World Poll 2018 – Part 2

ENTRIES IN PART 2:

Thomas Caldwell

Writer, broadcaster, film critic, public speaker and film programmer based in Melbourne, Australia

Top ten films
My favourite films that were released in Melbourne, Australia, in 2018 (including films released directly to streaming services or home entertainment):
Leave No Trace (Debra Granik, 2018)
Jusqu’à la garde, (Custody, Xavier Legrand, 2017)
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018)
Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton, 2017)
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)
Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017)
I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2017)
A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018)

Honourable mentions
Twenty more films I loved this year, listed alphabetically:
A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018)
Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2018)
Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard, 2018)
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S Craig Zahler, 2017)
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, 2018)
Cargo (Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke, 2017)
Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018)
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (Gus Van Sant, 2018)
First Man (Damien Chazelle, 2018)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
Ghosthunter (Ben Lawrence, 2018)
Gurrumul (Paul Damien Williams, 2017)
I Kill Giants (Anders Walter, 2017)
Manbiki kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017)
The Old Man & the Gun (David Lowery, 2018)
The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017)
Una mujer fantástica (A Fantastic Woman, Sebastián Lelio, 2017)
You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)

Favourite films not given a full release locally
Many of the films I saw this year that left a big impression on me are films that only screened to Melbourne audiences at various festivals. Some of those films have local distribution and will more than likely be released next year, so I’ll include them on my 2019 list, but the ones that don’t currently have local distribution (to the best of my knowledge) that I’d like to mention are the following:
Blaze (Ethan Hawke, 2018)
Holiday (Isabella Eklöf, 2018)
Khook (Pig, Mani Haghighi, 2018)
Ondes de choc – Journal de ma tête (Shock Waves: Diary of My Mind, Ursula Meier, 2018)
Para Aduma (Red Cow, Tsivia Barkai Yacov, 2018)
Relaxer (Joel Potrykus, 2018)
The Green Fog (Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin, 2017)
The Rape of Recy Taylor (Nancy Buirski, 2017)
Vinterbrødre (Winter Brothers, Hlynur Palmason, 2017)
Yours in Sisterhood (Irene Lusztig, 2018)

Michael Campi

Swept up by the possibilities of moving images for a lifetime: involved with non-commercial film exhibition over many decades. 2018 has been another fine year watching several hundred films on commercial release, at international festivals and elsewhere. My list includes what has impressed most across a cross-section of national cinemas seen in several regions, from the latest impressive works by Lee Chang-dong and Nuri Bilge Ceylan to fresh works by emerging filmmakers.

Titles listed alphabetically:
Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018)
America Town (Jeon Soo-il, 2017)
Un beau soleil intérieur (Let the Sunshine In, Claire Denis, 2017)
Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
Bisbee ’17 (Robert Greene, 2018)
Cho-haeng (The First Lap, Kim Dae-hwan, 2017)
Columbus (Kogonada, 2017)
Da Fo Pulasi (The Great Buddha+, Huang Hsin-yao, 2017)
Da Xiang Xi Di Er Zuo (An Elephant Sitting Still, Hu Bo, 2018)
The Deserted (Tsai Ming-liang, VR, 2017)
Di Qiu Zui Hou De Ye Wan (Long Day’s Journey into Night, Bi Gan, 2018)
En Guerre (At War, Stéphane Brizé, 2018)
Ex-Libris: The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman, 2017)
Gangbyun Hotel (Hotel by the River, Hong Sang-soo, 2018)
Les Gardiennes (The Guardians, Xavier Beauvois, 2017)
In Den Gängen (In the Aisles, Thomas Stuber, 2018)
L’insulte (The Insult, Ziad Doueiri, 2017)
Jianghu Er Nv (Ash is the Purest White, Jia Zhangke, 2018)
Kazenoki Wa Koto No Youni (Complicity, Chikaura Kei, 2018)
Kraben Rahu (Manta Ray, Phuttiphong Aroonphong, 2018)
Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro, Alice Rohrwacher, 2018)
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh, 2018)
Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Kore-eda Hirokazu, 2018)
Netemo Sametemo (Asako I & II, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2018)
Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
Oiktos (Pity, Babis Makridis, 2018)
Pul-lip-deul (Grass, Hong Sang-soo, 2018)
The Rider (Chloé Zhao 2017)
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
Sal-a-nam-eun A-i (The Last Child, Shin Dong-seok, 2017)
Styx (Wolfgang Fischer, 2018)
Tinta bruta (Hard Paint, Filipe Matzembacher, Marco Reolon, 2018)
Wajib (Annemarie Jacir, 2017)
Yoake (His Lost Name, Hirose Nanako, 2018)
Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)
Zimna wojna (Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)
Zi You Xing (A Family Tour, Ying Liang, 2018)

The Insult (Ziad Doueiri, 2017)

Nicolas Carrasco

Staff writer at Desistfilm

In no particular order:
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)
El silencio es un cuerpo que cae (Silence Is a Falling Body, Agustina Comedi, 2017)
Highview (Simon Liu, 2017)
Lazzaro felice (Happy as Lazzaro, Alice Rohrwacher, 2018)
The Image You Missed (Donal Foreman, 2018)
Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami, 2017)
Pup-ip-deul (Grass, Hong Sang-soo, 2018)
La casa lobo (The Wolf House, Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña, 2018)
Waldheims Walzer (The Waldheim Waltz, Ruth Beckermann, 2018)
Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017)
Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018)
In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018)
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos, 2018)
Gangbyeon hotel (Hotel by the river, Hong Sang-soo, 2018)
The Rider (Chloé Zhao, 2017)
Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)
Di qiu zui hou de ye wan (Long Day’s Journey into Night, Bi Gan, 2018)
Vinterbrødre (Winter Brothers, Hlynur Pálmason, 2017)
Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
Classical Period (Ted Fendt, 2018)
Black Mother (Khalik Allah, 2018)
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)
Que le diable nous emporte (Tempting Devils, Jean-Claude Brisseau, 2016-2018)
Arábia (Araby, Joao Dumans & Affonso Uchoa, 2017)
As boas maneiras (Good Manners, Juliana Rojas & Marco Dutra, 2017)
Era uma vez Brasilia (Once There Was Brasilia, Adirley Queirós, 2017)
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
Relaxer (Joel Potrykus, 2018)
Tesnota (Closeness, Kantemir Balagov, 2017)
Les Garçons sauvages (The Wild Boys, Bertrand Mandico, 2017)
Algo quema (Still Burn, Mauricio Ovando, 2018)
★ (Johann Lurf, 2017)
Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh, 2017)
Idizwadidiz (Isiah Medina, 2017)
Terra Franca (Ashore, Leonor Teles, 2018)
Teatro de guerra (Theater of War, Lola Arias, 2018)

Michael J. Casey

FILM CRITIC AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER FOR BOULDER WEEKLY

Bisbee ’17 (Robert Greene, 2018)
Birds of Passage (Cristina Gallego & Ciro Guerra, 2018)
BlackKklansman (Spike Lee, 2018)
Zimna wojna (Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)
The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2018)
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)
The Rider (Chloé Zhoe, 2018)
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
Your Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)

Celluloid Liberation Front

Celluloid Liberation Front is a multi-use(r) name whose writing is visible to the naked eye from outer space. For reasons that remain unknown, the name was borrowed from a collective of anti-imperialist blind filmmakers from the Cayman Islands

Good Morning (Bahij Hojeij, 2018)
The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017)
Atlanta – Season 2 (Donald Glover, 2018)
Da xiang xi di er zuo (An Elephant Sitting Still, Hu Bo, 2018)
Fotbal Infinit (Infinite Football, Corneliu Borumboiu, 2018)
I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2018)
A Feeling Greater Than Love (Mary Jirmanus Saba, 2017)
Sorry To Bother You (Boots Riley, 2018)
The Most Beautiful Country In The World (Želimir Žilnik, 2018)
Mary Poppins Returns (Rob Marshall, 2018)

Jeremy Chamberlin

Cinephile and Student, United States and United Kingdom

This is a rolling Top Ten list of films, with runner-ups, that were first released in 2018 or were released in 2017, but took a year to get to a theatre (or website) near me. There are many films that have come out this year that I have yet to see before this poll’s deadline, mostly because of their release schedules and my globetrotting, that will probably give the films in the Top Ten some stiff competition – including Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018), If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018), and Sǐ Líng Hún (Dead Souls, Wang Bing, 2018) – but this is still an excellent list.

