Justine Triet, Aki Kaurismäki, Pedro Costa, Victor Erice, Radu Jude and other directors from all around the world make a list, exclusively for Films in Frame magazine, with their favorite films and cinematic experiences of the year.

Christmas: time to give, time to love. And to make lists. Lists and more lists. Lists all around. What did we need? One more list. This one comes from a personal concern. There are already many important list efforts out there. Some of them are just trying to make a stand for the editorial point of view of a publication like the one that always turns out to be the first of the year (Cahiers du Cinéma). Others, whose ambitions are wider and plural, attempt to be a map of the specialized-professional contemporary world like Roger Koza’s already renowned Internacional Cinefila – which in a way serves as inspiration for this one – whose idea is to create a slightly different kind of documentation, one close to trying to capture a zeitgeist. 

What’s the idea behind this list? Something like a collective auteur gaze of 2023. To register, through the eyes and experiences of the active actors of the current year, what can be considered a record of it, by working on the ideas surrounding it, the concept of the “best” of the current year in filmmaking. Only directors whose most recent works have been released internationally during 2023 have been invited to this top. The invitation criteria? Easy. What yours truly, who has taken on the task of the compilation, and has seen thanks to his work and cinephilia all year long, humbly considers the most daring, valuable, and interesting cinematographic works of this year that we leave behind. 

Ego aside and obviating the limitations that my taste implies, here I had invited a compendium of artists who in their diverse works, feature and short films, experimental or narrative, represent together important linguistic audiovisual contributions, that through their narratives propose new paths or exemplified the contemporary state of cinema. The invitation was to choose their favorite film(s) or cinematographic-related experiences of the year. I could, and maybe even should, dig deeper into the diverse aesthetic and thematic connections between the films of the guests here, to devote space to every single film represented by the 35 contributors. But maybe, for length purposes mainly, this is the content for another publication. 

For the time being, I’ll let these mentions and filmmakers with their contributions delineate the filmic imaginary of 2023, which I invite you to discover. The final purpose behind this editorial effort can be simplified by a phrase in Argentinian auteur Lisandro Alonso’s contribution: “In the end, films are not made to be on lists, but in theaters to find their audience”. And the whole idea about this is to invite you to discover them, and if ambitions allow during time, to invite us not to forget the work and auteurs behind a great year for global cinephilia. 

Thanks to Films in Frame for hosting this effort. To David Thion, Rafael Guihem, Dorian Magagnin, and Egle Cepaite for their help and to all those who were willing to contribute with us to create this tableau of what 2023 was like cinematographically, and also to those who, for work or personal reasons – or even for their beliefs regarding end of year lists – (Todd Haynes, Hong Sang-Soo, Philippe Garrel, Catherine Breillat, Burak Cevik, Alice Rohrwacher, Maryam Tafakory, and Eduardo Williams) politely declined the invitation but their contribution to this year is undoubtedly and worth to mention. To the other filmmakers who were unable to answer, just hope you’re safe and sound. 

PS: Here is the full list of directors who answered my invitation. Even though the ultimate purpose of the list is not to quantify, to save you time my dear reader, I have idly counted for you the films cited by the guest filmmakers to create at the end a top 3 of what they consider to be the best films of 2023: 

1. Fallen Leaves – Aki Kaurismaki
2. Last Things – Deborah Stratman
3. El Auge del Humano 3 – Eduardo Williams / La Chimera – Alice Rohrwacher

Christian Petzold  •  Justine Triet  •  Bas Devos  •  João Canijo  •  Pham Thien An  •  Deborah Stratman  •  Joanna Arnow  •  Radu Jude  •  Pedro Costa  •  Rodrigo Moreno  •  Victor Erice  •  Aki Kaurismäki  •  Tulapop Saenjaroen  •  Aya Kawazoe  •  Joshua Gen Solondz  •  Éléonore Saintagnan  •  Carolina Fusilier  •  Tana Gilbert  •  Damien Manivel  •  Graeme Arnfield  •  Martin Rejtman  •   Graham Swon  •  Anthony Lapia  •  Kim Torres  •  Nour Ouayda  •  Guilhem Causse  •  Blake Williams  •  Philip Sotnychenko  •  Nadia Parfan  •  Melisa Liebenthal  •  Riar Rizaldi  •  Manuel Muñoz Rivas  •  Lisandro Alonso

***

Christian Petzold

Roter Himmel, Berlinale
Germany

The whole year, until now, I was glued to my own movie: journey, festivals, promotion, interviews. Now, back in Berlin, it’s December, ugly, dirt snow. I must say I haven’t seen the movies I’d have loved to see: Monster by Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World by Radu Jude, Showing Up by Kelly Reichardt, The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer, Falling Leaves by Aki Kaurismäki, Pacifiction, by Albert Serra… and on and on and on.

