World Poll 2024 – Part 7 the editors January 2025 World Poll Issue 112 ENTRIES IN PART 7: Gavin Oakes Darragh O’Donoghue Lalo Ortega Lydia Pankratova Andreea Pătru Antoni Peris-Grao Andréa Picard Milan PribisicSharat Raju Daniel Ribas Marie-Pierre Richard Peter Rinaldi Ole Kevin Rodberg Eloise Ross Julian Ross Gavin Oakes An enthusiastic film viewer for more than 50 years It’s been a pretty quiet year in film for me here in rural Victoria. Living mostly in the country means I don’t get to as many films as I would like to; in 2024 I saw only 26. A handful of these were extraordinary, many were pretty good, and some highly praised films left me cold. There was one curiosity and one so-called ‘masterpiece’ whose reputation completely baffles me; it seems worse every time I see it again. First, the Good, with one exception, all old films. Totally enthralling and entertaining, they are films of such nobility, probing genius, imagination and insight that every time I see one of them again I’m afraid I’m going to be disappointed because I can’t believe it could be as good as I remember it. Instead I am once again swept away by the power, beauty and vision of these films. In 2024, they included: North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959), L’année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais, 1961), Kumonosu-jō (Throne of Blood, Kurosawa Akira, 1957), and one film I hadn’t seen before, Dast-neveshtehaa nemisoozand (Manuscripts Don’t Burn, Mohammad Rasoulof, 2013), a film of shocking power and courage that makes most modern films look narcissistic, petty and self indulgent by comparison. The one extraordinary new film I saw I had approached with low expectations because of mixed reviews and my own disappointment in the director’s later films: Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024). If, as I think Godard said, all films come from either Méliès or the Lumière Bros, then Megalopolis is a riotously brilliant descendant of Méliès. Firmly in the realm of the imagination rather than the documentarian, staggeringly inventive, audaciously imaginative, grossly self-indulgent and over the top, and fantastically entertaining, Megalopolis presents a version of mainstream cinema as circus and funfair for intelligent adults rather than adults stuck in an eternal loop of adolescent wish-fulfilment. Megalopolis is fantastic and wonderful in all senses of those words. Next, the Bad: highly praised films that for some reason I just didn’t get. Gou zhen (Black Dog, Guan Hu 2024) starts out promisingly, but soon turns into a mannered, wanna-be US indie movie, with nods to Wim Wenders for cool and Emir Kusturica for weirdness, that tries too hard to be cool and weird, goes nowhere, and is ultimately boring and empty. Dune Part 2 (Denis Villeneuve, 2024) was simply execrable: a Trumpian fantasy strictly for adolescents with arrested personality development. Also in this group, a curiosity: Tar (Todd Field, 2022). Watching it for the second time I realised that, although I still thought it wasn’t a very good film, I had misunderstood it the first time around. Rather than Cate Blanchett’s Tar being a ‘monster’ (as she was often described in reviews), it now seems to me the film suggests that Tar is a naive and innocent victim of innuendo, malicious gossip and cancel culture. Tar, more or less insufferable as a person while at the same time being a great musician, is headstrong and arrogant, and alienated from everything except music. But a second viewing made me realise that the film presents no evidence of her doing anything wrong. What we see, rather, is a woman consumed by an overwhelming and uncompromising passion for music which makes her blind to the world around her, not only in her personal life, but more importantly for her work, to the cataclysmic machinations of identity politics. Her passion for the cellist, for example, is not, it seems to me, the passion of a sexual predator for a new prey, but rather a great musician’s infatuation with the musical greatness of another great musician. The world in which Tar actually lives – the social world, not the world of music – is incapable of understanding such a passion and so translates her behaviour into more vulgar, more easily categorised (and judged) currency: sexual passion. Consequently, Tar becomes, to her own bafflement, persona non grata, accused of things she hasn’t done by minions with their own agendas. Tar raises interesting issues, but because it is so heavy handed and self-righteous, it ends up being more a lecture than a film. Finally, the Ugly: The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949). It’s always been a mystery to me why this film is highly regarded, but, not having seen it for some years, when a new restoration was shown at ACMI I decided to give it another go. Maybe the passing of time had matured my outlook and its apparently quirky genius would reveal itself to me. Sadly (disappointingly) everything I had always disliked about the film was simply magnified by seeing it on a big