I did not do a Films of the Year of 2019. At the time, I thought that it would involve some distasteful self-promotion, by which I mean that at times I think that to blog at all is mere self-promotion, as well as possibly a masturbatory practice in that no one cares to know my thoughts on films (and so why do it in public?).
All the same, with that fear put aside for the time being, I am doing a kind of ’round-up’ of films that I saw for the first time in 2020, which will include those that I thought were most strong, and some other thoughts/observations, which will range from being about my viewing habits to things that I noticed/thought/liked/disliked. This might make this post a bit random, and at times a work of ‘mere opinion’. I hope that this is okay.
On a further note, I also include a lot of the short films that I saw this past year, but not all of them. And the list includes for the first time a number of the television/streaming shows that I saw.
And so it is that I saw 468 films for the first time in 2020. I thought that this was a lot, but looking back on 2019, I notice that in that year I saw 454 films for the first time, and in 2018, I saw 407. So while there has been a slight increase, the number of films remains roughly consistent. And if we wanted to put the increase down to anything, it would be a result of the increased amount of time spent at home/not interacting with others as a result of COVID-19.
The massive sea change that has taken place, though, is the reduction in the number of films that I have seen at the cinema, and the large increase in the number of films that I have seen online. For, in 2020, I saw a ‘mere’ 47 films at the cinema (compared to 237 in 2019), while also seeing 11 on DVD/file (21 in 2019), 13 on television and/or PayTV (0 in 2019), and 11 on aeroplanes (17 in 2019). All of these are dwarfed by the 386 films that I saw online (compared to 179 in 2019).
I do not include in my list of films the movies that I watched as part of the fabulous Small File Media Festival, run by, among others, Laura U Marks of Simon Fraser University. Many of these were micro-films of barely a minute in duration.
But while there is surely much more to say about those films than the mere mention that I give to them here, evoking the Small File Media Festival also allows me to mention how Marks has been charting/estimating the carbon footprint of watching films in high definition and/or 4K at home – and the numbers are not pretty.
I am not sure how home consumption of films compares to theatrical consumption, but overall the former will be more detrimental to the planet per person, since far fewer people attend home screenings than do (at least in principle) theatrical screenings. That is, home viewing is far more energy intense, and thus likely involves a bigger carbon footprint.
As we continue to watch movies at home as a result of the pandemic, and as viewing habits perhaps shift permanently away from theatres (a trend that was already taking place, but which now has intensified as a result of COVID-19), then bearing this issue in mind must be of great importance… and you can read some of Professor Marks’ work on calculating and mitigating your streaming carbon footprint here.
Where normally I just keep a list of films and their directors, this year I have also kept a note of their year and primary country of production (many are co-productions, but I basically have gone by the first named country if indeed a given film is a co-production).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of films that I saw were from the 2010s (259 films), with films from the 2020s coming also perhaps an obvious second (113 films). [It stands to reason that I saw more films from 2019 in 2020 than I saw films from 2020, because there is/will always be a lag between production and distribution/exhibition.)
I otherwise saw 19 films from the 2000s, 16 films from the 1990s, 15 films from the 1980s, 20 films from the 1970s, 8 films from the 1960s, 8 films from the 1950s, 0 films from the 1940s, 3 films from the 1930s, 2 films from the 1920s, and 2 films from the 1910s.
This clear bias for contemporary films seems a shame to me, not least because, ultimately, I feel I watched a lot of crap this year, especially some thoroughly mediocre films that seemed to merit my attention because streaming, when I likely would not have watched such films had I the usual choice of work in theatres.
To assert the latter – that I typically have a strong selection of films in theatres – bespeaks how lucky I am that London is/has become a major film hub – and the pandemic has only made me miss institutions like the ICA, the BFI, and others, as playing a key role in my life. Furthermore, places like the Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image (BIMI) are clearly of great value culturally both to me and to the city in general, and I should highlight Timité Bassori’s La femme au couteau (Côte d’Ivoire, 1969) as one of the true pleasures that I had at the theatre in 2020 – and which I saw at BIMI.
If London is a major film hub, it also in 2020 became no longer my home, as I moved from the UK to Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, in order to live with my partner, who at the start of the pandemic discovered that she was pregnant, about which more later.
Being in Vancouver during the Canadian equivalent of lockdown (not as prolonged or intense as in London) has meant that I have not discovered the city or its cinemas as much as I would like, and perhaps it is unfair to say straight off that Vancouver does not seem to have the diversity of offerings that London does (with Paris having an even greater diversity than London), because I may yet discover (and/or be part of!) a range of offerings hitherto unknown to me.
That said, I have attended in 2020 (and on earlier visits) screenings at both the University of British Columbia and Marks’ Simon Fraser University, and which have featured films that I might not otherwise see in regular theatres, this year including Jeff Barnaby’s Blood Quantum (Canada, 2020), a noteworthy post-apocalyptic zombie film in which First Nations inhabitants are immune to, and enjoy killing off those zombified by, the plague of the living dead.
I shall come back to First Nations films in a bit, but I might also mention how I have ventured to the VIFF Centre and the Cinemathèque also in Vancouver, seeing in particular the Dardenne Brothers’ Le jeune Ahmed (Belgium/France, 2019) at the latter, and I hope that in the fullness of time these can become firm favourites, with other independent theatres like the Rio similarly having given me the opportunity to see things like Les Misérables (Ladj Ly, France, 2019) and Fantastic Fungi (Louie Schwartzberg, USA, 2019).
What is more, since Vancouver enjoys a large Asian population, it seems clear that one can also see a range of Asian films at the cinema, as was the case for me this year with Feng Xiaogang’s Only Cloud Knows (China, 2019) and Yellow Rose (Diane Paragas, Philippines/USA, 2019).
In addition to the VIFF’s physical VanCity theatre, the VIFF (Vancouver International Film Festival) was also online this year, and, buying a festival pass, I surely got to see a good number of newer films that otherwise I might not have seen.
Perhaps needless to say, the shift to online film festivals this year means that in addition to VIFF and the Small File Media Festival, I have also enjoyed offerings from various other places, perhaps most notably the We Are One Festival on YouTube, a joint venture between 21 different fleshworld festivals, and which, in 2020 at least, offered up a range of non-premiere (or rarely premiere) work, but which nonetheless made for some good experiences, for example Fradique’s Ar condicionado (Angola, 2020).
I lamented above that I feel like I have watched more ‘crap’ in 2020 because alternative work is not showcased. And yet, since the internet is supposed to have everything that you could look for, it seems odd that I might say this. For surely there is nowhere that is as diverse as the internet for finding films.
And yet, what seems/seemed clear to me with a renewed intensity in 2020 is the importance of gatekeepers and curators. I have followed up on and chased down all manner of films in 2020, viewing stuff via the usual suspects (Netflix, Amazon Prime, MUBI), as well as taking out at least temporary subscription to places like OVID (and then leaving after seeing most of the content that appealed to me, and which I had not seen before; in particular this included being able to see Wang Bing’s monumental documentary, Dead Souls, China, 2018; Hôtel Terminus: Klaus Barbie, sa vie et son temps, Marcel Ophuls, USA, 1988; some shorter work by John Akomfrah; and finally the third part of Patricio Guzmán’s Battle of Chile, Chile/Cuba/Venezuela, 1979). I have also benefited from an institutional subscription to Kanopy, while of course also watching films on Vimeo, including Vimeo on Demand, and YouTube, including films released via YouTube/Google. This is not to mention various other online archives, nor iTunes, to which I equally turn on occasion if the title is right.
But across all of these, I have been browsing and/or tracking down titles. That is, I read about a film via a news story or what have you, and then I need to go and find out where to see it. Or, conversely, I hear that a.n. cinema, gallery, university or other is hosting an online screening of x or y film, and so I go to that venue for a single visit.
What to me seems clearly missing, however, is a single venue where one can go for the latest arthouse releases. MUBI comes closest to this, but a lot of the material that it shows is ‘archival’ (i.e. not new). Don’t get me wrong; I love MUBI, but it is not the same as the ICA, where three or four times a week I could physically watch a new film, generally ‘arthouse,’ and basically I’d trust that it would be halfway decent or worth watching because the ICA had decided to program it.
The VIFF may come to be closest to that in Vancouver, especially as it tries to rollout its festival year round. But even then, I think that its programming is less adventurous than that of the ICA going by what was selected for this year’s festival (much as I appreciated what I did see at the VIFF this year).
Now, I am not trying to sound ‘arsey’ or pompous by saying that the ICA hosts ‘arthouse’ films. But I mention its programming/curation specifically because I am not lacking for mainstream films online. Netflix and Prime both have their own productions, as well as hosting films from other studios, while HBO Max, iTunes, Optic, Disney+ and other venues allow me to see the full range of mainstream movies, even as studios have been withholding a lot of titles as they work out whether or not theatres are a safe option.
I will always be able to see those bigger movies. But being able to see a full world of cinema… that is what seems lacking, and a site that brings together and hosts the latest in world cinema – a bit like what MUBI is doing now, but with an emphasis on the contemporary – is what I think I miss most sorely about the ‘new normal’ of majority-online film viewing. Hunting for films can be fun; but time also becomes an issue – and especially if one has to take out a new subscription to a site, meaning that in addition to the one film that one wants to watch, one feels obliged to watch other material on that site… perhaps simply because it is there.
The issue of access to world cinema becomes clear to me when I consider where the films come from that I saw in 2020. The ‘medal table’ is as follows (with, for the sake of simplicity, co-productions being defined by the first named country only):-
| USA | 172 |
| UK | 39 |
| Canada | 21 |
| China | 21 |
| Japan | 20 |
| France | 19 |
| Brazil | 13 |
| Taiwan | 11 |
| East Kurdistan | 10 |
| Germany | 9 |
| North Kurdistan | 9 |
| Australia | 8 |
| India | 8 |
| Italy | 7 |
| Hong Kong | 5 |
| Philippines | 5 |
| Argentina | 4 |
| Denmark | 4 |
| South Africa | 4 |
| Sweden | 4 |
| Austria | 3 |
| Belgium | 3 |
| Egypt | 3 |
| Hungary | 3 |
| Mexico | 3 |
| Norway | 3 |
| South Korea | 3 |
| Chile | 2 |
| Czechoslovakia | 2 |
| Iran | 2 |
| Ireland | 2 |
| Lebanon | 2 |
| New Zealand | 2 |
| Spain | 2 |
| Uruguay | 2 |
| Angola | 1 |
| Bhutan | 1 |
| Cape Verde | 1 |
| Colombia | 1 |
| Costa Rica | 1 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | 1 |
| Cuba | 1 |
| DRC | 1 |
| Finland | 1 |
| Georgia | 1 |
| Ghana | 1 |
| Guinea-Bissau | 1 |
| Iceland | 1 |
| Jamaica | 1 |
| Kenya | 1 |
| Kosovo | 1 |
| Lesotho | 1 |
| Lithuania | 1 |
| Malaysia | 1 |
| Netherlands | 1 |
| Nicaragua | 1 |
| Palestine | 1 |
| Poland | 1 |
| Portugal | 1 |
| Puerto Rico | 1 |
| Qatar | 1 |
| Romania | 1 |
| Russia | 1 |
| Rwanda | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1 |
| South Kurdistan | 1 |
| Turkey | 1 |
| Uganda | 1 |
| Venezuela | 1 |
| Vietnam | 1 |
| West Kurdistan | 1 |
Broken down into regions, I have seen films as follows (with there being some overlap and repetition below across Africa, MENA and Asia):-
| North America – 193 |
| Europe – 111 |
| Asia – 76 |
| Latin America & Caribbean – 31 |
| Kurdistan – 21 |
| Africa – 14 |
| MENA – 11 |
| Oceania – 10 |
(I wish to note that Kurdistan has a separate entry here because I was a juror for the London Kurdish Film Festival 2020, and so saw various films from the Kurdish region(s).)