What I have seen, and what I loved:

The Quiet Girl – Colm Bairead.
Anatomy of a Fall – Justine Triet
Chun Xing – Tsu Hui Peng and Ping Wen-Wang
Plane – Brodie Torrance
Totem – Lila Alviles

That’s it. A poor year for me as a member of an audience. Next year, it will be better.

Justine Triet

Anatomie d’une Chute, Cannes
(France)

Voyages en Italie – Sophie Letourneur.

It is the first part of a trilogy on the couple. 

Bas Devos

Here, Berlinale 2023
(Belgium)

For me, the most exhilarating moments in cinema this year were:

The Human Surge 3, by Eduardo Williams; and
If You Don’t Watch The Way You Move, by Kevin Jerome Everson.

Both are so free and so deeply connected to the world we live in, at the same time. The first is a two-hour-long exploration of a poetic dream space that is always just out of reach. It’s funny and weird but somehow, miraculously, very worldly. The second is 12 minutes long and, like all of KJE’s works, moving and impressive in its formal proposition. His world is a world that I want to deal with, come to terms with, and live in.

João Canijo 

Vivir Mal, Mal Viver, Berlinale 2023
(Portugal)

Baan by Leonor Teles. What I think is amazing about this first feature by Leonor Teles is how she dares to suddenly set changes between Lisbon and Bangkok without warning. It lets the viewer’s imagination wander between the two cities and the main character’s mood. The film is also a very beautiful and courageous revelation of the director’s soul.

Pham Thien An

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Quinzaine
(Vietnam)

This year, I actually didn’t have free time to watch films but, so far, here are some films I already watched and loved: 

Killers of the Flower Moon – Martin Scorsese
Return to Seoul – Davy Chou
Anatomy of a Fall – Justine Triet
The Killer – David Fincher
La Chimera – Alice Rohrwacher

Deborah Stratman

Last Things, Sundance
(USA)

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World – Radu Jude. Swashbuckling meta critique of shitty urban planning, corporate scapegoating and media spin.

Dancing Boy, Summer Grass and Achala – Tenzin Phuntsog. Missives from the Tibetan steppe: three miniatures fit together like jeweled gears.

Orlando – Paul B. Preciado. An exuberant, deliciously defiant adaptation of Woolf’s seminal book.

 ur Bodies – Claire Simon. The personal is still and always political; utter respect here for female and trans bodies.

 The Voyage Out – Ana Vaz. An archipelago of interrelated observations spun out from radioactive soils.

 Trenque Lauquen – Laura Citarella. Slow burn mystery on The Pampas.

Joanna Arnow

The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed,  Quinzaine
(USA)

My favorite first watch from this year was Serial Mom.

Tulapop Saenjaroen 

Mangosteen, Berlinale 2023
(Thailand)

Notre Corps – Claire Simon
Last things – Deborah Stratman
Saint Omer – Alice Diop
An Asian Ghost Story – Bo Wang
Music – Angela Schanelec
The Trial – Ulises de la Orden
Remembering Every Night – Yui Kiyohara

Manuel Muñoz Rivas 

Aqueronte, IFFR 2023
(Spain)

I have not been a voracious spectator this year, mainly because I have been very busy working on a new film. Therefore, I have been inhabited by cinema, as a daily practice and reflection, but I have not been able to enjoy the discovery of other looks and sensibilities that much. In my work, the most enriching thing has been to observe how desire and reality, what is sought after and what is unexpected are interrelated. How mental images and the images captured by the camera are aligned or misaligned. How we, creators, gravitate between the poles of control and chance. How films reveal themselves to those of us who make them, no matter how much will and calculation have gone into trying to anticipate them, in the same way that a photographic image is revealed on photosensitive paper. That is to say, little by little, and wrapped in a fascinating mystery.

As my memory is not very sharp right now and I can’t remember very well what I have seen this year, I will refer to the most immediate or close ones. Last night, I was talking with another filmmaker friend, and we asked each other this very question: what films were our highlights in this last year? We mentioned a few titles, but none of them convinced me at all. We wondered about this lack of enthusiasm. Were we missing something? What was missing? Could it be that we are nostalgic? Films that we liked were cited, but none that had moved or fascinated us. We concluded that we both asked the cinema for some kind of transcendental experience and that, perhaps, our time is not so prone to the transcendental. Who knows.

