The 50 best films of 2024
Our round-up of the best movies of the year, as voted by our contributors, finds a dazzling array of cinematic wonders from around the world, from the return of old masters to a rich trove of breakthroughs.
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.
Our worthy winner is a film about love, but one that takes a clear stance against Islamophobia and other religious, caste and class prejudices that constrict real people’s lives. For its maker, love can be “both a form of resistance against society, but also [a step] towards having choice for women”. Such a feminist message sits comfortably at the top of this year’s poll. There are more female than male directors in the top ten, a feat that has only happened once before, in the pandemic year of 2020, when there were seven women listed – this year finds six.
— Pamela Hutchinson
Find all our 2024 round-ups in Sight and Sound: the Winter 2024-25 issue
The best films of 2024
=41. Afternoons of Solitude
Albert Serra, France, Portugal, Spain
Winner of the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Film Festival, Albert Serra’s impressionistic and intimate bullfighting documentary shows the beauty and the barbarism of the controversial tradition, filming Peruvian wunderkind torero Andrés Roca Rey across 14 bullfights.
Read the full review: Afternoons of Solitude: Albert Serra’s immersive encapsulation of matador life
Where to see it: Awaiting UK distribution
=41. All of Us Strangers
Andrew Haigh, UK, US
Andrew Haigh’s time-slipping film is a deeply affecting, supernatural exploration of the profound consequences of grief and homophobia.
Read the full review: All of Us Strangers: Andrew Haigh’s glorious magic-realist meditation on grief
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=41. April
Dea Kulumbegashvili, France, Italy, Georgia
Dea Kulumbegashvili follows up her stunning debut, Beginning (2020), with an unflinching, excoriating story of a Georgian obstetrician whose career is threatened by her reputation as an abortionist.
Read the full review: April: dread inhabits every frame of Dea Kulumbegashvili’s brilliant abortion drama
Where to see it: UK release date yet to be announced
=41. Black Dog
Guan Hu, China
An ex-convict tasked with cleaning up a desert town in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics forms an unlikely bond with a dog in this surprising crime drama that mixes noir moodiness with slapstick absurdity.
Read the full review: Black Dog: enigmatic Chinese drama tells a story of loss, redemption and canine love
Where to see it: On DVD and Blu-ray from 27 January 2025
=41. Conclave
Edward Berger, UK, US
Ralph Fiennes leads a bitter, gossipy group of cardinals through an attempt to elect a new pope in Edward Berger’s adaptation of Robert Harris’s page-turner: a brisk and engrossing ecclesiastical hoot.
Read the full review: Conclave: the hunt for a new pope begins in Edward Berger’s ecclesiastical hoot
Where to see it: In UK cinemas now
=41. Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve, US, Canada, UAE, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand, Jordan, Gambia
Denis Villeneuve’s latest instalment from Frank Herbert’s space opera is a war movie-cum-swashbuckling adventure loaded with giant worms and vivid villains, and unobtrusive parallels with the current state of global power politics.
Read the full review: Dune: Part Two: an impressive sci-fi war saga
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=41. Green Border
Agnieszka Holland, Poland, France, Czech Republic, Belgium, US, Germany, Turkey
Agnieszka Holland’s compassionate film about the dehumanising treatment of refugees on the Belarus-Poland border interrogates the European response to the migrant crisis in all its complexity and injustice.
Read the full review: Green Border: Agnieszka Holland explores human behaviour within a broken system in a nightmarish refugee drama
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=41. The Holdovers
Alexander Payne, US
Consciously evoking the cinema of mid-budget early 70s Hollywood, Alexander Payne’s high-school heartwarmer, starring a never-better Paul Giamatti, is every bit the equal of the films that inspired its aesthetic.
Read the full review: The Holdovers: this high-school heartwarmer is no ordinary throwback
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=41. I’m Still Here
Walter Salles, Brazil, France
A fictional restaging of the real-life disappearance of engineer Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) in 1970 at the hands of the Brazilian dictatorship, with his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) movingly devoting her life to discovering the truth of what happened to him.
Where to see it: In UK cinemas from 21 February 2025
=41. Juror #2
Clint Eastwood, US
A juror on a murder trial comes to suspect himself as the killer in Clint Eastwood’s stern parable of morality and conscience and terse interrogation of the American justice system.
Read the full review: Juror #2: Eastwood’s courtroom thriller is a throwback to an era of straightforwardly grown-up studio entertainment
Where to see it: In UK cinemas now
=35. About Dry Grasses
Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, France, Germany, Sweden, Qatar
The focus is firmly on telling over showing in Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s cerebral, formally audacious film about a disengaged art teacher in a quiet Anatolian village who is accused of inappropriate behaviour.
