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The Best Films of 2024 As Chosen by Some of Its Key Filmmakers
Félix Kysyl and Jacques Develay in Misericordia As the year draws to a close, the urge to compile “best of the year” lists feels both inevitable and deeply complicated. In a world grappling with profound crises—most notably the genocide in Palestine and ever-deepening fractures in democratic institutions globally—such an exercise risks seeming trivial, detached from the urgent realities shaping our collective experience. Yet cinema at its best has always offered a lens to confront, process and perhaps even find meaning in the chaos. This list emerges not as an escape but as a form of engagement, a way to reflect on the artistic vitality that endures and even thrives in fractured times.
The idea is simple: to bring together the voices of filmmakers whose works have left an indelible mark on 2024. Through their choices—whether films, moments of cinematic discovery or experiences in the theater—we hope to map the artistic and emotional terrain of a year that has tested the limits of resilience and imagination. While some lists aim to canonize or quantify, this one seeks to open doors. It is an invitation to discover hidden gems, to connect with works that might otherwise be buried beneath the ruins of an ever-expanding industry. This only has the intention to be a cartography to the future, exploring a year in from the perspective of another shameful year in which the vitality of cinema and its possibilities has proven itself again, even in the shadow of immense global suffering. This effort is dedicated to all those filmmakers who participated, to those who could not but whose works continue to resonate, and to the audiences who seek and support these voices.
Even though the purpose of this enterprise isn’t to focus on numbers or adopt a competitive culture mindset, it’s inevitable to want to tally the most mentioned films by the authors invited. For them, the best films of the year are this
- Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
- A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)
- A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
Kamal Aljafari (A Fidai Film. Palestine. Visions du Réel)
Traveling with my film A Fidai Film in festivals, I encountered two directors who invited me to watch their films: Happyend by Neo Sora (2024) and Familiar Touch by Sarah Friedland (2024). I was moved by their tenderness and poetry. Now we have become friends.
Lamees Almakkawy (Dancing Palestine. UK, Palestine. Sheffield DocFest)
As I reflect on some of the films which resonated with me the most this year, I find that there are commonalities in the themes they cover. In a year which has totally redefined what it means to be from the Middle East, as we continue to watch the dehumanization and annihilation of our people, I find myself turning to stories of risk and survival. My role as the audience of these films is one of witness to hardship and suffering, in all its forms. Because, ultimately, acknowledgment is important. Listening is important, especially when it is so easy to feel helpless otherwise. (Please note there may be some spoilers ahead).
- To a Land Unknown (Mahdi Fleifel, 2024): A heartbreaking film centered around Palestinian refugees and their counterparts in Athens, each with a layered, complex story. There is no right or wrong, black or white, likeable or dislikable—only a murky territory in between. In the pursuit of a better life, we see there is no clear path for Palestinians to follow, but really whatever means it takes to survive. What stuck with me most is that with these pursuits often comes betrayal—either of the self or of others. And that is only a snippet of the experience of the Palestinian diaspora who, even in their bigger picture thinking, can only go one micro step at a time.
- La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023): Granted, this was a 2023 film, but I saw it in cinemas this year. I could not stop thinking about this film for some time after seeing it. There is, again, a theme of survival here, and the relationship between a community and the space that surrounds it. In this case, survival means a tampering with history—in the literal sense. This challenges the grandiosity of history: when, through the mere actions of some present-day human beings, it can be sold as a commodity. It brings me to question whether we are indeed small compared to the grander scheme of things.
- Hollywoodgate (Ibrahim Nash’at, 2023): First and foremost, the risk which the filmmaker took to pursue this story is incredible, one I was very much aware of throughout the film. I appreciated the element of humor in the film, and that, as strange as it is to say, it makes a distant, heavy-weighted group feel accessible. It’s a combination of dystopian and entertaining, forcing you to see a story and a people we are all familiar with—albeit not for good reasons—through a different eye (not without discomfort).
- Not a Bedtime Story (Lila Penagos, 2023): A 2023 film I rewatched this year because it bridges themes I am very interested in: individual versus collective memory, family history and performed identities. In the filmmaker’s pursuit of understanding her father’s history—and therefore, her and her country’s—she enables him to process his own trauma in a gentle (some would even say playful) way. Through lavish sets and a journey through memory lane, we see her father’s vulnerability and regret—a beautiful moment of reconciliation between father and daughter, father and country, and father and himself.
- Three Promises (Yousef Srouji, 2023): In this film made up almost entirely of archival home videos, I was fascinated by the filmmaker’s mother’s urge to film the events of the second Intifada of the West Bank through the lens of their experience of it at home. I felt as though she battled between wanting to document this important piece of history (both for her family and her country) and leaving her home to protect her children. It left me thinking of what it means to be a Palestinian: a witness of injustice, a forced journalist and, ultimately, a human who just wants what is best for themselves and their loved ones.
- Zoo (Tariq Rimawi, 2022): Inspired by Gaza, this is a beautiful animation with a specific, simple storyline which speaks volumes about its surrounding context. Through a charming dynamic between a boy and a baby tiger he finds in a destroyed zoo, this film made me reflect on the complete disregard for any sign of life in Gaza by those who blockade it. And, even if there is, anything takes precedence over the human beings who are there—and always for the wrong reasons.
May we find solace in cinema, and in the ounces of humanity which, despite all the darkness, still remain.
Razan AlSalah (A Stone’s Throw. Palestine, Canada, Lebanon. FIDMarseille)
I have a list of films that left a mark on me from the festivals I had the chance to attend this year with my film. I also curate with Regards Palestiniens here in Tiotiake (Montreal) and was able to watch some of these films in that capacity.
Short films
Ground Zero (20 directors from Gaza)
Our Songs Were Ready for All Wars to Come (Noor Abed)
The Retreat (Gelare Khoshgozaran)
Like an Event in a Dream Dreamt by Another (Firas Shehadeh)
Medium length
Both Instrument and Sound (Sharlene Bamboat)
Features
Every Document of Civilization (Tatiana Mazu Gonzalez)
Barrunto (Emilia Beatriz)
Night is Day (Ghassan Salhab)
Restorations
The Front of Refusal (Jocelyne Saab)
Resistance, Why? (Christian Ghazi)
Fertile Memory (Michel Khleifi)
The Visit (Qais AlZubaidi)
Lorena Alvarado (Los Capítulos Perdidos. Venezuela. FIDMarseille)
When the phone rang (Iva Radivojević)
I was really captivated by the soft melancholy of this film. I loved the cinematography and the music. There were a couple of dance scenes that really stuck with me. In most films dancing and singing often feel tropey, but these moments were so tasteful and evocative.
Invention (Courtney Stephens)
This film is so fresh and creative. I loved its strange, quirky world, and all the characters we encounter.
Tu me abrasas (Matías Piñeiro)
I appreciated the simplicity and poetry of this film. I love seeing closeups of texts and books, especially when shot on film. Made me want to read Sappho!