Top Ten, Listed Alphabetically:
Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018). Embodies, over the course of three necessary hours, our living through a small life, continuing to live even though we can’t find any meaning in it: it’s either dig that well or suicide. Nonetheless, at least for the viewer, life is quite nice. Ceylan’s use of dialogue is novelistic and as immersive as Tarr’s use of images, though Ceylan’s images are also beautiful. They have a digital crispness to them, and a rich color palate centered around earthy colors. Unfortunately, Ceylan is still working in a masculine sphere.

Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018). A triumph of cerebral cinematic aesthetic values with a surreal, eldritch, visceral subject that allows it to beauteously dramatize the intertwinement between destruction and creation and how we are always becoming. The diverse, almost all-female cast is a great bonus. A perfect companion to Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, providing a visual aesthetic that enrichens the novella’s imagery and events.

Columbus (Kogonada, 2017). Aesthetically, it is almost perfect; I wish only that the camera did not move the two times it did. The still cinematography is perfectly in-line with the modernist architecture it captures. A light expression of contemporary dissatisfaction with modernity, globalization, and a dearth of life options along the lines of “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017). Detached, dark, cerebral, philosophical, severe like its titular denomination, conflicted yet unitary: a welcome throwback to Bergman, Bresson, and Dreyer, though one with the cinematographic control of Ozu. More a film about religion than religious, it is partially a repurposing of Bergman’s Winter Light for our age, though unlike the chance-based nuclear Armageddon of Light, global warming is going to be our sure, but slow death because our screwed-up world is not going to stop it. Its response to this doomed situation is truthfully uncertain.

Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018) An intriguing stylistic shift for Koreeda. Even when children starved in squalor, his films were so… nice, sometimes as if they could be blown away with a breath of air. This has his hallmarks – food, family, naturalistic gender parity, etc. – but the adjective that should be used now is “delicate”. There is a condemnation of Japanese society in its allusive portrayal of people managing to live precariously on the margins of the system, both economically and socially, but it is executed with restraint.

Nelyubov (Loveless, Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2017). A cold-hearted portrait of a rotted society in apocalyptic decay, and a fine work of art – barring the odd malicious portrayal of selfies – because of Zvyagintsev’s absolute aesthetic control over his medium, especially the 2.35:1 cinematography. It could be watched virtuosity alone, but it is also a compelling vision of a world that is apathetic to all we do.

Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017). Held me in a rapturous high: a paean to classical aesthetic values cinematic, musical, sartorial, and culinary. The central romance is deliciously twisted, with both dancers of the masochism tango on equal high footing with one another. On average. A plausible reconstruction of the male artist-female muse relationship, with all the scars that come from reconstruction.

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018). Immersed me into another time and place so entirely, so profoundly beauteously, that I lost all conception of time’s passage. Even when the end credits were rolling over an almost still image, the neighborhood’s sounds kept me immersed, and I didn’t want to leave. By being a work of drama, it can convey all the nuances of its subject era’s people, delights, beauties, inequities, oppressions, crises, et cetera, in a way that no essay ever could: instead of the relatively superficial understanding that comes from an explanation, they are understood on an intuitive level.

Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley, 2018). Radical in all the right places. Sometimes, radical filmmaking screws around with form that is just fine as it is, like cinematography, to no benefit. Here, the radicalness is in the politics, costuming, and storytelling that effectively moves solely of its own satirical momentum and inter-sectionalist anti-capitalistic logic through numerous genres. If only it had more of Detroit….

Zimna Wojna (Cold War, Paweł Pawlikowski, 2018). A rather cerebral romance: most of the protagonists’ falling in love happens during a time skip, and the film’s (superlative) old-school formalism keeps us at a slight remove. The music and the crisp, high contrast black and white cinematography add richness in lieu of a more standard romance. Dramatizes, in an extreme Cold War context, how we vacillate between sociopolitical things, reacting against what’s bad with one thing and (hoping to) find(ing) something better with the other, but never finding a perfect middle.

Very Honorable Mentions, Listed Alphabetically:
Bao (Domee Shi, 2018)
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017)
Disobedience (Sebastián Lelio, 2017)
Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz, 2017)
Paddington 2 (Paul King, 2017)
You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)

Honorable Mentions, Listed Alphabetically:
Jiā Nián Huá (Angels Wear White, Vivian Qu, 2017)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (The Cohen Brothers, 2018)
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)
A Fantastic Woman (Sebastián Lelio, 2017)
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh, 2017)
Lucky (John Carroll Lynch, 2017)
The Rider (Chloé Zhao, 2017)
They Shall Not Grow Old (Peter Jackson, 2018)
Wildlife (Paul Dano, 2017)

Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018)

Daryl Chin

Artist and writer in Brooklyn, New York, who maintains the blog Documents on Art & Cinema

2018 proved to be a year of political turmoil, but became a year of cinematic richness. Herewith, a list of notable films (30 in all) but it only scratches the surface, as it proved to be an impressive year for women directors, for African-American directors, and for Asian-American directors. The films listed were released theatrically in the US during the calendar year of 2018; some films which are awaiting official release in 2019, such as Werk ohne Autor (Never Look Away, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018) and The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018) were therefore excluded though both would have made the list otherwise:
Zama (Lucretia Martel, 2017)
A Bread Factory – Part One and Part Two (Patrick Wang, 2018)
Zimma Wojna (Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)
The Rider (Chloe Zhao, 2017)
Capharneum (Capernaum, Nadine Labaki, 2018)
Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Kore-eda Hirozaku, 2018)
1985 (Yen Tan, 2018)
Estiu 1993 (Summer 1993, Carla Simon, 2017)
Life & Nothing More (Antonio Mendel Esparza, 2017)
Lazzaro Felice (Happy As Lazarro, Alice Rohrwacher, 2018 )
24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami, 2017)
Roma (Alfonso Curaon, 2018)
We The Animals (Jeremiah Zagar, 2018)
Western ( Valeska Grisebach, 2017)
Good Luck (Ben Russell, 2017)
Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross, 2018)
Lean On Pete (Andrew Haigh, 2018)
Leave No Trace (Debra Granik, 2018)
Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack, 2018)
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)
Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
Jeanette, L’Enfance de Jeanne d’Arc (Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc, Bruno Dumont, 2017)
Tehran Taboo (Ali Soozandeh, 2017)
Akher Ayam El Medina( In the Last Days of the City, Tamer El Said, 2016)
Nico, 1988 (Susanna Nicchiarelli, 2017)
I Had Nowhere to Go (Douglas Gordon, 2017)
Free Solo (Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, 2018)
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)
Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018)

Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn

Film researcher based in Bangkok & London

Alphabetically in order:
Chained for Life (Aaron Schimberg, 2018)
Cocote (Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias, 2017)
Dislocation Blues (Sky Hopinka, 2017) and Fainting Spells (Sky Hopinka, 2018)
Drift (Helena Wittmann, 2017)
The Haunting of Hill House (Mike Flanagan, 2018)
Jane (Brett Morgen, 2017)
Kamjorn Sankwan and Invalid Throne (Jakrawal Nilthamrong and Kamjorn Sankwan, 2018)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan, 2018)
Nervous Translation (Shireen Seno, 2017)
People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose (John Torres, 2016)
Sleep Has Her House (Scott Barley, 2017)
Super Taboo (Su Huiyu, 2017)
Three Adventures of Brooke (Yuan Qing, 2018)
Too Late To Die Young (Dominga Sotomayor, 2018)

Pre-2016 films:
Batch ’81 (Mike de Leon, 1982)
Genpin (Naomi Kawase, 2010)
Hyenas (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1992)

Installation & Performance:
Fever Room (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2018) at National Taichung Theater, Taiwan.
Final Report of the Christmas Island Expert Working Group (The Institute of Critical Zoologists, 2018) at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore.
Turner Prize 2018 (Forensic Architecture, Naeem Mohaiemen, Charlotte Prodger, Luke Willis Thompson, 2018) at Tate Britain, UK.
Walker (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2018) at Zhuangwei Dune Visitor Center, Taiwan.