Read the full review: About Dry Grasses: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s talky portrait of a teacher in crisis
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=35. By the Stream
Hong Sangsoo, South Korea
The prolific Korean auteur’s minimalist story centred around four untrained actors working on a skit may not be his most visually inventive, but the performances find notes of grace and profound sincerity.
Read the full review: By the Stream: Hong Sangsoo’s slippery drama gives way to profound sincerity
Where to see it: In UK cinemas from 31 January 2025
=35. Misericordia
Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal
French director Alain Guiraudie is one of the most unique and transgressive voices in cinema, and this fabulously compelling rural melodrama, steeped in dark desires, again reveals his penchant for genre-hopping and narrative unpredictability.
Where to see it: UK release date yet to be announced
=35. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Quay Brothers, UK, Poland, Germany
The Brothers Quay return to Bruno Schulz’s limbo world with this dream-like, part stop-motion-animated train journey to a terminally derelict sanatorium somewhere in a hazy, haunted eastern Europe.
Where to see it: Awaiting UK distribution
=35. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mahommad Rasoulof, Iran, Germany, France
A tense family unit serves as a microcosm of life under Iran’s authoritarian regime in this genre-inflected drama from exiled director Mohammad Rasoulof.
Read the full review: The Seed of the Sacred Fig: Mohammad Rasoulof’s domestic thriller is an elegant warning to the Iranian regime
Where to see it: In UK cinemas from 7 February 2025
=35. The Taste of Things
Tran Anh Hung, France, Belgium
Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche sauté up a storm in this delightfully sweet romance between a man and his cook, which features many a mouthwatering scene.
Read the full review: The Taste of Things: Tran Anh Hung’s elegant gastro film is a feast for the senses
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=31. The Beast
Bertrand Bonello, France, Canada
A focus on omnipresent AI makes this era-hopping sci-fi, starring Léa Seydoux, Bonello’s most topical film to date.
Read the full review: The Beast: Bertrand Bonello’s most ambitious film to date
Where to see it: On Mubi now
=31. Civil War
Alex Garland, US, UK, Finland
Four photojournalists and writers go to extreme lengths to cover the violent atrocities of a North American civil war in Alex Garland’s thrilling examination of Hollywood violence.
Read the full review: Civil War: Alex Garland’s spectacle of violence is determined to throw the audience off balance
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=31. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
George Miller, Australia, US
George Miller remains a master craftsman of bloody petrol-punk visuals in this mythology-stuffed backstory to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), with Anya Taylor-Joy portraying Furiosa’s gruesome and gruelling coming of age.
Read the full review: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: George Miller’s ambitious prequel quickly loses steam
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=31. The Room Next Door
Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, US
Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature offers a philosophical view of euthanasia with its gentle story of two old friends, played by Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, navigating the realities of death.
Read the full review: The Room Next Door: Almodóvar’s graceful exploration of mortality and friendship
Where to see it: In UK cinemas now
=25. Crossing
Levan Akin, Sweden, Denmark, France, Turkey, Georgia
A Georgian woman goes in search of her estranged trans niece in this elegant, politically resonant feature by SwedishGeorgian director Levan Akin.
We said: “Through Tekla’s backstory, which emerges gradually, we understand the precarity of trans lives and the daily risk of violence in Georgia’s very patriarchal society, where her family drove her out of home… In this difficult terrain, Akin creates a beautifully poetic sense of place. It’s a testament to his empathetic respect for difference (and his family’s connection to Turkey) that none of this feels voyeuristic or exploitatively touristic.” (Carmen Gray, S&S July)
Read the full review: Crossing: an emotionally rich journey through Istanbul
Where to see it: On Mubi now
=25. Kneecap
Rich Peppiat, Ireland, UK
Belfast rap group Kneecap rail against British imperialism and fight for the Irish language in this outlandish, exhilarating film based on the band’s origin story.
We said: “From having their first single banned from Irish radio for ‘drug references and cursing’ to riling unionist politicians with their ‘Brits out’ slogan, Kneecap are unapologetically brash and republican. So is the film, which provokes the audiences with gleeful chants of ‘Tiocfaidh ár lá’ (‘Our day will come’) – the only phrase used more often may be ‘Fenian cunts’, howled back at the trio by police who are shown as variously feckless and sadistic.” (Thomas Flew, S&S September)
Read the full review: Kneecap: a biopic is only the beginning for this anarchic Belfast hip hop trio
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=25. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Rungano Nyoni, Zambia, UK, Ireland
Nyoni’s follow-up to I Am Not a Witch (2017) interrogates Zambian generational divides through a darkly funny story of a woman, a family and a community performing grief rituals for a man who no one will miss.