While I think that the numbers of films that I have seen from Asia and perhaps also Latin America are respectable, it seems clear that online film viewing, especially with what the major streaming services offer (and even more especially with how difficult it is to search through them for non-western fare), is an overwhelmingly Eurocentric affair.
I am ashamed that I have only seen two Iranian films this year (including one short), and I am also appalled that I have only managed 1 Russian film. I feel like I normally see much more from, say, Portugal, Romania, Spain, South Korea, Turkey, Argentina and Mexico in a given year, even as this year has been (relatively) good for my viewing of Taiwanese, Brazilian, Japanese and Canadian films.
And so while I love it that Netflix randomly had the back catalog of Youssef Chahine turn up among its titles this year (accounting for 2 of the 3 Egyptian movies I saw in 2020), and while I know that I can find archives of Korean (and probably Russian, Argentine, and Mexican films) online, it is the fact that these are not brought together that leads to the imbalances. If you will, I guess I want/need someone to take care of my movie diet for me – hence my emphasis on the importance of curation/programming – rather than me having to source everything myself.
Indeed, a case in point would be the Iranian movies. This year I bought a subscription to IMVBox, and so in principle I can see as many Iranian films as I want – from classics to more recent ones. However, I have not seen a single film yet via this service. In part, this is because I continue to get sidetracked into watching ‘crap’ on Netflix, and so mea culpa.
But it also is due to the fact that having to get to yet another website, and then having to browse it to find something that I want to watch (from among IMVBox’s own swathes of ‘crap’ – with all due respect to Iranian filmmakers) just becomes too much work to do.
I understand that this is a First World problem (how can one get more ‘First World’ than complaining about one’s lack of access to work from the ‘developing world’?). But in order to address the hegemony of the West, and in order to resist the general ‘crap’ that Netflix and Amazon Prime put out there, there needs to be a site that brings together the best in world cinema.
FestivalScope is perhaps the site that is the beacon of hope for this, and I have watched a decent number of films on that site. But a) it is not a site that is readily accessible, in that one has to demonstrate a connection to the professional film world, and b) its selection is wonderful, but it also regularly very ‘dour’, it contains a large number of films, and there is no internal curation to help you pick them apart with any particular ease. Perhaps the perfect site would be a hybrid of the curational stye of MUBI – mixing ‘high’ and ‘low’ – and the emphasis on the contemporary of FestivalScope (and in some respects similar sites like DAFilms).
At this point, I might also mention how Dr Leshu Torchin at the University of St Andrews in some way stepped up to this would-be plate by (meta-)curating a series of playlists, in many instances of movies to be found online, and which did indeed spark a great deal of enjoyment for me.
While my viewing has been dominated by western films in 2020, I might say that from within these spaces, I have nonetheless watched a lot of what we might call ‘decolonising’ cinema. In part this was spurred by the efforts of places like the Criterion Channel in making available classic African-American films in the wake of the revitalised Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd, and also as a result of the concerted effort by VIFF to programme First Nations movies. I should perhaps also here mention how I saw a few First Nations films at the Cinema at the End of the World symposium organised by Dr Mila Zuo at UBC in February, where I saw the afore-mentioned Blood Quantum.
Some of the First Nations films are, dare I say it, hit and miss; I did not personally care for VIFF’s opener, Monkey Beach (Loretta Todd, Canada, 2020), nor The Incredible 25th Year of Mitzi Bearclaw (Shelley Niro, Canada, 2019), which screened at the Cinema at the End of the World.
The latter in particular is about a woman who has just turned 25, and so its title is mathematically ‘off’, in that the film is about Mitzi’s 26th year, and not her 25th. However, such pedantry on my part does lead me to wonder that my insistence on mathematics misses the ‘untimeliness’ of the First Nations movie, in the sense of considering the western world from an outsider’s perspective, as well as my imposition on to the film of my own ‘mathematical’ and western sense of measurement and calculation.
It has been contested that the world ended for Native Americans many centuries ago, in that the arrival of white settlers marked an apocalypse of genocide, illness and displacement. Now that the white west is worried about the ‘end of the world’ as our ecology collapses, what really is revealed is its ongoing delusion that its own experience is universal. As we reach a world of ‘aftermath,’ then, perhaps it is the ‘aftermathematics’ of Mitzi Bearclaw that is what we need, but I am too stymied by my ‘mathematical’ thinking to let this be so.
And so it is with the ‘cheesey’ aesthetics of Monkey Beach and Mitzi Bearclaw. I find the films mawkish, and much prefer the more austere offerings of, say, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn, Canada/Norway, 2019), or the historical dramatisation of real-world events depicted in Beans (Tracey Deer, Canada, 2020). But again, this is perhaps my own prejudice at work, and maybe we need the ‘sweet’ style of these films in order to accomplish a better world.
As it was a great pleasure to watch a number of films by indigenous filmmakers, including from Canada, the USA and Brazil (for example, Apiyemiyeki?, Ana Vaz, Brazil/France/Portugal/Netherlands, 2020 – a film mentioned by various others in their Films of the Year lists), so was it also a great pleasure to watch various landmarks and forgotten pieces of Black American cinema – with numerous being excellent, including (in chronological order): The Girl from Chicago (Oscar Micheaux, USA, 1932), Lying Lips (Oscar Micheaux, USA, 1939), The Story of the Three Day Pass (Melvin Van Peebles, France, 1968), Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (William Greaves, USA, 1968), Watermelon Man (Melvin Van Peebles, USA, 1970), The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon, USA, 1973), Abar: Black Superman (Frank Packard, USA, 1977), Bush Mama (Haile Gerima, USA, 1979), Cane River (Horace B. Jenkins, USA, 1982), Losing Ground (Kathleen Collins, USA, 1982), Bless Their Little Hearts (Billy Woodberry, USA, 1983), The Killing Floor (Bill Duke, USA, 1984), She’s Gotta Have It (Spike Lee, USA, 1986), Sidewalk Stories (Charles Lane, USA, 1989), New Jack City (Mario Van Peebles, USA, 1991), Menace II Society (The Hughes Brothers, USA, 1993), Surviving The Game (Ernest R Dickerson, USA, 1994) and Down in the Delta (Maya Angelou, USA, 1998).
These joined a few recent landmark achievements in Black American cinema that I got to see, including Strong Island (Yance Ford, USA/Denmark, 2017), Queen & Slim (Melina Matsoukas, USA/Canada, 2019), The Forty-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank, USA, 2020), Time (Garrett Bradley, USA, 2020) and The Sleeping Negro (Skinner Myers, USA, 2021).
Indeed, I would place The Sleeping Negro and Time as two of my top top films of the year, with Skinner Myers’ film in particular being a revelation. Having seen the film somewhat by chance, I can only recommend that viewers seek it out; and I might add that one place to see it that I know of is at the forthcoming Slamdance Film Festival.
On this topic, I might note that the UK also had a strong year for Black film and television production, with I May Destroy You (Micaela Coel, UK/USA, 2020) being perhaps the stand-out television show, and Steve McQueen’s Mangrove (UK, 2020) and Lovers Rock (UK, 2020) also being superb. Alongside these I might recommend Remi Weekes’ His House (UK, 2020), as well as Onyeka Igwe’s short experimental piece, The Names Have Changed Including My Own and Truths Have Been Altered (UK, 2020).
Furthermore, I would like also to make a special mention for Juliet Ellis’ Ruby (UK, 2020), which is an extraordinary film made for £20,000 about a young girl and her seemingly sleeping mother, and which was made in Sheffield and Cleethorpes, having been rejected by funding bodies for having ‘no commercial value.’ For me, it is the best British film of the year, and also in my top top movies. The sort of cinema that really needs to be preserved and encouraged.
In addition to Black British and Black American films, I also managed to catch a few Asian American movies and shows, with Wayne Wang’s Chan Is Missing (USA, 1982) being for me a wonderful masterpiece.
And another underdog production worth lauding is Congolese rapper Baloji’s Zombies (DRC/Belgium, 2019), which in its short running time shows as much innovation and ideas as, say, Black is King (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Emmanuel Adjei, Ibra Ake, Blitz Bazawule, Kwasi Fordjour, USA, 2020).
Perhaps predictably, the UK also produced one of the worst films that I have seen about race in 2020, namely Darragh Carey and Bertrand Desrochers’ A Brixton Tale (UK, 2020), which reproduces some of the worst myths about Blackness, and which sees a completely unrealistic Brixton fetishised through a white girl’s lens as exotic and gritty.
And while I don’t typically like to bad-mouth any film production, since I know from experience how hard it is to make a film and also how hard it is to control a film’s production, I mention this because I have noted that A Brixton Tale has also been selected this year for Slamdance.
The point I wish to make, then, is that for all of the good work that the Slamdance programmers have done in selecting The Sleeping Negro, which is perhaps the best film that I saw in 2020, that they select alongside it a film as inept in its treatment of racial politics as A Brixton Tale only goes to show that festival programmers sometimes do not have the wherewithal to know what they are looking at, with their ability to pick films about pressing issues such as race being as good as chance, rather than based on any astute analytical skills. And I would consider Slamdance to be a major festival. Given how many entries festivals get these days, and given how few films ultimately Slamdance is screening, it seems particularly a poor choice to screen such a film, thereby undoing the good work of selecting The Sleeping Negro, and indeed undermining their own claims to be making meaningful or progressive contributions to cinematic discussions of race.
I have situated the prominence of Black film in the UK and the USA alongside the resurgence of Black Lives Matter in the wake of the death of George Floyd. This is not to overlook films from other parts of the world that deal with race (for me, two of note that I saw in 2020 are Khalik Allah’s Black Mother, Jamaica/USA, 2018, and Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela, Portugal, 2019). But I might also mention that following the angry-making execution of death row inmate Brandon Bernard, Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy (USA, 2019) also seems a film to have taken on a renewed timeliness.
And 2020 cannot but be remembered for the passing of, among others, Chadwick Boseman. Seeing him play a ghost in in Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee, USA, 2020) was indeed chilling, even as that was one of several films and shows to give the Vietnamese pretty short shrift in 2020 (Watchmen, Damon Lindelof, USA, 2020, being another case in point, much as I otherwise enjoyed it). While his soliloquy against god in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe, USA, 2020) is of such power seeing it after his passing, that really it does become a performance with what Roland Barthes might call punctum. I’d not be surprised if that turn in particular lands Boseman a posthumous Academy Award.
It also felt sad to say good bye to Irrfan Khan, an actor whom I have loved since I first saw him in A Mighty Heart (Michael Winterbottom, USA/UK, 2007), where he acted everyone off the screen. I managed to see two films with him in 2020, the thoroughly mediocre Puzzle (Marc Turteltaub, USA, 2018) and the better Qarib Qarib Singlle (Tanuja Chandra, India, 2017). He plays eccentric lovers in both, and is completely amiable in both, but it seems a shame that in the former his much more interesting story is overshadowed by the hackneyed struggles of domestic life embodied by Kelly McDonald.
With Winterbottom in mind, it was pleasing as always to see Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon together again in his Trip to Greece (UK, 2020), which constitutes the original comedians- and/or karaoke singers-in-cars show, and which remains superior to all that have followed (and I suspect that Coogan would make for a significantly more entertaining companion than most of the people that Jerry Seinfeld decides to reveal as pretty boring in his coffee-driven Netflix show).
Sacha Baron Cohen had a busy 2020, appearing in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Jason Woliner, UK/USA, 2020) as well as The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin, USA/UK/India, 2020), in which he was in particular very good. These screenings accompanied my first-time viewing of earlier turns from him in The Dictator (Larry Charles, USA, 2012) and The Brothers Grimsby (Louis Leterrier, UK/USA, 2016). As a note, though, while The Chicago 7 had various pleasures, the superior courtroom drama of 2020 was for me Steve McQueen’s Mangrove.
