Here’s IndieWire’s annual survey where directors pick their favorite films of the year. This year, there were 65 participants, including Edward Berger, Robert Eggers, Coralie Fargeat, Todd Field, Luca Guadagnino, Radu Jude, Payal Kapadia, Karyn Kusama, David Lowery, Paul Schrader, are Oliver Stone.
Luca Guadagnino’s list is topped by David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds.” No surprise. He’s a big fan of the Canadian filmmaker. In 2022, Guadagnino also had Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” as his #1 film of that year. Here’s what he said:
“Greatest movie this year. Fantastic … Another tender movie! It’s beautiful to see Cronenberg, who has been constantly seen as a very in control filmmaker with a very clinical coldness to his art, which is true, being so warm and so tender. It’s a beautiful love story and it’s also a very devastating vision of the future. It’s amazing.”
The rest of Guadagnino’s picks are unranked, and they include “Dune: Part Two,” “Juror #2,” “Furiosa,” “Trap” and “Terrifier 2” (which he hadn’t seen until this year).
Continuing on with tradition, Paul Schrader decided to include his own “Oh, Canada” on his top 10. The other nine on his list are “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” “Emilia Pérez,” “A Complete Unknown,” “My First Film,” “Babygirl” and “I Saw the TV Glow.”
Furthermore, Adam Wingard (“The Guest”) has no list. He says that out of the 84 titles he watched this year, only three were new movies. “Two of them I didn’t enjoy, and one was Furiosa, which I’ve seen multiple times [and is] one of my favorite films of this decade.”
Even the people who make movies aren’t seeing movies these days …
Meanwhile, Robert Eggers lists “Anora,” “The Substance,” “The Girl With the Needle,” “The First Omen,” “Babygirl,” and Furiosa.” He also confesses to having been highly impressed by “Mufasa”:
I just came home from “Mufasa” with my family. It was truly moving to see what Barry Jenkins’ singular voice brought to this massive event film
I’m not going to go through every single entry here, but a few other nuggets that caught my attention include Julius Onah (“Captain America: Brave New World”) proclaiming “Megalopolis” as the film of the year:
Perhaps the most transporting experience of 2024 in a theater. Seeing it in IMAX was absolutely glorious. Coppola pouring himself into every frame of this film was so inspiring. Rich with ideas, images and an unwavering faith in what is possible. Watching Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito and the entire cast work so passionately was incredibly moving.
The piece points out how many filmmakers were frustrated by the response to so-called “divisive” films that struggled to find an audience, with “Megalopolis” being the most mentioned (eight lists), followed by Ali Abassi’s “The Apprentice” (six lists).
Todd Field absolutely loved “The Apprentice,” but also, and especially, Radu Jude’s “Don’t Expect Too Much From the End of the World.” Here’s his writeup about the former:
Last year Nina Hoss—with typical understatement—said that she’d worked with this “very interesting guy named Radu Jude.” This in no way prepared me for the hallucinogenic excursion of “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World;” a strange concoction of absurd humor, rage and disgust with the TikTok world we occupy. The film’s pleasures are many, including Nina as a German automaton CEO overseeing a Bucharest-based production services company. And there’s a very funny, not-so-funny, cameo by the director Uwe Boll who shares a sentiment held by many today, that cinema is dead. So, it’s especially gratifying to watch Jude prove him wrong. Unleashing a ferocious skillset he shares with the incomparable Ilinca Manolache. An actor and director so perfectly aligned it’s impossible to separate praise for the wickedly smart execution of their aims. Seven months after seeing their film, I’m still thinking about it.
How about one more top 10? Edward Berger (“Conclave”) has “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” “Anora,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Nickel Boys,” “The Substance,” “C’È Ancora Domani,” “Challengers”/“Queer” and “Hollywoodgate.”
In case you’re wondering, these are the most mentioned films:
1) “Anora” = 24 directors
2) “Challengers” = 14 directors
3) “The Substance” = 12 directors
3) “The Brutalist” = 12 directors
5) “Nickel Boys” = 10 directors
5) “Babygirl” = 10 directors
7) “Conclave” = 9 directors
7) “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” = 9 directors
9) “Dune: Part II” = 8 directors
9) “Megalopolis” = 8 directors