We said: “The film’s images are made even more dreamlike by the near-perpetual night, each moment lit by the sapphire blue of the moon, where the light itself seems to dance along each surface like billowing silk. Such moments are intercut by the glaring primary colours of an old children’s television programme called Farm Club to which Shula’s memory keeps returning – in particular an episode about guinea fowl.” (Leila Latif, S&S Winter 2024-25)
Read the full review:
Where to see it: In UK cinemas now
=25. The Shrouds
David Cronenberg, Canada, France
David Cronenberg’s macabre modern love story stars Vincent Cassel as a widowed cemetery owner who invents grave cams for the grieving as a way to make sense of his loss.
We said: “The genre machinations of The Shrouds can feel like a grappling with a deep loss in this artist’s chosen language. Cronenberg has long used genre’s freedoms to liberate our empathic imagination to feel something forbidden or unfamiliar, or something so familiar that he gives us a combined estrangement and gross bear-hug to feel it anew – grief as a ghost story made flesh, and prolonged thanks to ShroudCam.” (Nicolas Rapold, S&S online)
Read the full review: The Shrouds: Cronenberg captures the obsessional force of grief in a dystopian widower drama
Where to see it: Awaiting UK distribution
=25. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Johan Grimonprez, Belgium, France, Netherlands
Johan Grimonprez’s vibrant documentary sets the events surrounding the assassination of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s independence leader Patrice Lumumba against a soundtrack of 1960s jazz.
We said: “Grimonprez literally soundtracks the slow unfolding of this malfeasance with jazz of the period fired up with a new sense of political activism and Afrocentrism. This music presents a kind of commentary on Lumumba’s struggle and defeat but, in Grimonprez’s telling, has a tragic dimension of its own: musicians such as Armstrong and Gillespie were convinced to tour Africa and Asia as cultural outreach activities that later turned out to be CIA-backed PR exercises.” (Sam Davies, S&S November)
Read the full review: Soundtrack to a Coup d’État: Johan Grimonprez’s collision of politics and jazz
Where to see it: In UK cinemas now
=25. Universal Language
Matthew Rankin, Canada
Matthew Rankin follows in the surrealist footsteps of his debut The Twentieth Century (2019) with a brilliantly bizarre comedy that imagines a Canada where the two official languages are Farsi and French.
We said: “The bizarreries which line the film are so plainly personal, a trait renewed by a quick swapping of actors’ roles in the last act to affirm the title’s universality and our comforting sameness. Major touchstones include the works of Winnipeg auteur Guy Maddin and the deadpan scenarios of Roy Andersson, but the main sites of influence on Rankin’s latest are the childhood parables of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.” (Saffron Maeve, S&S online)
Read the full review: Universal Language: a beautifully absurd crosscultural odyssey
Where to see it: Awaiting UK distribution
=21. Close Your Eyes
Victor Erice, Spain, Argentina
Victor Erice’s first feature in 30 years deals with the disappearance of a fictional actor and explores loss, grief and the exquisite power of cinema.
We said: “The carefully composed opening sequence of Close Your Eyes feels like Erice has never been away. Daylight gradually fills a shadowy interior, just as in the opening of El sur (1983). Characters speak in hushed tones about splintered families and father-daughter recriminations reminiscent of The Spirit of the Beehive, even if they allude to the country’s Franco dictatorship in a more direct way than that film’s dreamlike allegory.” (Leigh Singer, S&S May)
Read the full review: Close Your Eyes: a triumphant return for Víctor Erice
Where to see it: On BFI Player and other platforms
=21. A Different Man
Aaron Schimberg, US
Sebastian Stan stars as an actor whose face is transformed by an experimental treatment for his genetic condition in Aaron Schimberg’s mischievously meta doppelgänger tale.
We said: “Even with the deliberate air of staginess and tricksiness that permeates the self-consciously meta A Different Man, there is also a real mischief in the filmmaking. Schimberg’s deliciously twisted play on duality and morality and polarity never answers whether it’s better to be despised for what you are than admired for what you’re not. But it does impishly insist we count our blessings if we’ve never had to find out.” (Jessica Kiang, S&S October)
Read the full review: A Different Man: a discomfiting but darkly hilarious story of a man with two faces
Where to see it: In UK cinemas now
=21. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Radu Jude, Romania, Luxembourg, France, Croatia, Switzerland, UK
Radu Jude’s rude, relentless and original provocation skewers the managerial classes as it speeds through late-capitalist Bucharest.