Among the various actors who seem to have had a good year, I might mention Gina Rodríguez, who stood out in the otherwise mediocre Someone Great (Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, USA, 2019), and who in Kajillionaire (Miranda July, USA, 2020) was forced to play second fiddle to Evan Rachel Wood’s well-acted but otherwise wilfully quirky and white Old Dolio Dyne. Indeed, women of colour playing second fiddle to, or absent from the world of, white women seemed to be a common theme in films from 2020 – with movies like Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy, Australia, 2019) and System Crasher (Nora Fingscheidt, Germany, 2019) validating the (blonde) white girl as perhaps the stake of the future, posited by the latter film as a ‘system crasher,’ when in fact they are the beating heart of the (contemporary world, i.e. modern capitalist) system.
Some of the films about white women were better than others, with The Assistant (Kitty Green, USA, 2019) perhaps standing out, with this viewer not being as taken as others by Bombshell (Jay Roach, Canada/USA, 2019), Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis, USA/France, 2019), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman, USA/UK/Germany, 2019) or The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell, Canada/Australia/USA, 2020) – even as these films did have their merits.
Kristen Stewart perhaps gets a special mention as a performer whom I like a lot, but who appeared in a string of pretty forgettable films this past year, and in which her whiteness is at times core, including Underwater (William Eubank, USA, 2020), Seberg (Benedict Andrews, UK/USA, 2019) and Happiest Season (Clea DuVall, USA/Canada, 2020). While the latter is relatively pleasant in its depiction of coming out, its chief point of interest is the under-used Daniel Levy (from Schitt’s Creek), and whom I hope to see in many more films.
Indeed, in the year of ‘Karen,’ it seems as though the white-women-focused narrative seemed slightly off-kilter, and I might mention that White Chicks (Keenen Ivory Wayans, USA, 2004) seemed an appropriate film to watch for the first time.
It was also pleasing to see women taking the helm for otherwise average blockbusters like Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (Cathy Yan, USA, 2020), The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Blythewood, USA, 2020) and the disappointing Mulan (Niki Caro, USA/Canada/Hong Kong, 2020), with my estimation in 2019 already being that it is a sign of strength – at least in some respects – when women are as able to make, and do make, as basic films as men do.
That is, women directors – like directors of colour and indigenous filmmakers (as also suggested in the discussion of Mitzi Bearclaw above) – should always have jobs making not just the best films, but films from across the spectrum of quality or, put differently, making films for different audiences, with different budgets and so on.
I mean, I wish that every film could be a masterpiece and that there were no disappointments, or that there were not even merely forgettable films; but if there are going to be all of these types of film, then who gets to make them should be distributed equitably.
That said, of the 468 films that I saw for the first time in 2020, only 116 were directed by women, with a further 22 being made by male-female directing teams/collaborators. With a handful of films made by trans/non-binary directors, this nonetheless left the vast of majority of films being directed by men, or groups of men.
Of course, this could reflect my choices of films to watch rather than the state of the various industries from which I saw enough films to get a sense of the gender (im)balance in terms of directors. But really, I think that this reflects the ongoing gender bias in terms of few women getting to direct movies.
All the same, a number of films by women did stand out, as per various listed above (Yellow Rose, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, Beans, Queen & Slim, The Forty-Year-Old Version, Time, I May Destroy You, Ruby and The Assistant).
And to this list I might in no particular order add the notable A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller, China/USA, 2019), A Febre (Maya Da-Rin, Brazil/France/Germany, 2019), Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Céline Sciamma, France, 2019), Mignonnes (Maïmaouna Ducouré, France, 2019), Dick Johnson is Dead (Kirsten Johnson, USA, 2020), First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, USA, 2019), Present.Perfect (Shengze Zhu, China/Hong Kong/USA, 2019), Little Joe (Jessica Hausner, Austria/UK/Germany/France, 2019), and Honey Boy (Alma Ha’rel, USA, 2019).
Should it seem that I am picking unduly on the narrative focused on the (bland) white female character, I should add that there are plenty of films that do the same with white male characters, although again there were some good exceptions to this, including Uncut Gems (Benny and Josh Safdie, USA, 2019), True History of the Kelly Gang (Justin Kurzel, Austala/UK/France, 2019), Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark/Sweden/Netherlands, 2020), Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello, Italy/France/Germany, 2019) and Siberia (Abel Ferrara, Italy/Germany/Greece/Mexico, 2019).
That said, watching older American ‘mumblecore’ films by the likes of Joe Swanberg and Nathan Silver this year, I did come to think that they seem dated now, not least in their whiteness, which in the language of Kehinde Andrews constitutes a psychosis (a term that Andrews uses in relation to Amma Asante’s Belle, UK, 2013, a film I also saw for the first time in 2013). And yet, mumblecore has produced a couple of playful takes on precisely psychotic whiteness, as evidenced in the two Creep films that I saw this year by Patrick Brice (USA, 2014 and 2017), and which star mumblecore mainstay Mark Duplass as precisely that white psychopath.
What is more, Mark’s brother, Jay Duplass, also was one of the stars, with Tatiana Maslany, of Pink Wall (Tom Cullen, UK, 2019), which was one of the standouts of the year and certainly the best relationship/end-of-relationship film that I have seen for a while. Wim Mertens’ ‘Iris,’ which plays over the closing credits, was also a revelation for me. Fabulous acting, smart script writing, getting to grips with the depth and difficulties of human relationships and emotions.
Returning to (or staying with?) psychotic whiteness, this also seems in its most horrendous form to be at work in a range of films that I saw about manhunts, including the afore-mentioned Surviving the Game, as well as Craig Zobel’s utterly unlikely – and not particularly likeable – The Hunt (USA/Japan, 2020), wherein, as a direct contradiction of the logic of the Proud Boys, it is Democrats that hunt down Republicans for sport. Superior to both, however, is Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, Brazil/France, 2019), which is definitely one of the best of 2020, and which tells the tale of poor Brazilians in the sertão hunting back the white hunters who come to kill them for their amusement.
I might mention that psychotic whiteness is also at the core of (the same) Mila Zuo’s short film, KIN (USA, 2020), which was one of the most affectively rich films about a group of disaffected whites in rural Oregon that I have seen. I must confess to total bias, since I co-wrote the film, but I also think it worth puffing how this short is a dense, complex and powerful look at white America today – with a searing edit by Dougal Henken that takes the film a long way from the script that I co-wrote with Zuo (and for the better!), as well as powerful performances from Frank Mosley, Sophie Traub and Cameron Shuman.
And this mention allows me to segue into how Mosley is himself on the up and up. Having worked last year in Thunder Road (Jim Cummings, USA, 2018) and Chained for Life (Aaron Schimberg, USA, 2018), in 2020 we got to see him in The Ghost Who Walks (Cody Stokes, USA, 2019) and Freeland (Mario Furloni and Kate McLean, USA, 2020), while also catching his directorial effort, Her Wilderness (USA, 2014) reworked as an online interactive movie. Here’s hope for more in 2021!
From Creep, we might also segue into Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s excellent Creepy (Japan, 2016), one of several films from the director that I saw this year. This is a film that at one point features a jellyfish prominently displayed on a television screen, one of numerous examples this year of tentacles and cephalopodic creatures, which were the focus of David H Fleming and my recent book, The Squid Cinema from Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Chthulumedia (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). Such creatures also turned up in the afore-mentioned Watchmen, His House and Underwater, as well as in Ad Vitam (Thomas Cailley, France, 2018), Chanson douce (Lucie Borleteau, France, 2019), My Octopus Teacher (Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, South Africa, 2020) and Lovecraft Country (Misha Green, USA, 2020). And with HP Lovecraft in mind, we might also mention Richard Stanley’s The Colour Out Of Space (USA/Malaysia/Portugal, 2019)… Indeed, it would seem that tentacular and cthulhoid creatures continue to abound in contemporary film and television, such that David and I should prepare a second book on the topic (which in fact we are doing).
From Kurosawa, I also saw Before We Vanish (Japan, 2017), one of numerous films that seemed to announce and/or to rehearse life under COVID-19, some of which were more powerful (Vivarium, Lorcan Finnegan, Ireland/Belgium/Denmark/Canada, 2019) than others (I was not particularly taken by She Dies Tomorrow, Amy Seimetz, USA, 2020).
In terms of horror, I might also say that I enjoyed retrospectively seeing Insidious (James Wan, USA/Canada, 2010), which was esteemed to be cognitively the scariest movie of all time, as well as The Wailing (Na Hong-jin, South Korea/USA, 2016) and It Comes At Night (Trey Edward Shults, USA, 2017), which I found much better than the same director’s subsequent Waves (Trey Edward Shults, USA/Canada, 2019).
With regard to COVID-19, there were a few productions made to reflect life during the pandemic, with the one that I shall mention being Cinema-19 (Courtney Stephens, Kalpana Subramanian, Usama Alshaibi, Scott Cummings, Lori Felker, Matt McCormick, Eman Akram Nader and Alex Megaro, Christin Turner, Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, Kelly Gallagher, Sarah Ema Friedland, William Brown and Mila Zuo, Amir George, and Adam Sekuler, USA/Canada, 2020).
As the list of directors surely makes clear, I am blowing my own trumpet again, but I toot it to say how I proud I was and continue to be to participate in a project with such exceptional filmmakers, with Mila Zuo and I collaborating on Coyote, a short film about which I also shall be writing an essay for The Projector in 2021.
If Cinema-19 is a compendium of films of life under lockdown, then Ai Weiwei’s CoroNation (China, 2020) functioned for me as the best documentary yet about the pandemic, as it depicts the emptied streets of Wuhan and the almost science-fictional procedures put in place to control the spread of the disease.
Perhaps predictably, COVID-19 produced a rash of films about confinement, with window films becoming increasingly common, be those the windows of the digital machines that we consult at home, or the windows that we look out of into relatively empty streets.
While this aesthetic has been announced by Alfred Hitchcock in Rear Window (USA, 1954), thereby making an implicit connection between the window film and disability/disease, it is an aesthetic that also bespeaks surveillance. And it is surveillance that we see taken up explicitly as a theme in Ulu Braun’s remarkable Saturne (Germany, 2020), shot in Berlin as if uniquely from the viewpoint of CCTV cameras as a man seeks to spread the ashes of his dead mother, among other things.
Not only might we note the ongoing legacy of Rear Window in films like Number 37 (Nophiso Dumisa, South Africa, 2018), but we might also begin to weave together how the window aesthetic, tied as it is to surveillance and illness/disability, is also tied to the pandemic, as per some of the Cinema-19 films and as per Mati Diop’s In My Room (France/Italy, 2020).
The quasi-academic/theoretical point I wish to make, then, is that COVID-19 is perhaps linked, at least aesthetically if not politically, to the rise of a surveillance society, and that this surveillance society constitutes a sort of illness (with those who are disabled perhaps being best placed to perceive as much).
As made clear by Mati Diop’s other work, including her renowned short Atlantiques (France, 2009), which I also saw for the first time in 2020, surveillance is also linked to migration. Indeed, the confinement/carceral aesthetic of COVID-19, as well as the window aesthetic to which it is related, is demonstrated in His House, with Christian Petzold’s Transit (Germany/France, 2018), a hangover film that I also only saw late in 2020, equally relating the contemporary moment to a moment defined by the plight of those undergoing forced migration. (A propos of Petzold, I found Transit far superior to his more recent and aquatic Undine, Germany/France, 2020.)
Finally, if we see the window aesthetic already at work in films like 9 Days: From My Window in Aleppo (Floor van der Meulen, Thomas Vroege, Issa Touma, Netherlands/Syria, 2016), a film that I saw when it came out four years ago, then in some senses the ‘COVID-19’ aesthetic was also already announced by the refugee crisis prompted by the war in Syria. And this carceral aesthetic also is linked to the radicalised carceral logic at work in the contemporary USA and so brilliantly analysed by Garrett Bradley in Time.
While I am proposing somewhat provocatively, then, that there is an aesthetics, thematic and indeed a conceptual through-line from Blackness to surveillance society to refugees to aesthetics of confinement and/or fenestration, then I say this also to introduce the final ‘best film of 2020.’
While documentaries like CoroNation, The Two Lives of Li Ermao (Jia Yuchuan, China/UK, 2019) and Goodbye CP (Kazuo Hara, Japan, 1972) were among the best that I saw for the first time in 2020, it is Abbas Fahdel’s Bitter Bread (Lebanon/Iraq/France, 2019) that is my final ‘best film of 2020’ – which is perhaps unlike anything else in its weave of staged and documented scenes made with inhabitants of Syrian refugee camps in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. The film is urgent and powerful, and in some ways it brings together many of the key concerns for our planet right now.
In a final bit of puffery, I shall also mention that I finished a film called The New Hope 2 (UK, 2020) this year, a sequel to my earlier adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and which was shot in London’s Hyde Park back in 2014. Set in London and Los Angeles, I think that the sequel is, like the first part, a deliberately punk, DIY and no-budget film that also hopefully says something for/to our ‘DIY’ and ‘guerrilla’ filmmaking times, and which I offer up for free (as usual). May it provide some comic relief in these tough days.
However, even as I ‘big up’ KIN, my book and The New Hope 2, the best production for me was the one announced in Coyote, the contribution made by Mila Zuo and me to Cinema-19, and which comes in the form of Radian Winter Zuo Brown, a daughter born to me and my partner in 2020. No film can match even an instant in her company.
In sum, then, my best of 2020 – meaning films from 2019 and 2020 – are as follows, ranked in a Halliwell-style *** and **** system, since I don’t believe in shoe-horning together 10 films (or 100 films) for a Top 10 (or Top 100) if there aren’t enough that are of sufficient perceived quality.
Numerous of the above-named are films do not feature below. This is not because I don’t like them; indeed, to my mind – and still thinking Halliwell – many of those films would would get ** or * and lots of italics for standout contributions. And there are plenty of films I’ve not yet seen and yet which I imagine I would like (and in fact have already seen in 2021 a couple of films that might well have a got a mention here if I’d seen them only a few days earlier: Shirley, Ammonite, St Maud, Fourteen, Saint Frances, Clemency, Rocks, the rest of Small Ax, Minari, etc)…
All the same, the *** and **** films are as follows:-
*** Films
The Forty-Year-Old Version, I May Destroy You, Mangrove, Lovers Rock, Black Mother, Martin Eden, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, Vitalina Varela, The Assistant, Uncut Gems, Another Round, A Febre, Present.Perfect, Bacurau, CoroNation.
**** Films
Ruby, Time, The Sleeping Negro, Pink Wall, Bitter Bread.
Should it be of interest, my top films of 2019 are/were as follows, according to the same system:-
*** Films
13th (Ava DuVernay), Destroyer (Karyn Kusama), Dragonfly Eyes (Xu Bing), Ray & Liz (Richard Billingham), Long Day’s Journey Into Night 3D (Bi Gan), High Life (Claire Denis), Donbass (Sergei Loznitsa), Nuestro tiempo (Carlos Reygadas), The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot), Museo (Alonso Ruizpalacios), The Infiltrators (Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera), Le Franc (Djibril Diop Mambéty), Le Daim (Quentin Dupieux), Muna Moto (Jean-Pierre Dikongué Pipa), What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire? (Roberto Minervini), Monos (Alejandro Landes), Afrique, je te plumerai (Jean-Marie Téno), Campo (Tiago Hespanha), High Flying Bird (Steven Soderbergh), 24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami), Vulnicura VR (Björk/Andrew Thomas Huang), Beats (Brian Welsh), Cómprame un revólver (Julio Hernández Cordón), Leto (Kirill Serebrennikov), Talking About Trees (Suhaib Gasmelbari), The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent).
**** Films
Happy Hour (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), Hale County This Morning This Evening (RaMell Ross), The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)
And now, for what it’s worth, here are all of the films I saw in 2020, followed by a complete list of the films I saw in 2019.
| Title | Director(s) | Country | Year |
| 1917 | Sam Mendes | USA et al | 2019 |
| A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood | Marielle Heller | China/USA | 2019 |
| A Brixton Tale | Darragh Carey and Bertrand Desrochers | UK | 2020 |
| A Dance for Death | Zanyar Azizi | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| A Febre | Maya Da-Rin | Brazil/France/Germany | 2019 |
| A Hidden Life | Terrence Malick | USA/UK/Germany | 2019 |
| A Rainy Day in New York | Woody Allen | USA | 2019 |
| A rosa azul de Novalis | Rodrigo Carneiro and Gustavo Vinagre | Brazil | 2018 |
| A Russian Youth | Alexander Zolotukhin | Russia | 2019 |
| A Secret Love | Chris Bolan | USA | 2020 |
| A Shape of Things to Come | Lisa Malloy and JP Sniadecki | USA | 2020 |
| A Sun | Chung Mong-hong | Taiwan | 2019 |
| A Trip to the Moon | Mohammadreza Shayannezhad | Iran | 2020 |
| A Wrinkle in Time | Ava DuVernay | USA | 2018 |
| Abar: Black Superman | Frank Packard | USA | 1977 |
| Actors | Betsey Brown | USA | 2020 |
| Ad Vitam | Thomas Cailley | France | 2018 |
| Aerial | Margaret Tait | UK | 1974 |
| Akam | Hossein MIrzamshammadi | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| Alexandria… Why? | Youssef Chahine | Egypt/Algeria | 1979 |
| Alfred & Jakobine | Jonathan Howells and Tom Roberts | UK/USA | 2014 |
| Amigo Undead | Ryan Nagata | USA | 2015 |
| An American Pickle | Brandon Trost | USA | 2020 |
| Anbessa | Mo Scarpelli | Italy/Ethiopia/USA | 2019 |
| Another Round | Thomas Vinterberg | Denmark/Sweden/Netherlands | 2020 |
| Apiyemiyekî? | Ana Vaz | Brazil/France/Portugal/Netherlands | 2020 |
| Ar condicionado | Fradique | Angola | 2020 |
| Are You Listening Mother? | Tuna Kaptan | Germany/Turkey | 2019 |
| As boas maneiras | Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas | Brazil/France/Germany | 2017 |
| Asako I & II | Ryusuke Hamaguchi | Japan/France | 2018 |
| Así habló el cambista | Federico Veiroj | Uruguay/Argentina/Germany | 2019 |
| Asian Americans | Renee Tajima-Peña | USA | 2020 |
| Atlantiques | Mati Diop | France | 2009 |
| Aylesbury Estate | Carlotta Berti | Italy | 2020 |
| Baby Steps | Barney Cheng | Taiwan/USA | 2015 |
| Babyteeth | Shannon Murphy | Australia | 2019 |
| Bacurau | Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles | Brazil/France | 2019 |
| Bamboo Dogs | Khavn de la Cruz | Philippines | 2018 |
| Beans | Tracey Deer | Canada | 2020 |
| Beautiful New Bay Area Project | Kiyoshi Kurosawa | Japan | 2013 |
| Before We Vanish | Kiyoshi Kurosawa | Japan | 2017 |
| Belle | Amma Asante | UK | 2013 |
| Between Heaven and Earth | Najwa Najjar | Palestine/Iceland/Luxembourg | 2019 |
| Binding | Chen Ting-ning | Taiwan | 2019 |
| Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn | Cathy Yan | USA | 2020 |
| Bitter Bread | Abbas Fahdel | Lebanon/Iraq/France | 2019 |
| Black | Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah | Belgium | 2015 |
| Black is King | Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Emmanuel Adjei, Ibra Ake, Blitz Bazawule, Kwasi Fordjour | USA | 2020 |
| Black Mother | Khalik Allah | Jamaica/USA | 2018 |
| Bless Their Little Hearts | Billy Woodberry | USA | 1983 |
| Blood Quantum | Jeff Barnaby | Canada | 2019 |
| Blush | Em Johnson | USA | 2020 |
| Bombshell | Jay Roach | Canada/USA | 2019 |
| Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan | Jason Woliner | UK/USA | 2020 |
| Bridgend | Jeppe Rønde | Denmark | 2015 |
| Bring Down the Walls | Phil Collins | Germany/USA | 2020 |
| Buoyancy | Rodd Rathjen | Australia | 2019 |
| Bush Mama | Haile Gerima | USA | 1979 |
| Butterfly | Ashkan Ahmadi | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| Cane River | Horace B. Jenkins | USA | 1982 |
| Capital in the 21st Century | Justin Pemberton | France/New Zealand | 2019 |
| Cargo | Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke | Australia | 2017 |
| Caverna | Hannah Swayze and Daniel Contaldo | USA | 2020 |
| Chakde! India | Shimit Amin | India | 2007 |
| Chan is Missing | Wayne Wang | USA | 1982 |
| Chanson douce | Lucie Borleteau | France | 2019 |
| Child of Resistance | Haile Gerima | USA | 1973 |
| Children of the Dead | Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska | Austria | 2019 |
| Cinema-19 | Courtney Stephens, Kalpana Subramanian, Usama Alshaibi, et al | USA/Canada | 2020 |
| Cinémarxisme | Béla Tarr | Hungary | 1979 |
| Circus of Books | Rachel Mason | USA | 2019 |
| Coffee & Kareem | Michael Dowse | USA | 2020 |
| Come To Daddy | Ant Timpson | Ireland/Canada/New Zealand/USA | 2019 |
| CoroNation | Ai Weiwei | China | 2020 |
| Crazy World | Nabwana IGG | Uganda | 2014 |
| Creep | Patrick Brice | USA | 2014 |
| Creep 2 | Patrick Brice | USA | 2017 |
| Creepy | Kiyoshi Kurosawa | Japan | 2016 |
| Cuba: Living Between Hurricanes | Michael Chanan | UK/Cuba | 2020 |
| Da 5 Bloods | Spike Lee | USA | 2020 |
| Daddy’s Home 2 | Sean Anders | USA | 2017 |
| Dark Waters | Todd Haynes | USA | 2019 |
| Daughters of Dolma | Adam Miklós | Hungary/UK/Nepal | 2013 |
| De cierta manera | Sara Gómez | Cuba | 1977 |
| De nuevo otra vez | Romina Paula | Argentina | 2019 |
| Dead Souls | Wang Bing | China | 2018 |
| Destiny | Youssef Chahine | Egypt/France | 1997 |
| Devs | Alex Garland | UK/USA | 2020 |
| Diamonds of the Night | Jan Němec | Czechoslovakia | 1964 |
| Diane | Kent Jones | USA | 2018 |
| Diaries, Notes and Sketches (also known as Walden) | Jonas Mekas | USA | 1969 |
| Dick Johnson is Dead | Kirsten Johnson | USA | 2020 |
| Dillinger é morto | Marco Ferreri | Italy | 1969 |
| Dirty Computer | Andrew Donoho and Chuck Lightning | USA | 2018 |
| Disclosure | Sam Feder | USA | 2020 |
| Diz a ela que me viu chorar | Maíra Bühler | Brazil | 2019 |
| Domains | Natsuka Kusano | Japan | 2019 |
| Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer | Mark Lewis | UK/USA | 2019 |
| Down in the Delta | Maya Angelou | USA | 1998 |
| Drita | Daniel Kruglikov | Kosovo/USA | 2019 |
| Drunks | Peter Cohn | USA | 1995 |
| Dust in the Wind | Hou Hsiao-hsien | Taiwan | 1986 |
| Echo | Rúnar Rúnarsson | Iceland/France/Switzerland/Denmark/Finland | 2019 |
| Eel from the Yangtse | Jun Lv | China | 2020 |
| El arte de volver | Pedro Collantes | Spain | 2020 |
| El despertar de las hormigas | Antonella Sudasassi | Costa Rica/Spain | 2019 |
| El hoyo | Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia | Spain | 2019 |
| Ema | Pablo Larraín | Chile | 2019 |
| End of Summer | Jóhann Jóhannsson | Denmark/Iceland/Antarctica | 2014 |
| Era uma vez Brasília | Adirley Quierós | Brazil | 2017 |
| Été 85 | François Ozon | France/Belgium | 2020 |
| Euphoria | Lisa Langseth | Sweden/UK/Germany | 2017 |
| Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga | David Dobkin | USA/Iceland/Canada | 2020 |
| Exit Elena | Nathan Silver | USA | 2012 |
| Exit Medea | Anthony Paraskeva | UK | 2019 |
| Expecting Amy | Alexander Hammer | USA | 2020 |
| Extinction | Ben Young | USA | 2018 |
| Extra terrestres | Carla Cavina | Puerto Rico/Venezuela | 2016 |
| Familia sumergida | María Alché | Argentina/Norway/Germany/Brazil | 2018 |
| Family Romance LLC | Werner Herzog | USA | 2019 |
| Fantastic Fungi | Louie Schwartzberg | USA | 2019 |
| Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw | David Leitch | USA/Japan | 2019 |
| Fauna | Nicolás Pereda | Mexico/Canada | 2020 |
| Female Directors | Yang Mingming | China | 2012 |
| Ferat Vampire | Juraj Herz | Czechoslovakia | 1982 |
| First Cow | Kelly Reichardt | USA | 2019 |
| First Love | Takashi Miike | Japan/UK | 2019 |
| Five Fingers for Marseilles | Michael Matthews | South Africa | 2017 |
| Flatland | Jenna Bass | South Africa/Luxembourg/Germany | 2019 |
| Floating Life | Clara Law | Australia | 1996 |
| Flower Drum Song | Henry Koster | USA | 1961 |
| For Camera | Mustafa Shahrokhi | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| Four Sheets to the Wind | Sterlin Harjo | USA | 2007 |
| Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein | Daniel Gray Longino | USA | 2019 |
| Freeland | Mario Furloni and Kate McLean | USA | 2020 |
| Gemini | Aaron Katz | USA | 2017 |
| Ghost Strata | Ben Rivers | UK | 2019 |
| Giants Being Lonely | Grear Patterson | USA | 2019 |
| Giraffe | Anna Sofie Hartmann | Germany/Denmark | 2019 |
| Girlfriends | Claudia Weill | USA | 1978 |
| Girls Always Happy | Yang Mingming | China | 2018 |
| Go West | Buster Keaton | USA | 1925 |
| Goldstone | Ivan Sen | Australia | 2016 |
| Goodbye CP | Kazuo Hara | Japan | 1972 |
| Greed | Michael Winterbottom | UK | 2019 |
| Growing Up | Kun-ho Chen | Taiwan | 1983 |
| Guerillere Talks | Vivienne Dick | USA | 1978 |
| Gully Boy | Zoya Akhtar | India | 2019 |
| Hail Satan? | Penny Lane | USA | 2019 |
| Happiest Season | Clea DuVall | USA/Canada | 2020 |
| Heavy Burden | Yilmaz Özdil | North Kurdistan | 2019 |
| Her Wilderness | Frank Mosley | USA | 2014 |
| Heritage | Baran M. Reihani | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| Hidden Man | Jiang Wen | China | 2018 |
| His House | Remi Weekes | UK | 2020 |
| Honey Boy | Alma Ha’rel | USA | 2019 |
| Horse Girl | Jeff Baena | USA | 2020 |
| Hôtel Terminus: Klaus Barbie, sa vie et son temps | Marcel Ophuls | USA | 1988 |
| House | Nobuhiko Obayashi | Japan | 1977 |
| How Do You Know | James L Brooks | USA | 2010 |
| Hubie Halloween | Steven Brill | USA | 2020 |
| Hungry Soul | Yuzo Kawashima | Japan | 1956 |
| Hungry Soul, Part 2 | Yuzo Kawashima | Japan | 1956 |
| Hurrah, We Are Still Alive! | Agnieszka Polska | Poland | 2020 |
| hush! | Çaxe Nursel Doğan | North Kurdistan | 2018 |
| I am Raining Down into the City | Kasim Ördek | North Kurdistan | 2020 |
| I May Destroy You | Michaela Coel | UK/USA | 2020 |
| I Will Make You Mine | Lynn Chen | USA | 2020 |
| I’m Thinking of Ending Things | Charlie Kaufman | USA | 2020 |
| In My Room | Mati Diop | France/Italy | 2020 |
| In the Forest | Patricia Rozema | Canada | 2015 |
| In the Soup | Alexandre Rockwell | USA | 1992 |
| Inconvenient Indian | Michelle Latimer | Canada | 2020 |
| Indianara | Aude Chevalier-Beaumel and Marcelo Barbosa | Brazil | 2019 |
| Infinity Minus Infinity | The Otolith Group | UK | 2019 |
| Insidious | James Wan | USA/Canada | 2010 |
| IO | Jonathan Helpert | USA | 2019 |
| It Chapter 2 | Andy Muschietti | Canada/USA | 2019 |
| It Comes At Night | Trey Edward Shults | USA | 2017 |
| Je m’appelle humain | Kim O’Bomsawin | Canada | 2020 |
| Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich | Lisa Bryant | USA | 2020 |
| Jeremiah | Kenya Gillespie | USA | 2019 |
| Jojo Rabbit | Taika Waititi | New Zealand/Czechia/USA | 2019 |
| Journey to the Shore | Kiyoshi Kurosawa | Japan/France | 2015 |
| Judith of Bethulia | DW Griffith | USA | 1914 |
| Jumanji: The Next Level | Jake Kasdan | USA | 2019 |
| Jusqu’au déclin | Patrice Laliberté | Canada | 2020 |
| Just Mercy | Destin Daniel Cretton | USA | 2019 |
| Kajillionaire | Miranda July | USA | 2020 |
| Kal Ho Naa Ho | Nikkhil Advani | India | 2003 |
| Keteke | Peter Sedufia | Ghana | 2017 |
| Khavn on Kidlat | Khavn de la Cruz | Philippines | 2011 |
| Kin | Mila Zuo | USA | 2020 |
| Kingyo | Edmund Yeo | Japan | 2009 |
| Kmêdeus | Nuno Miranda | Cape Verde | 2020 |
| Kulob34 | Khavn de la Cruz | Philippines | 2009 |
| Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter | David Zellner | USA | 2014 |
| L’homme fidèle | Louis Garrel | France | 2018 |
| La batalla de Chile: La lucha de un pueblo sin armas – Tercera parte: El poder popular | Patricio Guzmán | Chile/Cuba/Venezuela | 1979 |
| La femme au couteau | Timité Bassori | Côte d’Ivoire | 1969 |
| La Gomera | Cristi Porumboiu | Romania/France/Germany | 2019 |
| La Maison du Bonheur | Sofia Bohdanowicz | Canada | 2017 |
| La Soledad | Jorge Thielen-Armand | Venezuela/Canada/Italy | 2016 |
| La Yuma | Florence Jaugey | Nicaragua/Mexico/Spain/France | 2009 |
| Lapsis | Noah Hutton | USA | 2020 |
| Las hijas del fuego | Albertina Carri | Argentina | 2018 |
| Last Holiday | Wayne Wang | USA | 2006 |
| Last Laugh | Tao Zhang | France/Hong Kong/China | 2017 |
| Last September | Gülsün Odabaş | Turkey | 2019 |
| Last Visit | Abdulmohsen Aldhabaan | Saudi Arabia | 2019 |
| Le jeune Ahmed | Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne | Belgium/France | 2019 |
| Lembro mais dos corvos | Gustavo Vinagre | Brazil | 2018 |
| Les confins du monde | Guillaume Nicloux | France | 2018 |
| Les Misérables | Ladj Ly | France | 2019 |
| Life Gone with the Wind | Siavash Saedpaneh | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| Liminal | Phiippe Grandrieux, Manuela De Laborde, Lav Diaz and Óscar Enríquez | Mexico/France | 2020 |
| Little Fires Everywhere | Liz Tigelaar | USA | 2020 |
| Little Joe | Jessica Hausner | Austria/UK/Germany/France | 2019 |
| Look the Other Way and Run | David Luke Rees | UK | 2020 |
| Los Salvajes | Alejandro Fadel | Argentina/Netherlands | 2012 |
| Los Tiburones | Lucía Garibaldi | Uruguay/Argentina/Spain | 2019 |
| Losing Ground | Kathleen Collins | USA | 1982 |
| Love in a Fallen City | Ann Hui | Hong Kong | 1984 |
| Lovecraft Country | Misha Green | USA | 2020 |
| Lovers Rock | Steve McQueen | UK | 2020 |
| Lucy in the Sky | Noah Hawley | USA | 2019 |
| Luka Chuppi | Laxman Utekar | India | 2019 |
| Lying Lips | Oscar Micheaux | USA | 1939 |
| Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom | George C Wolfe | USA | 2020 |
| Maggie | Yi Ok-seop | South Korea | 2018 |
| Maleficent | Robert Stromberg | USA | 2014 |
| Mangrove | Steve McQueen | UK | 2020 |
| Mank | David Fincher | USA | 2020 |
| Martin Eden | Pietro Marcello | Italy/France/Germany | 2019 |
| Mayhem | Joe Lynch | USA | 2017 |
| Mean Creek | Jacob Aaron Estes | USA | 2004 |
| Meetcute on Danceworld | Micah Khan | USA | 2020 |
| Memories To Choke On, Drinks To Wash Them Down | Kate Reilly and Leung Ming-kai | Hong Kong | 2019 |
| Menace II Society | The Hughes Brothers | USA | 1993 |
| Midnight Familiy | Luke Lorentzen | Mexico | 2019 |
| Midnight Traveller | Hassan Fazili | Qatar/UK/Canada/USA | 2019 |
| Mignonnes | Maïmouna Doucouré | France | 2020 |
| Mogul Mowgli | Bassam Tariq | UK/USA | 2020 |
| Monkey Beach | Loretta Todd | Canada | 2020 |
| Mother, I am Suffocating. This is My Last Film About You | Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese | Lesotho/Qatar | 2019 |
| Mudlove | Tero Peltoniemi | Finland | 2019 |
| Mulan | Niki Caro | USA/Canada/Hong Kong | 2020 |
| Munyurangabo | Lee Isaac Chung | Rwanda/USA | 2007 |
| My Brilliant Career | Gillian Armstrong | Australia | 1979 |
| My Brother Amal | Christopher Wollebekk | Norway | 2018 |
| My Cat | Imad Mahmadany | South Kurdistan | 2018 |
| My Octopus Teacher | Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed | South Africa | 2020 |
| My Prince Edward | Norris Yee-Lam Wong | Hong Kong | 2019 |
| Neomanila | Mikhail Red | Philippines | 2017 |
| Never Rarely Sometimes Always | Eliza Hittman | USA/UK | 2020 |
| New Jack City | Mario Van Peebles | USA | 1991 |
| Nina Wu | Midi Z | Taiwan/Malaysia/Myanmar | 2019 |
| No No Sleep | Tsai Ming-liang | Taiwan/Hong Kong | 2015 |
| Norman… Is That You? | George Schlatter | USA | 1976 |
| Nova Lituania | Karolis Kaupinis | Lithuania | 2019 |
| Now, at Last! | Ben Rivers | Brazil | 2018 |
| Number 37 | Nophiso Dumisa | South Africa | 2018 |
| NY, NY | Francis Thompson | USA | 1957 |
| O Órfão | Carolina Markowicz | Brazil | 2018 |
| Oklahoma! | Fred Zinnemann | USA | 1955 |
| On Body and Soul | Oscar Micheaux | Hungary | 2017 |
| On the Rocks | Sofia Coppola | USA | 2020 |
| One Says No | Dayong Zhao | China | 2016 |
| Only Cloud Knows | Feng Xiaogang | China | 2019 |
| Oración | Marisol Trujillo, Miriam Talavera and Pepín Rodríguez | Canada/Cuba | 1984 |
| Our Daily Bread | King Vidor | USA | 1934 |
| Our Town | Yuzo Kawashima | Japan | 1956 |
| Outcry and Whisper | Wen Hai, Jingyan Zeng and Trish McAdam | Hong Kong/China | 2020 |
| Oxhide II | Liu Jiayin | China | 2009 |
| Palm Springs | Max Barbakow | USA/Hong Kong | 2020 |
| Parasite | Joon-ho Bong | South Korea | 2019 |
| Pasqualino Settebellezze | Lina Wertmüller | Italy | 1975 |
| Passages | Lúcia Nagib and Samuel Paiva | UK | 2019 |
| Pink Wall | Tom Cullen | UK | 2019 |
| Pirotecnia | Carlos Federico Atehortúa Artuaga | Colombia | 2019 |
| Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Céline Sciamma | France | 2019 |
