New Delhi:
In a world in the grip of conflict and turmoil, many filmmakers around the world sought to record their sense of anxiety. While some people plunged into the whirlpool of growing restlessness to seek light in areas of darkness, others celebrated the joy that humanity produces even when the space for positivity shrinks. Our list of the ten best international films of 2024 includes works from many established masters as well as some young filmmakers who enjoy plowing a lonely field and trying to make sense of things spiraling out of control. Are.
sacred fig seed
Shot entirely in secret, Mohammad Rasoulof’s Persian-language sacred fig seed, Germany’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar is a powerful political allegory that examines the workings of an autocratic regime through the lens of the cracks that open within the family of a government official appointed as an investigating judge in Tehran. Is. As protests erupt in the streets of the city and the man executes hundreds every day and the gun given to him for protection goes missing, he becomes suspicious and distrustful of his own family – his wife and two daughters. Is surrounded by. Whose sympathy is with the protesters. Rasulof crafts a story of a moral and psychological conflict between a man and the three women who make up his family. It reflects the divisions in Iranian society as well as the moral dilemmas faced by individuals silently or actively fighting against or in support of an oppressive regime.
A scene from the seed of the sacred picture
Emilia Perez
Jacques Audiard, a brilliantly dazzling musical full of deep complexities Emilia Perez is a dazzling free-flowing drama that centers on a crime cartel kingpin who goes for gender confirmation surgery. The French production – the main language of the film is Spanish and the main setting is Mexico City – is driven by a stellar female ensemble (Carla Sofia Gascón, Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz) and graced with songs that cleverly complement the immersive narrative. Is threaded in. A dreaded gangster takes the help of a lawyer to disappear from the public eye and transform into a woman. The two make a daring move but the crime boss’s wife, children and his past inevitably catch up to him. Emilia PerezAn immaculate tour de force, about three women fighting to break free from different kinds of cages – the transwoman freeing herself from the man’s body she’s trapped in, the lawyer the soulmate of an unsatisfying career. gets rid of the crushing influence, and the gangster’s conflicted wife chooses to live in an unhappy marriage and ‘tragedy’. Different destinies and battles are woven into a remarkable tapestry of human experiences.
A photo of Emilia Perez
Substance
Coralie Fargate’s feminist tale, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, is starkly dark in spirit, but the elements around which it is built are brimming with colour, including white and gray that reflect the protagonist’s state of mind. , who is an aging celebrity. After being fired from a popular TV show she purchases a grey-market drug that promises to create a younger version of herself. This material is as harrowing as it is electrifying in its brutal takedown of showbiz where women are forced to think about unrealistic notions of beauty and marketability that are imposed on them by a bottom-up driven industry. Fearlessly esoteric but uncompromisingly controversial, this illustration pulls no punches. Fargate’s goal is not subtlety. Teathat substance This is, after all, a body-horror film that leaves no stone unturned in reimagining the genre in light of the indignities of objectification that a male-dominated world subjects its women to. It shocks and scorches.
Challengers
Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers Does this with tennis like no other movie has ever done. The dynamics of the game serve as a force that determines the changing equations between the three young men played by Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Feist over the course of more than a decade. The messy triangle sees the ball being slammed continuously from one court to the other. It presents an engaging erotic drama that uses subtle and highly effective means to excite and excite. Challengers, To a degree, Guadagnino’s “Desire” is an expansion on the trilogy – I am love, a big splash And Call me by your name. It is an erotic and captivating sports film that brilliantly captures the emotional dimensions of a competition that goes beyond victory and defeat. highest point of Challengers It’s its incredibly compelling finale that magically highlights the power of cinema. It is not that there is any dearth of such glimpses of inspiration in the rest of the film.
Metropolitan
Disarmingly self-indulgent and relentlessly inventive, 85-year-old Francis Ford Coppola’s entertaining epic could easily be dismissed as an expensive folly. But wait, that kind of leap of faith Metropolitan These are rare in this era of AI-powered marketing of entertainment products and hence, deserve to be talked about. A character in the film says, “When you leap into the unknown, you prove you are free.” Metropolitan Truly independent and fearless. This is the kind of big filmmaking that can only be done by a master who has nothing left to prove. The film’s protagonist, a visionary architect who hopes to change the course of history and the face of the world, is no different from the film. Given the sheer scale of his ambition, he may falter. But his adventure is a work of art in itself. This is an act of megalomaniacal and defiance of shocking proportions.