We said: “Jude skewers managerial classes and the falseness of choice for workers when power and money imbalances are severe. But far from declaring political points, he also strives to capture the textures and rhythms of modern existence – and in its discontinuity and relentlessness – with a sense of adventure and specificity notable among his contemporaries. It’s the sort of film that can sound like satire at times but turns out to be a mirror to twisted realities (as with the anecdote of a production assistant harangued to work without sleep who eventually died). Ilinca Manolache has an enviable unself-consciousness in the role, disappearing into Angela’s multitasking momentum… Jude’s film rewards rewatching and… bristles with the detail and the hum of a life in motion.” (Nicolas Rapold, S&S April)
Read the full review: Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World: Radu Jude’s twisted workplace realities
Where to see it: On BFI Player and other platforms
=21. Henry Fonda for President
Alexander Horwarth, Austria, Germany
A three-hour essay film exploring the history and politics of the United States through the life and work of one of its most enduring icons, the actor Henry Fonda.
We say: “The director of this transfixing gem of an essay film is Alexander Horwath, distinguished curator of and writer on cinema based in Vienna, where he ran the local film festival before heading up the Filmmuseum for many years. Horwath’s cinephilic erudition and analytical rigour are marshalled to superb effect in this portrait of Henry Fonda, whose personal history and choice of film roles – particularly those made with John Ford – mark him out as a kind of quintessential everyman figure; a liberal-minded avatar of American democratic ideals. The film is therefore as much a portrait of America as of Fonda, with Horwath forging intricate connections to reveal how the actor’s work and life intersect with and illuminate key moments in US history. It’s sheer delight from start to finish, and looks wonderful courtesy of cinematographer Michael Palm. Watching the film in the light of Trump’s re-election inevitably gives it an added piquancy and poignancy.” (Kieron Corless)
Where to see it: Awaiting UK distribution
=17. The Brutalist
Brady Corbet, US, UK, Hungary
Adrien Brody stars as a Bauhaus architect and Holocaust survivor who flees Europe for Pennsylvania in this beautifully constructed post-war epic, set over three decades.
We said: “At a length of just over three and a half hours including overture and intermission – the film might seem like a big ask, but Corbet’s story never sprawls or meanders. Bold American filmmaking like this will invite comparisons with Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007) and The Master (2012), as well as perhaps King Vidor’s great silent film The Crowd (1928), but it is also entirely Corbet’s own distinctive voice and vision. Toth is played with a kind of broken gusto by Adrien Brody, offering by far his best work in years. In The Brutalist, the artist suffers, but not for art: he suffers simply what history inflicts. Corbet’s film is a grandiose edifice, but he is as interested in the crumbling foundations as the soaring heights.” (John Bleasdale, S&S online)
Read the full review: The Brutalist: ambitious American saga shows the distinctive vision of Brady Corbet
Where to see it: In UK cinemas from 24 January 2025
=17. Emilia Pérez
Jacques Audiard, France, Belgium
Jacques Audiard’s story of a Mexican cartel leader who fakes their own death to conceal a gender transition is anything but subtle, but it’s never boring.
We said: “Emilia Pérez shouldn’t work. For one, there are too many plates spinning: a mix of genres ranging from crime caper to queer musical, trans telenovela and lesbian romance to state-of-the-nation exposé; an improbable redemption arc, and tonal shifts that fly by quick enough to give you whiplash. Surely its septuagenarian French director is going to slip up on the shifting sands of political correctness? Perhaps the biggest surprise in Emilia Pérez is not the director’s giddy experimentation with genre and form (Audiard has never been shy in that department and crime is a prevalent theme in his work), but that it casts such a heartfelt and even sympathetic look at gender transition. Neither of those adjectives should be confused with subtle. Emilia Pérez is many things, but it most definitely is not boring.” (Sophia Satchell-Baeza, S&S November)
Read the full review: Emilia Pérez: Jacques Audiard’s outlandish telenovela-style musical shouldn’t work, but it does
Where to see it: In UK cinemas and on Netflix
=17. Grand Tour
Miguel Gomes, Portugal, Italy, France
Miguel Gomes elegantly bridges 100 years of film history with an experimental, time-bending colonial-era story of a British civil servant trying to outrun his persistent fiancée.
We said: “Grand Tour is another seductive ode to cinema by this most cinephilic of filmmakers. In a concept reminiscent of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), Gomes and his co-writers conceived the script while zig-zagging across south-east and east Asia, collecting 16mm footage along the way. All the scripted scenes featuring actors were shot on studio sets back in Europe, assuming a look that recalls classical cinema. By alternating between the staged and documentary images, Grand Tour elegantly bridges a hundred years of (film) history, though without any pretence to seamlessness. Unlike in Christian Petzold’s Transit (2018), the collapsing of past and present does not convey a political message – the effect is purely poetic. The story and its emotions might be anchored in reality, but they follow a logic that is exclusive to cinema.” (Giovanni Marchini Camia, S&S online)
Read the full review: Grand Tour: Miguel Gomes’ seductive, globetrotting ode to cinema
Where to see it: UK release date yet to be announced
=17. Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola, US
Four decades in the making, Francis Ford Coppola’s audacious New Roman project is only conventionally digestible as an old-fashioned love story.