Roberta Ciabarra

Curator – Film, Australian Centre for the Moving Image

First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2018)
You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)
Roma (Alfonso Cuaron, 2018)
Dogman (Matteo Garrone, 2018)
Capharnaüm (Capernaum, Nadine Labaki, 2018)
Leave No Trace (Debra Granik, 2018)
Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)
Jia nian hua (Angels Wear White, Vivian Qu, 2017)
Distant Constellation (Shevaun Mizrahi, 2017)
The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017)
As Boas Maneiras (Good Manners, Marco Dutra, Juliana Rojas, 2018)
Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
The Rider (Chloé Zhao, 2017)
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)

ADAM COOK

Freelance critic, programmer for tiff, viff & hot docs

1. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, 2018)
2. What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire (Roberto Minervini, 2018)
3. Infinite Football (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2018)
4. Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman, 2018)
5. Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)
6. L. Cohen (James Benning, 2018)
7. The House That Jack Built (Lars Von Trier, 2018)
8. Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-Dong, 2018)
9. Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2018)
10. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

And twenty more in alphabetical order:
Jiānghú érnǚ (Ash is Purest White, Jia Zhangke, 2018)
Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018)
Fausto (Andrea Bussmann, 2018)
The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, 2018)
Green Book (Peter Farrelly, 2018)
Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (Ben Wheatley, 2018)
High Life (Claire Denis, 2018)
Gangbyeon hotel (Hotel by the River, Hong Sangsoo, 2018)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
L’empire de la perfection (In the Realm of Perfection, Julien Faraut, 2018)
Le livre d’image (The Image Book, Jean-Luc Godard, 2018)
Minding the Gap (Bing Liu, 2018)
A Portoguesa (A Portuguese Woman, Rita Azevedo Gomes, 2018)
Ang Panahon ng Halimaw (Season of the Devil, Lav Diaz, 2018)
Tarde para morir joven (Too late to die young, Dominga Sotamayor, 2018)
Drvo (The Tree, André Gil Mata, 2018)
Veslemøy’s Song (Sofia Bohdanowicz, 2018)
Waldheims Walzer (The Waldheim Waltz, Ruth Beckermann, 2018)
The Week of (Robert Smigel, 2018)
Ne di lian (Your Face, Tsai Ming-liang, 2018)
And a mention of the highest honour to one of our greatest directors, Clint Eastwood, for releasing two radical late works that evade being digested in their own moment even as, or perhaps because, their own moment is precisely what they scrutinize with such focus and peripheral awareness.

Jiānghú érnǚ (Ash is Purest White, Jia Zhangke, 2018)

Jesús Cortés

FOCO revista de cinema blog

Best New and Recent:
1. Battlecreek (Alison Eastwood, 2017)
2. Frères ennemis (Close enemies, David Oelhoffen, 2018)
3. Le livre d’image (The image book, Jean-Luc Godard, 2018)
4. La Villa (The house by the sea, Robert Guédiguian, 2017)
5. 5 to 7 (Victor Levin, 2014)
6. Corniche Kennedy (Dominique Cabrera, 2016)
7. Mes provinciales (A paris education, Jean Paul Civeyrac, 2018)
8. Que le diable nous emporte (Tempting devils, Jean-Claude Brisseau, 2016)
9. As boas maneiras (Good Manners, Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas, 2017)
10.Cinéma doumentaire, fragments d’une histoire (Jean-Louis Comolli, 2014)
11. Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)
12. Ex libris: The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman, 2017)

Best, But Not So New. Seen for the first time in 2018:
1. Kumo ga chigireru toki (As the clouds scatter, Gosho Heinosuke, 1961)
2. Chidambaram (Govindan Aravindan, 1985)
3. Die sünderin (The sinner, Willi Forst, 1950)
4. Il bacio di Tosca (Tosca’s kiss, Daniel Schmid, 1984)
5. Silver City (Byron Haskin, 1951)
6. Barricade (Peter Godfrey, 1950)
7. Tokai no yokogao (Shimizu Hiroshi, 1953)
8. Carrefour (Crossroads, Curtis Bernhardt, 1938)
9. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (Arnold Laven, 1957)
10.Captain Salvation (John S. Robertson, 1927)
11. To hell and back (Jesse Hibbs, 1955)
12. À la recherche du lieu de ma naissance (Looking for my birthplace, Boris Lehman, 1990)
14. The silent man (William S. Hart, 1917)
13. Krakatit (Otakar Vávra, 1947)
15. Stallion Road (James V. Kern, 1947)
16. Siddeshwari (Mani Kaul, 1989)
17. La mort du jeune aviateur anglais (Benoît Jacquot & Marguerite Duras, 1993)
18. Chetniks!, the fighting guerrillas (Louis King, 1943)
19. Flor de durazno (Peach blossom, Miguel Zacarías, 1945)
20. Carnival story (Kurt Neumann, 1954)
21. Delo rumyantseva (The case of Sergei Rumyantsev, Iosif Kheífits, 1955)
22. Oltre l’amore (Beyond love, Carmine Gallone, 1940)
23. Wir Bergler in den Bergen sind eigentlich nicht schuld, daß wir da sind (We Mountain People in the mountains aren’t really to blame that we are here, Fredi M. Murer, 1975)
24. Mati manas (The Mind of clay, Mani Kaul, 1984)
25. T’amerò sempre (I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU, Mario Camerini, 1943)
26. Desire me (uncredited, 1947)
27. Soledad (Miguel Zacarías, 1947)
28. Loophole (Harold D. Schuster, 1954)
29. Un poison violent (LOVE LIKE POISON, Katell Quillévéré, 2010)
30. Till we meet again (Robert Florey, 1936)

Greatest Re-evaluations

1. The unchanging sea (David W. Griffith, 1910)
2. Man’s castle (Frank Borzage, 1933)
3. La punition ou les mauvaises rencontres (The punishment, Jean Rouch, 1962)
4. Bound for glory (Hal Ashby, 1976)
5. Tenshi no harawata: Nami (Tanaka Noboru, 1979)
6. T’amerò sempre (Mario Camerini, 1933)
7. Landscape suicide (James Benning, 1986)
8. Domenico Scarlatti à Seville (Domenico Scarlatti in Seville, Edgardo Cozarisnky, 1990)
9. Al yawn al-Sadis (The sixth day, Youssef Chahine, 1986)
10. Coming home (Hal Ashby, 1978)
11. Cinq et la peau (Five and the skin, Pierre Rissient, 1981)
12. Les cousins (The Cousins, Claude Chabrol, 1959)
13. Lines of white on a sullen sea (David W. Griffith, 1909)
14. Impresiones en la alta atmósfera (José Antonio Sistiaga, 1989)
15. The covered wagon (James Cruze, 1923)
16. Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited away, Miyazaki Hayao, 2001)
17. Nippon-koku Furuyashiki-mura (A Japanese village, Ogawa Shinsuke, 1984)
18. El crack II (José Luis Garci, 1983)
19. Treasure island (Raoul Ruiz, 1984)
20. God told me to (Larry Cohen, 1975)

Corey Cribb

PhD student in Screen and Cultural Studies at The University of Melbourne who specialises in film theory and film-philosophy

New Films:
Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)
Foxtrot (Samuel Maoz, 2017)
Beoning (Burning, Chang-dong Lee, 2018)
Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
Le Livre d’image (The Image Book, Jean-Luc Godard, 2018)
Grass (Hong-sang Soo, 2018)
Ahlat Agaci (The Wild Pear Tree, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018)
Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton, 2017)
Pájaros de Verano (Ciro Guerra, 2018)
Visages Villages (Faces Places, Agnès Varda, 2017)
Les Garçons Sauvages (The Wild Boys, Bertrand Mandico, 2017)
The Square (Ruben Östlund, 2017)
Nelyubov (Loveless, Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2017)

Retrospective:
A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)
Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984)
Sedmikrásky (Dasies, Věra Chytilová, 1966)
L’Argent de poche (Small Change, François Truffaut, 1976)
La Niña Santa (The Holy Girl, Lucrecia Martel, 2004)
Hra o jablko (The Apple Game, Věra Chytilová, 1978)
The Colour of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1969)
Terrorizers (Edward Yang, 1986)
La Ciénaga (The Swamp, Lucrecia Martel, 2001)
L’Eclisse (The Eclipse – Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)

Comment: This is the first year that I’ve lived in Melbourne and I have to say that I’ve been absolutely spoilt as far as cinema goes. I’d like to tip my hat to the programmers at Melbourne Cinematheque, MIFF and ACMI, as well as acknowledge Melbourne’s strong independent cinema scene, which is achieves great quality and diversity of programming.

