Cinema tells the stories of our present
When it comes to cinema, the year coming to an end was full of diverse stories. The article reviews the best films released over the past 12 months
The best films on offer: some of the 15 best films of 2024, from “Blitz” and “sand dunes: Part II” to “illusion” and “perfect days” (iStock / Apple / Warner Bros. / Searchlight / i24 / Moby / Curzon)
These films reflect the issues of history and loneliness in a deep and diverse way, through stories and cinematic forms that address the challenges of the self, relationships and society in the past, present and future.
Cinema tells the stories of our present, and we were amazed at how beautifully, albeit sadly, this year’s collection of films reflected two of our most pressing concerns.
First, history, how it casts a shadow on the present and how naive we become if we ignore it.
Secondly, loneliness, which may seem like the feeling of a death sentence if we cannot find a way to talk to each other.
These ideas are present, in subtle or obvious images, in all the films included in this list. Certainly, it was not intentional, but maybe it was from the subconscious.
Here are the best films released in the past year, sorted according to their release dates in the UK.
15 – The Beast
In Henry James’s 1903 novel “The Beast in the forest”, a man isolates himself from the world out of fear of an unknown catastrophe, a wandering “beast”, walking in circles around his life, ready to attack.
The film directed by Bertrand Bonello was not fully adapted from the novel, revealing that James’s “monster” has grown stronger and fiercer over the decades. The events of the film are divided by time intervals and revolve around a woman named Gabrielle (played by actress Lea Seydoux), who is being “purified” from her past life in order to more efficiently serve the future of artificial intelligence, ruled by emotionless logic.
The film is not happy, but sincere, and it can be difficult to get rid of its traces. In each time period there is its own Gabrielle and Louis (his role was performed by actor George MacKay). Whether in 1910, 2014 or 2044, the couple’s fears and insecurities overwhelm their ability to love. In the contemporary section, the director points out how dangerous such self-imposed isolation is. In this section, Louis films on his phone violent and misogynistic statements, reflecting our real world. He also longs for connection but rejects vulnerability [the possibility of experiencing pain], and because he cannot admit that the former is impossible without the latter, he instead succumbs to hatred and a sense of entitlement. The film “Monster” is a scary tragedy, but it – whether it happened in the past, present or future – fully belongs to us.
14. “Four daughters” by Four Daughters
There is a universal feeling that perhaps draws us to return to our memories, to reconsider them with the eyes of the experience that the years have given us, to see them with a clearer perspective. The arts give us this opportunity. In the experimental documentary film [it goes beyond the traditional template of documentaries. Instead of relying solely on realistic narration or interviews, the film uses unfamiliar techniques, such as reenactment of events with the participation of real characters and actors] “four daughters” by Tunisian director kowther Ben Haniya, the life of alafa Hamrouni, whose two eldest daughters Ghufran and Rahma sheikhaoui joined the Islamic State, is reviewed through a series of dramatic acting scenes. Some of these scenes involve intimacy. And in the most difficult situations, actress hind Sabri intervenes [with an intimacy role]. Her two youngest daughters, Aya and Tayseer sheikhaoui, play their roles in the film, while Ishraq Matar and Nour Karoui play the roles of forgiveness and mercy.
Benhania succeeded in creating a space for these women to express themselves, to exchange conversation and confrontation, and to give girls the opportunity to express feelings and secrets that they have long kept inside them. The result is a complex portrait of motherhood, biased towards understanding and empathy rather than judgment or condemnation. It is a work that goes beyond being a narrative narrative, to become a group therapy through art. Be that as it may, the film “Daughters of intimacy” highlights things that are often left in the shadows.
13- Kneecap
The Irish hip-hop group “ni cap”, which originated in west Belfast, ended an exceptional year with a World Tour and wide recognition in the media, after they won a legal case against Kimmy Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party. The case revolved around her decision, when she was the minister of business, to withhold an artistic grant worth 14,250 Pounds Sterling, claiming that the band was “opposed to the United Kingdom”. The band member DJ profai came to court in a fake Land Rover police car with the Irish and Palestinian flags. Can this incident be added to the end of their film That would be a perfect finale.