We said: “Part of what’s fascinating and frustrating about Coppola’s most ambitious and audacious film, Megalopolis, developed over more than four decades, is the degree to which it revels in its own revisions – superimposing what look like later drafts over earlier ones, rather than using them as replacements. Far from emerging sadder but wiser, Megalopolis lands in our laps both happier and dumber for its lack of inhibitions. The conceit of imagining New York in terms of the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC (an attempted coup d’é tat against the consuls who ruled Rome) entails not only a collapse of today, tomorrow and yesterday but alternative versions of all three, and therefore a city reinvented whenever there’s a new scene to unravel. But the point of Megalopolis may be that we eventually teach ourselves how to make sense of it.” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, S&S November)
Read the full review: Megalopolis second look review: Francis Ford Coppola’s opus is fascinating as it is frustrating
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
16. Perfect Days
Wim Wenders, Japan, Germany
Wim Wenders concentrates on the quiet routine moments in the life of a Tokyo toilet cleaner in a delicate, meditative film that adapts the director’s documentary approach to a fictional subject.
We said: “What a delightful surprise that Perfect Days is Wenders’s best and most winning fiction film since Wings of Desire (1987), both an example of late style evolving out of a return to first principles and, more simply, of Wenders adapting the documentary approach, which has rarely failed him, to a fictional subject. A man of few words, Hirayama is more an observer of the film’s mini dramas than a participant. Central to his attitude to life is komorebi, the Japanese word for the shimmering of light and shadow created by leaves swaying in the wind, something that exists once, only at that moment. It’s important, too, that in his pleasures, Hirayama sticks to analogue culture. The argument seems to be that the imperfections of audio cassettes and emulsion film enhance komorebi.” (Nick James, S&S March)
Read the full review: Perfect Days: Wim Wenders captures the beauty of the everyday in his best fiction film since Wings of Desire
Where to see it: On Mubi and other platforms
=14. Janet Planet
Annie Baker, US, UK
Playwright Annie Baker’s quietly majestic film debut follows 11-year-old Lacy as she competes with new arrivals for her mother’s attention over one long, languid summer in 1991 western Massachusetts.
We said: “Baker is known for being unafraid of silences and sparse plots, and her first film is daringly elliptical, the passage of time denoted through droll intertitles and muffled adult conversations beneath Lacy’s bedroom window. Seeing the warm, wide 16mm shots of the redheaded Lacy – dwarfed by verdant woodland and existential questions – it’s hard not to think of Céline Sciamma’s magic realist childhood fable Petite maman (2021), but Janet Planet turns out to be icier terrain. The film has enough empathy to go round – for a mother overwhelmed by a child’s bottomless need, and a child’s agony over the changing rules of their bond. Like Maurice Pialat’s L’Enfance nue (1968), which Baker cites as an influence, it hangs on the ability of its child actor to communicate a complex interior life, and Ziegler delivers, unnervingly so.” (Katie McCabe, S&S September)
Read the full review: Janet Planet second look review: Annie Baker’s miraculous mother-daughter tale
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=14. The Zone of Interest
Jonathan Glazer, UK, Poland, US
Glazer’s film puts the focus on SS Officer Rudolf Höss and his family, letting the banality of their lives play out as the horrors of Auschwitz unfold in the background.
We said: “Point of view is Glazer’s virtuosic obsession, folding us into the warp and weft of unfamiliar zones. In contrast to the helmet-cam-style scrum of Son of Saul (2015), or the lucid calm before the storm of Haneke’s The White Ribbon (2009), Glazer and cinematographer Łukasz Żal lock us down with sunny yet cool imagery shot using wide lenses that keep the Hösses at arm’s length, especially, it seems, their faces. This quality of self-absorption is what Glazer’s film adapts, or adopts, from Martin Amis’s novel The Zone of Interest, while discarding swaths of plot and people, including the officers and, well, the prisoners. Amis’s Time’s Arrow came to mind with its thought experiment of narrating the Holocaust backwards, in a cinematic reversal of its activity. Glazer’s film, too, feels like a self-contained exercise (at times flirting with dark-as-the-void satire).” (Nicolas Rapold, S&S Winter 2023-24)
Read the full review: The Zone of Interest: Jonathan Glazer returns with a haunting adaptation of Martin Amis’s Holocaust novel
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
13. Challengers
Luca Guadagnino, US, Italy
Luca Guadagnino takes some big swings in this witty, frenetic three-hander starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, where the sexual tension plays out on and off the tennis court.
