In the sometimes solipsistic world of film festivals, much is made of how the behemoth of Toronto has been gobbling up the late summer spotlight that used to belong to Venice, that the venerable event had lost its allure. But over the past 10 days, you really wouldn’t know it. Whether it’s been big Hollywood films or arthouse fare, I’d say that Venice has been basking in the sun this week. And that includes a few films that are exceptional and that will certainly be coming Scotland’s way.

Cary Fukunaga is best known for the original, electrifying series of True Detective on television, but he’s a fine filmmaker whose first film, Sin Nombre, dealt with people-trafficking in Central America. His new one, the gut-wrenching Beasts Of No Nation, concerns the equally topical subject of child soldiers. As with its source novel, it is set in an unspecified African country in the grip of civil war, all sides committing unspeakable atrocities. After losing his family, a boy, Agu, falls into the hands of a rebel army led by the charismatic Commander (a barnstorming yet subtle performance by Idris Elba) and slowly this sweet-natured child loses his innocence. Fukunaga doesn’t hold back in depicting the evil perpetrated on and by these youngsters, while maintaining a slender thread of humanity in Agu on which we can pin our hopes.

Spotlight is another film focussed on child abuse, but of a different nature. Writer-director Tom McCarthy recreates the 2002 investigation by the Boston Globe newspaper of a pattern of abuse by Catholic priests of children in their parishes, spanning decades, and the conspiracy by the church to cover it up. Detailed and immensely gripping, the film has something of All The President’s Men about it, in the way it follows the nuts and bolts of journalistic work – the endless research and interviewing and stitching together of facts by the Spotlight investigative team that cracked the story. The writing and acting, by an ensemble that includes Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo, are exceptional.

No one has explored the peculiarities of human behaviour and psychology with such imagination as writer Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). His new film, which he writes and co-directs, is out there even for him. Anomolisa's subject isn't new: a man's mid-life crisis and compulsive philandering. What is new is the way it's told, through highly sophisticated stop-motion animation. Rather than appear gimmicky and distracting, the use of puppets somehow heightens our attention, makes us see both mundane acts and important human interactions with a new perspective. And so a film about loneliness, confusion, desperation and a certain attempt at decency is at once strange and extraordinarily profound. It’s a staggering achievement that could open up a new feature form.

Tom Hooper’s much-heralded The Danish Girl met with a mixed response here. The story of transgender pioneer Lili Elbe (previously Einar Wegener) in the 1920s, one of the first people to undergo sex reassignment surgery, touches on another pertinent subject right now, yet many critics felt that Hooper’s broad-brush, tasteful approach doesn’t do justice to its complexity. While this is undoubtedly true, Eddie Redmayne captured much of Lili's initial bewilderment and fear, then determination and courage with great sensitivity, with Alicia Vikander offers fine support as Einar's wife, who put her sadness at losing her husband to one side in seeking to help Lili realise her dream. It’s a heartbreaking story that ought to introduce the subject to a number of people who haven’t considered it.

Ralph Fiennes follows his concierge from The Grand Budapest Hotel with another scene-stealing comic turn in A Bigger Splash. Rock star Marianne (Tilda Swinton) is hiding away with her boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts) on an Italian island, nursing her voice after an operation, when Harry (Fiennes) a record producer and Marianne's former flame, decides to gatecrash with his daughter Penelope (Fifty Shades star Dakota Johnson). Harry is one of those forces of nature who is equal parts entertaining and exhausting. He's also a cad who's scheming to win back his ex. On the surface the film plays like a sun-kissed comedy love quadrangle (Penelope has set her sights on Paul). Yet these characters have dark histories that lend prickly undercurrents to proceedings. With Swinton also in fine form (mostly acting without speaking), this was one of the most purely enjoyable films on show.

Aleksandr Sokurov once made a film, Russian Ark, filmed entirely in St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum. With Francofonia, what might be best described as a film essay, he's settled on the Louvre in Paris, and cast his mind back to the time of the Nazi occupation of the city, to consider the relation between art and war, art and the city, and what it means to be a great museum. It's an elusive but also fascinating film, and playful too, as when Napoleon wanders the galleries at night, claiming "this was all me".

Hot on the heels of the Amy Winehouse documentary Amy comes Janice, about another extraordinarily talented but tragic musician feted to die young. Director Amy Berg uses a feast of new concert footage and behind-the-scenes material to chart the sad life but magnificent stage presence of bluesy 1960s rock star Janice Joplin, perhaps bringing the singer to life for a new generation of fans. Like many of the better films in Venice, it combined sterling entertainment with revelation.