The Big End-of-Year Film Roundup Post
Welcome to my favorite painstakingly-compiled annual obsession (no I don't use Letterboxd)
Hello all! In 2024 I saw a grand total of 290 films. I went to four film festivals: Cannes, Sheffield DocFest, BlackStar, and the Philadelphia Film Festival. I try to watch every major film released in any particular year, and these films were my very, very favorites. Most of these have received distribution. Some have remained difficult to see— largely because their content, as Brett Story’s wonderful Union, which takes on a unionizing campaign at an Amazon warehouse, has an inherently anti-corporatist edge. Films are becoming increasingly anti-capitalist, and as such, they are rubbing up uncomfortably against the distribution networks of late capitalism. All this to say: if some of these are hard to see, it might be by design, and our attention is that much more needed.
I tend to prevaricate, so I’ve tried to limit my description of and response to these films to a mere one sentence (gulp). Here goes nothing!
~ drumroll please ~
Honorable Mention: Memoir of a Snail - Adam Elliott (Australia)
Only Adam Elliott can put the most disturbing elements of the human condition (child abuse, poverty, sex addiction, neglect, alcoholism, exploitation) into claymation and make it fresh, exciting, and unironically empathetic
Rumours - Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson (Canada)
Honestly, everything about this film about idiotic and delusional G8 summit representatives is hilarious and good old Canadian fun. Also yes it does feature a giant brain
The Most Precious of Cargoes - Michel Hazanavicius (France/Belgium)
Apologies I don’t remember much about this gorgeously animated Holocaust movie through my incessant sobbing
Robot Dreams - Pablo Berger (Spain/France)
French animated films always find a way to craft something that should be cutesy and make it quietly, existentially profound (and a love letter to 1980s New York)
Limonov: the Ballad - Kirill Serebrennikov (USA)
This was an incredibly fun film with stunning theatrical set design, but unfortunately it probably can’t find distribution because its complicated politics are likely only culturally accessible to overeducated post-Soviets or people friends with them
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat - Johan Grimonprez (Belgium/France/Netherlands)
A brilliantly edited documentary that crafts a tale of the complicity of jazz with imperialism without any voiceover narration whatsoever
Kneecap - Rich Peppiat (Ireland)
I’ve written about this quasi-documentary, quasi-fiction about the Gaelic-language rap band Kneecap on Substack already but also as a reminder the movie is quite fun and also Michael Fassbender is in it so it gets two thumbs way way up, as Ebert would have it
Union - Brett Story (USA)
I’ve also written about this film on Substack before and continue to think it is a crucial, vital, captivating film about the unionization of Amazon workers in NYC. The fact that it hasn’t been able to find a distributor for obvious reasons is just proof enough of its revolutionary nature, and an example of the corporatized, defanged mediascape of late capitalism
Monkey Man - Dev Patel (India/USA)
Take incredible action scenes set in contemporary India and inspired by mythological characters but inject them with queer, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist ideology and an incredibly beautiful Dev Patel???
An Unfinished Film - Lou Ye (China)
A tender, fascinating, surprisingly fun, incredibly smart semi-documentary about the director’s real-life experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown and the film that resulted
The Invasion - Sergei Loznitsa (Ukraine)
With a 2.5 hour run time it is long, yes, but an important, unswerving, and antifascist look into post-invasion Ukraine, in all its ambivalences and complexity
Songs From the Hole - Contessa Gayles (USA)
Uniquely musical, rivetingly edited documentary-slash-audio-visual-poem and collaboration with incarcerated artist JJ’88 about carcerality and possibilities of redemption
Silent Trilogy - Juho Kuosmanen (Finland)
A trio of adorable Finnish “silent” films that look simultaneously from 2024 and 1924, featuring many quirky, lovable, working-class alcoholics and wonderful references to early film history
Shadow of Fire - Tsukamoto Shinya (Japan)
I’ve also written about this film before on Substack, too, and continue to be fascinated by the profoundly dark, antifascist, antiwar fervor of the director of Tetsuo: Iron Man (1989)— the only Japanese director whose work consistently keeps the fear of war alive
Janet Planet - Annie Baker (USA)
Extremely charming and awkward, restrained, gently mumblecore, deeply nostalgic (autobiographical?) story of a tween spending the summer with her mother Janet in Vermont, and Janet’s various countercultural friends and lovers (featuring Vermont puppetry!) (Also I may have loved this film so much because I not-so-secretly want to move to Vermont)
Julie Keeps Quiet - Leonardo van Dijl (Belgium)
Loved this understated film about a high school tennis player deciding whether or not to speak up against her coach so much that I wrote my first ever Substack post about it
Bird - Andrea Arnold (UK)
Gritty and thoughtfully neorealist film featuring a young teen protagonist— in other words, like other Arnold films (Fishtank, American Honey)— but here with added sparkling magic realist flair
All We Imagine As Light - Payal Kapadia (India)
Documentary-inspired, not at all melodramatic narrative about a budding romance across religious lines, and humdrum-but-beautiful everyday life in Mumbai; all in all, a tender city-symphony
Dahomey - Mati Diop (Senegal/Benin)
Think the decolonial documentary drive of Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’s Statues Also Die (1955) but with a darkly magic realist touch (I really do just love any film that crosses between documentary and magic)
Dying - Matthias Glasner (German)
3+ hours about a deeply dysfunctional German family / dying / music composition / more dying / alcoholism / even more dying / even more dysfunction was not enough!!!
When the Light Breaks - Runar Runarsson (Iceland)
Pared back, gentle, captivating, cinematographically stunning film about a disaster that suddenly befalls one member of a group of tight-knit teenage friends in Reykjavik
Problemista - Julio Torres (USA)
Not enough people saw this movie about the indignities of the US immigration system and yet it is just so charming, with just the best sets and visual effects and also Tilda Swinton!
Between the Temples - Nathan Silver (USA)
Neither did enough people see this (profoundly Jewish/therefore deeply neurotic) film, which is actually so surprisingly experimental and clever, and I don’t agree with the Jewish Currents take on this one AT ALL?? (i.e. that the film doesn’t address Zionism at all, which I actually prefer because it’s not actually about Zionism??)
Evil Does Not Exist - Hamaguchi Ryusuke (Japan)
A stunning work of ecocriticism centering a rural community that attempts to counteract a company using their precious resources to open a glamping reserve. Better than Drive My Car and with the best ending I’ve seen in cinemas in years. Decades, perhaps.
Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World - Radu Jude (Romania)
Radu Jude is the best, funniest, smartest leftist we have in the world of film and we should build him a statue (perhaps of this protagonist, a badass production assistant who spends her days filming TikToks, being exploited by her bosses, and driving people around for hours on end)
Anora - Sean Baker (USA)
I don’t expect everyone to love this Russian-American anti-oligarch, pro-sex work Cinderella story exactly as (delusionally) much as I did but I am its perfect audience and I will defend it with my life.
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Common Themes: class struggle, exploitation, the idiocy of the ultra-rich, empathy, the alienation of late capitalism, ecocriticism, absurdity, grief, surrealism, documentary in fiction/semi-documentary, music videos, the space between music and politics generally, carcerality, Kafkaesque bureaucracies, and the general indignities of modern life.
All for now! Sound off in the comments if you so wish! If you want to support more lists like this, hit the like button. xo-J