After the hangover, the ones that come to my mind right now are “Fairytale” by Aleksandr Sokurov, an audacious, disturbing, astonishing film. And “The Invention of the Other” by Bruno Jorge, because it has unpublished images, and after watching it, leaving the theater to return to reality is a disconcerting experience. I don’t know if I can say that I loved “De Humani Corporis Fabrica”, but it certainly did not leave me indifferent. And a film that I got to enjoy again, and a lot, thanks to its revival, is “Goodbye Dragon Inn” by Tsai Ming-liang, a delightful film that is pure cinema: that is, time, space, bodies, movement, faces, lights, and shadows.

Joshua Gen Solondz 

We Don’t Talk Like We Used To, NYFF
(USA)

Films that I’ve enjoyed this year / moved me:

Deborah Stratman’s Last Things. I saw at the Viennale, the perfect blend/blur of science/science fiction that addresses that old constant: time. Time is what we who engage in time-based mediums grapple with, constantly. What is existence after we are gone, what exceeds our capabilities of being in the universe? Walking by Cafe Schwarzenberg/Hertz Rental car and Beethovenplatz Parking garage afterward was the perfect morning after activity. Tears and elation, the desire to move my flesh while I still can.

Jonas Bers’s performance Delta V/Delta T (ΔV/ΔT) at Cosmic Rays blew my mind. Also had a nice coffee/breakfast with him and Charlotte Taylor the next morning. He asked me if I’d listened to Billie Eilish. Pulse of the universe. Entropy and decay. Mathematics (or technically physics?) that can only be felt by the body.

Miko Reverza’s Nowhere Near. Big feels for this child of an immigrant, national dysphoria. Diasporic solidarity. Tears in googlemaps, tears on the soil of the motherland.

Maryam Tafakory’s Mast Del. Best erotic film of the year. Heartbreakingly gorgeous, gripping, and bittersweet.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Boy and the Heron/How Do you Live? I was very disappointed when Miyazaki ‘retired’ and his last film was fucking Ponyo. Granted I wasn’t the target demographic of that film. This film is one of his weirdest and most bleak. I never wanted it to end.

New Red Order’s WORLD’S UNFAIR show as a whole as well as highlighting performances by Les Leveque, mirrored fatality, and Dreamcrusher.

Rajee Samarasinghe’s rough cut of his upcoming feature that I probably am not allowed to talk about but it’s got me very excited

Simon Liu’s Let’s Talk but I especially enjoyed it as an installation at KAJE Gallery.

Wang Bing’s Man in Black excellent example of performance/testimony as a film.

Mary Helena Clark and Mike Gibisser’s A Common Sequence, jeez, I really enjoy stunningly bleak films about the future don’t Ii? I’d been looking forward to this film and the black box did not disappoint.

Lewis Klahr’s Blue Rose of Forgetfulness I also enjoy hypnagogic melancholy and LK’s in fine form here.

Not new films that I also enjoyed (Videodrome restoration)

Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac
Amy Halpern’s retrospective, Rest in Power
Luther Price memorial screening/book release, especially seeing prints of RED ROOSTER/THE LOOK OF LOVE, GREEN, and RUN god I fucking love Luther Price
Yasunao Tone’s Molecular Music performance
Barbara Hammer’s Multiple Orgasm
Roee Rosen’s Kafka For Kids
Duke and Battersby’s Infernal Grove Project
Angelo Madsen Minax’s North By Current
Ken Jacobs, CHERRIES

Nadia Parfan

It’s a Date,  Berlinale
(Ukraine)

20 Days in Mariupol – Mstyslav Chernov

Lucy Kerr 

Family Portrait, Locarno 2023
(USA)

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World – Radu Jude
Aqueronte – Manuel Muñoz Rivas
El Auge del Humano 3 – Eduardo Williams
Bye Bye Tiberias – Lina Soualem
Critical Zone – Ali Ahmadzadeh
Mountains – Monica Sorelle

Radu Jude

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, Locarno
(Romania)

“It is the other arts which taught me the art of writing”, quotes Bresson from Stendhal in an interview. True, there is a lot of cinema in other things, like:

1. The exhibition Nicolas de Staël in Paris. Living in Romania also means that, with very few exceptions, there are no important exhibitions to be seen. As I happened to be in Paris for the release of my new film, I saw this exhibition and was extremely moved – no wonder that Godard loved his paintings so much, that he borrowed all the ideas of colors from de Staël. I add here Fautrier, I managed to get an album with his paintings and sculptures. Equally great.

