Filmatique's Best of 2018
Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro), Alice Rohrwacher (2018)
Amid or despite controversies spanning from reverberations of the #MeToo movement to seismic shifts in the digital distribution landscape, 2018 proved to be a stellar year for contemporary world cinema. Alfonso Cuarón's Netflix-produced Roma affirmed that art-house filmmaking and indigenous actors belong to the domain of popular film; female directors Alice Rohrwacher, Valeska Grisebach, Lynne Ramsay and Josephine Decker among others presented formidable works across the globe.
While much remains to be done regarding equality in the industry— advocating for racial, political and economic diversity alongside gender representation, for example— cinema represents the frontier of social transformation, the lens through which society shapes its desires and those desires, in turn, shape society itself.
Below are Filmatique's top films of 2018:
Birds of Passage, Ciro Guerra & Cristina Gallego
Burning, Lee Chang-dong
Cocote, Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias
Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski
Djon África, João Miller Guerra & Filipa Reis
The Favorite, Yorgos Lanthimos
Girl, Lukas Dhont
Las Herederas (The Heiresses), Marcelo Martinessi
Lazzaro Felice (Happy as Lazzaro), Alice Rohrwacher
Loveling, Gustavo Pizzi
Madeline's Madeline, Josephine Decker
Minatomachi (Inland Sea), Kazuhiro Sôda
Manta Ray, Phuttiphong Aroonpheng
Monrovia, Indiana, Frederick Wiseman
Ozen (The River), Emir Baigazin
Razzia, Nabil Ayouch
The Reports on Sarah and Saleem, Muayad Alayan
Roma, Alfonso Cuarón
Shoplifters, Hirokazu Kore-eda
Tiempo Compartido (Time Share), Sebastián Hoffman
Transit, Christian Petzold
The Trial, Sergei Loznitsa
You Were Never Really Here, Lynne Ramsay
Vox Lux, Brady Corbet
Western, Valeska Grisebach
The Wild Pear Tree, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Loveling, Gustavo Pizzi (2018)