Jordan Cronk

Founder: Acropolis Cinema; Contributor: Cinema Scope, Film Comment, Sight & Sound

ALTIPLANO (Malena Szalm, 2018)
Ang Panahon ng Halimaw (Season of the Devil, Lav Diaz, 2018)
Colophon (for the Arboretum Cycle) (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2018)
Arena (Björn Kämmerer, 2018)
Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
SLEEPCINEMAHOTEL (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2018)
A Bread Factory (Patrick Wang, 2018)
Casanovagen (Casanova Gene, Luise Donschen, 2018)
Classical Period (Ted Fendt, 2018)
CoinCoin et les Z’inhumains (CoinCoin and the Extra-Humans, Bruno Dumont, 2018)
Da xiang xi di er zuo (An Elephant Sitting Still, Hu Bo, 2018)
Sǐ líng hún (Dead Souls, Wang Bing, 2018)
Di qiu zui hou de ye wan (Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Bi Gan, 2018)
Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, 2018)
Le discours d’acceptation glorieux de Nicolas Chauvin (The Glorious Acceptance of Nicolas Chauvin, Benjamin Crotty, 2018)
Drift (Helena Wittmann, 2017)
L’empire de la perfection (John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, Julien Faraut, 2018)
Fainting Spells (Sky Hopinka, 2018)
Fausto (Andrea Bussmann, 2018)
La Flor (The flower, Mariano Llinás, 2018)
Fotbal infinit (Infinite Football, Corneliu Porumboiu, 2018)
Gangbyun Hotel (Hotel by the River, Hong Sangsoo, 2018)
Gens du Lac (People of the Lake, Jean-Marie Straub, 2018)
Gli indesiderati d’Europa (Les Unwanted des Europa, Fabrizio Ferraro, 2018)
The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, 2018)
Gulyabani (Gürcan Keltek, 2018)
High Life (Claire Denis, 2018)
In My Room (Ulrich Köhler, 2018)
Jianghu er nv (Ash Is Purest White, Jia Zhangke, 2018)
L. COHEN (James Benning, 2018)
Liberté / Roi Soleil (Albert Serra, 2018)
Le livre d’image (The Image Book, Jean-Luc Godard, 2018)
Nazidanie (Boris Yukhananov and Aleksandr Shein, 2017)
Netemo Sametemo (Asako I & II, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, 2018)
Ni de lian (Your Face, Tsai Ming-liang, 2018)
Notes on an Appearance (Ricky D’Ambrose, 2018)
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 1976/2018)
Parsi (Eduardo Williams, 2018)
Personal Problems (Bill Gunn, 1980/2018)
Please step out of the frame. / Future Light (Karissa Hahn, 2018)
Pul-ip-deul (Grass, Hong Songsoo, 2018)
Les quatre sœurs (Shoah: Four Sisters, Claude Lanzmann, 2017)
A Return (James Edmonds, 2018)
Segunda vez (Second Time Around, Dora García, 2018)
Sophia Antipolis (Virgil Vernier, 2018)
This Action Lies (James N. Kienitz Wilkins, 2018)
Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)
Watching the Detectives (Chris Kennedy, 2017)
What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? (Roberto Minervini, 2018)
Wishing Well (Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2018)

Fergus Daly

CO-DIRECTOR OF ABBAS KIAROSTAMI: THE ART OF LIVING, WRITER FOR FERGUSDALY.COM

Best Recent Films Seen in 2018
21 x Nowy Jork (21 x New York, Piotr Stasik, 2016)
Aardvark (Brian Shoaf, 2017)
All Summers End (Kyle Wilamowski, 2017)
Animal Kingdom (Dean Kavanagh, 2018)
The Automatic Hate (Justin Lerner, 2015)
The Bachelors (Kurt Voelker, 2017)
La caméra de Claire (Claire’s Camera, Hong Sang-soo, 2017)
Circles of the Sun (Alan Lambert, 2017)
Claire in Motion (Annie J. Howell, Lisa Robinson, 2016)
Dead Love aka A Song for the Living (Colin Floom, Greg Nemer, 2018)
Easy Living (Adam Keleman, 2017)
En attendant les barbares (Waiting for the Barbarians, Eugène Green, 2017)
Fail to Appear (Antoine Bourges, 2017)
Fahrenheit 451 (Ramin Bahrani, 2018)
Fear, Love, and Agoraphobia (Alex D’Lerma, 2018)
Fits and Starts (Laura Terruso, 2017)
For the Coyotes (Eric Daniel Metzgar, 2015)
Frost (Sharunas Bartas, 2017)
Galveston (Mélanie Laurent, 2018)
The Hero (Brett Haley, 2017)
The House of Tomorrow (Peter Livolsi, 2017)
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (Macon Blair, 2017)
The Image You Missed (Donal Foreman, 2018)
In the Radiant City (Rachel Lambert, 2016)
Keep the Change (Rachel Israel, 2017)
The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo, 2018)
Lane 1974 (S.J. Chiro, 2017)
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh, 2017)
Leave No Trace (Debra Granik, 2018)
Little Men (Ira Sachs, 2016)
Lucky (John Carroll Lynch, 2017)
The Lucky Man (Norman Gregory McGuire, 2018)
Mad (Robert G. Putka, 2016)
Mary Goes Round (Molly McGlynn, 2017)
Mary Poppins Returns (Rob Marshall, 2018)
Meadowland (Reed Morano, 2015)
Miss Stevens (Julia Hart, 2016)
Nancy (Christina Choe, 2018)
Never Steady, Never Still (Kathleen Hepburn, 2017)
Phantom Islands (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2018)
Porcupine Lake (Ingrid Veninger, 2017)
Ray Meets Helen (Alan Rudolph, 2017)
The Red Maple Leaf (Frank D’Angelo, 2016)
Return to Montauk (Volker Schlöndorff, 2017)
The Rider (Chloé Zhao, 2017)
Sadie (Megan Griffiths, 2018)
Say You Will (Nick Naveda, 2017)
Small Town Crime (Eshom Nelms, Ian Nelms, 2017)
Some Freaks (Ian MacAllister McDonald, 2016)
The Strange Ones (Christopher Radcliff, Lauren Wolkstein, 2017)
Sun Dogs (Jennifer Morrison, 2017)
Thoroughbreds (Cory Finley, 2017)
Thunder Road (Jim Cummings, 2018)
We the Animals (Jeremiah Zagar, 2018)
Where is Kyra? (Andrew Dosunmu, 2017)
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville, 2018)
Wonderstruck (Todd Haynes, 2017)
The World Made Straight (David Burris, 2015)

Best TV

L’amica geniale (My Brilliant Friend, Saverio Costanzo, 2018). HBO
Better Call Saul (Vince Gillian, 2015- present). AMC
Condor (Paramount, Todd Katzburg, 2018)
Goliath (David E. Kelly, 2016- present). Amazon
Howards End (Hettie MacDonald, 2017). BBC
Maniac (Patrick Somerville, 2018). Netflix
Sharp Objects (Marti Noxon, 2018). HBO
Sneaky Pete (David Shore, 2015). Amazon
Succession (Jesse Armstrong, 2018). HBO

Best Film-Related Event
Philippe Garrel Symposium (Organised by Fabien Boully and Valérie Jottreau, University of Paris 8 Nanterre and cinéma L’Arlequin, November 29-December 2)

Adrian Danks

Associate Dean, Media, in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, author of A Companion to Robert Altman and a previous editor of Senses of Cinema

For Adrian Miles and Frank Bren

Top 10 best new “films” series screening somewhere in Melbourne (in preferential order):
Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
Ahlat Agaci (The Wild Pear Tree, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018)
The Green Fog (Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin, 2017)
Zimna Wojna (Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
The Eyes of Orson Welles (Mark Cousins, 2018)
Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-Dong, 2018)
Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)
Blaze (Ethan Hawke, 2018)
Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)

Bubbling under:
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)
Le livre d’image (The Image Book, Jean-Luc Godard, 2017)

Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig 2017)
Finding the Field (Lynn-Maree Milburn, 2018)
Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
Ma vie dans l’Allemagne d’Hitler (Jérome Prieur, 2018)
Hostiles (Scott Cooper, 2017)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Ethan and Joel Coen, 2018) – particularly the “All Gold Canyon [Mr. Pocket]” episode
Tick Fucking Tock (Martin Coombes, 2018)
Dead Nation (Radu Jude, 2017)
Sayonara no asa ni yakusoku no hana o kazarô (Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, Mari Okada, 2018)

& 3 TV series:
The Deuce (David Simon& George Pelecanos, 2017) – season 1
The Crown (Peter Morgan, 2016- present) – season 2
Friday on My Mind (Matthew Saville, 2017)

The Crown (Peter Morgan, 2016- present)

Overrated or disappointing:
The Post (Steven Spielberg, 2017)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017) – three “very large” billboards, actually.
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird, 2018)
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Noah Baumbach, 2017)
Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton, 2017)
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (Paul McGuigan, 2017)
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)
You Were Never Really There (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)
Terror Nullius (Soda Jerk, 2018) – I very much liked the spirit of the piece, but often felt it was a little too obvious or just missed the mark (and I prefer their other work).