Audience!
French director Arnaud Desplechin’s hybrid film expands in different, exciting directions in celebration of a love of cinema and the places where films are shown. Spectator!, As the title suggests, it’s not as much about the filmmakers as it is about its consumers. Piecing together clips from the more than 50 films that shaped his cinematic vision, Desplechin focuses on the filmmaker’s pseudonym, Paul Dedalus, as a viewer. When we first see him, he is a child watching the 1964 French comedy Fantômas with his grandmother. In a cheeky later scene, Dedalus lies about his age in order to see Bergman’s Cries and Whispers. The cashier at the ticket counter lets him in, but not without warning that the film will bore him. Equal parts informative and entertaining, Audience! Provides solid justification for the one line that defines film: Cinema is a question, not an answer.
no other land
More than a movie, no other land, The only documentary on this list is a statement of hope and intent made by a Palestinian-Israeli group of activists working to find a way out of the ongoing conflict in the region. Directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The Palestine-Norway co-production project is led by Bassel Adra, a trained but unemployed law graduate who has been recording and protesting against the displacement of his people in the Masafar Yatta area of ​​the West Bank since childhood, and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who represents the voice of reason in an environment in which the army has been ordered to demolish the homes of people who have lived on the land for nearly two centuries. personal and political, no other land It paints a harrowing portrait of a people struggling with the stress, humiliation and depression of decades of occupation and oppression.
grand tour
Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes’s utterly mesmerizing cinematic adventure is a brilliant blend of austerity of craft and brilliance of idea. In 1918, a British civil servant elopes with his fiancée on the day she arrives in Rangoon to get married. “Whatever it takes, I’ll figure it out,” says passionate Molly Singleton, who goes on a tour across Asia to do just that. Nostalgic fugitive Edward Abbott travels to Singapore, Bangkok, Saigon, Manila, Shanghai and parts of Japan. The film retraces the path using a mix of period and contemporary scenes, a mix of B&W and color, and a voiceover in different languages, each representing a specific location. impeccably crafted grand tour At once beguiling and confusing but always masterful. The notes are arranged with amazing deftness when, midway through, the film shifts its focus from the sad man to the cheerful woman. For Gomes and Mouly, “Man is a tragedy, humanity is a tragedy”.
A view from the Grand Tour
wild robot
It is as wild and strange as it is poignant and magical, wild robotWritten and directed by Chris Sanders, it’s the only animation film here as it marks a vigorous return to the medium’s vibrant and vivid hand-painted roots. Based on Peter Brown’s 2016 children’s book of the same name, it tells the story of a hapless assistant-robot and an orphan gosling whose paths cross under tragic and turbulent circumstances on an island uninhabited by humans. A deep relationship is formed between the two. From their relationship flows a poignant story of a daughter adopted by a mother who crosses the boundary separating nature and machine. The lavishly executed animated film blends technology, wildlife vitality and human emotions (though there are no human characters in the plot), leading to a lively exploration of motherhood and cross-species solidarity in a forest where hunters Roam freely and the weak always remain. Under threat of destruction.
still from april
april
Georgian writer-director Dia Kulumbegashvili’s sophomore venture is a visually evocative, embodied study of a community where the only constant is the desire of men who want control over everything but are never responsible for the control themselves. In its ambiguities and stylistic angularities, april Kulumbegashvili’s debut film, Beginning, is just as strong. But the only major similarity between the two films is lead actress Sukhitaishvili, who plays an obstetrician in a Georgian village where she performs abortions despite the procedures being illegal. The monotonous routine of his life gets disturbed when he is accused of negligence and has to face an investigation. One has to contribute to protecting its values ​​and fighting against the innate notions that shape morality in the community. april It is a difficult time. However, its interesting premise and the director’s skillfully nuanced treatment of a woman at odds with the world around her gives the film an aura of solidity.