2. Sarx by George State. The fact that the most impressive poetry book of the last years passed almost unnoticed is no wonder. In a culture where almost all mediocre writers and artists congratulate each other for each shit they create, a work like George State’s flies too high not to make them feel uneasy. This is why, in my humble opinion, apart from 2-3 critics, this book made the others so audibly silent. A good sign for sure. I would add here Reginald Horace Blyth’s anthologies of haiku (in 4 volumes) and senryu – all easy to find as free PDFs on the internet.

3. John Cage. Not only his music but also his writings. John Cage gives me the energy I need to go on, even with my modest qualities. “I have nothing to say and I am saying it” could be my motto.

Pedro Costa

As Filhas Do Fogo, Cannes
(Portugal)

Nothing moved me more than the 4 four-minute films that Chantal Akerman shot in 1967 – a year before Saute ma ville – as her application to the INSAS in Brussels.

Aya Kawazoe

Howling, IFFR
(Japan)

Neighbor Abdi – Douwe Dijkstra
La chute – Sebastian Schaevers
Pacifiction – Albert Serra

Maria Aparicio

Las Cosas Indefinidas, FIDMarseille
(Argentina)

I missed great titles this year, such as Erice’s film, or those by Rodrigo Moreno, Martín Rejtman and so many others that I would have liked to see. I think there were great films this year. Reviewing them and putting together this list renews in me the belief that, in spite of everything, films are always there. 

Fallen leaves – Aki Kaurismaki
Eureka – Lisandro Alonso
El realismo socialista – Raúl Ruiz, Valeria Sarmiento
There is a stone – Tatsunari Ota
An evening song – Grahan Swon
O dia que te conheci – André Novais Oliveira
Muertes y maravillas – Diego Soto
Mudos testigos – Jerónimo Atehortúa, Luís Ospina
Partió de mí un barco llevándome – Cecilia Kang
La terminal – Gustavo Fontán
A short: Alicia fai cousas – Ángel Santos

Two special mentions:

The holdovers – Alexander Payne
Tembiapo Pyharegua – Christian Bagnat, Elvira Sanchez Poxon

Graeme Arnfield

Home Invasion, Berlinale
(USA)

This was the year when I made my first feature film. As such I often found myself stranded at film festivals, missing other people’s films while waiting for mine to finish so I could talk about it and get back to the important job of seeing other people’s films. In the moments I could find, in and around my film, these are some of the short and medium-length films that lived with me throughout the year. 

In order of encounter:

If You Don’t Watch the Way You Move – Kevin Jerome Everson
Black Strangers – Dan Guthrie
Music For Solo Performer  – Jenny Brady
Last Things  – Deborah Stratman
F1ghting Looks Different 2 Me Now – Fox Maxy
Is it a knife because… – Eitan Efrat & Sirah Foighel Brutmann
Repetitions – Morgan Quaintance
Sundown – Steve Reinke
My Want of You Partakes of Me – Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner
Dolle – Diego Macron

Rodrigo Moreno

Los Delincuentes, Un Certain Regard
(Argentina)

The films I liked the most – there were two: 

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, a Vietnamese debut feature that gave me back the mystery that cinema can offer in relation to magic: How this was made? How did they do that? How did he come up with this shot? How did he come up with this idea? When all this happens to me as a spectator,  I turn totally devoted to what the filmmaker proposes to me and I enter into a journey of a very intense connection with a film. All this happened to me with this film by Pham Thien An.

The other film is Aki Kaurismaki’s Fallen Leaves. The most important thing about Aki making the same old film over and over again is that it is unscathed by the decay of the world, I mean, the world is falling apart, cinema is disappearing, and we have Aki filming women eating alone, or listening to 1950s radios, or improbable streetcars, scenographic bars. The world doesn’t seem to spin for Aki, but rather, the world spins only for him.

Éléonore Saintagnan

Camping du Lac,  Locarno
(Belgium)

The film that made me laugh the most is Voyages en Italie by Sophie Letourneur. The one that made me cry the most was Anatomie d’une Chute by Justine Triet. I also enjoyed a lot Pacifiction by Albert Serra and Un Prince by Pierre Creton. I just saw La Chimera and it’s wonderful. Plus Yannick by Quentin Dupieux, which is funny and effective. 

My favorite documentaries are Le Vrai du faux by Armel Hostiou, which almost nobody knows about, but that is a very smart low-cost movie, and I was very touched by All the Beauty and the Bloodshed by Laura Poitras and Les Filles d’Olfa by Kaouther Ben Hania. I can also mention a very charming short film from Sebastien Betbeder called Mimi de Douarnenez, that I just saw at the Torino Film Festival. And – that is not very original, but – I love very long sagas like the crazy Beau is Afraid by Ari Aster and, like almost everyone else, Killers of the Flower Moon.

I am not able to prioritize. I must admit that I am easily pleased… But do I really have to?