| Posse | Mario Van Peebles | UK/USA/Netherlands | 1993 |
| Possessor | Brandon Cronenberg | Canada/USA | 2020 |
| Present.Perfect. | Shengze Zhu | China/Hong Kong/USA | 2019 |
| Privilege | Yvonne Rainer | USA | 1990 |
| Puzzle | Marc Turtletaub | USA | 2018 |
| Qarib Qarib Singlle | Tanuja Chandra | India | 2017 |
| Quebramar | Cris Lyra | Brazil | 2019 |
| Queen & Slim | Melina Matsoukas | USA/Canada | 2019 |
| Rabbit in the Moon | Emiko Omori | USA | 1999 |
| Rebecca | Ben Wheatley | UK/USA | 2020 |
| Rebelle | Kim Nguyen | Canada | 2012 |
| Return | Selman Deniz | North Kurdistan/Armenia | 2020 |
| Rhymes for Young Ghouls | Jeff Barnaby | Canada | 2013 |
| Rojava | Emmanuel Temps, Hugo Voisin, Marien Bideplan, Guillermo Montoya | North Kurdistan | 2018 |
| Roll | Daichi Murase | Japan | 2020 |
| Rough Night | Lucia Aniello | USA | 2017 |
| Ruby | Juliet Ellis | UK | 2020 |
| Salaam Namaste | Siddharth Anand | India | 2005 |
| Saturne | Ulu Braun | Germany | 2020 |
| Seberg | Benedict Andrews | UK/USA | 2019 |
| Sennan Asbestos Disaster | Kazuo Hara | Japan | 2016 |
| Sense8 Season 1 | The Wachowskis and J Michael Straczynski | USA | 2015 |
| Sense8 Season 2 | The Wachowskis and J Michael Straczynski | USA | 2018 |
| Sete anos em maio | Affonso Uchôa | Brazil | 2019 |
| Seven Songs for Malcolm X | John Akomfrah | UK | 1993 |
| Shanghai Queer | Xiangqi Chen | China | 2019 |
| She Dies Tomorrow | Amy Seimetz | USA | 2020 |
| She’s Gotta Have It | Spike Lee | USA | 1986 |
| Sheikh Jackson | Amr Salama | Egypt | 2017 |
| Shouted from the Rooftops | Beri Shalmoshi | Netherlands | 2018 |
| Showan | Bijan Zarin | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| Siao Yu | Sylvia Chang | Taiwan | 1995 |
| Siberia | Abel Ferrara | Italy/Germany/Greece/Mexico | 2019 |
| Sidewalk Stories | Charles Lane | USA | 1989 |
| Slaughter | Aku Zandkarimi and Siman Hosseinpour | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| Slingshot Man | Wang Qiong | China | 2020 |
| Small Apartments | Jonas Åkerlund | USA | 2012 |
| So Pretty | Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli | USA/France | 2019 |
| Someone Great | Jennifer Kaytin Robinson | USA | 2019 |
| Sometimes Always Never | Carl Hunter | UK | 2018 |
| Somniloquies | Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor | France | 2017 |
| Special Actors | Shin’ichirô Ueda | Japan | 2019 |
| Stranger Things Season 2 | The Duffer Brothers | USA | 2017 |
| Stranger Things Season 3 | The Duffer Brothers | USA | 2019 |
| Strasbourg 1518 | Jonathan Glazer | UK | 2020 |
| Strong Island | Yance Ford | USA/Denmark | 2017 |
| Stuber | Michael Dowse | USA | 2019 |
| Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate | Yuzo Kawashima | Japan | 1957 |
| Supa Modo | Likarion Wainaina | Kenya/Germany | 2018 |
| Surviving The Game | Ernest R Dickerson | USA | 1994 |
| Suzaki Paradise: Red Light District | Yuzo Kawashima | Japan | 1956 |
| Swallow | Carlo Mirabella-Davis | USA/France | 2019 |
| Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One | William Greaves | USA | 1968 |
| System Crasher | Nora Fingscheidt | Germany | 2019 |
| Tabija | Igor Drljača | Canada/Bosnia and Herzegovina | 2021 |
| Tales from the Loop | Nathaniel Halpern and Matt Reeves | USA | 2020 |
| Tartuffe | F.W. Murnau | Germany | 1925 |
| Tenet | Christopher Nolan | UK/USA | 2020 |
| Terminal sud | Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche | France/Algeria | 2019 |
| Testament | Kamiran Betasi | South Kurdistan | 2019 |
| That Summer | Göran Hugo Olsson | Sweden/Denmark/USA | 2017 |
| The Archivists | Igor Drljača | Canada | 2020 |
| The Assistant | Kitty Green | USA | 2019 |
| The Bad Batch | Ana Lily Amirpour | USA | 2016 |
| The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 | Göran Hugo Olsson | Sweden/USA | 2011 |
| The Blue Eyes of Yonta | Flora Gomes | Guinea-Bissau/Portugal/etc | 1992 |
| The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open | Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn | Canada/Norway | 2019 |
| The Border Fence | Nikolaus Geyrhalter | Austria | 2018 |
| The Boys in the Band | Joe Mantello | USA | 2020 |
| The Brothers Grimsby | Louis Leterrier | UK/USA | 2016 |
| The Bucket | Jia Zhangke | China | 2019 |
| The Calming | Song Fang | China | 2020 |
| The Chess Players | Satyajit Ray | India | 1977 |
| The Colour Out of Space | Richard Stanley | USA/Malaysia/Portugal | 2019 |
| The Crack | Wake Li | China | 2000 |
| The Curse of Willow Song | Karen Lam | Canada | 2020 |
| The Devil All The Time | Antonio Campos | USA | 2020 |
| The Dictator | Larry Charles | USA | 2012 |
| The Elephant and the Sea | Woo Ming Jin | Malaysia/Netherlands | 2007 |
| The End of the World | August Blom | Denmark | 1916 |
| The End of Us | Henry Loevner and Steven Kanter | USA | 2020 |
| The Forty-Year-Old Version | Radha Blank | USA | 2020 |
| The Future | Miranda July | France/Germany/USA/UK | 2011 |
| The Gentlemen | Guy Ritchie | UK/USA | 2019 |
| The Ghost Who Walks | Cody Stokes | USA | 2019 |
| The Girl from Chicago | Oscar Micheaux | USA | 1932 |
| The Good Daughter | Wu Yu-ying | Taiwan | 2019 |
| The Great Debaters | Denzel Washington | USA | 2007 |
| The Great Pretender | Nathan Silver | USA | 2018 |
| The Guest | Adam Wingard | USA/UK | 2014 |
| The Half of It | Alice Wu | USA | 2020 |
| The Harvest | Misho Antadze | Georgia | 2019 |
| The Heart of Raqqa | Rita Duarte | UK | 2019 |
| The Hedonists | Jia Zhangke | China | 2016 |
| The Hunt | Craig Zobel | USA/Japan | 2020 |
| The Incredible 25th Year of Mitzi Bearclaw | Shelley Niro | Canada | 2019 |
| The Invisible Man | Leigh Whannell | Canada/Australia/USA | 2020 |
| The Invitation | Karyn Kusama | USA | 2015 |
| The Joy Luck Club | Wayne Wang | USA/China | 1993 |
| The Killing Floor | Bill Duke | USA | 1984 |
| The King of Staten Island | Judd Apatow | USA/Japan | 2020 |
| The Last Angel of History | John Akomfrah | UK/Germany | 1996 |
| The Last Thing He Wanted | Dee Rees | USA | 2020 |
| The Lighthouse | Robert Eggers | Canada/USA/Brazil | 2019 |
| The Lodge | Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala | UK/USA/Canada | 2019 |
| The Lovebirds | Michael Showalter | USA | 2020 |
| The Mandarin Tree | Cengiz Akaygün | Germany | 2018 |
| The Meddler | Lorene Scafaria | USA | 2015 |
| The Midnight Sky | George Clooney | USA | 2020 |
| The Names Have Changed Includine My Own and Truths Have Been Altered | Onyeka Igwe | UK | 2020 |
| The Nest | Sean Durkin | UK/Canada | 2020 |
| The New Hope 2 | William Brown | UK/USA | 2020 |
| The Old Guard | Gina Prince-Bythewood | USA | 2020 |
| The Other Side of the Wind | Orson Welles | France/Iran/USA | 2018 |
| The Pattern | Azad Jannati | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| The Personal History of David Copperfield | Armando Ianucci | UK/USA | 2019 |
| The Plagiarists | Peter Parlow | USA | 2019 |
| The Pleasure of Being Robbed | Josh Safdie | USA | 2008 |
| The Queen of Versailles | Lauren Greenfield | USA/Netherlands/UK/Denmark | 2012 |
| The Queen’s Gambit | Scott Frank | USA | 2020 |
| The Red Phallus | Tashi Gyeltshen | Bhutan/Germany/Nepal | 2018 |
| The Rice Dumpling Vendors | Xin Qi | Taiwan | 1969 |
| The Sandbox Has No Limits | Alex Zandi | USA | 2020 |
| The Shepherd | Brwa Vahapur | Norway/France/Denmark/Sweden | 2019 |
| The Sleeping Negro | Skinner Myers | USA | 2021 |
| The Social Dilemma | Jeff Orlowski | USA | 2020 |
| The Spook Who Sat by the Door | Ivan Dixon | USA | 1973 |
| The Sprinkle | Volkan Uludağ | North Kurdistan | 2019 |
| The Staggering Girl | Luca Guadagnino | Italy | 2019 |
| the State we are in | Savas Boyraz with Mahkum Abi | Sweden | 2019 |
| The Stepford Wives | Bryan Forbes | USA | 1975 |
| The Story of a Three Day Pass | Melvin Van Peebles | France | 1968 |
| The Summer of the Swans | Maryam Samadi | East Kurdistan | 2019 |
| The Terrorizers | Edward Yang | Taiwan | 1986 |
| The Tree House | Minh Quý Truong | Vietnam/Singapore/France/Germany/China | 2019 |
| The Trial of the Chicago 7 | Aaron Sorkin | USA/UK/India | 2020 |
| The Trip to Greece | Michael Winterbottom | UK | 2020 |
| The Two Lives of Li Ermao | Jia Yuchuan | China/UK | 2019 |
| The Wailing | Na Hong-jin | South Korea/USA | 2016 |
| The Widowed Witch | Cai Chengjie | China | 2017 |
| The Worn Beak of the Crow | Ömer Ferhat Özmen | North Kurdistan | 2018 |
| The Wrong Missy | Tyler Spindel | USA | 2020 |
| The Zone | Joe Swanberg | USA | 2011 |
| Thelma | Joachim Trier | Norway/France/Denmark/Sweden | 2017 |
| There was a Country | Hebun Polasi | West Kurdistan | 2018 |
| Thugs of Hindostan | Vijay Krishna Acharya | India | 2018 |
| Thunderbolt in Mine Eye | Sarah Sherman and Zachary Ray Sherman | USA | 2020 |
| Thursday Appointment | Sayed Mohammad Reza Kheradmandan | Iran | 2019 |
| Tigertail | Alan Yang | USA | 2020 |
| Time | Garrett Bradley | USA | 2020 |
| Transit | Christian Petzold | Germany/France | 2018 |
| Trousers | Tahsin Özmen | North Kurdistan | 2019 |
| True History of the Kelly Gang | Justin Kurzel | Australia/UK/France | 2019 |
| True North | Eiji Han Shimizu | Japan/Indonesia | 2020 |
| Two Ends of a Bridge | Muhammed Seyyid Yildiz | North Kurdistan | 2019 |
| Two Men in Manhattan | Jean-Pierre Melville | France | 1959 |
| Two Plains + A Fancy | Whitney Horn and Lev Kalman | USA | 2018 |
| Una | Benedict Andrews | UK/Canada/USA | 2016 |
| Uncut Gems | Benny and Josh Safdie | USA | 2019 |
| Underwater | William Eubank | USA | 2020 |
| Undine | Christian Petzold | Germany/France | 2020 |
| Utu | Geoff Murphy | New Zealand | 1983 |
| Violet | Bas Devos | Belgium/Netherlands | 2014 |
| Vitalina Varela | Pedro Costa | Portugal | 2019 |
| Vivarium | Lorcan Finnegan | Ireland/Belgium/Denmark/Canada | 2019 |
| Walker | Tsai Ming-liang | Hong Kong | 2012 |
| Wasp Network | Olivier Assayas | France/Brazil/Spain/Belgium | 2019 |
| Watchmen | Damon Lindelof | USA | 2019 |
| Watermelon Man | Melvin Van Peebles | USA | 1970 |
| Waves | Trey Edward Schults | USA/Canada | 2019 |
| We Go Way Back | Lynn Shelton | USA | 2006 |
| Weathering With You | Makoto Shinkai | Japan/China | 2019 |
| Welcome to Leith | Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K Walker | USA | 2015 |
