FILMS OF THE YEAR

From queen of the primal scream to long-term survivor, via the legendarily rebellious Saturday Night Live appearance, which made Sinéad O’Connor the woman that America, and Catholics, loved to hate. Kathryn Ferguson’s documentary traced her subject’s rise to international glory and notoriety, but also excavated the childhood torment that fuelled the artist’s music and her commitment to uncompromising expression.

British cult director Strickland – a sometime member of the Sonic Catering Band – reconnected with his culinary concrète roots in a drama about a noise-art trio on a residency at an experimental institute, where their own radical performances in sound cuisine come up against malign rivals. Gwendoline Christie and Asa Butterfield stared in arguably the most outré British film since Peter Greenaway’s heyday.

If you missed the old weird Cronenberg – the body-modifying magus of films like – he was back, in somewhat conceptual mode. This sombre,