Carolina Fusilier

Corrientes Mercuriales,  NYFF
(Mexico, Argentina)

In these three films, it is suggested (sometimes more intensely and sometimes less obviously) that all the characters who appear are trapped in oppressive systems: jobs they don’t want, places that reject them, impassable bureaucracies, and industrial alienation. There is a shift of focus away from the protagonists and what is at stake are situations that cut through them, and monumental landscapes that swallow them up, leaving them in the background. 

In Youth (Spring) Wang Bing follows the daily life of a group of teenagers in a textile factory in China. The camera captures scenes of tenderness, seduction, love, and heartbreak, all while they work with the machines or during their breaks in these alienating spaces. The overflowing adolescent emotions invade the industrial labor space, humanizing it and thus appropriating it. There is something very efficient about the disappearance of the subject behind the camera in Bing’s films. The camera is a piece of furniture, a machine, there is no sign of its existence on the other side. This lets us see intimacies, solitudes, and coincidences that the author is not especially framing. As if we leave a webcam on in our workspace for a whole day. Narrative time is not manipulated, it happens and is casually captured by this non-existent camera. 

In this same sense, the omnipresence of Teddy Williams’ camera captures even the inaccessible to the human eye. In one of the final scenes, there is a glitch or an effect that deforms one of the characters and leaves the floating uneasiness of watching a virtual reality. In El Auge del Humano 3 there is a constant feeling of being lost, wandering along with a group of people who it is unclear whether they know each other or are meeting at that moment. The camera moves in the open, sometimes it’s a motorcycle, sometimes the steps of a giant (everything in 360 is exaggeratedly wide), the characters accompany this lethargic journey and it no longer matters who they are or where they are going. 

Miko Revereza makes a film (Nowhere Near) about a self-exile from the United States for having been undocumented throughout his life. One of his questions is “How can an undocumented person document himself through film”?  Miko’s voice, in the form of an intimate diary, exposes his frustrations, his anxieties, his longings, and nostalgia for leaving behind a country to which he does not know if he will be able to return.  The cinematographic medium becomes a place for catharsis, to understand the trauma, to transform, to heal, to let go. Miko works with the symbolic power of images and this becomes more intentional in her overlays. The delicate and complex sound design charges everything with emotions that are guided like a zigzagging river, the same river where people and scenarios of the past vanish.

Tana Gilbert 

Malqueridas, Venice Critics Week
(Chile)

I would like to highlight two works that I saw this year that I carry in my heart for their reflection on the Latin American way of making films. 

In Valdivia this year they made a retrospective of Alexandra Cuesta’s short films, from her first short films to the last one projected in 16 mm. Here is the list and their years:

Recordando el ayer (2007)
Beirut 2.14.05 (2008)
Piensa en mí (2009)
Lungta (2022)

In addition, I believe that El Realismo Socialista is a fundamental film. It is an unfinished work by Raúl Ruiz, finished by Valeria Sarmiento.

Damien Manivel

L’Ile, FIDMarseille
(France)

Not very original here, but I would say that the film that I enjoyed the most of this year was Fallen Leaves by Aki Kaurismaki. What touches me enormously in the film is that Kaurismaki manages to touch the heart of the viewer with very simple but nevertheless formally demanding means. It cleared my eyes of all the formatted and confusing films I’ve seen this year, it puts poetry back at the center. And the faces of the two main actors are unforgettable. Even if I’m not very optimistic about the future, I find it very encouraging that this film was such a success. It gives hope.

Martin Rejtman

La Práctica, San Sebastián
(Argentina)

It was a good year for Argentinian movies: I really liked Martin Shanly’s Arturo a los 30, Rodrigo Moreno’s Los Delincuentes, and Mix Tape La Pampa by Andrés Di Tella. Last month I was on the jury at the Torino Film Festival and there La Palisiada, directed by Philip Sotnychenko really stood out, and also Iris Kaltenbäck ‘s Le ravissement. 

Victor Erice

Cerrar los Ojos, Cannes
(Spain)

I have not been able to see many recent films for work reasons. The two best I have been, by far, above all others: Aki Kaurismaki’s Fallen Leaves and Pedro Costa’s As Filhas do Fogo.

Aki and Pedro, as always, are true to themselves: resilient.

Aki Kaurismäki

Fallen Leaves, Cannes
(Finland) 

I haven’t really seen many films of this year, but of the ones I saw my absolute favorite is La Chimera by Alice Rohrwacher.

Reason: It was good.