screen: pretentious, exploitative, nasty, stylistically derivative and vapid, the only half-decent thing about it is the acting. To mention just a few of its despicable characteristics: the film is completely unembarrassed about taking a truly terrible story and exploiting it so callously and viciously it might have been made by the early John Waters; the often admired, stridently oblique, camera angles are simply stylistic tics that mean nothing and are thrown into the film the way a clueless cook throws more salt into an already bad dish; the characters, as baroque and grotesque as any in an Orson Welles film, are as false as they are unattractive; stereotyped and cardboard, they are more Monty Python than Orson Welles. I could go on, but what’s the point. The film will continue to maintain its ‘masterpiece’ status and I will continue to hate it. Darragh O’Donoghue Darragh O’Donoghue is an archivist at Tate in London and a contributing writer for Cineaste. He completed a PhD on the Stephen Dwoskin Archive at the University of Reading Nana (Dorothy Arzner, 1934) The BFI Southbank season A League of Her Own: The Cinema of Dorothy Arzner (February 2024) proved the filmmaker to be more than a ‘mere’ pioneer. She was capable of major works including this delirious adaptation of Zola that may be even more potent than Renoir’s famous silent version. Kudos to the BFI for screening most of the season on 35mm – unlike the majority of retrospectives in London this year. Dear Octopus (Harold French, 1943) Part of the BFI’s ‘Projecting the Archive’ strand, this screening was shown alongside a revival of Dodie Smith’s 1938 play next door at the National Theatre. A rare and fascinating opportunity to compare media, principles of adaptation, and historical contexts. Despite the poignant central performance of Lindsay Duncan onstage, and the film’s concessions to a mass audience and reworkings for its wartime context, I found the latter the more powerful, moving, and telling version. Nu aștepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii (Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Radu Jude, 2023) & 5. Anora (Sean Baker, 2024) and Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard, 2024) I saw these joyous films back-to-back one morning at the London Film Festival. Leaving the cinema into the bright October light, I felt for a few foolish hours that God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. C’est pas moi (Leos Carax, 2024) Screening as part of the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts)’s indispensable ‘Off-Circuit’ programme highlighting films awaiting distribution – other gems revealed this year included Outside Noise (Ted Fendt, 2020), Subete no yoru o omoidasu (Remembering Every Night, Kiyohara Yui, 2022), and Favoriten (Ruth Beckermann, 2024). The Carax is sublime: his most personal, political, and playful work yet. Among other marvels, it restages Denis Lavant’s breathtaking “Modern Love” choreography in Mauvais sang (The Night Is Young, 1986) with the puppet from Annette (2021), while any film that uses both Tintin and Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema (1988-1998) as intertexts automatically earns my undying love. But the reason I placed C’est pas moi above other ‘Off-Circuit’ films is the Q&A with Lavant on 22 November. More circus and street theatre than formal catechism, where even waiting for the translator to finish was a pretext for inspired clowning, this was easily the greatest post-screening event I have ever attended. Chrysotile (Sarah del Pino, 2024) The most exciting and surprising cinema today exists at the conjunction of non-fiction, artist’s film, and dream. Fighter (Siddarth Anand, 2024) Knuckleheaded knock-off of Top Gun? The film that finally brought Modi-ology into the ‘Bollywood’ mainstream? Or a Sirkian recalibration of same? Hard to tell. Sensational entertainment with three of the most charismatic performers on the planet? Most definitely. Exhibition – Jean-Luc Godard: Scénario(s), ICA, London (14-22 December 2024) While he was alive, Godard changed what was possible inside and outside the cinema. In death, his redrawing of boundaries takes on a posthumous or metaphysical dimension. Not only do we get more ‘last films’ – gladly, and if there are any more, bring them on! – but they are revised and renewed in whatever new context they are presented. This exhibition screened Scénario(s) (2024) with Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” (2024), a kind of pre-production ‘making of’ wherein JLG explains the structure of the film using a storyboard – the very storyboard was displayed in an adjoining room with related notebooks, performing the function of holy relic. Scénario(s) is an exhilarating two fingers to Death and the biological limits of creativity, finished days before Godard’s suicide. Exposé… is an essential document of a Great Mind at work, but also unexpectedly moving with its intimist focus on Godard’s dying hands. The storyboards and sketchbooks are themselves works of art, rich