Sight and Sound: the Winter 2024-25 issue

What could the cinema do for us, in a year as violent and divided as 2024? It’s a lot to ask of art to save the planet, but it can at least, we hope, inform and educate, broadening our collective horizons – a salve in an age of misinformation, culture wars and starkly polarised political debates. The international diversity of this year’s winners and their subject matter, chosen by a global pool of critics, gives a heartening sense of broadened horizons. Cinema has always been the fastest way to travel. 

— Pamela Hutchinson, introducing our films of the year cover feature.

At the end of a year in which more than half the world’s population has been voting for new leadership, we squeeze in one last poll: our annual round-up of the 50 best films, as voted by our contributors. Pamela Hutchinson introduces the most heartrending, uplifting, thrilling, surprising films to arrive on our screens. 

The winner of the poll is SPOILED BELOW. 

While tribal conflict has cast a shadow across cinema, as across the whole world, films about war – both documentary and fiction – have offered complication, nuance and, among all the fodder for despair, evidence that humanity still has something going for it. By Hannah McGill.

In an era of short attention spans and flash-in-the-pan careers, this year has stood out for the amount of work produced by filmmaking veterans. But anyone looking for evidence to confirm a general theory about art and old age is doomed to disappointment. By Jonathan Romney.

Historic injustices, present-day conflicts and an ecologically depleted future – the subjects of this year’s documentaries offered little to feel cheerful about, but the sheer number of fine films was at least cause for some celebration. By Nick Bradshaw.

Animated film has never been more popular, as the glut of sequels at the multiplex will testify. Meanwhile, smaller-scale independent productions continue to startle and seduce with their originality. So why in 2024 did the industry have the jitters? By Alex Dudok de Wit.

The buzz about artificial intelligence, and what it might do for – and to – the film industry, doesn’t get any quieter. But in the last year, the possibilities the technology offers have perhaps become clearer – as have some of its limitations. By Dominic Lees. 

When the most important show of the year, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, is judged a failure, what counts as success? In a difficult year for the industry, Andrew Male finds that there are still shows with human characters and lighting that allows you to see them.

The home cinema market is becoming more eclectic and adventurous than ever, and is helping to redraft the canon, writes Kieron Corless.

From the adventures of Burton and Taylor to the triumphs of Kubrick and Varda, it’s been a great year in film publishing, writes John Bleasdale.

RaMell Ross’s fiction debut is an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel about two young men incarcerated in a brutal reform school in the 1960s. The director talks to B. Ruby Rich about pushing the boundaries of POV
camerawork, marketing other people’s subjectivity and finding a sense of belonging in the Deep South.

This documentary detailing decades of brutality by the Israeli military in the West Bank, and directed by a joint Israeli-Palestinian team, won the Best Documentary prize at Berlin. Two of its four directors spoke to Jonathan Romney.

Rose Glass’s steroid-fuelled romance, starring Kristen Stewart and a ripped Katy O’Brian, muscles its way into the top ten. Rachel Pronger celebrates its fresh and seductive mixture of small-town noir, body horror and queer desire.

In Coralie Fargeat’s blistering film, an ageing television personality, played by Demi Moore, makes what turns out to be a Faustian bargain to recreate her younger self. Is it sci-fi? Horror? Or just the way things are? By Jane Giles.

The great Chinese director’s latest film incorporates outtakes from his earlier work to create a romance that is also a portrait of his regular star Zhao Tao across time and a summation of his long exploration of a nation in the throes of change. By Samuel Wigley.

Almost 30 years after he directed Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Secrets and Lies, one of his most beloved films, Mike Leigh reunited with her to make Hard Truths. Here, the director talks about what has changed and what has stayed the same.

In 2021, artefacts plundered from the West African kingdom of Dahomey were transferred from a museum in Paris to one in Benin. Mati Diop’s film – narrated by a statue of one of Dahomey’s rulers – follows the process. Here, she reflects on what the film meant to her.

Rohrwacher’s dreamlike, magical film, featuring Josh O’Connor as a down-at-heel English archaeologist fallen among tomb robbers in central Italy, was one of the year’s surprise hits, running for 25 weeks at a cinema in New York City. Alice Rohrwacher, speaking to Lee Marshall,  presents a selection of five Etruscan places, all of which were locations in the film.

Mikey Madison strikes sparks as sex worker Ani, who gets entangled with the son of a Russian oligarch, in Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning screwball romance. She explains what went into the role, which she crafted alongside Baker. By Lou Thomas.

This delicate, dreamlike tale of loneliness and fellowship, following the lives of three women in Mumbai, is the unforgettable winner of this year’s poll. Here, the director shares her delight at hearing of her victory, outlines the project’s glacial evolution since film school and explains why ‘working on a film is working out the chaos of your mind’.

Compiled by Bob Mastrangelo. Including obituaries Donald Sutherland, Anouk Aimée, Cheng Pei-Pei, Dick Pope and Tony Strong.

Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of William Burroughs’s novel Queer is a portrait of the writer’s romantic obsession with a young man in Mexico in the 1950s. But far from a period drama, it sees the director undercut reality with artifice in a work that follows in a tradition of films presenting the creation of queer texts as a metaphor for the ways queer people build their identities from scratch. By Ryan Gilbey.