We said: “Confined to the dimensions of the court and the struggles of a magnetic ménage à trois, Guadagnino has returned to form, summoning the potent yearnings of his finest work, Call Me by Your Name (2017), and placing them in a major key. Challengers is a hot and heavy drama, but it’s also full of breezy wit and bizarre, borderline uncanny touches that, if they don’t always work, at least keep you on your toes, entertained. Tennis, in case it wasn’t obvious, represents desire, and it’s in this erotic vacuum that Guadagnino, with a nimble script written by Justin Kuritzkes, unleashes the film’s games, a hodgepodge of backstabbing, cuckolding, smack-talking and scheming that maintains the charged momentum of the match itself, the film’s framing device.” (Beatrice Loayza, S&S June)
Read the full review: Challengers: Luca Guadagnino summons the potent yearning of his finest work with a hot and heavy tennis drama
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
12. Evil Does Not Exist
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Japan
Hamaguchi Ryūsuke follows Drive My Car (2021) with an ambiguous, elegantly told story of a lakeside community’s resistance to an intrusive corporate ‘glamping’ development.
We said: “The mystery that Hamaguchi maintains around the direction of the film is sustained by Ishibashi Eiko’s shifting music, which creates a robust structure for the film quite apart from the dramatic development – almost as if it’s channelling the interiority of nature, and of a specific place, but even that feels like oversimplification, and the score can also cut out abruptly to unsettling effect. The ambiguous ending lands all the more jarringly after the preceding orchestration of mood and drama. Rather than frustrate, though, it feels like the kind of adventuresome move that might actually succeed in bottling something of the unpredictable nature of human behaviour. Evil Does Not Exist shows a filmmaker willing to muss up his own conceits and take gratifying risks when we might least expect them.” (Nicolas Rapold, S&S March)
Read the full review: Evil Does Not Exist: Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s beguiling ecological drama
Where to see it: On BFI Player and other platforms
11. I Saw the TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun, US, UK
Reality and fantasy blur for two isolated suburban teens who bond over a mysterious, Buffy-esque 1990s TV show in Jane Schoenbrun’s fantastically inventive second feature.
We said: “The film plays with the now quaint textures of predigital viewing culture. Great attention has also gone into realising the saturated colours and analogue textures of the show within the movie, The Pink Opaque. Twin Peaks looms large, alongside other zeitgeist-grabbing 90s shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files: shows in which unorthodox leads confront uncanny threats and hidden realities whose irruption reveals the everyday world as a skimpy gauze stretching over unimaginable otherness. Especially salient is the resonance with trans experience. Owen and Maddy both read as queer and seemingly buried alive by their upbringings, aware of the possibility that a better reality might exist if one rouses the courage to kill off the fatally familiar in favour of the tantalisingly unknown.” (Ben Walters, S&S September)
Read the full review: I Saw the TV Glow second look review: Jane Schoenbrun’s 1990s horror cracks open a radically disturbing space between realities
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
10. Nickel Boys
RaMell Ross, US
RaMell Ross’s fiction debut is an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel about two young men incarcerated in a brutal reform school in the 1960s.
We said: “The visceral experience of the film feels like being plunged underwater on dry land, thrust into a world that can be decoded only through attentive looking and listening, a constant scanning of the horizon and repositioning of the heart. It is the story of a boy and his friend, Elwood, Hattie’s grandson (played by Ethan Herisse), and Turner (Brandon Wilson). In a sort of dark mirror-image of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, they’re trapped in an underworld (the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory) from which Hattie repeatedly tries and fails to rescue her grandson. With POV (point of view) fidelity, Ross plunges the audience into the viewpoint of these young men, seeing what they see, witnessing what they witness. Audiences find themselves moving restlessly, lyrically, lovingly, tragically, with a subjectivity that the long lens and partial views ensure. Nickel Boys invokes a world of lost innocence, lost life and transcendent redemption. (B. Ruby Rich, S&S Winter 2024-25)
Where to see it: In UK cinemas from 3 January 2025
9. No Other Land
Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, Palestine, Norway
Filmed by media activists from both Israel and Palestine, this eloquent documentary captures the reality of a land struggle between resident Palestinians and the occupying Israeli forces seeking their expulsion.
We said: “No Other Land shows this slow ethnic cleansing on the ground, among Masafer Yatta’s residents from 2019 to late 2023, as IDF demolition raids tear down their homes and drive them into caves. The film’s rhythm is marked by staccato eruptions of violence as shock troops, armoured vehicles, bulldozers descend on a given village and smash classrooms, bathrooms, pigeon coops. One man is shot and paralysed as he tries to save his portable generator. This is difficult enough to watch. Imagine living it. (Nick Bradshaw, S&S December)
Read the full review: No Other Land: powerful documentary about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank asks questions of us all
Where to see it: In UK cinemas now
=7. Love Lies Bleeding
Rose Glass, UK, US
Rose Glass follows up her horror debut Saint Maud (2019) with a disjointed but compelling 1980s-set crime thriller filled with blood, sex and brawn.