Retrospective rediscoveries and new restorations:
At the Melbourne Cinémathèque (admission: I’m co-curator):
Gloria (John Cassavetes, 1980)
10 Rillington Place (Richard Fleischer, 1971)
La peau douce (The Soft Skin, François Truffaut, 1964)
Olivia (Jacqueline Audry, 1951)
Red Hollywood (Thom Andersen and Noël Burch, 1996)
Wild River (Elia Kazan, 1960)
Varieté (Variety, E. A. Dupont, 1925)
La resi dei conti (The Big Gundown, Sergio Sollima, 1966)
Il mercenario (The Mercenary, Sergio Corbucci, 1968)
Pytel blech (A Bag of Fleas, Vera Chytilová, 1962)
O necem jiném (Something Different, Vera Chytilová, 1963)
Strop (Ceiling, Vera Chytilová, 1962)
Amongst Equals (Tom Zubrycki, 1991)
Outrage (Ida Lupino, 1950)
The Sea Wolf (Michael Curtiz, 1941)
Moontide (Archie Mayo, 1942)
Zevinost bez zastite (Innocence Unprotected, Dusan Makavejev, 1968)

At Cinema Reborn (Sydney):
Sans lendemain (Without Tomorrow, Max Ophuls, 1939)
Tokyo Boshoku (Tokyo Twilight, Yasujiro Ozu, 1957)
In Einem Jahr mit 13 Monden (In a Year with 13 Moons, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)
Le crime de Monsieur Lange (The Crime of Monsieur Lange, Jean Renoir, 1936)
Woman on the Run (Norman Foster, 1950)
El-Fallâh el-fasîh (The Eloquent Peasant, Chadi Abdel Salam, 1970)
Al-mummia (The Night of Counting the Years, Chadi Abdel Salam, 1969)

At Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna):
Madame de… (The Earrings of Madame de…, Max Ophuls, 1953)
Enamorada (A Woman In Love, Emilio Fernández, 1946)
Prisoneros de la tierra (Prisoners of The Earth, Mario Soffici, 1939)
Caravan (Erik Charell, 1934)
The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
Seed (John M. Stahl, 1931)
When Tomorrow Comes (John M. Stahl, 1939)
L’héritage de la chouette (The Owl Legacy, Chris Marker, 1990)
Lights of Old Broadway (Monta Bell, 1925)
Saikaku ichidai onne (The Life of Oharu, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1952)
Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)
La ragazza in vetrina (Girl In The Window, Luciano Emmer, 1961)
La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)
Suzanne Simonin, La religeuse de Denis Diderot (The Nun, Jacques Rivette, 1966)
7th Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927)
In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
Carosello Napoletano (Neapolitan Carousel, Ettore Giannini, 1954)
None Shall Escape (Andre De Toth, 1944)
Sånt händer inte här (This Can’t Happen Here, Ingmar Bergman, 1950)

At home or one-offs:
Beggars of Life (William Wellman, 1928)
Le grand amour (The Great Love, Pierre Étaix, 1969)
Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen, 1940)
The Cheaters (Paulette McDonagh, 1930) – at MIFF
Das Alte Gesetz (This Ancient Law, E. A. Dupont, 1923) – at the Jewish International Film Festival
City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931)
Sorelle Mai (Marco Bellocchio, 2010)

Unlike last year, this list reflects the fact that I did get out a lot more but not so often to new movies. 2018 was marked by my first visit to Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, the first edition of Cinema Reborn in Sydney, and what proved to be a fairly bumper year for the Melbourne Cinémathèque (which I co-curate with my comrades Michael Koller, Eloise Ross, Cerise Howard and Michelle Carey). 2018 also marked Michelle’s final year as the Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Film Festival, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy that will be impossible to match. It was also defined by a number of very good films – though certainly not their best by any means – by an array of the greatest directors currently working: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lucrecia Martel, Lee Chang-Dong, Jean-Luc Godard and Paul Thomas Anderson (though he was certainly the closest to his best here). My 2018 was also marked by finally subscribing to Netflix, a service that delivered three of the richest and most enjoyable – if in some cases a little overrated – films of the year: Roma, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and The Other Side of the Wind. It was remarkable to finally see a version of Welles’ film, but I must admit to being a little bit disappointed that the most startling and innovative parts of it – the “art movie” being made by Jack Hannaford – is somewhat tossed away as a self-conscious, film-within-a-film joke (the kind of movie Welles wouldn’t make, though he sort of just did). A fair bit of the rest is either fascinating or fairly tedious. Like Adrian Martin, I certainly prefer Welles’ other essayistic explorations of the time – such as F for Fake (1973) and Filming “Othello” (1978) – but am very glad to have another Welles film to delve back into.

Another highlight of the year was the Edith Head show – The Costume Designer: Edith Head and Hollywood – at the Bendigo Art Gallery. This provided a very substantial survey of Head’s costumes and a clear illustration of why her work has stood the test of time – with the exception of lavish costumes for films such as The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille, 1952) that were well outside her comfort zone, Head’s costumes are notable for their wearability, even ordinariness. This was a terrifically mounted show that gave you a real sense of both her actual achievement and the transformative qualities of the cinema itself (at some level what you see are just clothes and not what you experience on the screen). It was an exhibition that wasn’t frightened to suggest that conclusion and was all the more valuable for it.

I also travelled to Italy for two stellar events: the Eisenstein for the 21st Century symposium convened by Julia Vassilieva in Prato, which revealed many fascinating insights into Eisenstein’s life and work including the extraordinary archives held in Moscow; and Il Cinema Ritrovato. There is so much that could be said about the latter, but I’ll restrict myself to a few highlights: the John M. Stahl retrospective, the Piazza Maggiore screening of Emilio Fernández’s Enamorada with Scorsese in attendance, the opera house presentation of Borzage’s 7th Heaven and the truly astounding restoration of Ulmer’s Detour. After so many years of watching this in poor quality, severely damaged and dupey prints, the clarity of the painstaking restoration almost felt wrong (but isn’t), denying the legend of the film’s precarious C-grade reputation and the director’s poverty row credentials. Don’t get me wrong, the film still betrays its short production schedule, minimal sets and depopulated frame, but it is now possible to better assess the true visual and aural qualities of Ulmer’s achievement.

This brings me to my two absolute highlights or (re)discoveries of the year, both involving, as with Ulmer, Jewish directors born in Germany or Austria who were exiled in Hollywood and elsewhere in Europe for large parts of their careers. My favourite event of the year was the fledgling Cinema Reborn festival in Sydney in early May helmed by the estimable Geoff Gardner. This was a highly collegial, warm and intimate celebration of film history and the art of restoration that found a canny sweet spot between Australian cinema, important international revivals and some true curios. May it keep running for many years. Many highlights including Chadi Abdel Salam’s two films – a synecdoche for the event itself, as Phillip Adams sagely suggested in his terrific introduction – but it was truly wonderful to finally see Max Ophuls’ Sans lendemain – as the opening night film – in a luminous looking digital “print”. This is really the lynchpin between Ophuls’ work in Europe in the 1930s and the magnificent run of films that define his reputation and mark the end of his career, and, I think, one of his true masterpieces. As is also true of the much more familiar Madame de…, the first film I saw at Il Cinema Ritrovato in the extraordinary surrounds of the Piazza Maggiore.

The other great rediscovery were two films by E. A. Dupont, both wonderfully detailed and extraordinarily staged sagas of “theatrical” life, and both in beautiful restorations. Variety screened at the Melbourne Cinémathèque and managed to survive one of the worst contemporary scores I’ve ever heard, by British “cabaret” band The Tiger Lillies (avoid that soundtrack option at all costs). The other was a less well-known work, Das Alte Gesetz, which screened at the Jewish International Film Festival in Melbourne. It’s a film that has often been compared to The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) but is, in fact, a much greater cinematic achievement providing a fascinating, fine-grained portrait of Jewish and theatrical life in mid-19th-century Europe. Although his career lost its way – absolutely – in the early 1930s, he is certainly a “subject for further research”.

A final note. The screening of several Chris Marker films at Il Cinema Ritrovato, including another terrific restoration of La Jetée, reminded me of the tragic death of my close friend, one-time cinephile and creator of the Chris Marker Database, Adrian Miles. I raise my glass to him and 2018, a wake lit by fireworks.