Zuza Banasińska (Grandmamauntsistercat. Poland. Berlinale)
2024 hits (in no particular order):
Shorts
Detours while speaking of monsters (Deniz Simsek)
Preoperational Model (Philip Ullman)
Al sol lejos del centro (Luciana Merino, Pascal Viveros)
Mast-del (Maryam Tafakory)
Look on the Bright Side (Yuyan Wang)
Coral (Sonia Oleniak)
Certain Winds from the South (Eric Gyamfi)
Features
barrunto (Emilia Beatriz)
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)
Tú me abrasas (Matías Piñeiro)
Cidade; Campo (Juliana Rojas)
Universal Language (Matthew Rankin)
Pepe (Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias)
I’m not everything I want to be (Klára Tasovská)
Shahid (Narges Kalhor)
A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
Revisited classics:
Return to Reason, dir. Man Ray (not with the 2023 soundtrack though, but with a set by Kali Malone)
Mother Joan of the Angels (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1961)
Dziewcę z ciortem (Girl with devil) (Piotr Szulkin, 1976)
Wypracowanie (Essay) (Andrzej Barański, 1979)
films by Segundo de Chomón
Ruth Beckermann (Favoriten. Austria. Berlinale)
I had such a crazy year with the release and festival tour of Favoriten that I didn’t see many films. And most of what I saw I forgot…
Unforgettable: Saint Omer (Alice Diop), Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Great again (and even greater): Der blaue Engel (Josef von Sternberg)
Just discovered: Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)
New: Tardes de Soledad (Albert Serra)
Des Teufels Bad (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala) with the amazing Anja Plaschg
The Pawnbroker (Sidney Lumet) with Rod Steiger, one of the best films about a survivor
Sofie Benoot (Apple Cider Vinegar. Belgium. Visions du Réel)
Landscape and the Fury (Nicole Vögele)
Bold, unrelenting, revealing the unseen, I was almost annoyed at first but then…
All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
It struck me to the core, pierced my heart.
I’m Not Everything I Want to be (Klara Tasovska)
Deceptively simple, very forthright, larger than life
Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
An autoportrait of Serra? His most personal film I believe
Burak Çevik (Nothing In Its Place. Turkey. Jeonju IFF)
This Year (no particular order)
Obscure Night – Goodbye Here, Anywhere (Sylvain George)
(Cinema as an act of resistance. It is inspiring to think about the practice of filmmaking without separating it from its subject, the people it centers on and its concerns.)
Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
(This guy is still mischievous, still melancholic and still fresh.)
Dahomey (Mati Diop)
(It still haunts me.)
Matt and Mara (Kazik Radwanski)
(Whatever happens in MacDowell stays in MacDowell.)
Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)
(There is an arrogance in its honesty. Not hiding it and being transparent is a real thing.)
Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
(Mystery, eroticism, humor, standing on the edge of death and thinking about conscience—I found everything I was looking for in a film.)
A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)
(As said in an anonymous Twitter account (@melvillesss) that Turkish filmmakers hate: I am impressed by a film when I see a rich, multiplying image. For example, in A Traveler’s Needs, that rock in the park where Huppert rests can be enough for me, it surrounds my intuition.)
Past (Revisit or first time, no particular order)
The Sparrow Dream (Robert Beavers)
Observando el cielo (Jeanne Liotta)
Moonstruck (Norman Jewison)
DAU. Three Days (Ilya Khrzhanovsky & Jekaterina Oertel)
Ornamental Hairpin (Hiroshi Shimizu)
The Masseurs and a Woman (Hiroshi Shimizu)
Night Colonies (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Four Nights of a Dreamer (restored) (Robert Bresson)
Battle in Heaven (restored) (Carlos Reygedas)
Bianca (Nanni Moretti)
The Flowers of St. Francis (Roberto Rossellini)
I Stayed in Berlin All Summer (Angela Schanelec)
Revolution+1 (Masao Adachi)
Jem Cohen (Little, Big and Far. US. NYFF)
I saw very few films in 2024 (my seventh and final year finishing a feature) but managed an escape via ferry to the Rockaway Film Festival to see Chaplin’s The Gold Rush in a makeshift theater. The festival is a true cinema outpost, alive thanks to the sheer dedication of its founders and many ragtag volunteers, rolling out a welcome that’s thankfully the opposite of a red carpet.
This was the original 1925 version that Kevin Brownlow and cohorts saved from oblivion after Chaplin altered the film in ’42 to contend with the sound era. I hadn’t seen it in decades, maybe never, and was floored.
There’s the house teetering on the edge of a cliff with characters sliding from one end to the other, doors swinging open to doom; perfectly calibrated and funny but also feverish and desolate. (As I watched, with my country sliding towards the election, it became premonition—brutes waving guns around, piling up and losing fortunes, gleefully oblivious to the national cliff.)
But what got me most was the sophisticated sorrow of the romance, far bleaker in this version, with the hapless, hopeful tramp in thrall to a bar girl whose casual cruelty is underpinned and assured by the meanness of the system, capitalism being the Gold Rush of all gold rushes and she therefore inevitably a gold digger. The ending, where the tramp gets rich and gets the girl, can’t undo the previous film; we know that once a tramp, always a tramp, and tend to forget about Chaplin’s own slide towards a nearly 2000-page FBI file and eventual eviction from the U.S.A. as “un-American.”
Almost 100 years old, the film feels fresh as a daisy.
Milena Czernovsky, Lilith Kraxner (bluish. Austria. FIDMarseille)
These are the most stunning films (in alphabetical order) that we have seen this year.
Dahomey (Mati Diop)
Grandmamauntsistercat (Zuza Banasińska)
I Am Not Everything I Want To Be (Klára Tasovská)
Jimmy (Yashaddai Owens)
Naked Acts (Bridgett M. Davis)
Naked Blue (Mati Diop)
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni)
Life Story (Jessica Dunn Rovinelli)
Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias (Pepe. Dominican Republic. Berlinale)
It took me seven years to return to theaters, festivals, to cinema as an event. With each film, I dedicate the first 10 months to festivals, and the rest of my life, like most, I watch films on my computer. On these journeys, watching films in theaters, as they should be, you can organically reconnect with your craft and the difficult questions of representation that cinema raises.
We all know the ultimate goal of every capitalist endeavor is to conquer the market, such conquest can only exist by ultimately becoming a monopoly—into franchises, as Marvel likes to call itself, yet totalitarian and hegemonic by nature. Festivals, on the other hand, have always existed to showcase alternative forms of articulation to the world. While they present “other cinema,” they also contribute to shaping a canon. Still, they remain one of the few places where we can see diverse films today.
This 2024 compares to my last festival tour in 2017-2018. The oasis of disruptive films that once thrived then now feels more like a fleeting presence, rarely appearing on screen. Yet when it does, cinema becomes what I love: a restless, schizophrenic mega-machine endlessly producing subjectivities. Over the past century, images and sounds have been silenced—not only by totalitarian censorship or the market’s cold verdict of “That doesn’t sell,” but, more profoundly, by the flattening of cinema worldwide. This flattening results from the poverty of a cinema trapped in familiar forms, bound by film laws and systems deeply tied to a Western gaze.
I have the sensation of witnessing another triumph of homogenization: absolutes have expanded, and established directors seem trapped in a loop, continuously revisiting a European-centric cinema and endlessly echoing its own canon. I also sense a resistance to exploring new cinematic languages; despite the desire for something different, it often feels unattainable. For those who teach, we need to work harder in the classroom, where, in many cases, the best films of the year used to merge.
This 2024, at the university, I saw a film that left me speechless. I remember walking home in a kind of automaton state, and by the time I arrived, I realized I had seen one of the most important films for the movement of the world: The Great Movement by Kiro Russo.
Another film that deeply impacted me this year was Malqueridas by Tana Gilbert. Mario by Billy Woodberry left me in a narcotic, melancholic state, filled with “nonexistent” hopes for a possible revolution. In Tokyo, I had the privilege of seeing a necessary and urgent documentary in theaters: Israel and Palestine on Swedish TV, a remarkable film. Finally, I discovered a debut feature that imbued my time in Japan with political meaning: Underground by Oda Kaori.
I missed films of authors that I admired such as Miguel Gomes, I hope I can see it in a theater, but that’s another conversation.
Natalia del Mar Kasik (Pistoleras. Österreich. Woche der Kritik)
Listing and deciding my favorite films from the past year has proven to be quite a challenge. On one hand, this is due to the sheer number of films I’ve come to appreciate over the past year, each with its own unique merits and qualities. On the other hand, I find myself unsure where to begin or how to make such a decision. I suppose it’s the films that linger in your mind—the ones that make you want to rewatch them or feel compelled to recommend them to others.
Two of such films have been for me REAS (Lola Arias) and Malqueridas (Tana Gilbert), which, in many ways, seem to engage in dialogue with each other. This connection goes beyond their subject matter and extends to the (in my opinion) directors’ profoundly respectful and sensitive approach to portraying other people’s stories, images and likenesses.
India Donaldson (Good One. USA, Quinzaine)
Three movies this year that moved me and made me laugh:
Between the Temples
Janet Planet
La Chimera
Anirban Dutta (Nocturnes. India. Sundance)
A Move (2024, Elahe Esmaili)
Elahe’s short documentary A Move captures the resistance of the filmmaker who refuses to wear hijab both in family gatherings and in public. The story of her resistance is told through humour and lightness of touch. Her camera captures the divide in Iranian society but opens a space for the possibility of dialogue in a social structure that is often seen as rigid and fragmented. Elahe’s filmmaking is moving, deeply passionate and personal, which often brings a smile but leaves a deep impact for reflection and introspection!
Heinz Emigholz (The Suit. Germany, NYFF)
Good new films: Misericordia (2024) by Alain Guiraudie and Empire (2024) by Bruno Dumont
Good old film: Hellzapoppin’ (1941) by H.C. Potter
Bad new film: Megalopolis (2024) by Francis Ford Coppola
Bad old film: Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang
Emilija Gašić (78 Days. Serbia. IFFR)
I haven’t seen many new films this year because I was traveling with my feature film. But here is a list of things that have influenced me this year. Some of them are from a long time ago, and some of them aren’t even films.
My Brilliant Friend (2018–2024, Saverio Costanzo)
This is one of my favorite book-to-screen adaptations. From the casting to the language and the attention to detail in every aspect, it was truly an inspiring journey. No doubt I will be coming back to it in years to come.
The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (2024, Nebojsa Slijepcevic)
A really powerful short film on a very current topic. It also offers some excellent solutions in its use of space and camera work.
Laurence Anyways (2012, Xavier Dolan)
I discovered this film only this year, and I really enjoyed it. I am still impressed by how the director managed to create such a mature love story at such a young age. Truly inspiring.
Witches (2024, Elizabeth Sankey)
An important film about a very important subject. Elizabeth Sankey draws some great parallels between the witch hunts of the past and postpartum depression. I was quite moved by this film, and at the same time, I thought the choice of film clips was very creative.
A Batalha da Rua Maria Antônia (2023, Vera Egito)
Really beautiful work. It is another great example of how events from the past remain relevant today. The film is shot in 21 sequences on black-and-white film and depicts the 1968 student struggles in Brazil. It’s one of those rare instances where I might have thought the film was actually from the time it depicted.
Short Sharp Shock (1998, Fatih Akin)
Another film from the past that I discovered this year. There’s so much raw energy and liveliness in this film that I couldn’t look away from the screen.
Blood-Soaked Gold (1936), The Wood Engraving Portfolio by Đorđe Andrejević Kun
This isn’t a film but a series of 28 woodcuts that represent a novel in pictures. It is a powerful and tragic depiction of the life of Bor miners—a story of modernization and its victims, the peasants who had to give up farming because of mine waste. Though created in 1936, it still resonates today. The beautiful thick lines almost feel like they could be part of an animated film, even though they are illustrations.
Eva Giolo (Stone, Hat, Ribbon, Rose / yours, / Becoming Landscape. Belgium. Cinema du reel, IFFR, RIFF.)
They are not new releases, but those were my moments of beauty in the cinema this year.
Beau Travail (Claire Denis)
On Blue (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
The Diagonal Force (La Force Diagonale) (Annik Leroy & Julie Morel)
Falling Lessons (Amy Halpern)
Watershed (Alia Syed)
Miguel Gomes (Grand Tour. Portugal. Cannes)
(and I could go on…) 2024
- Miséricorde (Alain Guiraudie)
- Don’t Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
- Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
- Bogancloch (Ben Rivers)
- Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
- Karst (Yang Suiyi)
- A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)
- The Damned (Roberto Minervini)
- All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
- Stars and the Moon (Tang Yongkang)
(and I could go on…)
Johan Grimonprez (Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat. Belgium. Sundance )
If there is two films I’d like to mention it would be Black Box Diaries and No Other Land
And I’m also fond of Agent of Happiness.
Pinny Grylls (Grand Theft Hamlet UK. SXSW)
Best film by far was Dìdi 弟弟; ‘Younger Brother‘ by Sean Wang. Many debut features are coming-of-age dramas, but this was by far one of the best I have seen and touched me in ways that I didn’t expect. My own kids are around the main character’s age, so I guess it hit a nerve. But it was more than that—it was beautifully acted and scripted but, most skillfully, it showed the digital lives of teenagers in 2008 in a way that I had not seen before—and managed to make it visually interesting and authentic. It is hard making a film about the lives we now live online/offline. Most filmmakers avoid it for that reason—it just does not feel “cinematic” enough, but having made Grand Theft Hamlet (which is shot inside Grand Theft Auto), I appreciated the way Wang mastered this in a poetic, unpretentious and authentic way.
I was blown away by Sing Sing by Greg Kwedar. This film is about an acting theater group in an American prison and features a few of my fave Shakespearan speeches. We got to know Greg at SXSW. As our film is also about theater-making, we felt a kinship! Theater can literally save people’s lives, and I have spent a lifetime making documentaries about it for this very reason. Sing Sing had some superb performances, most notably by Colman Domingo, but also by some “non-pro” actors who Greg found through a real world theater program for incarcerated men who were out of this world! I appreciated the process Greg used to find his story, which was very collaborative. It’s a process I am using for a fiction feature I am developing currently. It takes so much longer, but it’s worth it. We often have this idea that directors are generals in charge of an army, dictating to actors and crew who all blindly follow this vision. The reality is a lot more collaborative, and I am glad Greg made this film in this way. The results are just incredible.
I really appreciated a film called Witches by Elizabeth Sankey, which has also been playing festivals and is on MUBI now. It’s a documentary about her post-natal depression and uses an array of witch-themed film archive in an incredibly skillful way, emotionally and poetically, and is constructed to perfectly enlighten me to the reasons why I have always felt I needed to be a good girl and not complain—some kind of ancient fear that I will be burned at the stake if I don’t. I consider myself a witch and I have a coven of friends with whom I have found great support and strength, so this film had me shouting “YES YES YES” at the screen! I got to meet Elizabeth at a BIFA nominee party (we are actually in competition to get an award in the documentary category, I think) but I felt like a fangirl. She is so friggin cool.
Alain Guiraudie (Misericordia. France. Cannes)
I only have a Top 1: Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos. I’m not usually a big fan of Lanthimos’ cynicism, although I really liked Dogtooth. Here, his universe recaptures the universality and baroque of timeless tales. And what a great idea to bring naivety face to face with the inhumanity and greed of our world.