We said: “Love Lies Bleeding again shows Glass’s fetishist’s eye at work, splashing her interest in perverse desire across a larger canvas, as she translates a story originally imagined in Scotland to the mythic American West. She cites Showgirls (1995) and Crash (1996) as influences – both are easily detected here, in the film’s depiction of the camp otherness of 1980s Americana and the performative world of bodybuilding, and in an undercurrent of grisly body horror, which bubbles to the surface as Jackie’s steroid dependence grows.” (Rachel Pronger, S&S Winter 2024-25)
Read the full review: Love Lies Bleeding: this bodybuilding melodrama is a film of passionate extremes
Where to see it: On major streaming services now
=7. The Substance
Coralie Fargeat, UK, France, US
Demi Moore gives a winning performance as a fading Hollywood star who undergoes a grisly body-splitting treatment, but in its ‘monstering’ of the older female body, Coralie Fargeat’s film presents a confused argument about the politics of ageing.
We said: “The Substance contains a rich brew of cultural references. It made me think of the medieval ‘loathly lady’, who knows what women most desire – sovereignty and is given the choice of whether to be beautiful by day or night… Positioning the female reproductive body as prototype of all definitions of the monstrous in horror films, Barbara Creed’s critical study The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993) is a blueprint for Fargeat’s vision of a woman giving birth to her younger adult self and then ageing dreadfully. Above all this is cinema, and while her plot suggests John Frankenheimer’s Seconds (1966), Fargeat has taken inspiration primarily from the 1980s, gleefully marrying Hollywood’s ‘body beautiful’ chick flick to its evil twin, body horror.” (Jane Giles, S&S Winter 2024-25)
Read the full review: The Substance: a thrilling but ultimately hollow body horror
Where to see it: On Mubi and other platforms
6. Caught by the Tides
Jia Zhang-ke, China
Jia Zhangke’s recurring character Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) goes in search of her lover in this overly-familiar meditation on Chinese life, stitched together with footage from the director’s finest films.
We said: “Neither the decades-spanning time-scheme nor the motif of Zhao Tao searching for a man who’s left town are exactly new to Jia’s work. But in piecing together this narrative from unused footage from his own films (mostly – the final section is new), he’s found a suggestive way to rake over the coals, repurposing the raw material of a quarter of a century of filmmaking into a drifting, music-packed out-of-body reflection on the rapidity of change in modern China. Jia’s film is at once social history, a found-footage digest of his own career and, most affectingly, an intimate, cumulative, Boyhood-style portrait of his wife and frequent star ageing in real time. Zhao Tao’s character never speaks: she’s a mute wanderer through Jia’s outtakes, each frame capturing a wealth of documentary evidence of a nation undergoing transformative redevelopment and modernisation.” (Samuel Wigley, S&S WInter 2024-25)
Read the full review: Caught by the Tides: Jia Zhangke reincarnates his greatest works in a sprawling, essayistic love story
Where to see it:
5. Hard Truths
Mike Leigh, UK, Spain
Mike Leigh reteams with his Secrets and Lies star Marianne Jean-Baptiste for this story of two mismatched Afro-Caribbean British sisters and their families, Jean-Baptiste’s curdled Pansy and Michele Austin’s vivacious Chantelle.
We said: “Leigh’s trademark tragicomic blend is most present in the outrageous insults Pansy unleashes, no less funny for the hostility of Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s delivery. It’s a fearless performance, perhaps encapsulated by a marvellous moment when she somehow laughs and cries at the same time. She’s matched step for step by Michele Austin; their scenes together, haunted by a shared, unresolved past, are the film’s high points. It’s easy to take Leigh’s work for granted, even minor-key projects such as this, but the hardest truth of all is how irreplaceable he still is in British cinema. Very few other contemporary filmmakers in this country are so prepared to confront with care and dignity people who others would cross the road to avoid, and to unpick the wayward threads of their fragile lives.” (Leigh Singer, S&S Winter 2024-25)
Where to see it: In UK cinemas from 31 January 2025
4. Dahomey
Mati Diop, France, Senegal, Benin, UK
Mati Diop skilfully blurs nonfiction and fantasy as the director charts the return of 26 royal artefacts looted from Dahomey during the French colonial invasion in the late 19th century.