BRIAN DARR

San Francisco cinephile

Ten films with U.S. commercial releases in 2018:
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, etc., 2018)
Shirkers (Sandi Tan, 2018)
I Am Not A Witch (Rungano Nyoni, 2017)
Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)
Beo-ning (Burning, Lee Chang-Dong Burning, 2018)
Bisbee ’17 (Robert Greene, 2018)
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, 2018)
Madame Hyde (Mrs. Hyde, Serge Bozon, 2017)

Plus one more commercial release that didn’t screen in San Francisco until 2018:
Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

Five USA-undistributed features:
Tournage d’hiver: L’Atalante de Jean Vigo chutes et rushes(Winter Shooting: L’Atalante—Rushes and Outtakes, Bernard Eisenschitz, 2017)
Lerd (A Man of Integrity, Mohammad Rasalouf, 2017)
The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, 2018)
Mrs. Fang (Wang Bing, 2017)
★ – January MMXVIII version (Johann Lurf, 2018)

Blue (Apichatpong Weerasetkaul, 2018)

Twenty single-channel film and video works of less than feature length:
275 Capp Street (Adam Dziesinski, 2018)
Água Mole (Drop By Drop, Laura Gonçalves & Xá, 2017)
Applied Pressure (Kelly Sears, 2018)
Blue (Apichatpong Weerasetkaul, 2018)
Confidence Game (Kathleen Quillian, 2018)
The Crack-Up (Jonathan Scwartz, 2017)
Decoy (Alee Peoples, 2017)
Delerium (Lawrence Jordan, 2018)
Happy Birthday, Marsha (Tourmaline Gossett & Sasha Wortzel, 2017)
Junkanoo Talk (Rhea Storr, 2017)
Love Under Will of the Hags of Long Tooth (Mica O’Herlihy, 2015)
Mahogany Too (Akosua Adoma Owusu, 2018)
The Mirror (People Like Us, 2018)
NN (Pablo Mazzolo, 2017)
Onward Lossless Follows (Michael Robinson, 2017)
Pancoran (Dianna Barrie & Richard Tuohy, 2017)
Pwdre Ser . the rot of stars (Charlotte Pryce, 2018)
The Unimagined Lives of Our Neighbors (Jeffrey Skoller, 2018)
Wayward Emulsions (Tina Takemoto, 2018)
You Can’t Plan a Perfect Day Sometimes It Just Happens(Alison Nguyen, 2017)

Five installation works:
Earthworks (Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt, 2016) 5-projector video installation, The Lab, San Francisco, CA
Infinity Room (Refik Anadol, 2015) 4-projector video installation, Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
June 8, 1968 (Philippe Parreno, 2009) looped 70mm film installation, SFMOMA
La Marea (Miguel Novelo, 2018) video installation; San Francisco Art Institute Diego Rivera Gallery
Simulated Marin Tour (John Dykstra, 1973) video installation, BAMPFA

Five expanded cinema performances:
Cyclone Tracery (Richard Tuohy & Dianna Barrie, 2018) dual-16mm projector performance; Crossroads Festival; San Francisco, CA
Dot Matrix (Richard Tuohy & Dianna Barrie, 2013) dual-16mm projector performance; Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
Light Music (Lis Rhodes, 1975) museum staff re-staging of dual-16mm performance; Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
LocaLoops: Totality edition (Crackpot Crafters, 2018) multi-16mm projector performance with live sound; Engauge Film Festival, Seattle WA
Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 13 (Rick Prelinger, 2018) silent video with live filmmaker and audience narration; Castro Theatre, San Francisco, CA

DUSTIN DASIG

Film critic and communications, media, and film studies lecturer, Philippines

The most dominant trend that is prevalent in filmmaking and film exhibition in 2018 is the popularity of Netflix, no doubt given the release of two of the year’s highly acclaimed films: Roma (Alfonso Cuaron, 2018) and Private Life (Tamara Jenkins, 2018) that were distributed by the emergent film and television network. Despite the 2018 Cannes Film Festival’s rejection of Alfonso Cuaron’s highly personal film in the competition (due to the festival’s policy requiring competition films to be released in French theatres as opposed to Netflix’s ideology) as well as other acclaimed titles (including Orson Welles’ experimental film The Other Side of the Wind (2018), Netflix can be lauded for its tenacity to finance and distribute some of the world’s prolific and inventive auteurs (Martin Scorsese, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Paul Greengrass) projects.
Another impressive trend (at least in Hollywood and in my movie-going experiences) in 2018 is the continued audience appeal of non-fiction films. This is evidenced by the impressive critical and box-office performance of RBG (Betsy West and Julie Cohen, 2018), Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville, 2018), and Free Solo (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, 2018), among others.

Here are the ten films that highlighted my movie-going experiences this year:
1. Roma (Alfonso Cuaron, 2018)
2. Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
3. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017)
4 Visages Villages (Faces Places, Agnes Varda, 2017)
5. Zimna wojna (Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)
6. Won’t You Be My Neighbour? (Morgan Neville, 2018)
7. Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2018)
8. Private Life (Tamara Jenkins, 2018)
9. Leave No Trace (Debra Granik, 2018)
10. 22 July (Paul Greengrass, 2018)

The next 10 best:
11. The Rider (Chloe Zhao, 2017)
12. Pengabdi Setan (Satan’s Slaves, Joko Anwar, 2017)
13. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)
14. First Man (Damien Chazelle, 2018)
15. Dogman (Matteo Garrone, 2018)
16. Tully (Jason Reitman, 2018)
17. RBG (Betsy West & Julie Cohen, 2018)
18. Un beau soleil intérieur (Let The Sunshine In, Claire Denis, 2017)
19. Una mujer fantástica (A Fantastic Woman, Sebastian Lelio, 2017)
20. L’insulte (The Insult, Ziad Doueiri, 2017)

Best Performances:
Female: Glenn Close in The Wife (Björn Runge, 2017)
Male: Marcello Ponte in Dogman (Matteo Garrone, 2018)

Best Director of a Film: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma

Best Screenplay:
Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
Private Life (Tamara Jenkins, 2018)

ROBERT DASSANOWSKY

Cultural historian, indie producer, professor of film studies at university of colorado, colodara springs, the gcas

Top Ten of 2018 (in no particular order):
Angelo (Markus Schleinzer, 2018)
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
Zimna Wojna (Cold War, Pawel Pawilkowski, 2018)
Murer – Anatomie eines Prozesses (Murer – Anatomy of a Trial, Christian Frosch, 2018)
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache (Pamela B. Green, 2018)
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, 2018)
Werk ohne Autor (Never Look Away, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018)
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2018)
Widows (Steve McQueen, 2018)
The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

Very Honourable Mentions:
Manbiki kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
Der Hauptmann (The Captain, Robert Schwentke, 2018)
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley, 2018)
Donbass (Sergey Loznitsa, 2018)
3 Tage in Quiberon (3 Days in Quiberon, Emily Atef, 2018)
Vice (Adam McKay, 2018)
A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018)
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)
Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke, 2018)
Gräns (Border, Ali Abbasi, 2018)

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2018)

Henri de Corinth

Film writer, contributor to Lo Specchio Scuro, Kinoscope, and MUBI Notebook

1. Unrest (Philippe Grandrieux, 2017)
2. Fausto (Andrea Bussmann, 2018)
3. Les garçons sauvages (The Wild Boys, Bertrand Mandico, 2018)
4. Un couteau dans le coeur (Knife+Heart, Yann Gonzalez, 2018)
5. Altiplano (Malina Szlam, 2018)
6. In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018)
7. Edge of Alchemy (Stacey Steers, 2017)
8. Zan (Killing, Shinya Tsukamoto, 2018)
9. High Life (Claire Denis, 2018)
10. Cruel Optimism (Paul Clipson, 2017)
11. Slip (Celia Perrin Sidarous, 2018)
12. Axolotl (Olivier Smolders, 2018)
13. Água Forte (Strong Waters, Monica Baptista, 2018)
14. Night Pulse (Damon Packard, 2018)
15. Hagazussa (Lukas Fleigelfeld, 2017)
16. Touch Me Not (Adina Pintilie, 2018)
17. Varia (Marta Giec, 2017)
18. Gimny Moskovii (Hymns of Muscovy, Dmitri Venkov, 2018)
19. Ribâzu ejji (River’s Edge, Isao Yukisada, 2018)
20. Super Dark Times (Kevin Phillips, 2017)

Erasmo De Meo

Film critic for Mediacritica and Filmidee, based in Rome

A ranked list of 30 films watched in 2018:
1. Lazzaro felice (Happy as Lazzaro, Alice Rohrwacher, 2018)
2. Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)
3. First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
4. Teströl és lélekröl (On Body and Soul, Ildikó Enyedi, 2017)
5. Menocchio (Alberto Fasulo, 2018)
6. Zimna wojna (Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)
7. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
8. Beoning (Burning, Chang-dong Lee, 2018)
9. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)
10. L’amant double (Double Lover, François Ozon, 2017)
11. La flor (The Flower, Mariano Llinás, 2018)
12. Lucky (John Carroll Lynch, 2017)
13. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017)
14. Ovunque proteggimi (Wherever You Are, Bonifacio Angius, 2018)
15. Les fantômes d’Ismaël (Ismael’s Ghosts, Arnaud Desplechin, 2017)
16. The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo, 2018)
17. Ray (Paradise, Andrey Konchalovskiy, 2016)
18. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017)
19. Manbiki kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
20. Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)
21. Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno (Destiny, My Love: First Song, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2017)
22. D’après une histoire vraie (Based on a True Story, Roman Polanski, 2017)
23. Western (Valeska Grisebach, 2017)
24. Sophia Antipolis (Virgil Vernier, 2018)
25. Oleg y las raras artes (Oleg and Strange Arts, Andrés Duque, 2016)
26. Troppa grazia (Lucia’s Grace, Gianni Zanasi, 2018)
27. Leave no trace (Debra Granik, 2018)
28. Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018)
29. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies, 2016)
30. Estiu 1993 (Summer 1993, Carla Simón, 2017)

