From afar, 2024 looks like a pretty drab year for film. The box office was dominated by sequels, prequels and generally well-known intellectual property. But look a bit closer, a different story emerges.
Across the world, exciting and original stories found huge audiences thanks to strong word of mouth, including films such as Longlegs, Conclave, Challengers, Anora, Trap and The Substance. International fare including South Korea's Exhuma and India's Kalki 2898 AD proved that blockbusters are now a truly international concept. And the festival circuit once again showed that there are singular voices currently rising from all corners of the globe.
Here are 10 of the best films that premiered or were released in 2024.
To A Land Unknown
In desperate times, can we blame those that turn to desperate measures? In Danish-Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown, two refugees living Athens, Reda (Aram Sabbah) and Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) are in dire straits. They have mere days to raise enough money to guarantee safe passage for them and their families to Germany, and no legal means of doing so. They turn to crime, and when their plans continue to fail, their schemes get more and more outlandish.
On its face, this is a gripping neo-noir, elevated by a stand-out, nuanced performance from Bakri. Beneath that, this is a work of profound empathy – one that explores the nature of victimhood, eschewing the notion that only the virtuous deserve sympathy at a time when Palestinian humanity is under threat. Yes, that makes this an "important" film, but more importantly, it’s a great one.
All We Imagine As Light
This achingly beautiful, lyrical and deeply felt Indian drama is the story about kindness, both to ourselves and others. In it, two Malayali nurses in Mumbai live together as roommates, hiding their inner lives from the other all the while. Anu (Divya Prabha) is having a secret affair, while Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is estranged from her husband in Germany. They are each tortured by society's expectations for themselves and on Indian women overall, forced to bury their burdens deep inside until the light inside them dies. Told in subtle yet potent fashion, the film's journey follows the two across India towards personal understanding and lasting friendship.
The Beast
Some movies are immune to spoilers, and this anything-but-straightforward French drama from Bertrand Bonello is one of them. On one level, this is a work of science fiction, following a woman named Gabrielle (Lea Seydoux) in 2044, a time when artificial intelligence has reorganised the world, rendering humanity functionally obsolete. She’s desperate for a job to feel useful, and in order to get one, she’s forced to revisit her past lives to purge her DNA of accumulated traumas. From there, this becomes a romantic tragedy across three lives – 1910, 2014, and 2044 – as she and a man named Louis (George MacKay) continually fail unite their bonded souls. Like many of the best films, it has more to say than it might intend to.
Dune: Part Two
For years, both director Denis Villeneuve and actor Timothee Chalamet have been anointed by fans and critics as the apparent heirs to the top names of their disciplines. While they have each done excellent work in the past, never before have they each reached the heights they do with Dune: Part Two, the sequel to the 2021 hit. And while the first film ultimately felt beautiful but a tad lifeless, the sequel learns from its mistakes. It's thrilling, emotional and surprisingly funny. It's blockbuster filmmaking as it should be – with the beauty of Abu Dhabi on full display. Not since Lord of the Rings has a fantasy book for adults been adapted to the big screen more successfully than this, nor had a bigger impact on pop culture.
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958 – 1989 is a document of war – not only of regional conflict, but of narrative. For decades, there was an internal battle within Sweden's national public broadcaster SVT, fought over how much empathy to ascribe to the Palestinian people. In this inspired piece of work, featuring archival footage from decades of different reports, Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson has created a film that, even without comment, is an astonishing, invaluable document of the history of Israel and Palestine, and a fascinating insight into the complicated nature of journalism.
Wicked
Never have I expected to hate a movie and completely changed my mind upon viewing as much as I did with Wicked. Following a bizarre press tour and questionable early images, this turned out to be one of the joys of the 2024 film calendar, a propulsive and lively musical that has given new life to the genre on the big screen. Sure, the compositions are flat, the colours washed out and the camera too busy, but it all works in the end, so why quibble?
What we have here is a brilliant expansion of the stage production that draws from the best of the source novel, elevated by an excellent Cynthia Erivo, a charming if one-note Ariana Grande, and the delectable chemistry between them. And its story is actually interesting too – about a woman who becomes disillusioned by a broken system that brings harm to the innocent by design, who is labeled as a terrorist when she challenges the powers that be. If you're still skeptical, give it a shot. You might end up singing in the parking lot, too.
Evil Does Not Exist
Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi elevated himself to the upper echelon of international filmmakers with Drive My Car, but Evil Does Not Exist is the better piece of work. Yes, it may be frustrating at first – the opening four minutes is just shots of tree branches, for example. But it quickly becomes engrossing, following members of a Japanese mountain village (all played by non-professional actors) whose world is under threat when a big city company announces intentions to build a luxury glamping site, with little concern for how it may affect the local environment or their lives. And what begins as a straight-forward eco-fable becomes something much more interesting. A deeply considered work that never wastes a moment. Don't underestimate it.
Oddity
It's not just that Oddity is scary – it's how many different ways that the film finds to terrify you that's most impressive. The tension begins with a knock at the door. A young woman awaiting her husband's return is greeted by a strange man who has come to warn her that she is not alone. He's a patient of her husband's, he says, and while he may have been stalking her, he now only has her safety in mind. Is there danger lurking behind her? Or is the man the danger?
You don't immediately find out. The film cuts forward in time months after the woman's death, introducing you to her sister who runs a shop that sells supernatural oddities, herself determined to figure out what happened. It's a ghost story, a murder mystery and a monster movie all in one, with the duelling tones leaving you unsure where it may go next from beginning to end.
With only two films under his belt, Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy has shown himself to be a filmmaker of clear style and vision, who makes eminently watchable, funny and terrifying films full of interesting ideas. I can't wait to see what he does next.
Bird
If Ken Loach is the UK's greatest living chronicler of the plight of Britain's poor and working class, British director Andrea Arnold is not far behind him. Her films such as 2009's Fish Tank follow those at the fringes of society, often told with stark realism. Bird, her latest feature, has gotten the most mixed response of any film in her career, likely because it adds magical realism to the mix. In it, a young woman named Bailey (Nykiya Adams) living in abject poverty with her father (Barry Keoghan) meets a mysterious man looking for the parents he was separated from as a child. He becomes something of a guardian angel as she attempts to save her half-siblings from her mother's abusive partner. While there are times of pure fantasy and surrealism, this never loses sight of its characters, producing several of the most emotionally resonant moments I experienced in a theatre this year.
Hollywoodgate
Shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary at next year's ceremony, this film directed by Egyptian filmmaker Ibrahim Nash'at is a remarkable document, following the day-to-day life of Taliban air force commander Mawlawi Mansour and his soldiers following the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. It brings to mind the excellent 2017 documentary Of Fathers and Sons, directed by the Hollywoodgate's producer, Syrian director Talal Derki, which followed ISIS members in a similar fashion. Both are harrowing and chilling documents made with a genuinely startling intimacy by filmmakers who somehow gained the trust of the subjects, but never lost sight of their journalistic duties.
