2023 was a year of seemingly seismic change for the film industry, as superhero movies (especially Marvel) lost their grip on the box office while more auteur-led efforts such as Oppenheimer and Barbie made serious bank. Audiences seem hungry for a return to thoughtful and engaging efforts, voting for their wallets against a decade of cape-clad hegenomy in favour of more challenging (and visually interesting) cinema. But as with the majority of contemporary film analysis, these are mostly concerns for Hollywood. The international arthouse scene plugs away as usual, providing a diverse range of exciting visions that once again expand the very possibilities of the cinematic form. I went back and forth on this list several times, only coming to a final top ten this very morning. With courtroom drama, oddball romance, epic character study and even outright horror, this year’s selection subverted and expanded genre norms, showing that great cinema, both Hollywood and elsewhere, remains as vital as ever.
Honourable mentions: Past Lives, In Water, In Our Day, The Holdovers, Tótem, Manodrome, Bitten, May December, Elaha, Knit’s Island, Paradise Is Burning, Fair Play, Barbie, Caiti Blues, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.
10. LA PALISIADA | Philip Sotnychenko
As topics of de- and post-Russian colonialisation have been amplified in the wake of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, filmmakers have been responding in turn by examining the long shadow of occupation. A highly-creative metafictional look at Ukraine’s relationship to the death penalty (abolished in 2000, yet notably reintroduced in the occupied territories), La Palisiada might be a dense and complicated film, but remains jaggedly alive thanks to its angular structure and ever-looming sense of menace; not just taking us back to the Wild 90s, but ‘looking’ like it too, thanks to its stunning digital video cinematography and pitch-perfect production design.
9. BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY | Elene Naveriani
I have followed emerging Georgian director Elene Naveriani’s work with keen interest since 2021’s honourable mention Wet Sand. Here is a unique director with important things to say about the state of their nation and its relationship to marginalised lives, and a slow-cinema-influenced, highly-atmospheric way of telling their stories. With Cannes highlight Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, telling the story of a middle-aged virgin with a new lease on life, their cinema expands in tone and sensitivity, delivering a heart-warming, yet often shocking tale of self-(re)discovery.
8. LA CHIMERA | Alice Rohrwacher
La Chimera would make a lovely double feature with Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry. Both Rohrwacher and Naveriani’s cinema put atmosphere and character first, allowing the plot to spring out of careful observation and naturalistic details. Featuring a career-best Josh O’Connor as a bereaved English archeologist in Italy robbing from Etruscan graves in the hope of finding a door to the underworld, La Chimera comes alive thanks to its mixture of film formats, vivid use of light and slow, dreamlike pace; slowly immersing us into another one of Rohrwacher’s one-of-a-kind cinematic worlds.
7. NATIONAL ANTHEM | Luke Gilford
One of two films on this list shot in the re-emerging 1:66:1 aspect ratio (alongside La Chimera) National Anthem uses the nostalgic format to reinvent the potential of the Western. While hardly the first queer re-imagning of the genre (it’s hard to forget Brokeback Mountain or The Power of the Dog), National Anthem is still remarkable in its extraordinary scope and empathetic vision. Charting the experience of a young, rootless man finding his family on a LGBT-positive ranch, this hidden gem is at once a reimagining of the American mythos and a gorgeous, heart-stirring love story.
6. ABOUT DRY GRASSES | Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Ceylan might not be described as an entertainer by many, but his slow-burn portraits of assholes refusing to ever look inwards are addictively watchable. Just as you think his heroes couldn’t get any more obstinate and self-centred, they find (regrettably relatable) ways to steep to new lows. His latest, the perpetually-snow-laden About Dry Grasses, mixes vast panoramas and romantic imagery with careful dramaturgy and endless philosophical debates, savagely revealing his passive-aggressive central subject – a schoolteacher reluctantly posted in eastern Anatolia – to be a subject of immense self-loathing and remarkable pettiness. It’s easy to hate him; even easier to love Ceylan’s new work.
5. ANIMAL | Sofia Exarchou
Animal is the reason Baccara’s Yes Sir, I Can Boogie – an upbeat disco song with a surprisingly melancholy undercurrent – has been stuck in my head all year. The motif and resistance song for Kalia (Dimitra Vlagopoulou), a seasonal worker stuck in the traps of meaningless sex, people pleasing and punishing dance routines, its use and re-use (alongside Alla Pugacheva’s A Million Roses) pushes this devastating character study to its limit. Come for the cheesy choreography and karaoke routines; stay to see your heart slowly broken.
4. VERMIN | Sébastien Vaniček
Sometimes I’m in the mood to watch carefully-rendered character studies. Sometimes I love nothing more than a nasty creature-feature. With Vermin, debut director Sébastien Vaniček delivers one of the most purely-entertaining films of the year, with massive spiders causing endless havoc in a huge apartment block in the Parisian banlieue. And while not as nakedly political as last year’s Athena, Vermin manages to weave class-consciousness amongst the chaos, giving you something to think about while being deliriously entertained.
3. ANATOMY OF A FALL | Justine Triet
Sandra Hüller has been absolutely brilliant for years, but perhaps her one-two punch of Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest (we can all forget Sisi & I, which I think only I saw) puts her as the most exciting actress working today. In Anatomy of a Fall she plays a German writer in France, put onto the courtroom stage after being accused of murdering her husband. Speaking in both near-fluent English and halting, measured French (while crucially never speaking her mother tongue), Hüller hides immense depth behind an unreadable facade. Eventually the question isn’t about whether she’s guilty at all, but the discord and compromises behind all relationships, and the very nature of truth. A deserving Palme D’or winner.
2. THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL | William Friedkin
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, a largely faithful yet aesthetically austere remake of the Bogart-led 1954 The Caine Mutiny, doubles up as an elegy to two of cinema’s most memorable presences. Firstly, William Friedkin himself, the dark horse of the New Hollywood cinema, responsible for some of the most indelible chase sequences in cinema (The French Connection, Jade, To Live and Die in LA) as well as its darkest, most grotesque moments. Here, he strips back cinema to its essential components. Secondly, the inimitable presence of the ever-reliable and incredible commanding Lance Reddick, who never failed to lighten up even the dimmest of films and television shows. The go-to guy for military generals, he lends Friedkin’s meticulous military courtroom drama a remarkable gravitas. His final speech, threading the needle of moral ambiguity and (vanishingly rare) patriotism, might be the best, most emotional scene of the year.
1. THE DELINQUENTS | Rodrigo Moreno
Before going into The Delinquents, I had assumed it was a subversion of the heist film. Yet, apart from the wonderfully-understated opening sequence, it’s all about what happens afterwards. Everything seems to be contained in that ‘afterwards’, Moreno weaving a delightfully digressive three-hour inquiry into what it means to work for a living, whether there is more to life than clocking-in-every-day and the possibilities for personal re-invention. With pared-down performances, bringing to mind Bresson and late period Manoel de Oliveira, as well as gorgeous slow cinematography, intuitive editing and hilarious comic beats, this playful Argentinian movie doesn’t just subvert the genre as invent a whole new one. My penultimate watch before writing the list, The Delinquents sneaks into the number one spot by working purely on its own highly-watchable, truly transformational terms.
You can check out the rest of team DN’s Top Ten picks here.