Ilir Hasanaj (Worker Wings. Kosovo. IFFR)
No Other Land
Incredible film about friendship and the occupation of the West Bank in Palestine. It is at times unbearably sad to watch, to see Palestinians’ homes being torn down by the Israeli army, day after day, and still find the strength to resist. While Palestinians are being forced out from their home village, a rocky friendship is evolving between the two main characters, an Israeli and a Palestinian. Two apparent different worlds collide and two contrasted realities exchange. A must watch, especially now!
On The Way
A warm jewel in a depressing environment. It’s incredible what the filmmaker created in a simple car ride. A pessimistic father-son story about the emigration of Kosovars to western countries. The roles exchange between the father and the son, where you never know who is the grown-up and who is more realistic.
History is written at night
A very poetic short film by Alejandro Alonso Estrella about the outage of electricity in Cuba. Mysterious and fresh.
The Return of a projectionist
I enjoyed the lightness of this documentary, the passion toward cinema and the sweet friendship between the now retired projectionist and a young film enthusiast. Together they try to fix a projector to be able to screen films in a village in the outskirts of Azerbaijan. I loved the beginning of the film. Visual spoiler: On a snowy mountain, the old man guides a horse through. On the horse sits a young man with a laptop. The old man asks: Do you have internet now?
If it’s allowed, these were the films I have to mention but came out in 2023:
And the wind weeps
This film makes me cry every time I watch it. An incredible work by my friend Aulona Selmani. A film about the Kosovar War and its lack in finding justice. An elderly Kosovar man living in Switzerland is waiting endlessly to be called by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). While the story evolves around his ache, his wife reminds him that women have suffered too and are very often ignored or erased from history. Chapeau to Aulona and the team.
Poor Things
This film is a very feminist film where a woman frees herself from society’s expectations. A visual joy and inspiring music.
Past Lives
Beautiful romantic film against the stereotypes of romantic film expectations.
Perfect Days
A sweet feel good movie about simplicity and being allowed to be slow in a fast moving world. Sometimes a bit too romanticized, but the positive face of the main character gives me a happy feeling as if the smiling Buddha is reawakened to play this role.
Anatomy Of A Fall
A film that kept me glued to the silver screen. A story of “Did she or did she not?” Did she kill her partner or not? A quote that made me giggle from it: “In the background played a very sexist song: ‘P.I.M.P.’ by 50 Cent.” “It’s not sexist if the song is played without lyrics!” Through some corners, it made me think about truth and the interpretation of it.
Zone Of Interest
Since I saw Under The Skin by Jonathan Glazer, I thought this director is more than worthy to be compared with Stanley Kubrick. With Zone Of Interest, I can confirm the comparison is justified. A very powerful film about the banality of evil. Special in every direction, haunting and daring. Just as daring as Jonathan’s speech after receiving the Oscar for Zone Of Interest.
Tamer Hassan (Homing. US. Cinema du Reel)
I stopped watching films this year. After being at a few festivals in the spring, I didn’t watch anything for months. I had taken in too much over the past few years, often streaming, and my mind was filled with images and cuts. As I’ve slowly started to go back to the cinema, I’ve been much more selective. These films I did see resonated through the days of not watching. I don’t think I’ll go back to my old viewing habits.
Dearest Fiona (Fiona Tan)
The Goose’s Excuse (Mahdy Abo Bahat and Abdo Zin Eldin)
By the Stream (Hong Sang-soo)
Little, Big, and Far (Jem Cohen)
Blitz (Steve McQueen)
Daphné Hérétakis (What We Ask of a Statue is That It Doesn’t Move. Greece. Semaine de la Critique)
I watch a lot of films, but I always seem incapable of remembering them, especially when someone asks me to make a list! So, I’m sure I’m forgetting films that I loved, and this makes me sad already. But here are a few that I saw in the cinema in the past months that made a great impression on me, each for different reasons:
Universal language (Matthew Rankin)
Bogancloch (Ben Rivers)
Scénarios (Jean-Luc Godard)
Las novias del sur (Elena Lopez Riera)
My sister’s good fortune (Angela Schanelec)
Notre corps (Claire Simon)
Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
Callie Hernandez & Courtney Stephens (Invention. USA. Locarno)
For Courtney, seeing the restoration of Man’s Castle (1933) by Frank Borzage, which offers devastating critique while still managing to be romantic (plus Spencer Tracy skinny-dipping). For Callie, Last Summer (2024, or is it technically 2023?) by Catherine Breillat, with her signature, merciless edging throughout (not to mention near-perfect editing and performance from Léa Drucker), Hong Sang-solo’s A Traveler’s Needs (2024) and a special screening of Gardener’s Son (1977) by Richard Pearce, screenplay by Cormac McCarthy, in which a friend and I accidentally crashed the family/friend/crew reunion..
Images that most influenced Invention came from Callie’s dad’s public access TV archives and the bowels of the internet while thinking about the flow of alternative information around the turn of the 21st century. Homemade videos about making free energy, Royal Rife, healing copper demos, Ong’s Hat.
Diego Hernandéz (El Mirador. México. FICUNAM)
El origen de las especies – Juliana Zuluaga, Tiagx Vélez, Analú Laferal (Colombia, 2024)
Mi pecho está lleno de centellas – Gal Castellanos (México, 2024)
Algo viejo, algo nuevo, algo prestado – Hernán Roselli (Argentina, 2024)
La imagen permanente – Laura Ferrés (Spain, 2023)
Los Delincuentes – Rodrigo Moreno (Argentina, 2023)
Las cosas indefinidas – Maria Aparicio (Argentina, 2023)
Louis Riel o el cielo toca la tierra – Matias Meyer (Canada, México, 2024)
Abiding Nowhere – Tsai Ming Liang (Taiwán, Estados Unidos, 2024)
Pepe – Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias (Dominican Republic, Namibia, 2024)
El verano más largo del mundo – Alejandra Lipoma, Romina Vlachoff (Argentina, 2024)
Alexander Horwath (Henry Fonda for President. Austria. Berlinale)
Anora (Sean Baker)
Being John Smith (John Smith)
Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (Tyler Taormina)
C’est pas moi (Leos Carax)
Der unsichtbare Zoo [The Invisible Zoo] (Romuald Karmakar)
Intercepted (Oksana Karpovych)
Joker: Folie à deux (Todd Phillips)
Miséricorde (Alain Guiraudie)
Me (Don Hertzfeldt)
Pavements (Alex Ross Perry)
Scénarios (Jean-Luc Godard)
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Johan Grimonprez)
Suyoocheon [By the Stream] (Hong Sang-soo)
Teocalli (Los Ingrávidos Collective)
Trois Amies (Emmanuel Mouret)
Maxime Jean-Baptiste (Listen to the Voices. France. Locarno)
La Passion selon Béatrice (2024, Fabrice du Welz) – Locarno
(Y)our Mother (2024, Samira El Mouzghibati) – Visions du Réel
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed (2024, Hernán Rosselli) – Quinzaine des Cinéastes
I chose these three films [for] the way that they challenge the classic documentary format, by adding fiction, acting or archive. They are extremely inspiring in their own way. I was touched by La Passion selon Béatrice and (Y)our Mother because of the simple emotions of love, rage and despair that are transmitted to you as a spectator. I was struck by the direction of non-professional actors in Rosseli’s film, and the feeling of being part of the intimacy of the characters. Very strong.
Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child (1986, Alanis Obomsawin)
I discovered this short film when I attended RIDM, a great festival in Canada. I visited the exhibition Alanis Obomsawin: The Children Have to Hear Another Story in MAC (Montréal), and discovered this 1986 short film. During and after the 29 minutes, I couldn’t stop crying. A blend of fiction and real testimonies, to tell the tragic short life of Richard Cardinal, and to tell as well the condition of children in the foster care system in Canada, and specially the treatment of Indigenous children. Thank you Alanis Obomsawin for all this work.
Radu Jude (Eight Postcards from Utopia / Sleep 2. Romania. Locarno)
Scénarios + Expose du film annonce du film Scenario (Jean-Luc Godard)
Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)
Youth 2 (Wang Bing)
Silence of Reason (Kumjana Novakova)
A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)
Fire of the Wind (Marta Mateus)
TWST (Andrei Ujică)
Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine as Light. India. Cannes)
I saw a lot of films this year. I wish I had seen more since I think it was a very good year for cinema
Misericordia (Alain Giuraudie)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof)
Youth (Hard Times) (Wang Bing)
By The Stream (Hong Sang-soo)
Toxic (Saulė Bliuvaitė)
Oksana Karpovych (Intercepted. Ukraine, Berlinale)
Silence of reason (Kumjana Novakova)
Historia de pastores (Jaime Puertas Castillo)
There are two works that I keep thinking about after watching, probably because there is something in them that is close to my practice and sensibility. With Novakova, we obviously also share the subject of research: war crimes and testimony, and we both work with the archival material. The original way Novakova used text as an image is innovative and inspiring.
I liked the mystery and poetry of Castillo’s work, his film makes me think of Pasolini. there is something timeless about his style and the story he tells. timelessness combined perfectly and organically with the drones in frame and 3d graphics. Beautiful.
Phạm Ngọc Lân (Cu Li Never Cries. Vietnam. Berlinale)
Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)
Pepe (Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias)
The Girl with the Needle (Magnus von Horn)
Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)
Nikita Lavretski (Ulysses. Belarus. Jihlava)
I’m a total hedonist when it comes to consuming moving images. Even after working as a full time film critic for several years, I do not get the desperate need to catch up, sort through and evaluate that my colleagues feel toward the end of the year. I’m equally grateful to all the movies that lit up each separate month of 2024 for me, and brought me pleasure whether I planned to like them or not. Here are the ones that I’ve either rewatched compulsively already, or would be willing to rewatch at a second’s notice:
January — The Curse (Nathan Fielder & Benny Safdie)
The most surprising thing of 2024: a hilarious reality TV satire that crashes into a terrifyingly unironic Kafka homage.
January — Ushko — Maska_Iz_Kapel【MEGADANCE VIDEO】(BSEU students)
A vision of absolute freedom: Belarusian students dancing to an overwhelming hardbass anthem on the state university stage.
January — Philly Streets (Andrew Callaghan)
If this was 2004, Callaghan would be winning Palme d’Ors for his work. There’s nothing more touching than an impassioned artist’s portrait of his troubled city.
February — ¥$, Ye, Ty Dolla $ign – VULTURES (Juice Version) feat. Bump J & Lil Durk (Aus Onda and Ye)
In February, I starred in my friend Alexey Lapin’s movie, so I didn’t have much time to watch movies. Yet, this one I rewatched almost daily: I’m fascinated by pop videos where little things are off: the rapping is slightly out of sync, the editing is subtly memefied, everything fits into a tiny pixelated keyhole.
March — Oblivion (Alex Hrytsevich)
Pure longing in film form: Hrytsevich constructs a decidedly inaccurate low-polygon machinima replica of Minsk in which viewers are killed (by Half-Life’s nuclear button, no less) and resurrected.
April — Renegade Nell (Sally Wainwright), Ripley (Steven Zaillian), Baby Reindeer (Richard Gadd)
Perfect serialized entertainment that has figured out the main rule: more hours of storytelling call for more plot. A children’s adventure that’s as tight as my memories of watching shounen anime 17 years ago; an impossible-to-put-down mystery thriller; an autofiction extravaganza that’s navel-gazing and insightful at once.
April — Civil War (Alex Garland)
Haters say it’s the dumbest Alex Garland and/or A24 movie ever. I say it’s the smartest Michael Bay movie ever.
May — Jessie the Ghost (Patrick Boehmcke)
So many futurist digital experiments in shorts these days, yet this is a rare one that’s not a reflection of the old world captured with advanced technology, but a vision of a changed world depicted naturally.
May — Deep Dip 2 Streams (Wirtual)
How come watching streamers is so entertaining? I was never a fan of live sports, so maybe it’s because of e-sports’ extreme visual stimulation that I spent a whole month watching a Norwegian gamer trying to conquer a single Tranckmania map.
June — Fantasmas (Julio Torres)
The funniest Curb substitution: a paranoid-schizophrenic expressionist sitcom taking place in the bureaucratic hellhole of New York City.
June — Counterfeit Poast (Jon Rafman)
A great AI-generated movie: where lesser artists use this technology to capture the collective unconscious, it goes for the creepily, tragically, hilariously humanly specific.
July — The Bikeriders (Jeff Nichols), Longlegs (Osgood Perkins)
Perfect theatrical entertainment with awesome acting. They say AI can make old photos come to life, but it will never come close to these real men embodying recognizable male archetypes. They say TikTokers are the new movie stars, yet no TikToker has come close to creating a post-Stanislavsky character with the sheer conviction of Nicolas Cage.
July — Netflix Avatar Bad: A Needlessly Thorough Autopsy (Big Joel)
This video essay put down of a bad Netflix series is 100 times more entertaining than the series itself: Big Joel is clearly more passionate about telling the story of a failure than the Netflix creators cared about the story of their hero’s triumph.
August — Trap (M. Night Shyamalan)
What nerds even have time to analyse “plot holes” when each and every shot is so tight, each bit is so crisp, delivery—so sick? If you want my pick for the number one freshest movie of the year, this is it.
September — Colin from Accounts (Harriet Dyer & Patrick Brammall)
Perfectly unfiltered post-Apatow romcom with amazing chemistry. Comfort food, yes, but McDonald’s would also be on my list of top foods of 2024.
September — The Average Redditor: Origins + various short-form videos (The Slappable Jerk)
Jack Ryan a.k.a. The Slappable Jerk is a cringe comedy genius, and one of the few people making real art on TikTok. His DIY YouTube feature about an unbearable Redditor teenager confronting his teacher and father (both convincingly played also by Ryan) is the coming-of-age movie of the year.
September — Rebel Ridge (Jeremy Saulnier), His Three Daughters (Azazel Jacobs)
Great Netflix entertainment: the tightest (ever?) action thriller without a single kill; a super natural (sic) mumblecore comedy without a single empty silence.
September — Rahim Redcar – DEEP HOLES (Rahim Redcar)
Another slightly-off pop video: slick MJ-style dancing in the middle of a forest, shot on lo-fi cameras. If it’s ever confirmed that Rahim indeed filmed this self-portrait completely by himself, complete with pre-programmed drone movements, I’ll be willing to call this the most important technical achievement in cinema this decade.
October — Skibidi Toilet (DaFuq!?Boom!)
Not entirely pleasant but definitely the most intensely stimulating watching experience I had in 2024: binging Skibidi Toilet on a treadmill in a gym.
October — Computing Film (various directors)
In October, I presented my 10-hour-long motion picture novel Ulysses at Jihlava IDFF. There, I was most impressed by this retrospective of various early shorts made with computers and algorithms, most of them not featuring humans.