Queer director Luca Guadagnino talks to Ryan Gilbey about his fascination with the William Burroughs novel, the influence of Powell and Pressburger and why he would never take ayahuasca.

Brady Corbet’s mesmerising drama The Brutalist uses the story of a Hungarian architect in post-war America to explore the tensions between art and ambition. Here Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold explain how their own creative process works within a business driven by money and time – and within a marriage. By David Thompson.

A decade in the making, Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu brings the Dracula-inspired Count Orlok back to cinemas over a century after F.W. Murnau’s genre-defining original. The director discusses the cultural evolution of the vampire, his commitment to historical research and his misgivings about following in the footsteps of Murnau and the director of the 1979 remake, Werner Herzog. By Roger Luckhurst.

As Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch arrives in UK cinemas, the great everywoman of modern American film discusses the childhood classics that blew her mind when she was young, her fascination with the films of Alfred Hitchcock and her admiration for the magnetic screen personas of Cate Blanchett and Jodie Foster. Introduction and interview by Guy Lodge. 

The incompetence of our political masters is the subject of Rumours, a deliriously outré black comedy set during a G7 summit. Jonathan Romney picks the brains of the film’s directors, Guy Maddin and Evan and Galen Johnson, and its star Cate Blanchett.

It’s a time for sharing, so in a spirit of goodwill to all cinephiles, a dozen directors – one for each of the 12 days of Christmas – including Guillermo del Toro, Wes Anderson, Alice Rohrwacher, Luna Carmoon and Steven Soderbergh, choose their favourite Christmas films. Introduction by Thomas Flew.

Kelly Reichardt, Bong Joon Ho and Lynne Ramsay are all back in harness, and fans of Richard Linklater, Josh O’Connor, Tatiana Maslany and Jessie Buckley can look forward to double helpings. But will Lucrecia Martel at last deliver her documentary Chocobar? By Arjun Sajip.

Gift recommendations from the Sight and Sound team

In A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg’s character visits Poland to reconnect with both his Jewish heritage and his troubled cousin as they weigh up the historical trauma their relatives experienced and their inevitably smaller modern-day worries. Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the film, explains what drew him to the project. By Lou Thomas.

The pre-publicity for Idfa (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) was dominated by the opening film, About a Hero, Piotr Winiewicz’s fanciful AI-scripted reflection on dreaming machines, narrated by a deep-fake Werner Herzog. Yet despite an attention-grabbing premise and supremely stylish visuals, the actual experience of watching About a Hero was more numbing than thought-provoking, a machine’s idea of an interesting documentary. By Rachel Pronger.

Four very different posters embody the drama and violence of Luchino Visconti’s film. By Thomas Flew.

So good at being bad: Mayo Methot was far more than just the third Mrs Bogart. By Pamela Hutchinson.

If Nigel Kneale’s techno-ghost story feels old-fashioned, that’s because it was ahead of its time. By Andrew Male.

Whether in Milan 1961 or Brooklyn 1970, city life and married life demand courage. By Nicole Flattery.

How a supremely dazzling year for American cinema ended in disaster. By Jessica Kiang.

Behind the stories we told in 2024 is a bigger story of war and crisis – and the power of cinema. By Mike Williams.

Disowned by its director, screenwriter and stars, sexed up by the publisher of Penthouse, mauled by censors, derided by critics, Caligula has been treated as an example of depravity as much as a portrait of it. With a dazingly comprehensive new edition, can we finally see it clearly? By Brad Stevens.

With this melodrama about a returning convict who discovers that his adored daughter has turned to crime in his absence, Jean Grémillon became one of the first directors to show the real power of sound – to tell us without showing, and to give meaning to silence. By Imogen Sara Smith.

The recent resurgence of film collectives across the UK is proving a vital force in democratising cinema – creating platforms that amplify underrepresented voices and foster fresh ways of experiencing films. By Matthew Barrington.

The chaos that lies at the heart of the work of the American artist, explored in a major retrospective in London, presents not just a challenge to conventional notions of masculinity but to the very idea of subjectivity itself. By Laura Staab.

One of cinema’s greatest icons, Louise Brooks, looks back at the Humphrey Bogart she knew during her years in Hollywood, when the future star who would forever be immortalised as ‘Bogey’ was still learning his craft and struggling to reach the top. Sight and Sound, Winter 1966-67. Written by Louise Brooks.

Chris Columbus wraps up his Christmas comedy of childish mayhem and self-discovery with a finale that verges on sentimentality – but with a saving note of comic rage. By Alex Ramon.

Our critics review: Babygirl, The Brutalist, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, Nickel Boys, Remembering Every Night, Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl, Nocturnes, Juror #2, Hard Truths, Vermiglio, A Real pain, Better Man, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, Grand Theft Hamlet, We Live in Time, Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes, Maria, Architecton, Queer, An Odd Turn, The Girl with the Needle.

Our critics review: The Mother and the Whore, You and Me, The Hop-Pickers, J-Horror Rising, The Story of Adele H., Seven Samurai, Godzilla, Juggernaut, Fugitive Images.

Our critics review: Silent to Sound: British Cinema in Transition, The Last Dream, The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick.