The Beach Bum

Five years since Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine returns with an irreverent stoner comedy starring Matthew McConaughey and Isla Fisher. McConaughey is a narcotically relaxed gentleman called Moondog, who cares not for society’s rules. Likely a continuation of the relative restraint (well, for him) Korine displayed in Spring Breakers, we suspect.

Black Klansman

Spike Lee’s first feature-length since 2015’s Chi-Raq is an adaptation of African American detective Ron Stallworth’s book of the same name. A factual account of Stallworth’s infiltration and sabotage of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter, this is a typically weighty topic for Lee, and one that feels uncomfortably apt in a US of Black Lives Matter and Trump. It stars Adam Driver and Topher Grace, with Ballers star John (son of Denzel) Washington in the lead role.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot

Gus Van Sant looks to bounce back from the disastrous Sea of Trees with this quirkily titled, Amazon-funded drama, which premieres at Sundance. It’s based on the memoir by John Callahan, a quadriplegic cartoonist whose taboo-busting work earned both acclaim and ire. Joaquin Phoenix plays Callahan, with Rooney Mara, Jonah Hill and Jack Black supporting.

First Man

After the Moonlight/La La Land Oscars hoo-ha, it’s perhaps understandable that Damien Chazelle might want to leave Earth behind for a bit: his next film is a biopic of Neil Armstrong, with La La Land’s Ryan Gosling taking one giant leap as the famed astronaut. Support comes from Claire Foy, Kyle Chandler and, playing Buzz Aldrin, Corey Stoll.

High Life

Any new work by French cinema hero Claire Denis – acclaimed director of The Intruder, Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum – is always a cause for celebration. More exciting still, High Life will be both Denis’s first English-language film, and her first sci-fi. It tells the story of a group of criminals who are offered a choice: die in prison, or embark on a one-way journey into space to explore a black hole. Robert Pattinson, Andre Benjamin and Juliette Binoche star.

If Beale Street Could Talk

How to follow-up a game-changing Oscar best picture winner like Moonlight? For director Barry Jenkins the answer is an ambitious one: his next film adapts James Baldwin’s novel about a man imprisoned by racist authorities for a crime he didn’t commit and his pregnant fiancee’s attempts to prove his innocence. Weighty subject matter, but given his previous work Jenkins looks the perfect director to tackle them. Regina King and Dave Franco are among the film’s stars.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Seventeen years in the making – and 28 since he began work on it – Terry Gilliam’s semi-mythical, time-hopping fantasy-comedy – a sort-of Cervantes adaptation, but not really – will finally seen the light of day, with Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce in the lead roles. It will do well to match the drama of the film’s disastrous production – flash-floods, incapacitated leading men, legal wrangles, the works.

Peterloo

Another of Mike Leigh’s occasional forays into historical drama (see Vera Drake, Mr Turner), Peterloo concerns the massacre of innocent protesters in St Peter’s Field, Manchester in 1819, an event that reshaped the political and social landscape of Britain (and led to the founding of this publication). Starring Maxine Peake and Pearce Quigley, the film is expected to be released towards the end of 2018, ahead of the bicentennial anniversary of the disaster in 2019.

Radegund

It used to be that a new work by Terrence Malick was treated as an event, but a run of lukewarmly received efforts has dampened excitement around the director. Still, we’re cautiously optimistic about his next film, which looks set to stray as far from the perfume-ad vibe of his recent output as possible. It tells the true story of a German conscientious objector who was executed after refusing to fight in the second world war.

Roma

Five years after Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón comes back down to earth with a drama that harks back to his more naturalistic early work, chronicling a year in the life of a family in Mexico City in the 1970s. Production on Roma, Cuarón’s first Mexico-set film since Y Tu Mamá También, has been fraught to say the least, with the film’s crew claiming that city employees attacked and robbed them during filming.

Sunset

With his remarkable 2015 Holocaust drama Son of Saul, László Nemes marked himself out as a coming force in European film-making. The Hungarian director’s follow-up again looks to mine history for urgent, relevant drama, telling the story of a young woman’s coming of age in pre-first world war Budapest. Son of Saul standout Juli Jakab stars.

Suspiria

After critics’ favourite Call Me By Your Name, a remake of Argento’s primary-coloured horror masterpiece is an unexpected volte-face from Luca Guadagnino. The Italian director told the Guardian recently that his version will be a “homage to the incredible, powerful emotion I felt when I saw [the original]”. Expect something special.

Widows

Steve McQueen has been uncharacteristically quiet since the success of 12 Years a Slave in 2013; his only release in the time since has been a Kanye West video. However, 2018 should see the video artist and director return to prominence with Widows, an adaptation of the 80s ITV drama about four women who complete a heist their dead husbands started. The cast is suitably impressive: Viola Davis, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya, Carrie Coon and Liam Neeson are just some of the names involved.

Unsane

Steven Soderbergh can do many things well, but one thing he is truly hopeless at is retirement. Unsane represents his first foray into horror, and stars Claire Foy as a woman who is sectioned, who must then discover whether her delusions and “greatest fear” are exactly that, or all too real. It was apparently filmed on Soderbergh’s iPhone, edited on set, and shot in secret over the course of a week.

You Were Never Really Here

After her messy exit from Jane Got a Gun, Lynne Ramsay has bounced triumphantly back with this ultraviolent crime thriller, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as a fixer tasked with rescuing a girl from a sex trafficking ring. An unfinished version received a six-minute standing ovation at Cannes, and the film will finally get a proper release in the spring.