We said: “It’s a characteristically hybrid project for the genre-defying filmmaker, blurring the bounds of nonfiction and fantasy. Diop and cinematographer Josephine Drouin Viallard chart the artefacts’ journey with what at first seems a curiously measured gaze, all sleek wide frames and minimal flourish. Along with Ghezo’s sombre musings, Wally Badarou and Dean Blunt’s electric, ghostly score with its tidal synths and alien inflections casts a dream-like veil over clinical proceedings: the fastidious care with which the sculptures are packaged, the forensic appraisal of their condition. Moments of emotion spill from the margins: the spirited parade that welcomes the looted treasures’ homecoming; nighttime sequences in the presidential gardens while Ghezo omnisciently surveys the transformed streets of his youth; the Beninese conservator who sings quietly to the recovered sculpture before him.” (Kelli Weston, S&S November)
Read the full review: Dahomey second look review: haunting documentary captures the homecoming of looted treasures
Where to see it: On Mubi
3. La chimera
Alice Rohrwacher, Italy, France, Switzerland, Turkey
Josh O’Connor plays a melancholic tombarolo who loots artefacts from ancient Tuscan burial sites in this joyous work of folk magic.
We said: “No description of what happens in La chimera can adequately convey what happens in La chimera, which feels like watching ancient magic from the point of view of the spell. Arthur awakens to the realisation that his lifestyle is built on a desecration of the very things he loves. But Rohrwacher’s real story – splitting the difference between the earthiness of The Wonders (2014) and the whimsicality of Happy as Lazzaro (2018), and surpassing them both in vivid strangeness – is the story of the Tuscan ground and the beautiful secrets that sleep beneath our feet.” (Jessica Kiang, Sight and Sound June)
Read the full review: La chimera: a joyous, masterful work of folk magic
Where to see it: On Mubi and other platforms
2. Anora
Sean Baker, US
Mikey Madison achieves instant star status as Ani, a funny, fiery Brooklyn sex worker who enters a whirlwind marriage with the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch.
We said: “Sean Baker’s fantastic Palme d’Or-winning screwball tragicomedy Anora plays like a dizzy homage to, and then a breakneck evisceration of, the whole Pretty Woman fantasy machine, electrified by a central character whose jaw-jutting attitude and brittle worldliness make her a Brighton Beach crazy-mirror Kit, raised to the power of a sweet smile that actually communicates ‘Just gimme my money, already.’ Anora (instant superstar Mikey Madison), her Brooklyn accent so laaawng and narrow it’s like she’s sucking all her vowels through a straw, dislikes her ‘shitty Uzbek name’ and insists on going by Ani. This makes the film’s title both a gentle rebuke and an affirmation – not the first time that Baker has displayed an uncanny knack for loving even those aspects of his characters that they cannot love about themselves. By turns swoony, funny, panicky and sad, this is the director’s most vivid creation yet.” (Jessica Kiang, S&S November)
Read the full review: Anora: Sean Baker’s demolition of the Pretty Woman fantasy is his most vivid creation yet
Where to see it: In UK cinemas now
1. All We Imagine as Light
Payal Kapadia, France, India, Netherlands, Luxembourg, US, Italy, Switzerland
In her Grand Prix-winning second feature, Indian director Payal Kapadia presents an inventive drama about three nurses navigating life in Mumbai that takes a poetic approach to expressing painful truths.
We said: “From the outset, Kapadia establishes yearning – for love, and for an end to precarious living conditions – as her key theme. The film begins with footage of Mumbai accompanied by voiceovers reciting letters written by transplants to this ‘city of dreams’. The feelings of displacement being voiced are not attached to any specific authors – perhaps loneliness in urban India is a widespread affliction? – but Kapadia soon begins to focus her drama through three key characters, two nurses and a hospital cook who have moved to Mumbai from elsewhere.
“Towards the end, the film abandons its metropolitan perspective for rural mysticism. A devastating, hallucinatory moment shifts the movie away from realism while reminding us that even the film’s more grounded, everyday scenes have had the slippery, unstable nature of a dream, or a memory. This surreal development recalls the cinema of transcendentalist motifs embraced, to varying degrees, by other Asian filmmakers such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Lav Diaz. But All We Imagine as Light has a distinct feel. It is from very real circumstances, such as looming slum-clearances or economic migration, that the film’s more unreal nature is teased out.” (Arjun Sajip, S&S December)
Read the full review: All We Imagine as Light: Payal Kapadia’s graceful vision of Mumbai marks her out as a filmmaker of significant promise
Where to see it: In UK cinemas now
Read more: Payal Kapadia on winning Sight and Sound’s best films of 2024 poll with All We Imagine as Light
Find all our 2024 round-ups in Sight and Sound: the Winter 2024-25 issue