Top 10 Films of 2020

Something I am always inclined to internally register and extrapolate upon recounting my favorite films of any given year are the possible trends and/or connections I can make from the highly coveted top ten (based upon a regularly maintained yearly ranking). Essentially, what types of films of all geographical, ethnic, gender, and class backgrounds can see representation in a given year's best new releases, long and short form, narrative or avant-garde. For me personally, what ends up ranking highest suggests not only a palette of taste and the maturation of it, but also where exactly on the vast filmmaking spectrum does cinematic excellence thrive most. Typically in the past, my canon of top tens have been all-inclusive to featuring extravagantly funded mainstream studio productions to seldom distributed indies made for less than what back channel royalties Adam Sandler still receives from the making of Little Nicky. To bar you of the worn redundancies of 2020's "unprecedented" circumstances, simply put, the past year has seen the traditional ecosystem of film distribution abruptly gutted. But where big money business saw devastating ruin, albeit somewhat deserved, the always indefatigable world of independent cinema has continued to prevail with admirable resilience against the many critical pronouncements of the medium's demise. This brings me to the meat of my list. In a year where undesirable drivel flooded various mass market streamers left and right, I stay of utmost gratitude for platforms like MUBI, virtual screenings, online festivals, and self-distribution for rectifying what would have otherwise been a truly dreadful year for the cinema. But because of these crucial pillars for supporting independents, the year has in actuality turned out much, much stronger than what most would recognize based solely upon the most surface level offerings only. For as unrelentingly dreadful as the year was in most respects, its cinema is of great, relieving pleasure. The caveat being that you just have to know where to look.

10) STILL PROCESSING (Dir. Sophy Romvari)

A personal gem from the year's handful of online festivals, Toronto-based talent Sophy Romvari's Still Processing is a bare abstract of grief and mourning for the filmmaker and subject's two late siblings. Sometimes bordering on being too transparent for comfort (the film features multiple emotionally vulnerable scenes of Sophy), this spiritually cathartic documentary memorial provides a lovingly felt Bazinian justification for the moving image as a vessel for preservation of the subject intact. Romvari's openness to chronicling her vulnerability interspersed with a collage of photo and cinematographic materials manages to do something uniquely special, possible only with the aid of the film instrument. Despite the physical absence of the deceased, the binding of contemporary and past filmed images reunite the siblings as photographic equals projecting out the frame through light. As if through this technological process of alchemy, the three are at once in company again and this time, forever. Thank you again for sharing, Sophy (if you're reading this).

*The film has yet to be widely released, but a recent announcement for distribution signals availability soon.

9) KRABI, 2562 (Dir. Ben Rivers & Anocha Suwichakornpong)

Likening it to a "cinematographic postcard" in an earlier writing, the experimental narrative Krabi, 2562 sees a surprise directorial collaboration between two singular minds of the contemporary avant-garde in Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong. Impossible to categorize, the unlikely duo put their respective cultural identities and perspectives to form resulting in a seamless blurring of fiction and non-fiction as the local Thai region the film is named after is treated as a vivid abstract muse, both from that of the native and that of the tourist (the titular town is a spot for international visitors). Multiple cross-cutting narratives run through the film's veins from working locals to distant travelers and even to elusive cave dwelling indigenous peoples, all existing in a collective, mostly harmonious stasis. At first seemingly observing the effects of colonization, as the film etches on it then invisibly changes, or more so reveals, its heart by finding an agreed meditative compromise to the commodification as instead a more warmly received case for cosmopolitanism, even if induced to a pinpoint on the map most don't even know exists. Ostensibly a tribute to "the spot."

