This year I lost my London Film Festival virginity and amongst some of the incredible films I was enthralled by I caught my number 1 for this year’s Top Ten. I am a woman who unashamedly wears her emotions very proudly on the surface but this is also the year I developed my tactical cry, where I had to rush to the bathroom after screenings to release the raw and unrestrained pouring of emotions films evoked in me so I was able to pass through Picture House Central and the BFI Southbank and network without being a snotty mess. Here at Directors Notes, we launched our BIFA partnership for The Douglas Hickox Award and I was truly blown away by the talent, execution and fucking formidable stories told by these debut feature filmmakers – none of which was even comparable to each other. I ended the year in a very traditional fashion with an epic screening of Its a Beautiful Life at Brighton’s iconic Duke of Yorks cinema and have been bingeing my final films from some other top film lists in these purgatorial days as I desperately attempt, as someone who doesn’t enjoy defining my favourites as I always say it depends on my mood, to chase down the best of the best. As always there is a mix of festival, streaming and cinema viewing and there are so many more I want to talk about but without further ado…my top ten of 2024.
Honourable mentions: Bring Them Down, Santosh, Good One, Didi, Sasquatch Sunset, Grand Theft Hamlet, Memoir of a Snail
10. THERE’S STILL TOMORROW | Paola Cortellesi
An immediate breakout hit in Italy which became one of their highest-grossing films ever! Cortellesi’s neorealist-styled monochrome dramedy (a word I still haven’t decided if I like or not) centralises the struggles of post-war housewives around Delia whose daily battle against abuse, cruelty and poverty ebbs and flows between a lighthearted hopeful measure and pure grim and cruel disappointment. However, we are eventually led to an unexpected but incredibly rewarding tale of empowerment and women fighting for their rights and showing future generations they don’t have to suffer the same subjugation they’ve had to endure.
9. WHEN THE LIGHT BREAKS | Rúnar Rúnarsson
Taking place over a pivotal 24 hours, When The Light Breaks instantly struck me with the depth of grief it gave its young protagonists. Rúnarsson fills his film with huge swathes of quiet and contemplation, pinpointing the suffering at the heart of a young woman whose heartbreak is overshadowed. The shock and violent loss of a friend in a group on the cusp of adulthood also brings them together in the true spirit of youth and I felt completely seen by this film in an almost inexplicable manner.
8. ANORA | Sean Baker
Sean Baker, who we first became fans of when MarBelle spoke to him about his indie drama Starlet back in 2012, continues to delight audiences and Anora is certainly one of the most talked about films of the year and didn’t disappoint. He lays forth the ever fought for, and rarely ever achieved, American Dream through a hopeful sex worker and spoilt Russian billionaire in a Cinderella story rife with brilliantly devised thugs, formidable wardrobes, reminiscent of Julia Roberts’ iconic cutout dress, and a tour through a lesser known New York. With brilliant pops of calamitous comedy and a truly breathtaking performance by Mikey Madison, Baker pits her street smarts and grit against her own naivety and hope that there are a pair of glass slippers for her at the end of the day sitting behind a white picket fence.
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7. THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF IBELIN | Benjamin Ree
If it had not been for other people in my life, who know I am (ever so slightly) stubborn persuading me to look past the synopsis, poster and thematic conceit of this remarkable piece of cinema I would have missed one of the most intensely emotionally torturing films I have ever seen. Benjamin Ree, who we last spoke to for his art heist documentary The Painter and the Thief, opened up my eyes to a new form of filmmaking. Whilst I have never bought into the societal fear that games are ruining young minds, I hope The Remarkable Life of Ibelin will open others’ viewpoints and show that assumptions, even from those closest to us, are often wrong and life is a complex, beautiful mess which we will never be able to fully comprehend even in death.
