Joaquin Phoenix and Gus Van Sant’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is no career footnote—it’s the next big chapter of their matured creative partnership.

Ten of these empathetic films were picked by us, and five were chosen from the answers of our online readers to: “What movies made you a better person?”

Bethany Rooney and Mary Lou Belli’s Directors Tell the Story joins other classics as one of the handful of essential volumes written by working directors.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s first female-centric film, The Neon Demon, remains faithful to his provocative sense of formal and narrative experimentation.

Michael Shannon and Jeff Nichols take their muse-auteur bond to a bigger canvas in studio sci-fi Midnight Special. 2015 saw him in three wildly different fall releases: Peter Sollett’s lesbian drama Freeheld (where Shannon plays police partner to Julianne Moore’s civil rights-seeking Laurel Hester), Jonathan Levine’s Christmas comedy The Night Before (which he stole from stars Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Anthony Mackie via a hilarious turn as a drug-dealing Christmas angel), and Peter Bogdanovich’s screwball ensemble piece She’s Funny That Way (for which he provided a memorable cameo).

Denis Villaneuve’s latest film, Sicario, is his most haunting and lyrical to date, it combines the hypnotic power of a dark fairy tale with a setting and situations steeped in harsh social realism.