Drowning Dry
Lithuanian director Laurynas Bareiša’s sophomore feature follows two sisters and their families during a fateful lakeside retreat where macho posturing and petty domestic tensions give way to sudden, devastating tragedy. Using a non-linear structure that feels like a misremembered dream, this film from Locarno jumps through time in ways that make you question what you’re seeing. The film won best director and best performance honors for its cast at Locarno last year. While its pacing and elliptical structure might not be for everyone, this is a masterful study of how trauma ripples through time, and rewards a patient re-watch.
Flow
The Latvian entry for Best International Feature Film is, in a very good year for feature animation, the most haunting and memorable animated movie, premiering in Un Certain Regard at Cannes where it swept critics honors for animated feature. It tells the story of a cat who survives a disastrous flood and then teams up with a group of four other of God’s creatures in an effort to survive and to learn to live together despite their differences, coming from animation genius Gints Zilbalodis. There’s not a single word of dialogue in this entire film, yet it communicates more about survival and community than most scripts manage with thousands of words. The water becomes both enemy and refuge, rendered in animation that feels both dreamlike and urgently real.
Art College 1994
Chinese animated drama Art College 1994 features lofty debates on the meaning of art, Duchamp’s urinals, and selling out from the minds of two painting majors in their early 20s, with Xiaojun listening to Nirvana, hating traditionalist art, and seeming unwavering in his idealistic notions about creating without interest in fame or monetary gain. Their heartfelt exchanges brim with grand philosophical inquiries revealing them to be adrift while eager to be seen as defiant, as writer-director Liu Jian traces how life and all its variables dilute their rigid resolve, forcing them to reassess their once firm expectations. This feels like a time capsule from a very specific moment in Chinese history, when everything seemed possible and nothing was certain.
Girls Will Be Girls
Shuchi Talati’s international independent film Girls Will Be Girls is decidedly one of the best indie films of the year, focusing on the complicated experience of girlhood and womanhood in India due to its social politics over gender, touching on this through the lens of Mira, a young teenager who navigates young romance, sexual expression, and a complicated relationship with her mother. The mother-daughter dynamic here cuts deeper than most family dramas dare to go, exploring the ways women police each other’s bodies and desires across generations. It’s uncomfortable viewing at times, which is precisely why it matters.
When Fall Is Coming
In her cottage in Burgundy, where the leaves are turning russet and the woods are full of wild fruits, elderly Michelle tends her garden and supports her best friend, as French director François Ozon is at his most elegantly slippery here, with anyone, even an ostensibly virtuous grandmother, harboring secrets and desires too dark to name, while Vincent with her beautifully aged face is quietly mesmerizing. Ultimately, this is a wistful but unsentimental meditation on families: how they fail us and how, with love, they might be rebuilt. Ozon understands that darkness and light coexist in every human heart, and he films both with equal tenderness.
April
Given the largely commercial arthouse lineup at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April was the deep dive, and in any other year might have come away with more than the Special Jury Prize. This Georgian filmmaker doesn’t hold your hand through her narrative, trusting you to piece together the fragments of a story about a doctor facing investigation after a newborn dies. The camera work alone demands your attention, with long takes that refuse to look away from difficult truths. It’s the kind of film that film students will be analyzing for years, not because it’s trying to be difficult, but because it respects the intelligence of its audience enough to let them work for their understanding.
The world of cinema extends far beyond Hollywood blockbusters and festival darlings. For every billion-dollar success, there are countless movies that go under the radar of general audiences, as while many great films of the year amassed financial profits, many went unnoticed, making scant earnings at the box office, if they were given a chance in theaters at all. Independent films recorded an all-time high in 2023 with a box office revenue of nearly two billion dollars after reaching their lowest value in 2020. These hidden treasures deserve your attention just as much as any major release. Did any of these titles surprise you?