Graham Swon

An Evening Song (for three voices), FIDMarseille
(USA)

Five Short Thoughts on Five Short Films (2023)

Perhaps because of the state of the world, perhaps because of the weather, this year I found myself more possessed by shorts than features. Beyond even shorts, I found myself attracted to single shots, single scenes. Smaller and smaller fragments of cinema.

Mast-del  (Maryam Tafakory, 2023, 17 min)

Past and present merging, in turns revealing and hiding the personal and the political. A fevered series of threads woven with elegance into a single tapestry, which brings tears to the eyes in more ways than one.

Unglückliche Stunde (Ted Fendt, 2023, 10 min)

Small problems, smaller time, even smaller (like a mouse), almost invisible, but still present, still human (like a mouse), and most of all, still hilarious (like a hamster).

Labyrinth Sequences  (Blake Williams, 2023, 20 min)

Not a new way of seeing but an old way of seeing re-articulated. A maze of mazes, empty spaces, and simple images elevated to revelation. Simultaneously a vacation and a prison. Aren’t we all lost in the 3rd dimension?

Film Annonce du Film qui n’existera Jamais: “Drôles de Guerres”  (Jean-Luc Godard, 2023, 20 min)

Magnetic in its oscillations (pushing away, pulling in). Not a ghost-film, not an old-man film, but a young film, still searching, glimpsing, surprising, insisting. At peace with itself but leaving the viewer without rest or resolution.

Histoires de Glace (Raúl Ruiz, 1987, 34 min)

Without subtitles and with a limited grasp of spoken French, I was granted the opportunity to create a film in my mind out of the raw material of my birth year: two men struggle against one another, without movement, across the centuries. Stories emerge, then disappear, swallowed by the sea. Above all, the unconquerable ice, always shifting, breaking, reforming, dominating all with irresistible force.

Nour Ouayda 

The Secret Garden, Cinema du Reel
Lebanon 

My film list, in no particular order. I would like to precise that these are not my favorite or top 3, but 3 films from the last year that have left a mark on me. I also did not watch that many films. 🙂

An Asian Ghost Story – Bo Wang
Last Things – Deborah Stratman
Archive of the Future – Giorgio Bassil

Vadim Kostrov

Still Free, Woche der Kritik
(Russia)

It was quite a difficult year for me and unfortunately I had not seen so many films but here are my best impressions from 2023, from the films I’ve seen in cinema this year. 

L’argent – Robert Bresson (just the most powerful immersion of the cinema of the year)
News from Home – Chantal Akerman (some things here had a deep connection with me)
Youth (Spring) – Wang Bing (Must be mentioned.)
Moving – Shinji Sōmai
Fallen Leaves – Aki Kaurismaki
The Boy and the Heron – Hayao Miyazaki
La femme de vends – Yazujiro Ozu
Gerry – Gus van Sant
Perfect Days – Wim Wenders
The Virgin Suicides – Sofia Coppola

Riar Rizaldi

Monisme, FIDMarseille
(Indonesia)

When I was approached to write my top film this year, I was really hesitant. One, I haven’t seen that much film this year (which I know that I missed a lot), both in cinema or home viewing context, as I’m constantly traveling with my feature Monisme and other work. Two, instead of film in a theatrical sense, my favorite encounter or top discovery of moving image mediums this year quite often happened outside the black-box cinema. Regardless, I am keen to share my favorite cinematographic experience and top discovery this year.

Horse Riding Horse (after Edward Muybridge) (2008) – Kim Beom

24 seconds of loop cinema history inside joke. 130 years after The Horse in Motion. Funniest cinematographic work I have seen this year.

Serah by Kasimyn in the final scene of Tiger Stripes (2023) – Amanda Nell Eu

This is more like a musical experience rather than cinematic experience, but nevertheless, the harmony between visual imagery and music in one of the last scenes of Tiger Stripes is beautiful and enchanting.  My favorite film-music moment this year. Disclaimer: Kasimyn is a best friend, and I know that this kind of music is not really his forte. However, with the help of brilliant musician Aryo Adhianto, Kas managed to compose this short serenade of melancholic tunes, which accompanies a brilliant scene.

Operator (2017–ongoing) – Patricia L. Boyd

This is quite literally a cinematic medium as an investigation apparatus. A thrilling video installation by Patricia L. Boyd that makes me rethink the medium of cinema itself. A par excellence representation of Farocki’s operational images. The film is shot in a black-box theater using a camera attached to motorized mechanic rigging floating mechanically scanning the floor. The video is projected using a very short throw projector on the wall, while another wall faces the video which renders a very small alley space for the audience to be as close as possible to the projected image. According to the exhibition leaflet, every time Boyd presents this work, she re-edits the duration of the film based on the loan repayment scheme that she devised. Amazing thought-provoking work.

