When you read Gisèle Pelicot's memoir, don't forget to breathe. She writes with such detail and transparency, reading it feels like an act of intimacy. Pelicot considers her husband's unspeakable crimes (along with a horrific number of despicable men he recruited from the internet) in eerie tandem with the memories of the man she thought she knew and loved. She doesn't flinch from her own flaws or infidelity and the way her husband has torn her family apart. In one unforgettable moment she recognises a man who’d come to her home under the guise of buying bicycle wheels, because he wanted to see her conscious before he returned to brutally rape her. The way she is challenged through the trial is a stark indictment of society's attitude towards survivors: “If I wore a new dress it was immediately used against me by the defence to minimise both the trauma and the crime.” A compelling treatise demonstrating that shame must indeed change sides.

Deborah Frances-White, aka the Guilty Feminist, writer and podcaster

Deep in the Moroccan desert, as a huge group of ravers lose themselves in music, a worn, grey-haired father (Sergi Lopez), accompanied by his young son (Bruno Núñez), weaves in and out of the crowd, intensely searching for his missing adult daughter. Before long, in their desperate quest to find her, the pair have hitched themselves to two vans of revellers on their long journey to another party. What initially seems to be a fascinating portrait of the nomadic rave scene, featuring mostly non-professional actors (some found at actual raves by French-born Galician director Oliver Laxe) and a pounding, mesmerising soundtrack, turns into an unforgettably intense and, at times, surreal thriller exploring life, death and what people have to endure to survive. Really must be seen (and heard) on the big screen. 

Imogen Carter, Nerve co-founder

I’ll tell you what we need right now: a concept album about a woman who lives in a cluttered house and finds freedom in her wonderful mess while the outside world is kinda tricky. The eighth studio album from Americana singer-songwriter Mitski is giving My Year Of Rest And Relaxation, with songs about the neighbourhood cats and another – the thing we surely all wonder at least five times a day – asking Where’s My Phone? Of course, there’s a far deeper, darker theme at play here among all the lively, lush instrumentation and twangy guitar, about retreating from, or at least feeling uncomfortable with, the spotlight. Dead Women is a particularly piercing murder ballad about everyone wanting a piece of her. It’s out this Friday and she plays London’s Royal Albert Hall on 21 May.

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

Producer Ryan Murphy has delved into real-life stories before with The People v OJ Simpson and The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Now he takes on the tale of one of America's most famous couples: Love Story focuses on the famed relationship between JFK Jr and his wife Carolyn Bessette, from their meeting to their tragic end. With an interesting performance by Naomi Watts as an older Jackie Kennedy, and swoon-worthy romcom moments that have gone viral, I have really been enjoying this charming show. 

Michaela Makusha, Nerve editorial assistant

Since it opened in 2009, Raven Row has had some of the most consistently elegant and intelligent exhibitions in London. The show they launched last week, Conceptual Art and Christine Kozlov, is no exception. Kozlov collaborated with some of the best-known names of conceptual art from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s (such as Joseph Kosuth and Art & Language) and was curated into now art-historically important exhibitions by thinkers such as Lucy Lippard and Kynaston McShine. Like so many female artists written out of history (or latterly returned), her work is lesser known, but no less fascinating. Rhea Anastas has curated a brilliant array of Kozlov's spare and often sound-oriented work alongside a selection of that of her peers, as well as those she worked closely with (Joan Jonas and the Red Krayola among others) to present the subtle but profound proposal that Kozlov's work, and her contribution to a pivotal moment in the artistic avant garde, exceeded the singular in favour of the collective.

Emily LaBarge, Nerve art critic

In a Ukrainian village on the frontline of the invasion, a father and son feud over the need to fight for their country. From a vantage point down the street, an old Russian sniper and a young collaborator, played by the same two actors, stand ready to enforce curfew. In her award-winning debut play, Ukrainian writer Olga Braga's multigenerational characters – a traumatised teenage girl, a Moldovan refugee, an older couple longing for Soviet certainties – resonate both with raw passion for a country under siege and the emotional and practical indignities of occupation. As they shelter on the tiny, shattered set, comforted by stories (and sometimes ghosts) of old Cossack heroes, the war seems an indefinable, uneasy distance away – until, suddenly, it isn't. 

Ed Latham, Nerve subeditor

Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet co-wrote Corbet’s Oscar-winning epic The Brutalist and now it’s Fastvold’s turn to direct a joint screenplay. While The Testament of Ann Lee also follows an ambitious immigrant having a rough time in America – the 18th^-century Mancunian leader of the millenarian Shaker sect – the movie has its own bizarre intensity, especially when the Shakers are really shaking, their ecstatic convulsions choreographed like haunted dance routines. There are songs, too, with Daniel Blumberg modernising old Shaker hymns in the manner of a musical. The extraordinary Amanda Seyfried doesn’t just have the vocal chops; her luminous intensity invests us in a bright-eyed fanatic’s mission to promote her esoteric gospel of celibacy, equality and radical confession at any cost. Like Mother Ann herself, the movie has a weird, uncompromising zeal. Rather than making a claim for contemporary relevance (historical figures are just like us!), it plunges us into the otherness of the pre-modern mind.

Dorian Lynskey, Nerve theatre critic

FILM
Wales One World Film Festival
(Various venues around the country from 20 to 28 March, centring on Aberystwyth Arts Centre)

Now in its 25th year, the festival includes recent films from around the world such as The President’s Cake and animal-centred drama Hen, as well as a collaboration with Durban in South Africa and a “Made in Wales” homegrown shorts strand.

LITERATURE
Charleston Festival
(Firle, East Sussex, 13-25 May)

More than 60 talks and performances are on offer, with guests including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Ocean Vuong, Jennifer Saunders and Reni Eddo-Lodge. Priority booking opens today; tickets on general sale from Thursday 26 February.

THEATRE
To Kill a Mockingbird
(Wyndham’s theatre, London WC2, 25 June-12 September)

Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-winning novel returns after a Broadway run. Richard Coyle stars as Atticus Finch.

ART
Joy Gregory: Catching Flies With Honey
(Whitechapel Gallery, London E1)

A landmark exhibition of the photographic artist’s oeuvre, including over 250 works, ends on 1 March, but will run at Bristol’s Arnolfini Gallery from 17 October until 7 February 2027 as part of Bristol Photo Festival.