November — Smile 2 (Parker Finn), Rap World (Conner O’Malley & Danny Scharar), Queens of Drama (Alexis Langlois)
Great music-themed arthouse delights, even if one is a commercial horror flick, and another was released on a comedian’s YouTube channel. The third one is a lavish hyperpop melodrama and deserves to be the biggest musical of 2024.
November — My Brilliant Friend: The Story of the Lost Child (Laura Bispuri)
The climax of, perhaps, the most psychologically precise soap opera ever left me devastated.
November — МЭЙБИ БЭЙБИ — Hit Em Up (DISS) (Sasha Needmor & MIPUNGA)
This is my Kendrick-vs-Drake: perhaps, foreigners won’t understand the thrill of watching Maybe Baby cosplay 2Pac and rap “This baby represents Belarus” while dissing Instasamka and Mia Boyka but, personally, I can’t stop watching.
December — Oba Electroplating Factory (Yoshiharu Tsuge)
I’m writing this in November, so not sure what I will watch & enjoy in December, except for this one: I recently started Oba Electroplating Factory, the latest in the book series collecting all of Yoshiharu Tsuge’s mature works. As always, he is an unequalled master of subtextually heartbreaking mise en scène and economic editing bursting with emotion. Comic books are cinema too: I don’t read them, I watch them.
Some older five-star classics that I also watched this year: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969, George Roy Hill), The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger), Cool Hand Luke (1967, Stuart Rosenberg), Mikey and Nicky (1976, Elaine May), Harsh Times (2005, David Ayer), The Hustler (1961, Robert Rossen), Take Out (2004, Sean Baker & Shih-Ching Tsou), Prince of Broadway (2008, Sean Baker), A Gentle Creature (2017, Sergey Loznitsa).
Ines Lima (O Jardim Em Movimento. Portugal, Quinzaine)
This year I have been lucky to attend some film festivals, where I had the chance to watch an incredible amount of shorts more than features. Between them are these four. All incredibly different—they can talk about the past or the future, technology or tradition, or the supernatural within the natural world, but one thing is for sure: they were all the craziest rides I had this year. The same I felt with these three other features—even though they all touched very different places in me, they are the ones that often inhabit my thoughts.
(shorts)
Grandmamauntsistercat (Zuza Banasinska)
En El Mismísimo Momento (Rita Pauls, Frederico Luis)
Panadrilo (Marcela Heilbron)
For here am I sitting in a tin can far above the world (Gala Hérnandez)
(features)
Rotting in the Sun (Sebastián Silva)
Volveréis (Jonás Trueba)
Eat the Night (Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel)
Lei Lei (Break No. 1 & Break No.2. China. IFFR / re – engraved. China. NYFF)
In September 2024, I saw the film April at the New York Film Festival. This film (by Dea Kulumbegashvili) was my favorite film of the year. Interestingly, the movie theater at the NYFF was very classic, with seating for the audience up and down, and the screen was so big that all the audience members had to tilt their heads to see the movie.
I remember that my seat was pretty far back, there was a black crowd in front of me, and the screen was so high as it stood up, so I felt like it was a video installation more than a film the whole time. Because of that experience, I found the still images, the longshots, very beautiful, like classical paintings hanging in a theater.
Gala Hernández López (for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world. Spain, France, Forum Expanded)
La Parra / The Rim (Alberto Gracia)
Pepe (Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias)
The Human Hibernation (Anna Cornudella)
Grandmamauntsistercat (Zuza Banasińska)
512×512 (Arthur Chopin)
Worker’s Wings (Ilir Hasanaj)
The roller, the life, the fight (Elettra Bisogno y Hazem Alqaddi)
The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Marta Mateus (Fogo do Vento. Portugal. Cannes)
Two films I profoundly admire, that I somehow accompanied and I’ve seen more then once :
Looking for Robert (Richard Copans)
A very important film for all film professionals, directors, producers, programmers and, above all, for film students, because it reminds us of something fundamental that is falling apart today: cinema can only be born in a space of trust, solidarity and friendship, of a very intimate encounter between souls.
Scénarios & Exposé du film annonce du film Scénario (Jean-Luc Godard)
“Using a horse to illustrate that a horse is not a horse is less efficient than using a non-horse to illustrate that a horse is not a horse.”
If there is someone who drew our attention to the vital power and dangers of language for our community, it is Jean-Luc Godard.
Merci, merci, JLG, and all the non-horses.
Deeply involved in the two works mentioned here are great friends and two of the producers of Fire of Wind, Fabrice Aragno and Richard Copans.
My good fortune and my admiration for these films also reveals that, like non-horses, souls also meet to inspire and conspire, in life as in cinema.
Marianna Milhorat (Just Above the Surface of the Earth. Canada / USA. Dokufest)
Formally innovative, expressive, and complex, these are the films that continue to linger with me from this year. Each through their own logic—sometimes elusive, rebellious—and with great humanity reassemble fragments from a shattered world: reclaiming stories, memories, bearing witness, and giving eulogy. “To those who died…and to those who have not yet died” (Ghassan Kanafani, qtd. in A Fidai Film).
A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
La Laguna del Soldado (Pablo Alvarez-Mesa)
CORRESPONDENCES (Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith)
Intercepted (Oksana Karpovych)
Silence of Reason (Kumjana Novakova)
Heaven Rain Flows Sweetly (Shasha Li)
Strata (Hannah Jayanti and Alexander Porter)
Nine Easy Dances (Nora Rosenthal)
Pavel Mozhar (Unwanted Kinship. Germany, Berlinale)
Favorite films from 2024:
Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Favoriten (Ruth Beckermann)
A bit of a Stranger (Svitlana Lishchynska)
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
Shadows in Paradise (Aki Kaurismäki)
Films from the past, which left an impression (re-) watching in 2024:
A Thousand Fires (Saeed Taji Farouky)
By the Name of Tania (Mary Jimenez/ Bénédicte Liénard)
Bread Day (Sergei Dvortsevoy)
BeFreier und Befreite (Helke Sander)
Wiegenlieder (Tamara Trampe, Johann Feindt)
Sound of Insects (Peter Liechti)
News from Home (Chantal Akerman)
Uncle Yanko (Agnès Varda)
There Will be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Marcel Mrejen (Memories of an Unborn Sun. Argelia. Visions du Réel)
Feature: A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
Mid-length: C’est pas moi (Leos Carax)
Short: The Hymn of the Plague (Ataka51)
Bonus: The Thug (Salah Abu Sei (4K restoration)
Celeste Rojas Múgica (Una Sombra Oscilante. Chile. FIDMarseille)
This year I was able to see just a few films (I have a list of incredible films pending), and some of the films I managed to snag at the beginning of the year had been released the previous year but I did not manage to see them until that moment. My list is, then, brief and somewhat scattered, but traversed by the little bit that moved me deeply and diversely between my transits.
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
Bogancloch (Ben Rivers)
Something old, something new, something borrowed (Hernan Roselli)
Todo Documento de Civilización (Tatiana Mazú)
Animalia Paradoxa (Niles Atallah)
Finally, this year I revisited Francis Alys’ Children’s games, a fundamental piece in his work, which helped me a lot to go through these difficult times and trust in new possibilities.