In collaboration with writer and director Rich Peppiatt and star Michael Fassbender, the band (DJ profai, Mo Shara, moglay Bab, who performed their roles themselves) made a film expressing their art and rebellious spirit, about the liberation that the Irish language gives, about the life of the “peace generation”, who were born after the Good Friday Agreement (between the British and Irish governments and Irish parties, which led to the cessation of clashes in Northern Ireland) .
The film combines touching moments and a wild comedy full of sex and drugs in the interests of authenticity at the expense of respect (respect to whom, anyway?)). Some of his events are fictional, others are real, such as the famous incident in which DJ profay revealed the phrase “Get Out, British” written on his ass.
12. Perfect Days
While many of the films on this list deal with loneliness, only Wim Wenders ‘ “perfect days” invites us to accept it instead of being afraid of it. What if we reconsider isolation not as the absence of friends, loved ones or family, but as an opportunity to form deep and nutritious connections with the world around us Hirayama (played by actor Koji Yakusho) is an employee of one of the restrooms in Tokyo. He lives according to his daily routine. We see him in contemplative silence getting ready for work, getting into his truck, playing a cassette tape – the music is full of songs by the Velvet Underground Band The Velvet Underground, Patti Smith and Otis Redding. Hirayama is free enough to see what others do not see: the light etched through the concrete, the person dancing alone in the park, the people gathered in cafes.
Fenders did not romanticize Hirayama’s ascetic life like a monk. His noisy colleague Takashi (Tokio Emoto) and his reclusive sister Kiko (Yumi Aso) remind him of his isolation. And sometimes, he experiences grief resulting from unknown, lost experiences. Despite this, the film gives a sense of recovery because Yakusho’s performance dictates it. The film is solid in its gentle nature, and it culminates with an amazing shot to the tune of Nina Simone’s song Feeling Good, which is a summary of everything that happened before, without saying a word.
11. Challengers
“The challengers” recreates the story of the classic film” Jules et Jim ” Jules et Jim, released in 1962 and directed by Francois Truffaut to fit into the era of hyper-capitalism, where desire can no longer be separated from achievement and efficiency. Far from any [unconventional] bohemian touch, the film introduces the characters of tennis players Tashi Duncan (Zendaya), art Donaldson (Mike Feist), and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’connor), even if the latter tends to sleep in his car sometimes. In the world of director Luca Guadagnino, love is gluttonous (literally so in his film about cannibals “bones and all” [bones and all that] Bones and All), and often selfish too. The film asks bold questions about the politics of desire and keeps them unanswered:
Do art and Patrick like Tashi, or do they like each other Does Tashi, who was forced to retire early due to injury, like these two guys, or does she just like the way they like her Is tennis the meaning of their life, or just a way to vent pent-up desires There is no unequivocal answer to these questions, he keeps his audience under his mesmerizing influence – sweat-soaked locks of hair, taut muscles, Zendaya at the peak of her brilliance, and the pulsating beats of music created by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. In this world, every dialogue is a tennis match, and every tennis match is a love scene.
10. Dune: Part Two
Director Denny Villeneuve said during an interview earlier this year, with a rather bold statement, “honestly, I hate dialogue. I’m not interested in dialogue at all. The power of cinema lies in the image and sound”. While there are a number of films on this list that refute his theory, the film “sand dunes: Part II” is proof that he is a man who lives at least according to his own rules. Some individual scenes in the film carry a cold symbolic weight more like what a newly discovered artifact might carry; their meaning is not immediately clear, but they are so rich and exciting that they capture attention forever.
