Alex Heeney reflects on the best films of 2024 so far, all festival favourites that may have flown under your radar. Discover an eclectic list of films from around the world, many directed by women, and a few that probably never screened near you.
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Before the deluge of fall festival films, I’ve compiled a list of the best films of 2024 so far. Many are favourites from last fall’s festivals. Some of the films on this list have probably never played at your local arthouse cinema. Unfortunately, this is all too common anywhere outside of LA and NYC. For example, in Toronto, five films on the list never received a theatrical release, including the top three films on my list.
As per usual at Seventh Row, my list will help you have a film festival from your couch, with films from around the world: Belgium, Cameroon, Australia, Poland, Romania, Germany, Lithuania, Brazil, United States, United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada. The list includes 8 films by women, three Indigenous films, one sophomore feature, and two first features.
Some of the films are ambitious, lengthy, but intellectually rewarding. (I promise! I’m a wary viewer!) Some are warm, feel-good films that are just great character comedies or dramas. Many of the films address important social issues in a humanist, character-driven way. All of them are films that have lingered with me for months or years.
I’ve included the films’ premiere dates in part to indicate just how long it can take for great films to finally make their way to our screens. I’ve gone by US release dates to decide eligibility and only included films that were released by July 31, 2024. So films like India Donaldson’s Good One and Maciek Hamela’s wonderful In the Rearview were not eligible, though they’re already on my shortlist for best films of the year.
15. The Old Oak (Ken Loach, United Kingdom)
Premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
The Old Oak is a warm, heartbreaking film that may not reach the highs of Loach’s best work, but still leaves you energized to leave the cinema and make the world a better place. A former British mining town, now rife with poverty and unemployment in a post-Brexit world, struggles to cope with a deluge of Syrian immigrants whom they see as a threat to their barely remaining privileges as the old white working class guard. TJ (Dave Turner) owns the last remaining public gathering space in town, the dilapidated pub The Old Oak, where locals gather to spout xenophobia and drown their sorrows. After a chance encounter with a young Syrian photographer, Yara (Ebla Mari) whose camera was unceremoniously smashed as soon as she arrived in town, TJ must decide whether turning the other cheek to keep his business alive is worth hurting the newcomers in town.
14. Tautuktavuk (What We See) (Carol Kunnuk and Lucy Tulugarjuk, Canada)
Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023.
Inuk filmmakers Carol Kunnuk and Lucy Tulugarjuk’s Tautuktavuk (What We See) is a film about female friendship and how women talk about and around trauma. Set during the early pandemic, much of the film takes place over Zoom conversations between two sisters: Uyarak and Saqpinak. Uyarak (Lucy Tulugarjuk) is temporarily living in Montreal to receive counselling in the wake of an abusive relationship and years of alcoholism. Saqpinak (Carol Kunnuk) lives in Igloolik and is quietly struggling with domestic abuse. Things have gotten worse now that access to social services is worse than ever.
It’s rare to see women discussing domestic violence this frankly and supportively in any context. What We See has its finger on the pulse: unafraid to address the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the specific challenges of life in the remote Canadian Arctic, underserved by government services.
Now on VOD and streaming in Canada.
13. Nowhere Special (Uberto Pasolini, United Kingdom)
Premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 2020 Venice Film Festival. It was released in the UK in 2021, but Cohen Media has been holding onto it for North American release for just as long.
Uberto Pasolini’s Nowhere Special is a lovely tearjerker with an impressive central performance by James Norton, about a working class father in Northern Ireland who is dying and must find new parents for his son for after he passes. I interviewed Norton and Pasolini on the podcast about this warm and tender film that manages to be a feel-good movie, which only occasionally dips into sentimentality amidst the tragic subject matter.
Listen to the podcast on Nowhere Special
Nowhere Special is on VOD in Canada, the US, and the UK.
*Nowhere special never screened in a Toronto cinema.
12. I Used to Be Funny (Ally Pankiw, Canada)
Premiered at the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival.