6. TO A LAND UNKNOWN | Mahdi Fleifel
No Other Land by a Palestinian-Israeli collective felt too huge and significant to sit on my binary list but Mahdi’s perhaps more digestible, and that by no means diminishes any of its power, had me wholly absorbed and silently crying on the tube home after the screening – thankfully it is London and no-one pays any attention to anyone else! Two desperate refugees, forced to leave their own land and now left nationless is a sharp indictment of how we treat people and frankly, the lack of shits given and is a narrative we need more of, people need to see these stories and see for themselves the precarious balance so many live in without any sense of hope or relief.
5. THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE | Magnus von Horn
Not what I expected, I was never able to see what was coming and a true macabre, at times absurd, delight. As the insane world we live in continues to restrain and reverse female reproductive rights and our obsession with true crime continues The Girl With the Needle, loosely based on real life Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye, is dirty, grim and suitably horrific. It is technically tremendous and each narrative beat only made more piercing as the putrid monochromatic world presented can be smelt and touched through the screen.
4. THE SUBSTANCE | Coralie Fargeat
A lifelong Demi Moor fan since Disclosure, plus a lover of Fargeat’s debut Revenge (which I can highly recommend watching after her newest offering) The Substance was everything it was being hyped up for. Body horror at its best and female narratives given brand new ways to confront and critique the all too real and ever present societal pressure put onto women which quite frankly – isn’t changing. We’ve all starred into mirrors, picking at often invisible flaws and wishing back to a youth where we were equally insecure and Fargeat shows us it is definitely not a preferable swap!
3. FLOW | Gints Zilbalodis
I have a dog with some peculiar habits, she isn’t one to curl on your lap and cuddle in but for the first time, I saw her entirely enthralled by what was on the TV in the opening scenes of Flow. Perhaps mimicking my shining absorption into the mystical, flooded world in Zilbalodis’ absolutely stunning journey as we both sat in awe. The animation, particularly of the water and the fish which fed the oddest collection of animals on a very bizarre Noah’s Arc, was unlike anything I have ever experienced and the fantastical elements contrasting with the constant steady search for shelter had me wanting to watch this over and over again.
2. KNEECAP | Rich Peppiatt
I come from Protestant stock from the North of Ireland and since watching this film have discovered my family’s experiences living in Belfast during the height of The Troubles. It’s a subject we rarely discussed previously but Kneecap has opened up a whole world of illegal occupation, rejection of culture, heinous acts of colonisation and the continued and lasting effect this has on people to me and about which I am ashamed not to have considered before. Rich Peppiatt, the addictive hip-hip trio Kneecap and his wildly fun but at the same time soberly reflective debut feature won’t leave me. Everyone on my Whatsapp has received a link to their album Fine Art (which is currently blasting through my headphones as I write this) and my chat with Rich as part of our BIFA partnership was a clear highlight of the interviews I’ve done since joining DN. The film’s inclusion on the Oscar International Feature Film shortlist for Ireland and winning of Best British Independent Film at the BIFAs (irony rules) proves that Kneecap needs to keep making noise, keep on causing disruption and opening up more eyes to the continued atrocities inflicted on those whose land has been stolen from them, a direct reflection of the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories – a cause which Kneecap are consistently shining a light on.
1. LES BALCONETTES | Noémie Merlant
It might not be a critic favourite and sure, it is sometimes absurd and exaggerated, but I LOVE seeing real, complicated, multifaceted women and the force of friendships which is personally something I can’t imagine not having. Would I commit one of the worst crimes for my friend…of course. Do I want to be doing so in vibrant neon sparkles running around the enticing city of Marseille…FUCK YES. Co-written by Céline Sciamma – another director who wowed us with her debut feature, the aquatic Water Lilies and whose Portrait of a Lady on Fire still lives on in me – and performed by co-writer and director Noémie Merlant, ignore those naysayers and immerse yourself in this joyful female driven middle finger up to trauma, abuse and the general bullshit faced by women on a daily basis.
You can check out the rest of Team DN’s Top Ten picks here.
