1. The Zone of Interest
Released in the UK in February
It might seem odd to award the number one slot in the best films of 2024 list to a picture I first saw in May 2023, but Jonathan Glazer’s piercing portrait of the family of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss has lost none of its devastating potency, formal daring and weighty significance with distance. A masterpiece.
2. La Chimera
May
A tale of grief and graverobbing, set in 1980s Tuscany and starring a sublime, wounded Josh O’Connor as the leader of a disreputable band of renegade archaeologists, director and co-writer Alice Rohrwacher’s beguiling caper has an untamed pagan spirit and a story infused with earth magic.
3. All We Imagine As Light
November
The discovery of the year is Payal Kapadia’s delicate drama tracing the interlinked lives of three women in Mumbai. The former documentary-maker elegantly blends nonfiction techniques with elements of dreamlike abandon. Mesmerising and profoundly moving.
4. Anora
November
Sean Baker’s robustly profane spin on the classic screwball comedy is his finest film to date. See it for the jangling vulnerability of Mikey Madison’s central performance as a stripper Cinderella; fall in love with the chiselled and photogenic bone structure of New York in winter, and with Yura Borisov as tender tough guy Igor.
5. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
November
Agile, informative, exhilarating to watch: Belgian director’s Johan Grimonprez’s exhaustively researched documentary weaves together the cold war, colonialism, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the politics of American jazz in a virtuoso display of editing artistry.
6. Conclave
December
Spending several hours sequestered in the company of a bunch of catty, back-stabbing cardinals as they attempt to choose the next pope may not sound like a good time, but in the hands of Edward Berger this stylish Ralph Fiennes-starring papal thriller is one of the year’s most enjoyable pictures.
7. Poor Things
January
The Yorgos Lanthimos/Emma Stone dream team doesn’t always deliver – I was less enamoured of their most recent collaboration, Kinds of Kindness – but with its extravagant oddness and deliciously macabre flourishes, Poor Things is a work of demented genius.
8. Four Daughters
March
Motherhood, sisterhood, radicalisation and the forces of entrenched cultural misogyny: heavyweight themes are explored with a light and playful touch in Kaouther Ben Hania’s remarkable, experimental blend of documentary and dramatic reconstruction. A Tunisian mother and her four daughters are confronted with actors playing out key moments in their lives – an audacious device that pays off handsomely.
9. Robot Dreams
March
Probably the film that made me cry the hardest this year, Pablo Berger’s utterly gorgeous 2D animation celebrates friendship and mourns loss through the bond between a lonely dog and his flat-packed robot buddy. The film’s secret weapon is its loving recreation of 80s Lower East Side Manhattan.
10. Green Border
June
Veteran director Agnieszka Holland’s bruising, multi-stranded drama shot in black and white tackles a refugee crisis at the border between Poland and Belarus. Following a Syrian family, an Afghan woman, an activist and a border guard, this is a sobering, serious-minded picture driven by compassion and anger.
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