While the first part of 2021, adapted from the first half of the science fiction novel by Frank Herbert, was terrifying, the second part abounds in menace. Paul Atreides (Timothy chalamy), manipulated by his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and her Bene Gesserit clan of space magicians, discovers that the path drawn for him leads only to death and mass destruction. But, even on such a colossal scale, Villeneuve works with meticulous craftsmanship, both by the minor changes he made to Herbert’s book, and by the poisoned performances of shalamet, Ferguson and Austin Butler, who plays the role of the brutal opponent Vaid-Rautha. The film is not just another blockbuster, It is a unique cinematic experience.
9. All of Us Strangers
The film” we are all strangers ” is a ghost story whose boundaries are blurred, stuck between memory and Dream, between Real dialogues and those that we wished to go through before it was too late. Andrew Scott gives a performance that is considered the best in his career, drawing strength from a deep sadness that leaves his features and body in a state of constant tension and confusion. Scott embodies the character of Adam, a frustrated screenwriter who lives in a semi-empty modern building in south London. Suddenly, Harry (Paul mescal) appears at his door, drunk and eager to communicate.
In the gap of their romance, writer-director Andrew Hay, who generally adapted Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel “Strangers”, weaves another turbulent story. Adam returns to his childhood home outside Croydon, to find his mother (Claire Foy) and father (Jamie Bell) there, although they died decades ago. He withdraws into his past, dressed in pajamas, and finds himself in their bed, wondering: if he had found peace then, would his life now seem less turbulent The film, some of the scenes of which were shot in Hay’s childhood home, offers an exceptional dose of frankness and vulnerability – a piece of the artist’s heart, in which we can find a reflection of a part of our own, too.
8. All We Imagine as Light
The first Indian film to win the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival,” everything we imagine as light “is the embodiment of loneliness not much different from”we are all strangers”. Both titles, and the mood they create, suggest inclusivity. But while Andrew Hay’s film carries a sharp pain that hurts the soul, Payal Kapadia’s film relieves this pain into a dull, but persistent ache. This feeling haunts Prabha (Kani kosruti), a woman living in Mumbai, who is infiltrated by the memory of her absent husband when, surprisingly, he sends her a rice cooker. At night, she gets out of bed to cuddle her.
Kapadia’s film reminds us that silence can inhabit the heart of the most noisy city. Despite the absence of words, a woman like Prabha can reach out in solidarity to those around her: her roommate Anu (Divya Prabha), who is afraid to admit her relationship with a Muslim man in front of her family, or Parvati (Chaya Kadam), a widow who is in danger of being evicted from her home. In the second half of the film, Kapadia allows us to move away, beautifully, towards dreams. The trio, freed from the cruelty of the city, finally had the opportunity to reflect on their own desires. Their discoveries sound like a long-awaited sigh.
7. No Other Land
The significance of the film “no other land” stems not only from the images that the film depicts, such as the gradual, but deliberate destruction by the Israeli occupying forces of the Masafer Yatta area, a group of Palestinian villages in the West Bank, but also from the fragile, but full of hope, friendship relationship that it embraces at its core.
Since he was fifteen, activist and law student Bassel Ader has been collecting footage documenting forced displacement and the accompanying increasing violence. But after meeting Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, the two formed a broader team responsible for producing the documentary, in collaboration with Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Bilal and Israeli photographer and editor Rachel shore.
Abraham helps rebuild houses, writes with passion about demolitions, is frustrated when the news does not spread. It is the voice of the sympathetic stranger, driven by the sense that something has to happen and it has to happen now. But this was the focus of Adra’s entire existence, as well as his father’s existence before. Adra jokes that Abraham thinks he can end the occupation on his own within the next 10 days. Between the frightening realities it presents, the film “no other land” allows space to explore the relationship between these two men, as well as the true meaning of solidarity. Abraham received death threats after denouncing in his speech at the Berlin Film Festival the inequality between him and his co-director [Adra], calling for an end to the “apartheid state [between them]”.