*Available on Region B Blu-ray by Powerhouse Films

8) YOUNG AHMED (Dir. Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

Of the films released in 2020, many key releases shared direct commonality in being excesses still in the process of distribution from the previous year's Cannes film festival. The first of two films from that jam-packed slate on this list is the questionably controversial Young Ahmed by well established Belgian luminaries Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne. A prime example of a work of art unfairly judged, the Bros' latest effort may go down as the black sheep of their vast filmography due to inflammatory, over reactive accusations of racist depictions of the Muslim community by the critically myopic (the film even got banned from playing at TIFF for related reasons). But watching the film, I'm gob smacked by these accounts. What I expected at the worst was an unsuccessful attempt at something at least interesting, but what I really got was a conceptually rewarding masterwork that may even be among the siblings' finest. Aware of their eyebrow raising premise (and their place as old white male directors), the brothers enact provocation of a portraiture of Muslim extremism's influence on an uncompromising juvenile not as a transgressive act, but instead as a canvas for ideological contestation on spirituality, physicality, and youth. To say more would be to spoil, but the profundity the film so successfully ruminates on can best be summed in this powerful quote from Metropolis: "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart."

*Streaming on Criterion Channel and Kanopy. Available to buy on Blu-ray/DVD and VOD by Kino Lorber

7) THE SKY IS CLEAR AND BLUE TODAY (Dir. Ricky D'Ambrose)

Hot off the trails of his pictorially impressive Notes on an Appearance (2018), New York-based independent filmmaker Ricky D'Ambrose returns with his punctual short The Sky is Clear and Blue Today (easily my favorite film title in recent memory). Conceptually based off the infamous Thomas Hoepker 9/11 photograph (mimicked in the film in the above photo), D'Ambrose constructs a fictional narrative of interwoven character relationships analyzing their recollection and process of the event's lingering trauma. At its core, the film studies the cancerous growth of American nationalism led on by various multi-media channels narrating and aestheticizing tragedy. Thus, effectively scrubbing and replacing the fleeting purity of the moment for propagandic agendas, most often dangerous or at the very least skewed in their influence. An ideological evocation that makes me personally curious of whether D'Ambrose's musing is of deliberate enactment for the times. The long-running stratagems of political ideation in his work wouldn't make it a sporadic move either. D'Ambrose's trademark rigor of clear Straub-Huillet-ian descendence is developed at its most dramaturgically piercing here, further assuring my deeply felt expound of him being the most cerebral working filmmaker in contemporary American cinema today and hopefully for many years to come. A potential major player, him. Even more so than he's already been.

*Currently awaiting distribution

6) JOAN OF ARC (Dir. Bruno Dumont)

Dispassionate, bold, and cheeky. Three contrasting adjectives I'd use to describe the rigorously frigid Joan of Arc by veteran French auteur Bruno Dumont (which premiered to almost zero buzz upon its premiere at Cannes 2019). The imminent follow-up to his more outlandishly patent Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2017), Dumont takes a hard formal brake in the stilted momentum of the aforementioned in place of a searing, but languid existential quandary, bounded by an elongated variation of the trial executed so dryly comical (as to almost be nonexistent) and with such sparse dynamism that of all the films on this list, I consider this to easily be the most challenging watch. But where some might mistake most of Dumont's direction as legitimately bored (with the exclusion of the electrifying honor guard sequence at the beginning; an honest strong "best scene of the year" candidate for me), even more so than what his trademark elusiveness notes him for, the shift from Jeanette's optimism is tentative to the emotional poignancy Dumont so damningly punctuates in this naturally bleaker end segment to the storied tale. Despite the knowing trajectory of Jeannette's fate, Dumont's constant tonal oscillation slyly illustrates the futility of her ambitious crusade as a self-damning prophecy, gradually drained of energy as the inevitable is confronted. Won't be shy about my hubris about this one when it's canonized as one of the great, ingenious formal experiments in due time.