in collage, concrete poetry, and art informel gestures. Like most acts of homage to Godard this century, the exhibition’s tone was overly reverential and humourless; its uncritical celebration of his campaign against the ravages of forgetting overlooked his own convenient lapses in memory. But when will we ever get an opportunity like this again? Yeohaengjaui pilyo (A Traveler’s Needs, Hong Sang-soo, 2024) This and Suyucheon (By the Stream, 2024) concluded the ICA season The Human Comedy: The Cinema of Hong Sang-soo, which screened the 22 features and various shorts Hong has made since 2010. Individual Hong films are always a treat but hard to see, in the UK at any rate. Seeing so many in such a narrow time frame (late October-early December) led to addiction, dependency, and withdrawal issues from which the large crowds who attended each screening are still suffering. When the trailer first started doing the rounds, I thought its claim he was ‘contemporary cinema’s most inventive filmmaker’ was a bit hyperbolic. Six weeks later, I thought the claim didn’t go far enough. He makes Jorge Luis Borges, Éric Rohmer, and Woody Allen look like mere antecedents of Hong Sang-soo. Lalo Ortega Mexican film critic and journalist. Editor-in-chief for Mexico and Brazil at Filmelier, and regular contributor to Cine PREMIERE and La Estatuilla To what extent is it the job of critics and journalists – two distinct but often intertwined professions – to advocate for certain films? What overlooked works, if any, should they attempt to make visible for an audience that may have passed them by, for whatever reason? I grapple with these questions every year as search engines and algorithms insist on shoving journalistic and critical work towards the genericness of ‘content’ that follows a ‘success-by-metric’ mentality, which usually leans towards mainstream consumption. While I have nothing against movies for the sake of pure entertainment – with its box-office-and-popcorn conception of success –, I tend to think this kind of cinema can be limiting of our collective worldviews, in a time when plurality, compassion and public discussion of an alarmingly wide range of urgent topics is so desperately needed across the globe. None of which is, by definition, in opposition to fun or, as they say, ‘a good time at the movies.’ I choose to advocate for cinema that, despite critical praise and festival success, has been relatively unpromoted by their distributors, unceremoniously dumped on streaming services or blatantly ignored by most of the local audience and, as a result, went generally underseen during 2024 in my country. Despite this, I believe the following films contribute diverse worldviews and speak compassionately about human experiences across all that’s wonderful and terrible. Everything from elder abandonment to colonialism, misogyny, self-repression, the precariousness of immigration and the sacrifice of the self in the altar of capitalism and consumption in their most unhinged, abject manifestations. But they also speak, each in their own way, of the hopes that lie within these crises, big and small, personal and global. (Please note that these films were either commercially released in cinemas and/or streaming in Mexico during 2024, or were shown in festivals and exhibitions and have a confirmed commercial release at a later date. Three of them are from Latin America, I hope their inclusion here inspires you to seek them out and watch them in other regions of the globe). All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, 2024) Nu aștepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii (Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World, Radu Jude, 2023) I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024) Thelma (Josh Margolin, 2024) La cocina (Alonso Ruizpalacios, 2024) A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg, 2024) Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024) Sujo (Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez, 2024) El jockey (Kill the Jockey, Luis Ortega, 2024) Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood, 2024) La Cocina Lydia Pankratova Film and Architecture Researcher and Journalist based in Moldova Derrière les fronts: Résistances et résiliences en Palestine (Beyond the Frontlines: Resistance and Resilience in Palestine, Alexandra Dols, 2017) – Giudecca Library, Venice 20 dniv u Mariupoli (20 Days in Mariupol, Mstyslav Chernov, 2023) – Moldova special film screenings Anul nou care n-a fost (The new year that never came, Bogdan Mureşanu, 2023) – Romanian Film Days in Chisinau, Moldova The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024) – Cineplex Loteanu, Chisinau Witches (Elizabeth Sankey, 2024) – on MUBI Performance (Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg, 1970) Marfa și banii (Stuff and Dough, Cristi Puiu, 2001) – Romanian Film Days in Chisinau, Moldova Focus: War and resistance, with no horizon of peace in sight; women caught between their identities and the battles – both external and internal – that define them. Some plunge into the capitalist maelstrom, like the unfortunate characters in Stuff and Dough, while others seek refuge in the dreamy art form of cinema, as in Performance. Ultimately, it may be through film that we find some hope – otherwise the rain will never stop. Andreea Pătru Programmer & film critic. Spain/Romania In a non-hierarchical order: Feng liu yi dai (Caught by the Tides, Jia Zhang-Ke, 2024) Der Spatz im Kamin (The Sparrow in the Chimney, Ramon Zürcher, 2024) Cu Li không bao gio khóc (Cu Li Never Cries, Phạm Ngọc Lân, 2024) Household Saints (Nancy Savoca, 1993) Gou Zhen (Black Dog, Guan Hu, 2024) Dāne-ye anjīr-e ma’ābed (The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024) Immaculata (Kim Lêa Sakkal, 2024) Lie huo qing chun (Nomad, Patrick Tam, 1982) – restored Director’s Cut 512×512 (Arthur Chopin, 2024) Tongo Saa (Rising Up at Night, Nelson Makengo, 2024) The Seed of the Sacred Fig Antoni Peris-Grao Miradas de Cine La bête (The beast, Bertrand Bonello, 2023) La chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023) Else (Thibault Emin, 2024) Nu aștepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii (Do not expect too much from the end of the world, Radu Jude, 2023) Segundo premio (Saturn Return, Isaki Lacuesta and Pol Rodríguez, 2024) Hoard (Luna Carmoon, 2023) Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot, 2024) Grand Theft Hamlet (Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, 2024) En la alcoba del sultán (Close to the Sultan, Javier Rebollo, 2024) La estrella azul (The Blue Star, Javier Macipe, 2023) Lists may result in common places, repeating over and over again same names and titles. I couldn’t avoid a few movies that touched me this year, but I avoided some great directors who are known to everyone, like Glazer, Bilge Ceylan, Canijo or Hamaguchi, for instance. I’d rather include some films centred on creation, either musical (Saturn Return, The Blue Star) or cinematic (Close to the Sultan, Grand Theft Hamlet) not only for their intrinsic values but also for their defence of art development linked to emotions and human relationships. I’d like to point out also a trend we may see in a special comeback from musical genre. Quite forgotten for past decades, except for Broadway show adaptations, musical has reappeared in a peculiar way. Dramatic (even melodramatic) plots are mixed with dance and song sequences in a very successful way. It happened a couple of years ago in La Piedad (Piety, Eduardo Casanovas, 2022) but it has reappeared through brave directors’ decisions in Joker: Folie a Deux (Todd Phillips, 2024), Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard, 2024) and Polvo serán (They Will Be Dust, Carlos Marqués-Marcet, 2024). It seems a global phenomenon as this strategy might have been seen only in some Asian or French films but seems currently to be widely accepted and we may see it in the future more frequently. Andréa Picard Senior Film Curator at TIFF Cinematheque and the Toronto International Film Festival, and a programming consultant for the Marrakech International Film Festival Tardes de soledad (Afternoons of Solitude, Albert Serra, 2024) ***** (Redacted, Arthur Jafa, 2024) exergue – on documenta 14 (Dimitris Athiridis, 2024) Scénarios + Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” (Jean-Luc Godard, 2024) Qingchun (Youth) trilogy (Wang Bing, 2023-24) Miséricorde (Alain Guiraudie, 2024) Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, 2024) No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, 2024) All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, 2024) The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024) / The Damned (Roberto Minervini, 2024) New restorations: Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta, Marguerite Duras, 1976) The Sealed Soil (Marva Nabili, 1977) Milan Pribisic Teacher, Loyola University Chicago All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, 2024) Anora (Sean Baker, 2024) Cerrar los ojos (Close Your Eyes, Víctor Erice, 2023) Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024) Dar ghorbat (Far from Home, Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1975) Emilia Pérez (Jacques Audiard, 2024) Nu aștepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii (Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Radu Jude, 2023) Tótem (Totem, Lila Avilés, 2023) Uriui haru (In Our Day, Hong Sang-soo, 2023) Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant (Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, Ariane Louis-Seize, 2023) Close Your Eyes Sharat Raju Writer and director who has directed nearly 45 episodes of episodic television since 2016, and since 2020 has curated the Quarantine Film Society in Los Angeles, California In 2020, we began a film club. With both the film industry and movie theatres closed off to our group of working filmmaker-cinephiles, we needed a way to maintain our sanity. Quarantine Film Society was born out of this need. One hundred and sixty-one films later, we approach our fifth year of running QFS where we discuss on a near-weekly basis the week’s selected film with our group of working filmmakers. As curator of the group, I make the selections and, selfishly, prioritize films I have not yet seen but with an occasional revisit of a classic or something that feels worth of a rewatch. In 2024 we selected and discussed 28 films, each with an introductory essay and a post-discussion and analysis. Here are my favourites from our QFS 2024 selections. 