- The best films of 2024: No 50 to No 31
- The best films of 2024: No 30 to No 21
- The best films of 2024: No 20 to No 11
10
Perfect Days
Directed by Wim Wenders. A former professor listens to pop music, reads books, takes photographs and works as a public-toilet cleaner in Tokyo in this feelgood Cannes prize-winner. Read the full review.
9
About Dry Grasses
Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. There is no more consistent director than the Turkish master of slow cinema. His latest concerns a teacher’s introspections after being accused of abusing a student. Read the full review.
8
That They May Face the Rising Sun
Directed by Pat Collins. Joe (Barry Ward) and Kate (Anna Bederke) have returned to a lakeland spot during the 1970s. He’s a writer who grew up in the townland; she is an artist and gallery owner. The best Irish film of the year is defined by quietude and fascinating local characters. Read the full review.
7
The Goldman Case
Directed by Cédric Kahn. Rigorous, forceful re-creation of the trial of Pierre Goldman, French radical, for murder in 1970s France. The seriousness of the approach does nothing to lessen the tension and righteous anger. Read the full review.
6
I Saw the TV Glow
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun. In the mid-1990s two weirdo teens find solace in a girlie TV pastiche of Power Rangers with Buffy-friendly fonts. An extravagantly imaginative fable that marries trans identity and Mark Fisher’s writings on the weird with the eerie, hallowed aura of older, spookier TV. Read the full review.
5
The Substance
Directed by Coralie Fargeat. Brilliantly disgusting satire of the beauty industry that generated endless argument and counterargument about its attitude to ageing. Demi Moore is a blast as an older star who finds a flawed elixir of youth. Read the full review.
4
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Directed by Radu Jude. In this year’s most barbed satire, an overworked, exhausted production assistant is commissioned by a multinational company to film a workplace-safety video. Except it’s a compensation scam. She blows off steam by faking Andrew Tate videos. Read the full review.
3
All We Imagine as Light
Directed by Payal Kapadia. Welcome a new directing star to the heavens. Kapadia’s study of three health workers in Mumbai is one of the great city films. Elegant. Fine-grained. Ultimately magical. Read the full review.
2
Anora
Directed by Sean Baker. Anora (Mikey Madison) is a pretty Brooklynite working in a tacky lapdancing joint when Ivan, an adorably clueless young Russian heir, rocks up. Their whirlwind romance attracts henchmen and concerned parents to enact screwball beats worthy of Ernst Lubitsch. Read the full review.
1
The Zone of Interest
Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Glazer dismantles Martin Amis’s source novel and puts it back together as a terrifying exercise in the sociopathy of denial. While the family of the Auschwitz commandant go about their everyday business, soft thuds and dying wails remind us that the greatest of outrages is happening just over that wall. The English director is confirmed among the best of his generation. Read the full review.