*Available on VOD and coming soon to DVD by KimStim

5) ANNE AT 13,000 FT. (Dir. Kazik Radwanski)

In a year where very little was certain, one of the few things that managed to be was the continued, assuring strength of contemporary Canadian cinema. Among the impactful batch, which includes Romvari's Still Processing and Denis Cote's Ghost Town Anthology, the most stately of the wave is none other than Toronto-based filmmaker Kazik Radwanski's Anne at 13,000 ft. A film that may at first induce a great many eye rolls upon the sight of its potentially nauseating use of tight frames shot in handheld, Radwanski's usage of the admittedly worn tactic is anything but uninspired. Featuring an illuminatingly elusive lead performance from Deragh Campbell as the titular Anne (in what is easily her best showing to date), the film's piercing ability to act both as an interrogation of Anne's mental plights while neither reprehending her character creates a puzzling effect of empathy that I can only ever recall seeing once before in Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar (2002). Anne's difficulties remain solely trapped inside her body, but Radwanski's camera (by way of regular DP Nikolay Michaylov) through some oscillating shifts in dichotomy between spontaneity and information of the hand, enigmatically illustrates the interior's projection outwards. It's a mesmeric effect, one that is attempted by many, but seldom achieved for genuine aesthetic warping of the ontological. Perhaps seems shallow in my praise to harp on what may sound like a one-note technique, but the results are uniquely spellbinding. Also features a skydiving sequence that impressed me for two note reasons, none attributed to its low-budget nature. One, the seamless transition from grounded character scenes to setpiece, and two, the fun Bazinian game one can play determining fact from fiction during Anne's (Campbell's) plummet back to Earth. Watch your fucking back Tom Cruise.

*Coming soon to virtual theaters by Cinema Guild

4) TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH (Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Easily the film with the largest of scope on this list, Japanese iconoclast Kiyoshi Kurosawa's To the Ends of the Earth is a lone seismic offering in a moment where so many "big movies" feel small in their reverb. Made in part as a commemoration of 25 years of diplomacy between Japan and Uzbekistan, Kurosawa sees his sensibilities flourish abroad like none other with a centered character study constantly shifting in forward motion, aided by the grandiose terrain and adventurous splendor of the region's landscapes and people (think a more engaged alternative to The Passenger). Guided by the sonorous lead of pop sensation turned actress Atsuko Maeda (who gives the year's best performance), the film is at once about cultural revelation as it is a deeply personal one as well. Plotting down its all encompassing narrative would be near next to impossible in short form (which I say with no trace of hyperbole), but let me say this. If diplomacy and cross cultural mending is what sparked this project, Kurosawa illustrates that grander relationship with damn near perfection as his Japanese cast intrude, reflect, and eventually blur into this land of which is not theirs. The geographically distant cultures clash only to find common ground through rough but never violent tumult. It's a beautiful thing to take in for the moment and a firm, but necessary reminder that if we dig deep within ourselves, we'll see the rest of the world, no matter how foreign and alien on the surface.

*Coming soon to virtual theaters by KimStim

3) THE GIVERNY DOCUMENT (SINGLE CHANNEL)

(Dir. Ja'Tovia Gary)

Many of the previous year's tragedies remained in most ways unnecessary and violent reiterations to issues long festering within the annals of human history. One of those most poignant is the continued oppression of the black man and woman in a world ravaged by colonialism and mass cultural normalization of white Europeans as the self-declared dominant ethnic group. Made prior to but released in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement to the mainstream political stage, American multi-media artist Ja'Tovia Gary's The Giverny Document is an evocative work of cinematic collage meditating on the place of the contemporary black woman living in the United States. Gary's "expressing through all means necessary" film is given a simple, but provocative ideological anchor through candid interviews on the streets of New York City of age-varying black women with the repeating question, "Do you feel safe?" Replies vary from person to person, each detailing specific profiles of each subject's vantages, from the experiential to the spiritual. Through this, Gary frames a segment of the population in an existential stand still. Confident or fearing, the circumstances of each's subjectivity is revealing. These snapshots juxtaposed with a Nina Simone concert and many a document of black womanhood (with the inclusion of an upsetting record of police violence aftermath) in a semi-structuralist format paints a grieving, but resistant portrait more cognizant than most modern works regarding oppression typically entail. Being informed is obviously key, but I also do firmly believe that education of the matter is best done through text and academia than of the cinema. Where Gary succeeds in her topicality is not in didacticism and/or dramatization, but the translation of her experience to the framework of cinema. The many lives of the black woman are synthesized into a sort of "ghost in the machine" relationship. Not a film for the times as it is a film of time.