6. La Chimera
The film “illusion” is as exquisite and delicate a work as the artifacts that the rebellious hero of the film, archaeologist Arthur (Josh O’connor), extracts from the Earth. It is a wonderful gift from the Italian director Alice rorwacker, whose films (among them the 2018 film “Happy As Lazzaro” Happy as Lazzaro) seem to have been born from the womb of magic and memory. Here, we can talk about a concrete story: Arthur, in the Tuscany region (Tuscany) in the Eighties of the last century, is newly released from prison, to quickly find himself in the company of a group of “grave robbers”, local grave robbers. He moves from one hill to another in a dirty linen suit. His oldest girlfriend, Beniamina (Yeli vianiello), is long gone. He visits his mother Flora (Isabella Rossellini), to find that his selfish and capitalist tendencies are being challenged by a free-spirited student, Italia (Carol Duarte), codenamed.
Very often, the film rorwacker slips into the world of mythology and folklore. Arthur possesses supernatural visions, as the Oracle of Delphi [a priestess to Apollo, based in the temple of Delphi, one of the ancient Greek myths]. He searches for Benjamin, just as Orpheus searched for Eurydice, but he remembers her holding a thread in her hand like Ariadne guiding Theseus out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur [all of the above are part of Greek historical myths]. In “Illusion,” who is lost?” And who guides the other Who is the neighborhood And who is the dead
The film is more like a talisman, where history acquires its own power, where everyone is lost, and everyone finds out in the end.
5. Blitz
While director Alice rorwacker has portrayed the line between past and present as vague and elusive, director Steve McQueen portrays a line that connects the two with a Robin Hood-like determination when pulling his bow. In his epic film “blitzkrieg” set around the Second World War, McQueen borrows the traditions of classic children’s literature – about children who are loaded onto trains and sent away from the dangers of the city, seeking adventure in the British countryside – to create a revealing picture of that era. [Blitz, or blitzkrieg, refers to the campaign carried out by Nazi Germany against the United Kingdom during World War II].
We see the film through the eyes of its black-skinned hero, young George (played amazingly by Elliot Heffernan), who jumps off one of these trains to make his way home in the arms of his mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan). And through his eyes, we can understand the reality of the city. This reality is presented in minute detail, from the underground jazz clubs teeming with life and challenge, to the air raid warden (Benjamin Clementine) who stands up against fanaticism, to the fear-filled hearts of civilians trying to find refuge, only to discover that their government has closed the metro stations that used to provide them with safety in front of them. We are really lucky to have a director like McQueen, who sees with unparalleled empathy and clarity.
4. I Saw the TV Glow
The list of “best films” is sure to provoke controversy about what was and was not included in it. And for this I am grateful to the film by director Jeanne Schoenbrun “I saw the glow of television”, which frankly addresses the absurdity of insisting that we all share one objective experience. Our relationship with art is a special personal one, and sometimes it may stem from a place so intimate and unknown that it seems to tell us things about ourselves that we didn’t know yet.
The film talks about the transgender experience, although the central metaphor of the film is so strong that it tolerates other interpretations: two children in 1996, Owen (Justice Smith with a great performance) and Maddie (Brigitte Lundy Payne), bond through a supernatural late-night TV show called “opaque syphilis” the Pink Opaque and talk to them in ways that are difficult for them to express. While Maddie embraces the freedom he provides, Owen denies her, and their choices leave them walking side by side seemingly as if they are two opposite sides of a cliff, and for Owen, the world remains tilted. In this context, the words” there is still time, ” written in chalk on a street in a residential suburb, shout out to the viewer. No.no. Still. Over there. Time.