Miranda Pennell (Man Number 4. UK. Dokufest)
A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
Bogancloch (Ben Rivers)
The Invisible Worm (Rosalind Nashashibi)
Barefoot Birthdays on Unbreakable Glass (Rebecca Jane Arthur)
Viet and Nam (Truong Minh Quý)
Matías Piñeiro (Tú me Abrasas. Argentina. Berlinale)
Equation à un Inconnu (Francis Savel)
Mäddchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan)
Nubes Dispersas (Mikio Naruse)
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse) vuelta a ver [rewatch]
The Mission (Johnnie To)
The Beyond (Lucio Fulci)
Lancelot du Lac (Robert Bresson) vuelta a ver
Nightshift (Robina Rose)
Practice Practice Practice (Kevin Jerome Everson)
The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
No other land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal)
7 walks with John Brown (Pierre Creton & Vincent Barres)
Lázaro de noche (Nicolás Pereda)
The Damned (Roberto Minervini)
By the Stream (Hong Sangsoo)
Cuatro Noches de un Soñador (Robert Bresson)
La Paloma (Daniel Schmid)
Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao Hsien)
Toute une Nuit (Chantal Akerman) vuelta a ver
Scénarios (Jean-Luc Godard)
Exposé du Film Annonce du Film Scénarios (Jean-Luc Godard)
Speed Racer (Wachowski Sisters)
Diary (David Perlov)
Historia de un Vecindario (Ozu)
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)
The Stranger Within a Woman (Mikio Naruse)
One Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting (Tacita Dean)
These Three (William Wyler)
Jezabel (William Wyler)
River of the Night (Kozaburo Yoshimura)
An Osaka Story (Kozaburo Yoshimura)
City for Conquest (Anatole Litvak)
The Sealed Soil (Marva Nabili)
Driftwood (Allan Dwan)
That Brennan Girl (Alfred Santell)
Mirage de la vie: portrait de Douglas Sirk (Daniel Schmid)
The Written Face (Daniel Schmid)
La Prisonnière de Bordeau (Patricia Mazuy)
The Man I Love (Raoul Walsh)
Haut Bas Fragile (Jacques Rivette) vuelta a ver
In This our Life (Raoul Walsh)
Ginza KanKan Musume (Koji Shima)
Hanakago no uta (Heinosuke Gosho)
Manpower (Raoul Walsh)
Farewell to the Dream (Keisuke Kinoshita)
Arakure (Mikio Naruse)
Un Vivant qui Passe (Claude Lanzmann)
The United States of America (James Benning & Bette Gordon)
Dahomey (Mati Diop)
A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang Soo)
L’été Dernier (Catherine Breillat)
Las hermanas Munekata (Yasujiro Ozu) vuelta a ver
The Cherry Tree with Grey Blossoms (Sumiko Haneda)
Historia de Pastores (Jaime Puertas Castillo)
Safe in Hell (William Wellman)
Arrowsmith (John Ford)
Bushman (David Schickele)
Angel (Joseph Cornell)
Desire (Frank Borzage)
Follow Me Quietly (Richard Fleischer)
Youth (Wang Bing)
The Heiress (William Wyler)
Mutter Kuster fahrt zum Himmel (RW Fassbinder) vuelta a ver
Truong Minh Quy (Viet and Nam. Vietnam. Un Certain Regard)
Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
Happyend (Nero Sora)
An Unfinished Film (Lou Ye)
Miséricorde (Alain Guiraudie)
A Traveller’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)
All we Imagined as Light (Payal Kapadia)
Stranger Eyes (Yeo Siew Hua)
Cu Li Never Cries (Pham Ngoc Lan)
The Invasion (Sergei Loznitsa)
Familiar Touch (Sarah Friedland)
VR/ Film performance:
A Conversation to the Sun (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Room in a Crowd (John Torres)
Rewatched in cinema:
Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer), projected from a breathtakingly old 35mm print by Brussel Cinemathek.
It was a fun experience to go through the memories of watching films during the year. Thank you for asking me this.
Iva Radivojevic
(When the Phone Rangs. Serbia, Locarno)
It was a fun exercise to remember!
In no particular order /
Films released this year that inspired me :
Razeh-Del (Maryam Tafakory)
Cent Mille Milliards (Virgil Vernier)
Formas de atravesar un territorio (Gabriela Domínguez Ruvalcava)
Man Number 4 (Miranda Pennell)
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
Older films I saw this year that were inspiring :
Via Dolorosa (2021, Oraib Toukan)
Calcutta 71 (1971, Mrinal Sen)
Palestine in the Eye (1977, Mustafa Abu Ali)
All Round Reduced Personality (1978, Helke Sander)
In the Absence of Light, Darkness Prevails (2010, Fern Silva)
Films I’ve been itching to see, have an inspiring feeling about, but haven’t had a chance to watch yet:
A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
Fogo Do Vento (Marta Mateus)
All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich)
Balint Revesz (KIX. Hungary. CPH: DOX)
I feel that critical reception of new titles is more and more impacted by statistics and political agendas instead of aesthetic qualities and innovative storytelling.
I don’t like important films, I only like ‘good’ films :-)
Fave films from 2024:
MA – Cry of Silence (The Maw Naing)
When the Phone Rang (Iva Radivojevic)
C’Est Pas Moi (Leos Carax)
Le Deuxième Acte (Quentin Dupieux)
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni)
Little, Big, and Far (Jem Cohen)
and some other quite recent films that had heavily impacted me this year:
De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
Dry Ground Burning (Joana Pimenta, Adirley Queirós)
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (Elene Naveriani)
Future Shock – The End of Eternity (Hui-Yu Su)
King Coal (Elaine McMillion Sheldon)
Sarah Jessica Rinland (Monólogo Colectivo. Argentina, UK. Locarno)
A series of recently restored films by Narcisa Hirsch made between 1973-1977, two for her friend and one for her daughter. Narcisa talks over images she recorded of people she loves, their gestures, portraits, their bodies within landscapes, photographs, details of their rooms, family archive. The projector is sometimes heard in the background as she watches the images and talks to them as if the person were sat in front of her: “I wanted to write you a letter, but not a letter. A declaration of love.” No other film moved me more than these in 2024.
Rafael en Rio, 1977
Rafael, 1975
Andrea, 1973
Ben Rivers (Bogancloch. UK. Locarno)
Falling Lessons (Amy Halpern)
7 Walks with Mark Brown (Pierre Creton)
Dahomey (Mati Diop)
Being John Smith (John Smith)
The Damned (Roberto Minervini)
Lázaro at Night (Nicolás Pereda)
Direct Action (Guillaume Cailleau/Ben Russell)
Man Number 4 (Miranda Pennell)
Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)
Bogancloch (me) (haha)
Ben Russell (DIRECT ACTION. Germany France. Berlinale)
2024 was a year in which so many of us were marked by the shock of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, most of us physically removed from the violence but held close to the terror that our screens provided on a minute-by-minute basis. This hasn’t let up, nor has the question of what art and artists can do in relation to action, to activism and politics—if anything at all. While it’s obvious that both it and we can do something, it’s also clear that this something will never feel like it’s enough (surely because it isn’t—it can’t be). My own co-authored entry into this particular discourse (DIRECT ACTION) came into view in February and, since then, I’ve been present for any number of Q&As where the nature of its response has been variably celebrated and critiqued, applauded and hissed at. I’ve been looking back at the audience for answers and, when I’m not in front of them, I’ve looked to other moving images as well. In the order that I saw them, here’s a short list of works from the last year, both new and old-but-new-to-me, that I’m sure to carry with me well into the future:
Techqua Ikachi, Land – My Life (1989, Agnes Barmettler and Anka Schmid)
A digital restoration of a film well-versed in the poetics of the political, made by two Swiss artists in a Hopi community in the USA. The difference in the dialectic around cultural preservation between this film and Mati Diop’s was truly striking.
