itmemes
Yes, there is life beyond superheroes and other blockbusters, and you may not be paying too much attention.
We help you!
No, this is not a list to tell you that you should stop watching blockbusters.
On the contrary: in case it is not noticed, in PHOTOS we love them. In this list, you can find some of the best films of the year. In a beautiful demonstration of the excellent health that independent cinema enjoys.
1- The truth
For the first time, the Japanese Hirokazu Koreeda leaves the borders of his country. To direct the French film with Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, and Ethan Hawke.
The result is dazzling. A reflection on the relationship between art and life, between reality and fiction. It’s a history of medicine between shootings and rehearsals.
2- Portrait of a woman on fire
Céline Sciamma has signed one of the great cinematographic masterpieces of Last Year.
In it, she shows us two women floating between the original and the copy, between the truth and the representation.
While merging into a love story it’s composed of looks, silences, and gestures. An overwhelming, dazzling film with some images worthy of being hung in a museum.
3- Until forever, my son
Wang Xiaoshuai has composed an essential Chinese chronicle with this film. One that takes us to the ’80s by the hand of two marriages.
With which we go through the nearly three decades that separate us from understanding the situation of the country today.
4- Liberté
The always irreverent Albert Serra has again amazed this year.
The Catalan takes us back to the past. A few years before the French Revolution, it tells us the routines of a group of libertines fleeing from the ultraconservative government of Louis XVI. Its mission: export debauchery to Germany.
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5th- Century
Best Argentine film in BAFICI, this film by Lucio Castro. Its a small wonder that plays with time, memories, and different forms of love.
A film that goes one step beyond Andrew Haigh’s ‘Weekend’ to reflect on how love relationships evolve, especially between two men.
6- Where is my body?
Netflix has released this year’s films as commented as ‘ The Irish ‘ or ‘ Story of a Marriage. But this animated French jewel that the platform acquired at the Cannes Festival has stolen our hearts.
With a somewhat strange premise (an amputated hand that escapes from a laboratory in search of its body). It stands as an exploration of the loss and the search for one’s own identity.
7- A great woman (Beanpole)
As bright as it is devastating, this Russian film directed by Kantemir Balagov takes us to Leningrad in 1945. Where the effects of World War II lived on the streets of the city.
Misery reaches the lives of two women, who try to get ahead.
8- The traitor
You had never been told about the rise and fall of the Italian Cosa Nostra, as Marco Bellocchio does in this amazing film. The Italian director composes an unchallenged chronicle of how Tommaso Buscetta ( Pierfrancesco Favino ).
Finally revealed all the secrets of the most powerful Italian mafia. And won the enmity of a clan to which he used to belong.
9- Blinded by the light
It was time for someone to dedicate a musical to Bruce Springsteen.
The singer and his songs inspire the story of the protagonist of this film by Gurinder Chadha (‘ I want to be like Beckham ‘). On the other side of the Atlantic, in England, and within a Hindu family who does not understand why The Chief has become the new God of young Javed.
10- Ray & Liz
Photographer Richard Billingham has always worked with his family memories.
Thus, some of his most famous photographs have inspired his first film opera. A portrait of his disastrous parents wallowing in misery and filth on the outskirts of the English city of Birmingham. A blunt film and difficult to digest.
11- The wretched
This is not another adaptation of the musical that Tom Hooper took to the big screen in 2012. But a rereading of Victor Hugo’s classic from the Parisian suburbs of today.
The debutant Ladj Ly draws his own experiences of crime. In those areas on the outskirts of the French capital to compose an intense. And sweeping ‘ Training Day ‘ thriller, where violent outbursts take your breath away.
12- The daughter of a thief
The debut of Belén Funes is ravishing, largely, by the relationship between its two protagonists, father, and daughter, both in reality and in fiction.
Eduard Fernández and Greta Fernández lead this story of poverty, survival, and ‘daddy issues’ with incredible forcefulness. As much as that of the director in one of the best national films of the year.
13- Longa Noite
Galician filmmaker Eloy Enciso has signed one of the most suggestive films of the year in our country, and, yes, about the Civil War and Franco.
But the way he tells us about that era has nothing to do with what we have seen so far. It is a film that speaks from literature, in a state of deep meditation, playing with image and sound, with facts and memories.