Nicholas de Villiers

Associate Professor of English and Film, University of North Florida, USA

Best films I experienced in 2018:
Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, 2018)
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley, 2018)
Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018)
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos, 2018)
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)
Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)
Una mujer fantástica (A Fantastic Woman, Sebastián Lelio, 2017)
The Cured (David Freyne, 2017)
November (Rainer Sarnet, 2017)

Connor Denney

Cinephile, Venice, CA

1. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)
2. Green Fuse (Daïchi Saïto, 2008)
3. Geu-hu (The Day After, Hong Sang-soo, 2017)
4. 3/4 (Ilian Metev, 2017)
5. First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
6. Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)
7. The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
8. Chiasmus (Daïchi Saïto, 2003)
9. Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
10. Cocote (Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias, 2017)
11. Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis (Daïchi Saïto, 2009)
12. Never a Foot Too Far, Even (Daïchi Saïto, 2012)
13. Jeannette, l’enfance de Jeanne d’Arc (Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc, Bruno Dumont, 2017)
14. L’Amant d’un jour (Lover for a Day, Philippe Garrel, 2017)
15. Era uma Vez Brasilia (Once There Was Brasilia, Adirley Queirós, 2017)
16. Jiang hu er nv (Ash Is Purest White, Jia Zhangke, 2018)
17. Blind Alley Augury (Daïchi Saïto, 2006)
18. PROTOTYPE (Blake Williams, 2017)
19. Un beau soleil intérieur (Let the Sunshine In, Claire Denis, 2017)
20. Le Fort des fous (Narimane Mari, 2017)
21. Ouroboros (Basma Alsharif, 2017)
22. The Stoas (Robert Beaves, 1997)
23. The Guests (Ken Jacobs, 2014)
24. Engram of Returning (Daïchi Saïto, 2015)
25. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, 2018)
26. A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018)
27. From the Notebook of… (Robert Beavers, 1971)
28. Di qiu zui hou de ye wan (Long Day’s Journey into Night, Bi Gan, 2018)
29. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)
30. Mrs. Fang (Wang Bing, 2017)

Wheeler Winston Dixon

JAMES RYAN PROFESSOR OF FILM STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKER, AUTHOR OF NUMEROUS BOOKS ON CINEMA INCLUDING BLACK AND WHITE: A SHORT HISTORY

My ten “best” films of 2018, in no particular order; some of these are 2017 releases, but reached the US in 2018, so there you are:
Una mujer fantástica (A Fantastic Woman, Sebastián Lelio, 2017)
Visages Villages (Faces Places, Agnès Varda and JR, 2017)
Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018)
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
The Rider (Chloé Zhao, 2018)
Zama (Lucretia Martel, 2017)
Boy Erased (Joel Edgerton, 2018)
Wildlife (Paul Dano, 2018)
Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
Nostalgia (Mark Pellington, 2018)

The overall picture for films in 2018 – most of them, of course, shot digitally – is considerably brighter than in years past. While the art house circuit of the 1960s through the 1980s in the United States has definitively collapsed, streaming has become the new norm, with the result that just about everything you want to see is available online – if you know where to look for it. Netflix continues to frustrate, putting the most mainstream films on top, and making it very difficult to find the quality work on the site, while Amazon Prime offers a much wider and more accessible list of foreign films and indies for modest fees ranging from $2.99 to $4.99 a pop.
Streaming is an excellent way to see a film for the first time, and then, if you like it enough, by all means buy the DVD – which won’t be available for long in this day and age, with interesting films such as Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime (2018) being offered only on burn-on-demand DVDs, rather than regular pressings, simply because the demand for a large scale home release just isn’t there. The films in the list above are just some of the more interesting titles released this year; I’m also very attracted to the Vimeo website, where micro-budgeted indies and shorts proliferate, by such unknown but brilliant filmmakers as Larry Wang.
On the whole, I’m optimistic. I got rid of cable long ago, and just use online streaming services. I can watch about one film a day online that’s really good, and as far as television itself goes, I’m very much a fan of two excellent series: Better Call Saul, the far superior spinoff from Breaking Bad, and The Terror, both of which are “slow burn” projects that gather resonance and power across a wide arc. While most cable and net series are mainstream fare, the lure of having a long form format to tell a complex story is extremely attractive, and when used well, can have enormous benefits.
The cost of making films has gone down, while the quality of indies seems to be going up, precisely because the actors, writers and directors who make them know they’re never going to crack the multiplex, and really don’t care to. And occasionally, a low budgeted film – usually a horror film, such as Hereditary – will make a fortune on a miniscule budget. But it’s become a two-tier system; the blockbusters and the Indies, and never the twain shall meet.
The audiences who flock to mainstream fare such as Ralph Breaks the Internet (Rich Moore, Phil Johnston, 2018) or Creed II (Steven Caple Jr., 2018) will never see these smaller, more thoughtful films, but that’s on them. For the rest of us, we’ll get to see films like the ones in my list online, while they open theatrically only in New York and Los Angeles. For the sort of films the readers of Senses are interested in, theatrical distribution is no longer necessary. We’ll just see them online.

The Rider (Chloé Zhao, 2018)

Dzondunkellicht

writes and travels for cinema

New/ Recent:
Meshok bez dna (The Bottomless Bag, Rustam Khamdamov, 2017)
L. Cohen (James Benning, 2018)
glory (James Benning, 2018)
52 Films (James Benning, 2018)
Gens du Lac (People By the Lake, Jean-Marie Straub, 2018)
Trahir la Place (The Betrayed Square, MML Collective, 2018)
Si Hunling (Dead Souls, Wang Bing, 2018)
Le livre d’image (The Book Image, Jean-Luc Godard, 2018)
Dee Sitonu A Weti (Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan, 2018)
Rêver sous le capitalisme (Sophie Bruneau, 2018)
Da xiang xi di er zuo (An Elephant Sitting Still, Hu Bo, 2018)
La flor (The Flower, Mariano Llinás, 2018)
Die bauliche Massnahme (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, 2018)
The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, 2018)
The Other Side Of The Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)
Diane Metamorphosis (Christophe Bisson, 2018)
Ni De Lian (Your Face, Tsai Ming-liang, 2018)
Roi Soleil (Albert Serra, 2018)
High Life (Claire Denis, 2018)
Casanovagen (Luise Donschen, 2018)
Abyss Film (Leslie Thornton, James Richards, 2018)
Donbass (Sergei Loznitsa, 2018)
Phantom Islands (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2018)
Parsi (Eduardo Williams, 2018)
La casa lobo (The Wolf House, Joaquín Cociña, Cristóbal León, 2018)
Obscuro Barroco (Evangelia Kranioti, 2018)
Tuzdan Kaide (Burak Çevik, 2018)
The Rare Event (Ben Rivers, Ben Russell, 2018)
Minatomachi (Inland Sea, Kazuhiro Sôda, 2018)
Wieża. Jasny dzień. (Tower. A Bright Day, Jagoda Szelc, 2018)
Unicórnio (Unicorn, Eduardo Nunes, 2017)
Trinta Lumes (Thirty Souls, Diana Toucedo, 2017)
Unas preguntas (One or Two Questions, Kristina Konrad, 2018)
A Árvore (The Tree, André Gil Mata, 2018)
Nuestro tiempo (Our Time, Carlos Reygadas, 2018)
Gangbyeon hotel (Hong Sang-soo, 2018)
1986 Natsu (Toshio Matsumoto, 2018)
Hanagatami (Nobuhiko Ōbayashi, 2017)
Tell Me the Story of All These Things (Rehana Zaman, 2017)
Panku-zamurai, kirarete sôrô (Gakuryū Ishii, 2018)
Wunschbrunnen (Wishing Well, Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2018)
Turtle Rock (Xiao Xiao, 2017)
Zavtra (Tomorrow, Yuliya Shatun, 2017)
Las cruces (The Crosses, Carlos Vasquez Mendez, Teresa Arredondo Lugon, 2018)
Ljetnikovac (Summerhouse, Damir Cucic, 2018)
Paul est Mort (Paul is Dead, Antoni Collot, 2018)
Actos de Cinema (Acts of Cinema, Jorge Cramez, 2018)
A (Im)Permanência do Gesto (The (Im)Permanence of the Gesture, Manuel Botelho, 2018)
A Volta ao Mundo quando tinhas 30 Anos (Around the World When You Were 30, Aya Koretzky, 2018)
Aftermath (Mike Hoolboom, 2018)
Antecâmara (Jorge Cramez, 2018)
A Ilha Invisível (The Invisible Island, Rui Almeida Paiva, 2018)
Antígona (Pedro González-Rubio, 2018)
Providence (Tacita Dean, 2017)
Extinção (Extinction, Salomé Lamas, 2018)
Les Flâneries du voyant (Song of a Seer, Aïda Maigre-Touchet, 2018)
Barulho, Eclipse (Uproar, Eclipse, Ico Costa, 2017)
Segunda Vez (Second Time Around, Dora García, 2018)
Quantification Trilogy (Jeremy Shaw, 2014-2018)
Di qiu zui hou de ye wan (Long Day’s Journey into Night, Bi Gan, 2018)
Beskrajni rep (Endless Tail, Željka Suková, 2018)
Laika tilti (Bridges of Time, Kristīne Briede, Audrius Stonys, 2018)
L’Esprit des Lieux (In The Stillness Of Sounds, Serge Steyer, Stéphane Manchematin, 2018)
Walden (Daniel Zimmermann, 2018)
The Best Thing You Can Do with Your Life (Zita Erffa, 2018)
Al Marjouha (The Swing, Cyril Aris, 2018)
La estrella errante (Wandering Star, Alberto Gracia, 2018)
Jonaki (Aditya Vikram Sengupta, 2018)
Sol alegria (Tavinho Teixeira, 2018)
La torre (The Tower, Sebastián Múnera, 2018)
The End of Fear (Barbara Visser, 2018)
Hmyz (Insects, Jan Švankmajer, 2018)
La película infinita (Leandro Listorti, 2018)
Expiación (Raúl Perrone, 2018)
The Rare Event (Ben Rivers, Ben Russell, 2018)