| What Did Jack Do? | David Lynch | USA | 2017 |
| Where’d You Go, Bernadette | Richard Linklater | USA | 2019 |
| White Chicks | Keenen Ivory Wayans | USA | 2004 |
| White Rabbit | Daryl Wein | USA | 2018 |
| Wisdom Tooth | Liang Ming | China | 2019 |
| Wolf Creek | Greg McLean | Australia | 2005 |
| Women Is Losers | Lissette Feliciano | USA | 2021 |
| Wrath of Silence | Xin Yukun | China | 2017 |
| Year of the Woman | Sandra Hochman | USA | 1973 |
| Yellow Rose | Diane Paragas | Philippines/USA | 2019 |
| Your Highness | David Gordon Green | USA | 2011 |
| Zeinab on the Scooter | Dima El-horr | Lebanon | 2019 |
| Zombies | Baloji | DRC/Belgium | 2019 |
And here you go for 2019 (with just titles and directors):-
| 13th (Ava DuVernay)* |
| 1991=HERE AND NOW (Vladimir Kobrin) |
| 24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami)* |
| 36 Hours (Adam Sekuler)* |
| A Family Tour (Ying Liang) |
| A Moon for My Father (Mania Akbari and Douglas White) |
| A Private War (Matthew Heinemann) |
| A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper) |
| A Story from Africa (Billy Woodberry)* |
| A Woman is a Woman (Maisy Goosy Suen)* |
| Abrázame como antes (Jurgen Ureña) |
| Ad Astra (James Gray) |
| Adoption (Márta Mészáros)* |
| Afrique, je te plumerai (Jean-Marie Téno)* |
| Agarrando pueblo (Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo)* |
| Ali, the Goat, and Ibrahim (Sherif Elbendary)* |
| Aliens of the Deep (James Cameron and Steven Quale)* |
| Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez) |
| All Good Things (Andrew Jarecki)* |
| All The Light in the World (Joe Swanberg)* |
| Always Be My Maybe (Nahnatchka Khan)* |
| Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack) |
| American Factory (Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert)* |
| Anima (Paul Thomas Anderson)* |
| Anniversary of the Revolution (Dziga Vertov/Broomberg & Chanarin) |
| Antes del olvido (Iria Gómez Concheiro)* |
| Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller) |
| Aquarela (Viktor Kossakovsky) |
| Arábia (Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans)* |
| Aristotle’s Plot (Jean-Pierre Bekolo)* |
| Art History (Joe Swanberg)* |
| As duas Irenes (Fabio Meira)* |
| At Eternity’s Gate (Julian Schnabel) |
| Atlantique (Mati Diop) |
| Atmospheres (Sophia Jaworski) |
| Au Poste! (Quentin Dupieux)* |
| Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa) |
| Avengers: Endgame (Anthony and Joe Russo) |
| Babylon (Franco Rosso)* |
| Bad Black (Nabwana IGG) |
| Badiou (Rohan Kalyan and Gorav Kalyan) |
| Bait (Mark Jenkin) |
| Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)* |
| Beats (Brian Welsh) |
| Becoming Animal (Peter Mettler and Emma Davie) |
| Belmonte (Federico Veiroj)+ |
| Benjamin (Simon Amstell) |
| Between Two Ferns: The Movie (Scott Aukerman)* |
| Beyond the Black Rainbow (Panos Cosmatos) |
| Bicentennial Man (Chris Columbus)^ |
| Biopotentials (Vladimir Kobrin) |
| Blinded by the Light (Gurinder Chadha) |
| Blue Amber (Jie Zhou)+ |
| Blue Story (Rapman) |
| Booksmart (Olivia Wilde) |
| Border (Ali Abbasi) |
| Born Bone Born (Toshiyuki Teruya) |
| Boy (Taika Waititi)* |
| Boy Erased (Joel Edgerton) |
| Bright Future (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)* |
| Brightburn (David Yarovesky) |
| Brittany Runs a Marathon (Paul Downs Colaizzo) |
| Brothers of the Night (Patric Chiha)* |
| Bumblebee (Travis Knight) |
| Burning (Lee Chang-dong) |
| Burning Cane (Phillip Youmans)* |
| Butter on the Latch (Josephine Decker)* |
| By The Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong)* |
| Campo (Tiago Hespanha) |
| Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller) |
| Capernaum (Nadine Labaki) |
| Captain Marvel (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck) |
| Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey)* |
| Carrie (Kimberly Peirce)* |
| Chained for Life (Aaron Schimberg) |
| Charlie’s Angels (Elizabeth Banks) |
| China’s Van Goghs (Yu Haibo and Kiki Tianqi Yu) |
| Churchill and the Movie Mogul (John Fleet) |
| Chuva é Cantoria na Aldeia dos Mortos (João Salaviza & Renée Nader Messora) |
| Cielo (Alison McAlpine) |
| Circumstance (Maryam Keshavarz)^ |
| Claire’s Camera (Hong Sang-soo)* |
| Clando (Jean-Marie Téno)* |
| Class Relations (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub) |
| Colour Me True (Hideki Takeuchi) |
| Como Fernando Pessoa salvou Portugal (Eugène Green)* |
| Cómprame un revólver (Julio Hernández Cordón)* |
| Crawl (Alexandre Aja) |
| Creed II (Steven Caple Jr)+ |
| Crystal Gazing (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen) |
| Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (Spike Lee)* |
| Dark Passage (Delmer Daves)^ |
| Dead Horse Nebula (Tarık Aktaş)* |
| Deep Impact (Mimi Leder)* |
| Destroyer (Karyn Kusama) |
| Diagnosis (Ewa Podgórska) |
| Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt) |
| Dil Dhadakne Do (Zoya Akhtar)* |
| Dirty God (Sacha Polak) |
| Docteur Chance (FJ Ossang)* |
| Dolemite Is My Name (Craig Brewer)* |
| Dolor y Gloria (Pedro Almodóvar) |
| Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot (Gus Van Sant)* |
| Donbass (Sergei Loznitsa) |
| Doubles vies (Olivier Assayas)+ |
| Dragged Across Concrete (S Craig Zahler) |
| Dragonfly Eyes (Xu Bing)^ |
| Drift (Helena Wittman)* |
| Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) |
| El color que cayó del cielo (Sérgio Wolf)* |
| El incendio (Juan Schnitman)* |
| En rachâchant (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub) |
| Entre dos aguas (Isaki Lacuesta) |
| Escape in the Fog (Budd Boetticher)^ |
| Europa 2005, 27 Octobre (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet) |
| Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (David Yates) |
| Fifi Howls From Happiness (Mitra Farahani)* |
| Fighting With my Family (Stephen Merchant) |
| Finis Terrae (Jean Epstein) |
| Flame in the Streets (Roy Ward Baker) |
| Fly By Night (Zahir Omar)+ |
| For Sama (Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts) |
| Four Springs (Lu Qingyi) |
| Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz) |
| Free Solo (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin) |
| Freedom Fields (Naziha Arebi) |
| From Its Mouth Came a River of High-End Residential Appliances (Wangshui)* |
| Frost (Sharunas Bartas)* |
| Fugue (Agnieszka Smoczyńska)* |
| Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto)* |
| Gemini Man (Ang Lee) |
| Girl (Lukas Dhont) |
| Glass (M Night Shyamalan) |
| Gloria Bell (Sebastián Lelio) |
| Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Michael Dougherty) |
| Golden Exits (Alex Ross Perry)* |
| Goryeojang (Kim Ki-young) |
| Grâce à Dieu (François Ozon) |
| Green Book (Peter Farrelly) |
| Greta (Neil Jordan) |
| Hale County This Morning This Evening (RaMell Ross) |
| Half of a Yellow Sun (Biyi Bandele)* |
| Hanagatami (Nobuhiko Obayashi)* |
| Hanoi martes 13 (Santiago Alvarez)* |
| Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher) |
| Happy Hour (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)* |
| Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (Ben Wheatley)* |
| Harriet (Kasi Lemmons) |
| Heaven on Earth (Alfred Schirokauer) |
| Here For Life (Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Adrian Jackson) |
| High Fantasy (Jenna Bass)^ |
| High Flying Bird (Steven Soderbergh)* |
| High Life (Claire Denis) |
| History Lessons (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet) |
| Homecoming (Beyoncé Carter-Knowles and Ed Burke)* |
| Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov) |
| Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria) |
| I Am Easy to Find (Mike Mills)* |
| Ieoh Island (Kim Ki-young) |
| If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins) |
| IJspaard (Elan Gamaker)^ |
| In Between (Maysaloun Hamoud)* |
| In Fabric (Peter Strickland) |
| In the Claws of a Century Wanting (Jewel Maranan) |
| In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison) |
| Inland Sea (Kazuhiro Soda)* |
| Integrity (Alan Mak) |
| Internationale (Alexander Shein) |
| Investigating My Father (Wu Wenguang) |
| Island of the Hungry Ghosts (Gabrielle Brady)* |
| James White (Josh Mond)* |
| Joachim Gatti (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet) |
| John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (Julien Faraut) |
| John Wick 3: Parabellum (Chad Stahelski) |
| Joker (Todd Phillips) |
| Judy (Rupert Goold) |
| Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (Karan Johar)* |
| Kadvi Hawa (Nila Madhab Panda)+ |
| Karwaan (Akarsh Hurani)+ |
| Knives Out (Rian Johnson) |
| Knock Down The House (Rachel Lears)* |
| L’enfant secret (Philippe Garrel)* |
| L’exilé (Marcelo Novais Teles)* |
| La Belle Noise (William Brown) |
| La camarista (Lila Avilés) |
| La Cordillera de Sueños (Patricio Guzmán) |
| La libertad (Laura Huertas Millán)* |
| La película infinita (Leandro Listorti)* |
| La religieuse (Jacques Rivette) |
| La société du spectacle (Guy Debord)^ |
| La villa (Robert Guédiguian) |
| Lagaan (Ashutosh Gowariker)* |
| Land of the Lost (Brad Silberling)^ |
| Last Exit to Kai-Tek (Matthew Torne) |
| Late Night (Nisha Ganatra) |
| Le choc du futur (Marc Collin) |
| Le Daim (Quentin Dupieux) |
| Le film est déjà commencé? (Maurice Lemaître)^ |
| Le Franc (Djibril Diop Mambéty) |
| Le Mans ’66 (James Mangold) |
| Le monde du silence (Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle)* |
| Le monde est à toi (Romain Gavras) |
| Les amants criminels (François Ozon)* |
| Les éternels (Pierre-Yves Vanderweerd)* |
| Les Saignantes (Jean-Pierre Bekolo)* |
| Leto (Kirill Serebrennikov)* |
| Liquid Crystal Effects (Timo Menke) |
| Little Women (Greta Gerwig) |
| Long Day’s Journey Into Night 3D (Bi Gan) |
| Long Shot (Jonathan Levine) |
| Lore (Sky Hopinka)* |
| Loro (Paolo Sorrentino) |
| Los guantes mágicos (Martín Rejtman)* |
| Lost Land (Pierre-Yves Vanderweerd)* |
| Love Education (Sylvia Chang)* |
| Lovely Rita (Jessica Hausner)^ |
| Luce (Julius Onah) |
| Ludwig (Luchino Visconti)* |
| Maborosi (Kore-eda Hirokazu) |
| Machorka-Muff (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet)* |
| Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker) |