14- The audition
Nina Hoss won the Best Actress award in the last edition of the San Sebastian Festival with this titanic interpretation of a music teacher who becomes obsessed with the talent of one of her students, to the world that her personal life, as Mother and wife, is just staggering.
A blunt film from the German Ina Weisse.
15- Wall Street scammers
You never have to judge a book by its cover, and there is no film to which this saying can be applied more in last year than to Lorene Scafaria’s.
With a cast led by Constance Wu and Jennifer López, it’s a true story about strippers who, during an economic crisis, decided to take revenge against Wall Street in their own way.
16- One cut of the dead
Without a doubt, the horniest and most unexpected movie of the year.
Become a phenomenon in Japan, where they claim it as their own ‘ Zombies party, ‘this film by Shinichirô Ueda plays with medicine and zombies to make us laugh nonstop.
A love letter to the art of making movies, especially gender.
17- The Farewell
It is one of the big bets of North American indie cinema this year, although in Spain we have not paid much attention to it.
The debut in the direction of Lulu Wang starts from a very personal story, that of his own family and his conflictive relationship with his Chinese roots.
That conflict is what Awkwafina adopts in fiction, with an emotional, honest, and fun film.
18- Amazing Grace
Alan Elliot had a mission: to recover the recordings that Sydney Pollack made of Aretha Franklin’s performances in January 1972 (and that would be the origin of his famous album ‘Amazing Grace’ and turn them into a documentary that everyone could enjoy.
The result is an overwhelming, intense, and exciting documentary, ninety minutes of pure musical pleasure.
19- Super nerds
Female superstar of ‘ Supersalidos ‘ for the contemporary world, this film (debut in the direction of actress Olivia Wilde ) gives off so much joy, youth, and feminism that it can only be considered one of the great cinematographic miracles of the year.
His teenage comedy is full of reflection, of a hard but conscious look at two young women at a turning point in their lives and the friendship they share. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are plethoric.
20- What burns
The Galician film, signed by the promising Oliver Laxe (‘ Mimosas ‘), is an explosion for the eyes and senses, a chronicle of a fire that burns the screen.
How close the fire chamber is, which at the same time destroys and purifies the wetlands of Galicia.
21- Atlantique
Released on Netflix in Spain, Mati Diop’s debut opera stands as one of the most interesting films of the year.
Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival, tells the story of impossible love between two young people with the crisis of African refugees in the background and a surprising development that will take us to supernatural touches.
22- Letters to Paul Morrissey
In this collection of short films, Armand Rovira and Saida Benzal write letters to the member of the New York Factory Paul Morrissey, while looking for the meaning of life in places like the Valley of the Fallen, movies like ‘Chelsea Girls’ or songs by François Hardy.
23- In the 90s
Who would have said that Jonah Hill had a magnificent director?
With this film, the actor of ‘Supersalidos’ and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ has debuted behind the cameras, and the result could not have been better.
A ‘coming-of-age’ in a poor neighborhood, where skating becomes the escape route of its shy protagonist.
24- The stillness
The Argentine Pablo Trapero returns to immerse himself in reflections on the family in this amazing film, in which two sisters will have to live together on the family farm (which gives its name to the film) when his father suffers a heart attack and stays in a coma.
25- Border
One of the strangest and most irreverent movies of the year. Directed by Ali Abbasi, she was nominated for an Oscar (for Best Makeup).
Established as one of the titles of the season, with a love story between two fantastic and different beings looking for their place in the world.
26- Sunset
The director of the Oscar-winning ‘ The Son of Saul ‘, Lászlo Némes, continues to surprise with his ability to evoke ancient times shockingly and profoundly.
There was no doubt that that prime opera portrayed the Holocaust. Still, in this second feature film, it plays the ambiguity of a confusing story to take us to a moment of the fall of the aristocracy, just before the First World War.
27- The days to come
There are processes in life that look like a roller coaster, and pregnancy is one of them.
María Rodríguez Soto and David Verdaguer know it because they offered that (real) moment to Carles Marqués-Marcet to compose this beautiful film that breathes authenticity, emotion, and complexity.
28- Next
Again, science fiction is the setting for a portrait of the relationships between parents and children.
Only now, for a change, it is a mother ( Eva Green ) and her daughter, how conciliation is sometimes an unattainable utopia. Director Alice Winocour permeates this story of sensitivity and mystery, of questions that still have no answer.