Latah: A Culture-Specific Elaboration of the Startle Reflex (1983) – Ronald C. Simons

I’ve been fascinated by culture-specific mental disorders. Latah is one of these disorders that is bound to Southeast Asian culture, especially the Malay-Indonesian archipelago. On the other hand, out of curiosity about the genre, this year I have tried to watch as many medical anthropology films as possible. These two aspects perfectly match in this film. Though I must admit in terms of form it doesn’t offer any radical aesthetic but this little gem comes as my favorite from this genre, not only this year, but this is one of my favorite medical anthropology films ever. This is very personal to me: watching this reminded me of my late grandmother. Really happy to discover this film.

Srigala (1981) – Sisworo Gautama Putra (new restoration)

Finally had a chance to see this new 2K scan restoration of the Indonesian classic Friday the 13th rip-off! For such a long time I have only seen the letterboxed and cropped version of this film. This is perhaps not really a discovery since I always loved this film, but seeing it for the first time in its original images and sound was an experience.

The Cloud of Unknowing (2011) – Ho Tzu Nyen

Also not a discovery, but rewatching this 30-minute magical film about clouds in a museum space with proper 13-channel sound, a giant subwoofer, and a fog machine was at the top of my cinematic experience this year. When the theatrical element of cinema is expanded, and when the cloud literally jumps out from the screen at the end of this work, I was really transfixed with this overtly sensorial experience.

A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief (1988) – Jon Reiss

Greatest film about hell that I have watched. Revisit this film this year as I just found that its clean 16mm scanned copy has been on YouTube for the last 4 years. Those Survival Research Laboratories demon machines are terrifying!

Future Shock – The End of Eternity (2023) – Su Hui-yu

I am a sucker for the adaptation of theory books in cinema, from the concept of unfinished Marx Capital by Sergei Eisenstein to the chaotic Inventing the Future by Isiah Medina. I would put Future Shock by Su—which is adapted from the homonymous Alvin Toffler classic futurist prognosis—in one category of this theory book translated to cinema. Su’s films are bold, daring, and challenging at the same time. Though it might not be as bold as his previous work, this feature debut surely challenges the very concept of adapting theory books into abstract cinema.

La Taranta (1962) – Gianfranco Mingozzi

Finally, someone uploaded this classic ethnography study on magic and ritual in South Italy with English subtitles on YouTube. Through its poetic approach, this short 18 minutes manages to immerse me in the world full of magical thinking and collective hysteria. One of the best films on ritual and magic and the best discovery this year. On another note, I also recommend reading Magic: A Theory from the South by Italian anthropologist Ernesto de Martino to understand more about magic and ritual and how it links to structural poverty in southern Italy.

Anthony Lapia 

After, Berlinale
(France)

Films that moved me at the cinema this year, by alphabetical order:

Ashkal – Youssef Chebbi
The Beast – Bertrand Bonello
Christina –Nikola Spasić
The Daughters of Fire – Pedro Costa
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World – Radu Jude
The Fabelmans – Steven Spielberg
H – Carlos Pardo Ros
Koban Louzoù – Brieuc Schieb
Last Summer – Catherine Breillat
Last Things – Deborah Stratman
Master Gardener – Paul Schrader
My Sole Desire – Lucie Borleteau
Oppenheimer – Christopher Nolan
Orlando, My Political Biography – Paul B. Preciado
The Other Laurens – Claude Schmitz
Our Bodies – Claire Simon
Passages – Ira Sachs
The Rapture – Iris Kaltenbäck
Sleepless Nights – Donatienne Berthereau
Summer Scars – Simon Rieth
The Temple Woods Gang – Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche

And one TV Show (thanks to Sortie de Secours for the discovery): The Curse by Nathan Fielder

Kim Torres

Solo la Luna Comprenderá, Locarno
(Costa Rica)

La imagen Permanente – Laura Ferrés
In Water – Hong Sang-soo
Tótem – Lila Avilés
Dreaming and Dying –Nelson Yeo
El auge del humano 3 – Eduardo Williams

Guilhem Causse

Knit’s Island, Visions du Reel
(France)

Here’s my favorite films of this year, which impacted me in many different ways.

The Lost Boys Of Mercury – Clémence Davigo
What Should We Have Done – Fujino Tomoaki
Stars At Noon – Claire Denis
A Night of Knowing Nothing – Payal Kapadia
Hideous – Yann Gonzales
On the Edge – Nicolas Peduzzi
Fauna – Carlota Serarols
Poor Things –Yorgos Lanthimos

Blake Williams

Labyrinth Sequences, Cinema du Reel
(Canada)

Time Tunnel (1971, Takahiko Iimura)

My year of moving image media peaked early when, during the Berlinale, I attended the Forum Expanded exhibition, “An Atypical Orbit.” Nestled among the nearly three dozen pieces contained within silent green Kulturquartier’s underground gallery was a re-staging of a Takahiko Iimura exhibition mounted fifty years ago at Kino Arsenal’s Schöneberg location. 