| Man and the Ocean (Alexander Shein) |
| Manmarziyaan (Anurag Kashyap)+ |
| Manta Ray (Phuttiphong Aroonpheng)* |
| Mar (Dominga Sotomayor Castillo)* |
| March on, Land of Mine (Alexander Shein) |
| Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach) |
| Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke) |
| Matango (Ishirō Honda)* |
| Matar a Jesús (Laura Mora Ortega)+ |
| Matthias & Maxime (Xavier Dolan) |
| Me The Terrible (Josephine Decker)* |
| Mean Girls (Mark Waters)* |
| Meeting Gorbachev (Werner Herzog and André Singer) |
| Meili (Zhou Zhou) |
| Mektoub My Love: Canto Uno (Abdellatif Kechiche) |
| Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen (Hepi Mita)* |
| Mercuriales (Virgil Vernier)* |
| Meteor Storm (Tibor Takács)^ |
| Mi piel, luminosa (Gabino Rodríguez and Nicolás Pereda)* |
| Midsommar (Ari Aster) |
| Mimesis: African Soldier (John Akomfrah)> |
| Minding the Gap (Bing Liu) |
| Mira (Denis Shabaev) |
| Monos (Alejandro Landes) |
| Monsters vs Aliens (Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon)^ |
| Mughal-e-Azam (K. Asif) |
| Muna Moto (Jean-Pierre Dikongué Pipa) |
| Museo (Alonso Ruizpalacios) |
| My Twentieth Century (Ildikó Enyedi)* |
| Nam June Paik> |
| Native (Daniel Fitzsimmons)* |
| Ne Zha (Jiaozi) |
| Ni le ciel, ni la terre (Clément Cogitore)* |
| Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (Hong Sang-soo)* |
| Normal (Adele Tulli) |
| Nothing Sacred (William A Wellman)* |
| NOW! (Santiago Alvarez)* |
| Nuestro tiempo (Carlos Reygadas)* |
| Nước 2030 (Nguyễn Võ Nghiêm Minh)* |
| Obsession (Brian De Palma) |
| Ode to My Father (JK Youn)^ |
| Of Horses and Men (Benedikt Erlingsson)* |
| Of Time and the Sea (Peter Sant) |
| Official Secrets (Gavin Hood) |
| On the Basis of Sex (Mimi Leder) |
| Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino) |
| Öndög (Wang Quanan)* |
| One Child Nation (Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang) |
| One Cut of the Dead (Shinichirou Ueda) |
| Our House (Yui Kiyohara)* |
| Our Idiot Brother (Jesse Peretz)* |
| Our March (Alexander Shein) |
| Out Of Blue (Carol Morley) |
| Overseas (Yoon Sung-A)* |
| Pájaros de verano (Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra) |
| Paper Heart (Nicholas Jasenovec)^ |
| Pariah (Dee Rees)* |
| Peace (Kazuhiro Soda)* |
| Pendular (Júlia Murat)* |
| Permission (Soheil Beiraghi) |
| Pig (Mani Haghighi)* |
| Pity (Babis Makridis)* |
| Private Life (Tamara Jenkins)* |
| Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (Angela Robinson)* |
| Prophesy of Present Value (Maya Nadine Billig) |
| Rafiki (Wanuri Kahiu)* |
| Rampage (Brad Peyton)+ |
| Rapado (Martín Rejtman)* |
| Ray & Liz (Richard Billingham) |
| RBG (Betsy West and Julie Cohen) |
| Reality Bites (Ben Stiller)* |
| Right Now Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo)* |
| Rojo (Benjamín Naishtat) |
| Samouni Road (Stefano Savona) |
| Sauvage (Camille Vidal-Naquet) |
| Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (André Øvredal) |
| Seachd – The Inaccessible Pinnacle (Simon Miller)* |
| Self-Organization in Biological Systems (Vladimir Kobrin) |
| Self-portrait and three women (Zhang Mengji)* |
| Self-Portrait at 47km (Zhang Mengji)* |
| Self-Portrait: Window in 47km (Zhang Mengji) |
| Selfie (Agostino Ferrente) |
| Señoritas (Lina Rodríguez)* |
| Shakti (Martín Rejtman)* |
| Shazam! 3D (David Sandberg) |
| Sicilia! (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub) |
| So Long, My Son (Wang Xiaoshuai) |
| Sol negro (Laura Huertas Millán)* |
| Song of the Homeland (Alexander Shein) |
| Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach) |
| Soufra (Thomas Morgan)+ |
| Space is the Place (John Coney)* |
| Space Tourists (Christian Frei)* |
| Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts) |
| Spoor (Agnieszka Holland)* |
| Spread (David Mackenzie)* |
| Spring of the Korean Peninsula (Lee Byung-il) |
| Stan & Ollie (Jon S Baird) |
| Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Leonard Nimoy)^ |
| Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (JJ Abrams) |
| Stockholm My Love (Mark Cousins)* |
| Stones Have Laws (Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan) |
| Stranger Things: Season 1 (The Duffer Brothers)* |
| Summer of Changsha (Zu Feng) |
| Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino)^ |
| Talking About Trees (Suhaib Gasmelbari) |
| Tarde para morir joven (Dominga Sotomayor Castillo) |
| Tehran: City of Love (Ali Jaberansari) |
| Teknolust (Lynn Hershman Leeson)^ |
| Temblores (Jayro Bustamante) |
| Tempo comum (Susana Nobre) |
| Ten Years (Kwok Zune, Wong Fei-pang, Jevons Au, Chow Kwun-Wai and Ng Ka-leung)* |
| Terminator: Dark Fate (Tim Miller) |
| Terra Franca (Leonor Teles) |
| The Admiral: Roaring Currents (Kim Han-min)* |
| The Arch (Tang Shu-shuen)* |
| The Beach Bum (Harmony Karine) |
| The Beguiled (Don Siegel)* |
| The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned from a Mythical Man (Tommy Avellone)+ |
| The Boy Who Liked Deer (Barbara Loden)* |
| The Burning (Isabella Martin) |
| The Captain (Andrew Lau) |
| The Circle (James Ponsoldt)* |
| The Clock (Christian Marclay)> [10.02-20.45,except about 18.00-18.15] |
| The Cotton Club (Francis Coppola)* |
| The Creeping Garden (Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp)* |
| The Crossing (Bai Xue) |
| The Day After (Hong Sang-soo)* |
| The Day Shall Come (Chris Morris) |
| The Devil Outside (Andrew Hulme) |
| The Drum Tower (Fan Popo) |
| The End of the Track (Mou Tun-fei) |
| The Farewell (Lulu Wang) |
| The First Foot (Goderdzi Chokheli) |
| The Frontier Experience (Barbara Loden)* |
| The Great Hack (Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer)* |
| The Hate U Give (George Tillman Jr)+ |
| The Infiltrators (Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera) |
| The Irishman (Martin Scorsese) |
| The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo) |
| The Kinetics of Biological Processes (Vladimir Kobrin) |
| The King (David Michôd)* |
| The Kitchen (Andrea Berloff) |
| The Knife Sharpener (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub) |
| The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot) |
| The Last Dream of Anatoli Vasilievich (Vladimir Kobrin) |
| The Last Tree (Shola Amoo) |
| The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh)* |
| The Lion King (Jon Favreau) |
| The Loveless (Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery)* |
| The Man Who Cuts Tattoos (Michael Omonua)* |
| The Myth of the American Sleepover (David Robert Mitchell)* |
| The Navigator (Donald Crisp and Buster Keaton)* |
| The Needle (Rashid Nugmanov)* |
| The Night Before the Strike (Lee Eun, Lee Jae-gu, Chang Younhyun and Chang Dong-hong) |
| The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent) |
| The O.A.: Season 1 (Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling)* |
| The O.A.: Season 2 (Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling)* |
| The Party (Sally Potter)* |
| The Peanut Butter Falcon (Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz) |
| The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (Sophie Fiennes)^ |
| The Price of Everything (Nathaniel Kahn) |
| The Purge (James DeMonaco)* |
| The Purge: Anarchy (James DeMonaco)* |
| The Purge: Election Year (James DeMonaco)* |
| The Quiet Earth (Geoffrey Murphy)* |
| The Raft (Marcus Lindeen)* |
| The Report (Scott Z Burns)* |
| The Rib (Zhang Wei) |
| The Road to Mother (Akan Satayev) |
| The Science of Mechanics (Vladimir Kobrin) |
| The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard) |
| The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)* |
| The Spy Who Dumped Me (Susanna Fogel)* |
| The Subject Matter and Tasks of Biophysics (Vladimir Kobrin) |
| The Times of Harvey Milk (Rob Epstein)^ |
| The Trial (Sergei Loznitsa) |
| The Two Popes (Fernando Meirelles)* |
| The Wandering Earth (Frant Gwo)+ |
| The Warden (Nima Javidi)* |
| The Warriors (Walter Hill) |
| The Wayfarer (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub) |
| The Wedding Guest (Michael Winterbottom) |
| The White Crow (Ralph Fiennes) |
| The Wiz (Sidney Lumet)* |
| They Shall Not Grow Old (Peter Jackson)* |
| Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (Josephine Decker)* |
| Though I Am Gone (Hu Jie)* |
| Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle) |
| Thunder Road (Jim Cummings) |
| Tlamess (Ala Eddine Slim)* |
| Todos lo saben (Asghar Farhadi) |
| Tomorrow Is Another Day (Chan Tai-Li)+ |
| Too Early, Too Late (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet) |
| Too Late for History to End (Kalle Sanner and Karl Palmås) |
| Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley) |
| Triumph (Kaveh Abbasian) |
| Umbrella Diaries: The First Umbrella (James Leong)^ |
| Un amour impossible (Catherine Corsini) |
| Un couteau dans le cœur (Yann Gonzalez)* |
| Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell)* |
| Une saison en France (Mahamet Saleh-Haroun) |
| Us (Jordan Peele) |
| Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn)* |
| Vanishing Waves (Kristina Buožytė)* |
| Varda par Agnès (Agnès Varda) |
| Velvet Buzzsaw (Dan Gilroy)* |
| Vice (Adam McKay) |
| Victory Day (Sergei Loznitsa)* |
| VMayakovsky (Alexander Shein Jr) |
| Vox Lux (Brady Corbet) |
| Vuelven (Issa López) |
| Vulnicura VR (Björk/Andrew Thomas Huang) |
| Walking Past the Future (Li Ruijun)+ |
| Wanda (Barbara Loden)* |
| We The Animals (Jeremiah Zagar) |
| Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (Wes Craven)* |
| What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire? (Roberto Minervini) |
| Where Chimneys Are Seen (Heinusoke Gosho) |
| White Boy Rick (Yann Demange)+ |
| Wild Rose (Tom Harper) |
| William Shakespeare’s Shitstorm (Lloyd Kaufman) |
| Wolf Warrior (Wu Jing)* |
| Woman at War (Benedikt Erlingsson) |
| Workers, Peasants (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub) |
| X-Men: Dark Phoenix (Simon Kinberg) |
| XY Chelsea (Tim Travers Hawkins) |
| Yara (Abbas Fahdel)* |
| Yesterday (Danny Boyle) |
| Yurigokoro (Naoto Kumazawa) |
| Zoe (Drake Doremus)* |
| Zombi Child (Bertrand Bonello)* |
| Zombieland: Double Tap (Ruben Fleischer) |
begstealborrowfilms.com 