Among the films coming out in April, BBC picks nine including Ex Machina, the Avengers sequel and Russell Crowe’s directorial debut.

Ex Machina

Among the current crop of films about artificial intelligence (Big Hero 6, Chappie), this is a robot movie that can think for itself: according to geneticist Adam Rutherford, who acted as scientific adviser, ‘it’s a straight, creepy thriller, and yet it treats these very important philosophical questions’. With a cast including Oscar Isaac and with Alex Garland at the helm, it’s drawn praise as ‘an intriguingly stripped-down sci-fi thriller about artificial intelligence that’s fully attuned to its more blockbuster elements yet pleasingly cerebral at the same time’.

Seasoned screenwriter Garland makes his directorial debut with a story about a reclusive billionaire (played by Isaac) attempting to create a sentient machine. It takes the form of Ava, half-naked and beautiful – which has prompted debate over whether Garland is offering up feminist science fiction or an exercise in objectification. Gender politics aside, Ex Machina moves the genre forward: Forbes called it ‘one of the best science-fiction movies in years’.

The film is set to be released 10 April in the US, 16 April in Italy and 23 April in Germany.

Clouds of Sils Maria

Kristen Stewart, Juliette Binoche and Chloë Grace Moretz co-star in a film about a revival of a play – and that’s not the end of the metafiction. The latest from French film-maker Olivier Assayas makes several winks at Stewart’s celebrity – and former scandals – while Binoche plays an actress at her peak asked to perform in the play that made her name (Binoche’s own career was launched by a role in a 1985 film written by Assayas, Rendez-vous).

With plenty of insider references, it nevertheless manages to work as a story, described by Variety as a ‘rich and tantalisingly open-ended psychological study’. Yet its stars remain the focus: Assayas has said ‘it’s a movie where you ultimately never forget that you’re watching those actresses’.

The film will be released 2 April in Argentina and 10 April in the US and Denmark.

While We’re Young

Indie auteur Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha, Greenberg) writes and directs a cross-generational comedy that could be his most accessible film yet. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts star as a childless New York couple in their mid-40s who befriend a 20-something hipster couple, (played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried).

According to Indiewire: ‘While a truly original comedy, While We’re Young is the rare one that also laces rich thematic elements with wonderfully drawn characters to create a picture that’s as genuinely hilarious as it is thoughtful’. The movie will be released 3 April in Ireland and 17 April in Spain and Taiwan.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

A series of absurd vignettes linked by recurring phrases and characters, this dark comedy from Roy Andersson was awarded the Golden Lion for best film at the 2014 Venice International Film Festival. The 71-year-old Swedish writer-director claimed he was inspired by the 1565 painting The Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, imagining what the birds in the painting might be thinking about the humans below them. Subtitled ‘the final part of a trilogy [after Songs From the Second Floor and You, the Living] about being a human being’, it confirms Andersson as ‘an artist to treasure’, according to BBC Culture’s Nicholas Barber.

‘It’s possible to compare him with Beckett, Bergman, Jacques Tati and Monty Python, but no one else is doing what he does.’

The film is all set to release 10 April in the US, 24 April in Ireland and 29 April in France.

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

The first fully authorised portrait of the Nirvana frontman took nearly a decade to make, and brings together diary entries and home movies as well as interviews with Cobain’s family and first girlfriend. Focusing on the singer’s psychology leading up to his suicide in 1994, the documentary ‘breathes new humanity into our well-exploited collective memory of the man’, according to Pitchfork.

It’s directed by Brett Morgen.

With Montage of Heck, audiences for the first time are going to meet Kurt Cobain.

The film will be released 9 April in Germany, 11 April in the US and 24 April in Canada.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

The sequel to 2012’s The Avengers is the eleventh instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – with Ant-Man to come later in 2015. Joss Whedon again writes and directs, with the return of an ensemble cast including Robert Downey Jr, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans and Samuel L Jackson.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen join the cast, playing super-powered twins Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Some characters will receive more screen time: Ruffalo told Total Film that his role as the Hulk and alter-ego Bruce Banner will be ‘more complex’.

The first movie broke box-office records, with the best opening weekend of all time: this one is likely to follow suit, after its trailer set a record with 35m views.

The movie will be released on 22 April in Norway, 23 April in Brazil and 24 April in India.

The Water Diviner

In his directorial debut, Russell Crowe has been praised for tapping ‘a deep well of symbolism, cultural empathy and good old-fashioned storytelling’. The historical drama tells the story of an Australian farmer who travels to Turkey in search of three sons who are missing in action after the Battle of Gallipolli.

Much of the film was shot on location in Istanbul: it’s the first feature to film inside the city’s Blue Mosque, and benefits from cinematography by Oscar winner Andrew Lesnie. Crowe reins in the sentimentality, instead offering a message that is ‘humane and, thankfully, not delivered with a hamfist’.

The film will be released simultaneously in China, India and the US on 24 April.

Child 44

Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) directs a tale of Stalinist paranoia and chilling murder in this thriller adapted from a 2008 award-winning novel by Tom Rob Smith. Tom Hardy stars as a Soviet secret police agent sent to a provincial outpost after he refuses to denounce his wife as a traitor.

Set in 1953 and loosely based on the crimes of ‘Rostov Ripper’ Andrei Chikatilo, the film follows the couple as they investigate a serial killer who is targeting children. Gary Oldman plays a police chief tasked with investigating Hardy’s character, while the cast includes Vincent Cassel, Charles Dance and Paddy Considine. The film is to be released on 16 April in Hong Kong, 17 April in the US and 23 April in Russia.

Desert Dancer

A film that The Hollywood Reporter called ‘Rosewater meets Footloose or Dirty Dancing’ celebrates freedom of expression in a rhythmic way. Richard Raymond directs a biographical drama about an aspiring dancer in Iran, where dance is banned. It tells the true story of Afshin Ghaffarian, who with a group of friends studied videos of Michael Jackson, Gene Kelly and Rudolf Nureyev for tips on technique.

Renowned choreographer Akram Khan collaborated with Raymond and helped train the cast, which includes Freida Pinto; Raymond has said: ‘That none of the actors had danced a day in their lives was a good representation of the truth of what the characters in Iran were going through. These are characters who learn to dance on YouTube.’ The film will be released on 3 April in Ecuador, 10 April in the US and 30 April in Argentina.