1. Tengoku to jigoku (High and Low, Kurosawa Akira, 1963). High and Low is an astonishing feat of cinematic storytelling – it’s a thriller, a family drama, a chase, a horror film, a commentary on class and modern society. In the first half of the film, Kurosawa presents a masterclass in staging – the film is almost entirely in one location. The bridge to the second half is a literal bridge over which a speeding bullet train rockets while we are inside, handheld, holding on with heart-pounding intensity. In the second half, we’re in pursuit with the detectives on the case as it unfolds through a rapidly modernizing Yokohama, winding through a seemly underbelly and the clinking darkness of an opium-addicted underworld. And along the way, we are treated to a textbook in police procedural storytelling. The fact that Kurosawa fits this all into one motion picture, along with the restrained brilliance of Mifune Toshirō, puts High and Low near or at the top of the master filmmaker’s work. 2. City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931). Everything in City Lights pays off in the final shot – the very final shot – of the film. This is a remarkable feat of filmmaking and storytelling. The entire film, of course, exhibits Charlie Chaplin’s extraordinary command of the medium and physical performance gifts, and there are moments throughout that fill the screen with beauty and pathos and humour and realism. But it’s the final image that pays it all off. How few films can claim that everything will build to a final, joyful, emotional apex? Chaplin does it without wasting a moment in his truly timeless masterpiece. 3. Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Rainer Werner Fassbender, 1974). Ali: Fear Eats the Soul feels as if it could’ve taken place today. It’s a contemporary story, told with Fassbender’s deft hand and framing. You feel as though you are spying on a real relationship; our eyes are on the couple just as the eyes of the Germans around them. Though specific to Germany at the time, it very well could be a story about an interracial relationship in America today between a Latino immigrant man and a local White woman from Iowa, say. (Or take any number of combinations and permutations of the similar.) Prejudice and racial discrimination are not unique to any one country, and as Fassbender shows through his imagery and storytelling – neither is loneliness. 4. Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981). An early sequence in Blow Out stands out as perhaps one of the greatest examples of purely visual storytelling you can find in cinema. Jack (John Travlota) is on the bridge recording sound with a shotgun microphone as part of his work as a sound engineer. We first hear a couple talking near a bridge, in a wide shot while Jack is in the distance listening in. The sound then trails to something mysterious, only to be revealed as a frog croaking. A clicking sound but don’t yet know what it is, and we’re lead to an owl hooting. The owl turns its attention, as Jack does, to the sound of an approaching car. A pop – was it a gunshot or just a blow out?! – and the car spins out of control and goes over the bridge, which sparks the entire narrative journey of the film. De Palma draws our attention to exactly where it needs to be, expertly using the tools of cinema to draw us to narrative importance – size, distance, framing, movement. 5. Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951). One of the most surprising aspects of Ace in the Hole is that it’s from 1951 and not 1971. There’s an expectation for many of the post-World War II American films, that they have a Capra-esque quality. A happy ending or at least one that’s, at best, ambiguous or a qualified victory for the protagonist. A happy ending Ace in the Hole certainly does not have. A tale of greed, ambition, the fickle nature of the masses, spectacle, exploitation. Shrewd commentary about human’s ability to profit from the tragedy of others. An extremely cynical film by Wilder, a man not necessarily known for this particular tone. Honourable Mention: Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1971). As filmmakers, it’s difficult to watch Wanda and separate the narrative from the craft. The story, though thin on a driving narrative, is still compelling. And the reason to keep watching is Wanda (Barbara Loden), seeing what happens to her as she drifts through life. The movie is also about how Loden made it and what that evokes in us as a viewer. This is true for many films to some extent – how did they do that – but