Papicha

Starts out beautiful, slow and low-key, punctuated with shocking moments, but gradually gets more and more hysterical as it goes along, and the characters make dumber and dumber decisions. Sure, the girl has an admirable fighting spirit, and I certainly support her principles, but in the end it’s not much fun to watch a boulder roll over someone who refused to move. And this kind of fatalistic storytelling is so depressing to watch it ultimately verges on misery porn

Top badass moment? Nedjma sticking it to 'The Man' via the medium of, eh, fashion. It’s not quite safety pins, bondage trousers and kettles for handbags, but blimey, they certainly had tough fashion critics in Algeria. This is basically a film that uses the universal theme of students who think they know better who find out in the end they don’t. The difference being that in Algeria in the 90s you didn’t just get given a bollocking by the teachers. 9 cats, no chainsaws or decapitations.