Dahomey (2024, Mati Diop)
Not just a bold surface dive into the turbulent waters of cultural restitution, but a roadmap for how a work that asks hard questions about complicated subjects can also be straight-up cool—in the most direct and sincere meaning of the word. A surprising pleasure.
Last Things (2023, Deborah Stratman)
I started a monthly screening series of experimental visual anthropological films called DOUBLE VISION in Marseille, yet another blatant move on my part to both see and share works that are dear to my heart, past/present/future. Deborah came by before her Jeu de Paume retrospective and shared this film alongside works by Brigid McCaffrey and Jodie Mack about geological time. I’d programmed Last Things blind and, as an artist who consistently blows me away, I was again totally earthquaked by her incredible collage film about, umm, the origin of everything.
The Garden Cadences (2024, Dané Komijen)
A gently intimate portrait of a queer-feminist collective living next to a trailer-rattling Berlin soundsystem, one that helped me imagine a whole other framework for approaching my own work around space and bodies.
Là (2024, Eitan Efrat & Sirah Foighel Brutmann)
One of my highlights of last year involved performing modular synthesizer as part of a three-hour improvised music set with Eitan Efrat and Caetano Maacumba in the middle of Eitan and Sirah’s touching and painful and urgent 11-screen 16mm installation at SMAK in Ghent. Our sounds looped with film loops for hours on end, creating a mutable space where images made in the Negev-Naqab desert in Israel-Palestine produced an emotional container for the rage and fragility and despair that the war in Gaza was actively producing.
Sanctuary Station (2024, Brigid McCaffrey)
I was lucky to be present at the world premiere of this stunning non-fiction address to the legacy of environmental activists in northwestern California. Shot on hi-con b/w 16mm film stock, this film has such a strong sense of being that it’s as if Robert Kramer and Chick Strand joined forces to bring this film into the vibrating present.
I’m Here 17.12.2022 5:44 (2024, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst)
The most incredible AI-generated work I’ve ever seen. After spending hours stoned in wonder at the Surrealist exhibition at the Pompidou, this video declared itself to be the contemporary inheritor of everything the less sexist Surrealists could have ever imagined. Here is the delight and shock of the image, built via a self-generating data set that tries to illustrate the dream-recording at its foundation.
The Magic Sun (1966, Phil Niblock)
The great Phil Niblock left us this year but he was generous enough to leave us with so much! I stumbled into a looping projection of this Sun Ra performance at the Pompidou, was thrilled to see how a document of an array of visionary free jazz performers could translate into the one of the most stunning alignments of sight and sound that I’ve experienced in a long long while.
Aura Satz (Preemptive Listening. UK. CPH DOX)
Right up until the premiere in Feb 2024 I was cooped up trying to finish my first feature film, whilst reeling from disassociated grief about everything that is ongoing in Gaza and beyond. There were a few films I really wanted to watch but wasn’t sure I could cope with more darkness—when I finally braved it they gave me clarity, strength and solace. There were others I appreciated because of the intense rhythms, echoes and afterimages they left in my body. It would be easier (and perhaps more meaningful) to list all of the wonderful new filmmaker and cinephile friends with whom I have connected at different festivals this year. But as I’ve been asked to put together a brief list of films, here are just a few:
Silence of Reason (Kumjana Novakova)
A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
Drama 1882 (Wael Shawky)
Marshall Allen 99 Astronaut (Ari Benjamin Meyers)
Monisme (Riar Rizaldi)
Una sombra oscilante (Celeste Rojas Mugica)
Melted into the Sun (Saodat Ismailova)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Paul Schrader (Oh, Canada. US. Cannes)
Haven’t seen Sing Sing, The Brutalist or Nickel Boys.
Oh Canada
Emilia Perez
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Maria
The Apprentice
My First Film
Late Night with the Devil
Alexandra Simpson (No Sleep Till. USA Venice Critics’ Week)
Caught by the tides
Janet Planet
Challengers
The room Next door
Universal Language
Miséricorde
Grand Tour
Between the Temples
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
East of Noon
Neo Sora (Happyend. Japan. Venice)
I was editing my first feature film in October 2023, but seeing the images of genocide coming out of Gaza, I nearly lost the will to make films altogether. Coming across Elia Suleiman’s films (Divine Intervention and It Must Be Heaven) made me want to watch films again, but I realized I couldn’t accept films that fictionalized violence anymore. The only films I could digest were ones with love, warmth and a bit of humor.
I wasn’t able to watch many films this year, but these stood out as particularly memorable:
- Divine Intervention (Elia Suleiman)
- It Must Be Heaven (Elia Suleiman)
- Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)
- Việt and Nam (Trương Minh Quý)
- Water Sports (Whammy Alcazaren)
Anupama Srinivasan (Nocturnes. India. Sundance)
Perfect Days (2023, Wim Wenders)
I love films in which very little happens; Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days is just such a film from 2023 that I saw earlier this year. The precision of the edit stunned me. It is only in the delicate hands of a master that a few days in the life of a middle-aged man cleaning public toilets in Tokyo can be elevated to a poetic rendition of the human condition, at the same time mining immense philosophical depths, all presented in a film that is tender and minimalist.
Tyler Taormina (Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point. US. Quinzaine des Réalisateurs)
Gotta shout out the work of my loves Alexandra Simpson (No Sleep Till), Carson Lund (Eephus) and Lorena Alvarado (Los Capítulos Perdidos)
Aside from them:
Challengers
Megalopolis
Grand Tour
The Room Next Door
L’été Dernier
Janet Planet
Between the Temples
La Práctica
…are the cuts above. But I’m missing so many that I believe will be bangers. It’s sad, really.
Andrei Ujica (TWST: Things We Said Today. Romania. Venice)
There is a sentence in Madame Bovary which captures the entire ambition of the book. After Rodolphe’s final refusal, Emma exits the castle filled with deadly despair: “The earth beneath her feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows seemed to her immense brown waves breaking into foam.” When I read it in my teenage years, I was struck by the jubilation Flaubert must’ve felt understanding he’d managed to elevate prose to the heights of great poetry. Then, a question began to take root in my mind: when could cinema reach the complexity of literature? Half a century has passed, and I’ve found only fleeting answers.
These were the thoughts that were racing through my head last summer when I was preparing to go to Venice with TWST. A month later, in New York, I watched Afternoons of Solitude, the film by Albert Serra, and another answer found its way to me, the type you find once in a blue moon. At the same time, Albert also answers to Lorca and Hemingway, taking one’s poetry and the prose of the other, to transform them into pure cinema. The secret lies in his use of only aesthetic means to achieve such a transgression, just as Flaubert did. For me, Afternoons of Solitude is the film that transmits the most genuine artistic emotion of the year.
Jonathan Vinel (Eat the Night, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. The Exploding Girl., France. Locarno. France)
My favorite films seen this year at the cinema and at home:
No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Yadra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Anora (Sean Baker)
Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman)
Portrait d’une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman)
Concerning violence (Göran Hugo Olsson)
Nicole Vögele (The Landscape and the Fury. Switzerland. Visions du Réel)
i really really liked LLAKI (SORROW) (Diego Revollo)
also interesting I found MORICHALES (Chris Gude)
incredible collection and editing: A Year in the Life of the Country (Tomasz Wolski)
eye opening I found SHADOW SHOLARS (Eloise King)
just stunning and mega touching IBELIN (Benjamin Ree)
so sensitive and beautiful WE ARE INSIDE (Farah Kassem)
others likes:
My Stolen Planet (Farahnaz Sharif)
Anora
The Zone of Interest