there’s something different about the “how” with Wanda and it in some ways fleshes out the “why.” Shot mostly on 16mm reversal stock – which is cheaper but less forgiving than negative film and more in line with budget-strapped documentarians of the day – Wanda, though restored, retains the grainy immediacy of the shooting format. Although not a documentary, it has a feeling of being a loose and free portrait of a time, place and a real person in a real world with whom we journey alongside in seemingly real time. A truly singular auteurist creation. Daniel Ribas Film writer, curator and professor Was this year a good one for cinema? Nevertheless, images and sounds are there, fighting for the discourses, and, at least, cinema, wherever we see it, is in the conversation. (Today), my favourite ten films are studies of their characters, and mostly of our precarious condition. They all speak of time – specifically of cinematic time and its exquisite building of reality. (Alphabetical order) All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, 2024) Delicate, funny, and luminous, this is a film that helps us to better understand the daily struggle for dignity. Anora (Sean Baker, 2024) A kind of Succession on steroids, this is the most radical American film of the year. Capitalism in its full splendour. La bête (The Beast, Bertrand Bonello, 2023) Our preferred sci-fi film this year touches the most sensitive parts of our bodies. Bogancloch (Ben Rivers, 2024) Sensorially building a portrait of a man and his life, this film also plays with the use of celluloid and its sensitivity to light. A cinema that is a machine of time and memory. Eureka (Lisandro Alonso, 2023) Inventive, funny, anarchist: the most liberated film of this year. Invention (Courtney Stephens, 2024) A forensic examination of an “invention” which is funny and nostalgic, the film contributes to the contradictory historical narrative of our late capitalism. Monólogo colectivo (Collective Monologue, Jessica Sarah Rinland, 2024) Zoos, animals, women. Is it possible to have acts of care in the most anarcho-capitalist country on the planet? Quando a Terra Foge (When the Land Runs Away, Frederico Lobo, 2024) A look at a wintry everyday life made up of slow gestures, secret conversations and constant rural labour. The reverse side of modernity (the lithium mines, the gold of the 21st century), through a rare delicacy about disappearing ways of life. Qingchun: Ku (Youth (Hard Times), Wang Bing, 2024) An archive for the future: the days and nights of a precarious youth closed in small workshops, sewing and living. Tardes de soledad (Afternoons of Solitude, Albert Serra, 2024) What to say? A film that gives back the spectator the ability to think (about how we live and how we live by images). Collective Monologue Marie-Pierre Richard Festival Director & Programme Curator, IFI French Film Festival Below is my top ten list of films for 2024. All of them were released in Ireland this year: Aku wa sonzai shinai (Evil Does Not Exist, Hamaguchi Ryūsuke, 2023) All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, 2024) Memory (Michel Franco, 2023) Kaibutsu (Monster, Kore-eda Hirokazu, 2023) Zielona granica (Green Border, Agnieszka Holland, 2024) La habitación de al lado (The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodóvar, 2024) Anora (Sean Baker, 2024) Kuru Otlar Üstüne (About Dry Grasses, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2023) Cerrar los ojos (Close Your Eyes, Víctor Erice, 2023) That They May Face the Rising Sun (Pat Collins, 2024) Peter Rinaldi New York based filmmaker and the host of Back To One, Filmmaker Magazine’s actors-on-acting podcast My favourite films released in the U.S. in 2024, in alphabetical order. Anora (Sean Baker, 2024) Between the Temples (Nathan Silver, 2024) Dāne-ye anjīr-e ma’ābed (The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024) Femme (Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping, 2024) His Three Daughters (Azazel Jacobs, 2024) Janet Planet (Annie Baker, 2024) Joker: Folie à Deux (Todd Phillips, 2024) Scrambled (Leah McKendrick, 2024) Summer Solstice (Noah Schamus, 2024) www.RachelOrmont.com (Peter Vack, 2024) Favorite retrospective discovery of the year: Du côté d’Orouët (Near Orouët, Jacques Rozier, 1971) Ole Kevin Rodberg A Nowegian with an MA in Film Sutides who works as a social worker in Oslo The last four movies on the list, I watched at the cinema Vega Scene in Oslo, while the first six were watched on my 65” Samsung at home. I finally completed a project I started 15 years ago: watching all the films from the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, which I bought the week I started studying film in 2009. The films by Nichols and Davies were seen because of this project. I also had the project to watch all the films by the American comedian Albert Brooks. I enjoyed all of his films, but the one featured on the list is my favourite of his. There are also many good movies coming out of Norway in the last few years, and the last year is no exception. Dag Johan Haugerud has released a great trilogy in 2024, while Lilja Ingolfsdottir has made an instant classic in Elskling. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966) Lost in America (Albert Brooks, 1985) Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1988) Oslo-København (Oslo Copenhagen, Jan Vardøen, 2020) Anatomie d’une chute (Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet, 2023) Dream Scenario (Kristoffer Borgli, 2023) Bastarden (The Promised Land, Nikolaj Arcel, 2023) Kuolleet lehdet (Fallen Leaves, Aki Kaurismäki, 2023) Sex (Dag Johan Haugerud, 2024) Elskling (Loveable, Lilja Ingolfsdottir, 2024) Eloise Ross Academic at Swinburne University and a co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque I’m glad for this journal’s new guidelines for their submissions this year; ten films max means I will limit myself and maintain a level of discernment. However, I have still managed to have some chaos in here, with films in different contexts. Nine of the ten things on this list were first-time viewings for me. Organised in the order in which I saw the films this year. Utu Redux (Geoff Murphy, 1983/2013). Bluray. I found this on a trip to Wellington a few years ago, out the back of the video store Aro Video. Co-produced by Aromedia and the NZ Film Commission, this copy is embarrassingly rare for such an incredible film in Aotearoa’s history. Godzilla (Luigi Cozzi, 1977). Online. Alternately known as Cozilla as a presumably loving nod to its filmmaker, this is a wild remix of the US re-edited version of the original Gojira. Footage of Raymond Burr and fantastical destruction are intercut with newsreel and other footage to study the cultural impacts of WWII and its aftermath in Japan and Italy. Watched this one evening following a visit to Cozzi’s store (and underground Dario Argento museum) in Rome. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956). Il Cinema Ritrovato, 70mm. Outside in the Piazza Maggiore, I had planned to watch as much as I could and leave early when I got tired – I’d seen it before – but needless to say I was in its awe the entire time. A beautifully restored print, still with a few cracks and projection issues, which made this experience all the more magical. Tovarich (Anatole Litvak, 1937). Il Cinema Ritrovato, 35mm. There’s almost nothing like seeing a screwball comedy in a packed cinema and this one was simply delightful; Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer are a duchess and prince exiled after the Russian Revolution and get up to a lot of antics “for the Tsar.” A sparkling Hollywood oddity that could only have come out of an industry populated by émigrés. The Boatswain’s Mate (H. Manning Haynes, 1924). Il Cinema Ritrovato, 35mm. Swiftly paced and good humoured tale of love and hijinks, with a vibrant and fiery Florence Turner against a cheeky Victor McLaglen. Truly joyous and demonstrating control of its form, the live score performed by OooopopoliooO was always attuned to the film’s tone and thus terrific. Chijō (On This Earth, In Revolt, Yoshimura Kōzaburō, 1957). Il Cinema Ritrovato, 35mm. Incredibly rich colour in this melodrama with strong pro-union politics, solidarity with labour and unashamed takedown of oppressive patriarchal ideology, and some of the most beautiful kimonos I’ve ever seen on film. Zielona granica (Green Border, Agnieszka Holland, 2023). Melbourne International Film Festival, DCP. Sharp, harrowing, and with a great impromptu dance scene and a textual epilogue that actually means something and hit hard. End war, ethnic and political persecution, and genocide everywhere. Incident (Bill Morrison, 2023). Online. Remix as protest. This represents the radical power of found footage filmmaking; I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Also ACAB. Forbidden Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1924). Melbourne Cinémathèque, DCP. The Melbourne Cinémathèque programmers and I had been waiting for this for years, so its eventual screening came with a sense of grandeur worthy of Adolphe Menjou’s moustache. La chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023). New release, at home. “You are not for human eyes.” I love everything I’ve seen from this filmmaker and I cannot wait for more. Fun to watch this a few days after Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, 2024) and be gifted with a wildly different Josh O’Connor performance. Utu Julian Ross Head of Film Programming & Distribution, Eye Filmmuseum Ohikkoshi (Moving, Sōmai Shinji, 1993) Guling jie shaonian sharen shijian (A Brighter Summer Day, Edward Yang, 1991) Camp de Thiaroye (Thierno Faty Sow & Ousmane Sembène, 1988) Amsterdam Global Village (Johan van der Keuken, 1996) Al-Manam (The Dream, Mohammad Malas, 1987) Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024) Trong lòng đất (Việt and Nam, Truong Minh Quy, 2024) Koute Vwa (Maxime Jean-Baptiste, 2024) A Conversation with the Sun (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2022) Razeh-del (Maryam Tafakory, 2024)