Gulyabani (Gürcan Keltek, 2018)
Journey to Russia (Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi, 2017)
Happy Lamento (Alexander Kluge, 2018)
Sedução da Carne (Júlio Bressane, 2018)
A Portuguesa (The Portuguese Woman, Rita Azevedo Gomes, 2018)
Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018)
O Termómetro de Galileu (Galileo’s Thermometer, Teresa Villaverde, 2018)
Ang Panahon ng Halimaw (Season of the Devil, Lav Diaz, 2018)
Fotbal infinit (Infinite Football, Corneliu Porumboiu, 2018)
Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)
Summa (Andrei Kutsila, 2018)
Now, At Last (Ben Rivers, 2018)
Il Diario di Angela – Noi Due Cineasti (Angela’s Diaries, Yervant Gianikian, 2018)
Introduzione all’oscuro (Introduction to The Dark, Gastón Solnicki, 2018)
Blue (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2018)

Pullipdeul (Grass, Hong Sang-soo, 2018)
Zwei Basiliken (Heinz Emigholz, 2018)
Shelley Duvall is Olive Oyl (Ken Jacobs, 2017)
Waldheims Walzer (The Waldheim Waltz, Ruth Beckermann, 2018)
Colophon (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2018)
Train de vies (Paul Vecchiali, 2018)

Como Fernando Pessoa Salvou Portugal (How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal, Eugène Green, 2018)
Fausto (Andrea Bussmann, 2018)
Jing Li De Ren (Men In The Well, Hu Bo, 2018)
Closing Time (Nicole Vögele, 2018)
Yara (Abbas Fahdel, 2018)

Veslemøy’s Song (Sofia Bohdanowicz, 2018)
Albertine a disparu (Véronique Aubouy, 2018)
Albâtre (Jacques Perconte, 2018)
Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman, 2018)
De Sancto Ambrosio (Antonio Di Biase, 2018)
Selimpaşada Bir Gün (One Day in Selimpasha, Hilal Baydarov, 2018)
Saulė leidžias rytuose (Sun Sets in the East, Alexander Belinski, Agne Dovydaityte, 2018)
The Drunkard’s Lament (Jim Finn, 2018)
J (Gaetano Liberti, 2018)
Mitra (Jorge León, 2018)
Bahar Zmien (Of time and the sea, Peter Sant, 2018)
Entre dos aguas (Between Two Waters, Isaki Lacuesta, 2018)
Gli indesiderati d’Europa (Les Unwanted De Europa, Fabrizio Ferraro, 2018)
Ada Kaleh (Helena Wittmann, 2018)
Ti imaš noć (You Have the Night, Ivan Salatić, 2018)
Sophia Antipolis (Virgil Vernier, 2018)
Film Catastrophe (Paul Grivas, 2018)
Wild Relatives (Jumana Manna, 2018)
Process (Sergei Loznitsa, 2018)

Sie ist der andere Blick (She is the other gaze, Christiana Perschon, 2018)
Invest in Failure (Norbert Pfaffenbichler, 2018)
Zan (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2018)

L’envol (Patrick Bokanowski, 2018)
El Laberinto (Laura Huertas Millán, 2018)
Classical Period (Ted Fendt, 2018)
Ray & Liz (Richard Billingham, 2018)
Vivek (Reason, Anand Patwardhan, 2018)
Die Stropers (Etienne Kallos, 2018)
Île d’Ouessant (David Dudouit, 2018)
Poly Two (Kevin Jerome Everson, 2018)
Another Movie (Morgan Fisher, 2018)
Terra Franca (Ashore, Leonor Teles, 2018)
Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari (I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, Radu Jude, 2018)
‘Nu verandert er langzaam iets’ (‘Now something is slowly changing’ , mint film office, 2018)
Giacinto Scelsi (Giacinto Scelsi. The First Motion Of The Immovable, Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva, 2018)
Rūgštus miškas’ (Acid Forest, Rugile Barzdziukaite, 2018)
Yukiko (Young Sun Noh, 2018)
Notes from Unknown Maladies (Liryc Dela Cruz, 2018)
Bean::queen (Paul Winkler, 2018)

Repertory/ Restored/ Revived:

Ahlam al-Medina (Dreams of the City, Mohammad Malas, 1984)
Namus (Hamo Beknazaryan, 1926)
Nahapet (Henrik Malyan, 1977)
Nouron wa Zilal (Light And Shadows, Omar Amiralay, Oussama Mohammad, Mohammad Malas, 1994)
Nujim An-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight, Oussama Mohammad, 1988)
Metroliner (Victoria Hochberg, 1975)
Women’s Happy Time Commune (Sheila Paige, 1972)
Dos monjes (Two Monks, Juan Bustillo Oro, 1934)
Stonelifting (Maria Lassnig, 1971-74)

A Ilha dos Amores (The Love Island, Paulo Rocha, 1982)
Das alte Gesetz (The Ancient Law, Ewald André Dupont, 1923)
Al-Mummia (The Night of Counting the Years, Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969)
Reality’s Invisible (Robert Fulton, 1971)
Nespatřené (The Unseen, Miroslav Janek, 1996)
235 000 000 (Uldis Brauns, 1967)
Proust lu (Véronique Aubouy, 1993)
Five Came Back (John Farrow, 1939)
Al Ahwar (The Marshes, Kassem Hawal, 1976)

Krasts (The Coast, Aivars Freimanis, 1963)
11×14 (James Benning, 1977)
Mirt Sost Shi Amit ( Harvest: 3,000 Years, Haile Gerima, 1976)
Pasts (Laila Pakalniņa, 1995)
Senis ir žemė (The Old Man And The Land, Robertas Verba, 1965)
Gombrowicz o la seducción (Alberto Fischerman, 1986)
The Blind Owl (Reza Abdoh, 1992)
26’1.1499″ for a String Player (Jud Yalkut, 1973)
Río Escondido (Hidden River, Emilio Fernández, 1947)
Spring Night, Summer Night (J.L.Anderson, 1967)
Oblomok imperii (Fragment of an Empire, Fridrikh Ermler, 1929)
Bolívar, sinfonía tropikal (Bolívar, a Tropical Symphony, Diego Rísquez, 1979)
Assignment:Female (Raymond Phelan, 1966)
Pénélope (Claire Doyon, 2012)
Mueda, memória e massacre (Ruy Guerra, 1982)