3. The Zone of Interest
When Jonathan Glazer’s speech at the Academy Awards, in which he delivered the acceptance speech for the Best International Film Award for “zone of interest”, became a point of controversy due to the mention of the “ongoing attack on Gaza”, it was only a confirmation of the message of his film. He, and Steve McQueen’s film “blitz”, do not aim to put history behind a glass for people to contemplate calmly; rather, these two films are supposed to act as two mirrors, in which we are challenged to see the reflection of the present and our role in it.
Glazer’s film shows the life of the family of Rudolf Hus (Christian Friedel), the real commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp, in a cruel way. At first, many details might seem banal, if not for the disturbing awareness that they live meters from the place where an estimated 1.1 million people – of which 960 thousand were Jews – were killed with bureaucratic efficiency. They are hidden behind walls of barbed wire, but the signs are still there: slender bodies in muddy uniforms handing out food, the faint sounds of screams, wives exchanging conversations about clothes that they stole from Jewish victims. The HUS family, including his wife Hedwig (Sandra holler), live in what they believe is a world of her own. But as it becomes clear in Glazer’s controversial final scenes, set in the current era, this denial will not resist the inevitability of history.
2. Poor Things
“Poor beings “is one of the most easily understood films of the Greek director and professor of exoticism, Yorgos Lanthimos (in contrast to his interesting spiky film” kindsof kindness”, which was also released this year), at least in part, thanks to some of the literary wit of screenwriter Tony McNamara. However, it still resembles an amazingly strange dream that can be viewed through a lens of blurred panoramic vision, where goose heads are in the form of Dog Heads, sea ships sail under a pink sky, and the fashion of the late Victorian era is reflected in rubber raincoats and ruffled panties.
Lanthimos used Alastair Gray’s original novel [from which he quotes the film’s story] to weave a delightful picture of a kind of metaphorical rebirth. This is the power of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), the revived body of Victoria Blessington, a woman whose baby’s brain was placed in her skull as part of an experiment conducted by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). She is a Frankenstein’s monster without tragedy, ready to take over the reins of her fate, to forgive her creator and come to terms with her alien existence, explore the world and take everything she can from it, even as men try to control her through sex, philosophy and marriage. We can all learn to be like Bella.
1. Hoard
It may surprise you to see a small production like “hoarding” topping the list ahead of a couple of films with several nominations in the awards season, but there’s no point in telling you that the films you’ve most likely already seen are worth your time. And anyway, this movie shocked me. “Hoarding “is the debut feature film of director Luna Carmon, a soul mate and a striking antithesis of Charlotte Wells ‘critically acclaimed film” nectar of summer vacation ” Aftersun in 2021, starring actor Paul mescal. The two films deal with the stories of young women who search the memories of their parents who left their lives early, and live under the frivolous belief that there are hidden answers, under an unturned stone.
The story of the film “nectar of Summer Vacation” took place in a passing noise on a dance floor at a holiday resort. While the movie “hoarding” lives in an dishonest, depraved, magical and beloved mess. It is the boldest British film made in years because it rejects the tendency to embellish loss or divide it into sections, instead, it allows sadness to express itself and go to ugly and uncomfortable places. Maria’s mother (Hayley Squires as the mother and Lily Bo Leach as Maria) suffers from a hoarding addiction. They love each other dearly, becoming twin Queens of their little kingdom of garbage. But it’s serious, after all, Maria is separated from her mother and placed in foster care.
Years later, after unexpected news, Maria (now played by actress Saura Lightfoot-Lyon) returns to the same smelly shelter, finding refuge in Michael, a garbage worker and her colleague in nursing homes (Joseph Quinn, who also appeared in two more films this year: “Gladiator II” and”A Quiet Place: the first day”). Leon and Quinn challenge their characters to a constantly escalating monstrous state, and these are amazing performances, full of toxicity and eccentricity, but at the same time they carry a deep warmth and longing for communication, even if it comes to a spoon and a bowl of ashes (you can complement the picture yourself). Carmon will certainly continue to achieve significant achievements. It’s just a matter of choosing whether you want to be there, where it all started [with her first feature film].
