alive with warmth and dry humour.