“Time Tunnel: Takahiko Iimura at Kino Arsenal, 18. April 1973” comprised five small CRT televisions, each in front of its own seat, showing simultaneous loops of four of Iimura’s then-recent video works, and taking its name from the best of the lot: Time Tunnel (1971). Presented in its rare 31-minute complete version, Time Tunnel is, like most of Iimura’s feedback work, elegantly structured, and soundtracked by only some hissy roomtone and the artist’s own voice. 

The image is of what appears to be a looping film reel countdown—working from 10 to 1 and then restarting again at 10—and Iimura counts along with the numbers as they appear on the screen. Occasionally the countdown’s rhythm slightly changes, causing his vocal accompaniment to mistakenly arrive early or late. Sometimes Iimura confuses the order of some numbers, prompting him to stop and correct himself. At one point the countdown stops and then changes direction, now counting upward, to create more playful confusion. Most intoxicating of all, though, is that the countdown appears to have been re-photographed off of a monitor that was connected to a live feed from the capture camera. 

This setup, combined with the camera’s analog tube technology, turns each of the on-screen numbers into spectral vapors that seem to lift off the screen at varying intensities, wisping past my eyes and seeming to pass right through me. Dirt and debris would transform, in some moments, into a kind of stargate field, giving Kubrick and Trumbull’s work three years earlier a run for its money. I visited the exhibit to re-watch this piece three times over the two-week festival, each time lost in its hypnotic vortex, wondering where that half hour went once it would finally abruptly cut to black. It’s a perfect synthesis of materials, structure, and spontaneity, the likes of which have become a rare find in contemporary film- & video-making.

Philip Sotnychenko

La Palisiada, IFFR
(Ukraine)

My favorite film is About Dry Grasses by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. 

Melisa Liebenthal 

El Rostro de la Medusa, Berlinale
(Argentina)

Geographies of Solitude, Jacqueline Mills
Ramona, Victoria Linares Villegas
Roter Himmel, Christian Petzold
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, Elene Naveriani
Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt
How To Have Sex, Molly Manning Walker

Lisandro Alonso

Eureka, Cannes
(Argentina)

It seems to me that 2023 was a good year for cinema. At Cannes, premiering Eureka, I was able to realize this. That the cinema that I like, that I enjoy watching and making, hopefully continues to be made. Me and other colleagues have found the weapons within our reach to move it forward. And for some time now I have prioritized watching the films of those filmmakers with whom I feel affinity, also with whom I have built some kind of friendship. 

For Timo [e.n. Timo Salminen, DOP, best known for his artistic work on Aki Kaurismäki‘s films], the affinity is with Aki,  I liked his Fallen Leaves. Also Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, Rodrigo Moreno’s Los Delincuentes, Amat Escalante’s Perdidos en la Noche, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s documentary Retratos Fantasmas and The Zone of Interest, a film that interests me conceptually. All of them interest me for their cinematic value, for the surprise they generated in me. 

Two great films that I saw this year but are not from this year, Pacifiction by Albert Serra and Mato Seco En Chamas by Adirley Queirós and Joana Pimienta. I’m also dying to see Miguel Gomes’ new one, which is getting ready and hopefully will be released soon. I would have liked to see Arturo a los 30, La Práctica, El Auge del Humano 3. It was a great year for Argentine cinema, it stood out. It was everywhere and I hope it can continue like this for a long time. 

One thing that stands out, commercially speaking in 2023, is that the films that I liked, even if they end up in MUBI, continue to be shown in theaters. I’m glad about that and I want to point that out. I don’t like to make lists. I forget about films, about people, and in the end films are not made to be on lists, but in theaters to find their audience. I hope that this continues to happen or that the public continues to find the films.

Pedro Emilio Segura Bernal

Selecționer, critic și distribuitor de film din Mexic. Este co-fondator și co-director al La Ola Cine, o companie de distribuție de film din Mexico City. În prezent, face parte din echipele artistice ale festivalurilor Black Canvas, Reykjavik FF, Ambulante și Woche der Kritik. Textele sale despre cinema au fost publicate în reviste precum Cinema Scope, Film Comment, MUBI Notebook, cât și în proiectele editoriale ale festivalurilor de la Locarno, Viennale, Mar del Plata și altele.