*Currently awaiting distribution. The film was available on YouTube for sometime but has since been privated. Though try personally emailing Ja'Tovia Gary for a screener.

2) I WAS AT HOME, BUT... (Dir. Angela Schanelec)

The only filmmaker to make an appearance on both of my favorites lists for 2020, German luminary Angela Schanelec returns with her newest and perhaps most major work to date, the curiously titled I Was At Home, But... Finally delving into Schanelec's filmography last year resulted in the most resonant filmmaker discovery I've made in recent. As a very formally oriented cinephile, Schanelec's hard compositional focus on the ontological opposed to the textual aims for a mode of cinematic presentation that all while being well established in tradition (Ozu, Bresson), the manner in which it rejects didacticism for temporality makes it feel all the more like a breath of fresh air in cinema's current aesthetic stasis. Narrating the aftermath of the abrupt return of her son from an unspecified disappearance, single mother Astrid (played by Schanelec regular Maren Eggert) and the lives of those closely and distantly related are thrust into existential purgatory. The strong undercurrent of leisurely or fleeting rumination common in Schanelec's past works are now replaced with an expedited sensation of dread and pessimism under the vice grips of contemporary urban living. The anxious uncertainty of what a doomed future will bring and the inability to stay up to speed with ever-growing societal hardships results in a "locking up" of social performance and responsibility in Astrid I find solace with, as well as many others I'm sure. No matter the various institutions she and her children drift in and out for her personal validation of some meaning or context, her interior doldrums seemingly never calm. But it is rather in the removal of these pressures, that life is restored, both for Astrid and her family, and quite literally the tone of Schanelec's film. It's a damning impression of hushed struggles I think most can identify with and the deeply problematic projections of tomorrow that loom over our clarity day by day. If there's one shot in a film that stayed with me most from this year, it'd have to be the long tracking sequence at the midpoint, where-in the camera sits still chronicling Berlin from the window of a moving car as characters gently converse over the phone. Reinforces to me that cinema is not actually anything enacted in large, sweeping technical gestures, but simply in what the image relays to us.

*Currently streaming on MUBI. Coming soon to Blu-ray, DVD, & VOD by Cinema Guild

1) FOURTEEN (Dir. Dan Sallitt)

Those who've kept tabs on my film postings from the year won't see this coming as a surprise at all, especially given my repetitious praise of it at every given chance, but if one film certainly impressed me most in 2020, it'd be none other than the long-awaited recent outing of American filmmaker & critic Dan Sallitt's decade defining masterwork Fourteen. Starring Tallie Medel and Norma Kuhling, the film charts the deterioration of a longtime friendship between two best friends as the circumstances of life pull them ever so distantly apart. Compared to some of the more formally ambitious films on my list, Sallitt's sensibilities remain the most simplistic and minimal in their gesture, but the effect results in constant momentous charge, often allowing for hard hitting punctuations in emotional catharsis. For being a film I self proclaim as the best of the American cinema in the past decade, Sallitt's channel of influences are anything but locally sourced. Fully embracing the cool naturalistic reserve of Maurice Pialat and the stylized realism of Eric Rohmer, the best American film in recent is unabashedly flowing with French blood in its veins (the other red, white, and blue). Momentary vignettes loosely drift and connect to one another dodging linearity and ellipsis seamlessly undercuts didactic form. A richly textured film of dramatic layer that I feel is a rarity in today's cinema. To honestly discuss the film's contents further would be to exhaust precious detail better seen than read given its rather minimalistic narrative, but let me assure you in saying that I doubt any other recent film will leave you entranced and gripped in quite the manner only Sallitt is capable of. One that in its very nature is steeped in cinematic tradition, while simultaneously illuminating the path forward of a cinema that is entirely fresh and advanced. 

*Available on DVD & VOD by Grasshopper Films