Ally Pankiw’s I Used to Be Funny is the latest entry in a small, growing canon of films about female comics. These films tend to tackle social issues women face, through the lens of our protagonist’s comic perspective. The film is about a twentysomething woman, Sam (Rachel Sennott), who is coping with PTSD from a workplace sexual assault. Told in two separate timelines, we meet Sam post-assault, in the midst of a year-long depression. She feels alienated from her former self, her friends, her boyfriend, and her professional work as a comic. When her former charge, Brooke (Olga Petsa) seeks Sam out after a year of no contact, Sam spirals. Painful memories come flooding back.
11. La Chimera (Alice Rorhwacher, Italy)
Premiered in Competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival
Although technically a 2023 US release because it got a qualifying run in 2023, Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera didn’t come out until spring 2024 in most of the English-speaking world so is, to my mind, still a 2024 release. The film stars the always excellent Josh O’Connor as Arthur, an archealogist, mourning the death of his girlfriend while robbing graves of Etruscan treasure in 1980s Italy. It plays like a fairy tale and a bit of a caper, but O’Connor adds depth to this conflicted man who isn’t sure if he wants to start a new chapter of life or stay frozen in his grief.
I’ve never clicked with Rohrwacher’s films before, but I found this one lingered. She is gifted at mise en scene. Arthur is both a mythical figure who stands outside of the group who also finds community and companionship with his band of thieves. There are a couple of wonderful scenes where the thieves start playing instruments and singing songs mythologizing their existence, where we watch Arthur divided from them, walking away from them singing in a restaurant or on the train. He’s a somewhat unknowable figure to them and to us. Cinematographer Hélène Louvart makes excellent use of magic hour, so that the film shimmers, adding to its dream-like quality.
La Chimera is one of two Josh O’Connor vehicles, alongside Challengers to make my list, and his performance is a key factor, elevating characters who weren’t quite so fleshed out as written. I’ve been a long-time fan of O’Connor since God’s Own Country when I interviewed him about his career to date, way back in 2018!
10. Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, United States)
Challengers pulled out of the 2023 Venice Film Festival at the last minute and premiered in cinemas in March 2024.
I’ve spent more time thinking about Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers than I have on most movies that came out this year. That’s partly because it works so well in some ways, and disappoints in even more ways. I spent forever trying to figure out why I liked the film despite its flaws, and even went back to see it a second time.
The short answer is that it all comes down to Josh O’Connor’s scene-stealing performance that elevates every scene partner and Luca Guadagnino’s impeccable blocking and directing. The two of them make up for a screenplay that needed more drafts and two actors who aren’t quite up to the challenge. It’s one of the best times I had at the movies this year (which is not a knock on the other films on this list, most of which never screened in a cinema in my city).
It’s not a particularly good Luca Guadagnino film (watch Call Me by Your Name or Suspiria or even the wonderful if flawed A Bigger Splash for something better), but it hit the zeitgeist for a reason. I still found Challengers a little irresistible.
On the podcast, Andrew Kendall joined me to discuss our complicated feelings about the film, why it works and doesn’t, and our uncomplicated feelings about the greatness of Josh O’Connor.
Listen to the podcast on Challengers
Challengers is now on VOD in Canada/US/UK.
9. Fancy Dance (Erica Tremblay, France)
Premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Cinema Dramatic Competition
Before Killers of the Flower Moon premiered, the Lily Gladstone showcase Fancy Dance bowed at Sundance — and had a terrible time finding a distributor until the success of Scorsese’s film and the attention Gladstone got from it. It was one of the best films at Sundance, which tackles the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, very much still a present-day problem not just a relic of the past as in Scorsese’s film, through a road movie/thriller.
Gladstone stars as Jax, a queer woman and aunt to a young teenager, Roki (Isabel DeRoy Olsen), whose mother recently disappeared. Jax and Roki embark on a road trip to find Roki’s mother, which seems like a fool’s errand with only bad news waiting. Along the way, Tremblay develops the pair’s background and deep relationship, the importance of family, the land, and Indigenous dance, as well as the challenges of navigating life under settler colonialism. It’s especially complicated for the family because Jax’s father (Shea Whigham) is white and doesn’t understand how the customs of the Indigenous community he lived in for years.
Make it a double feature
Fancy Dance makes for an excellent double feature with this year’s Limbo by Ivan Sen’s about an Indigenous Australian detective story also about missing and murdered women and girls. When I saw Fancy Dance at Sundance, it reminded me of the Sonia Boileau’s Rustic Oracle, about an Indigenous mother and daughter in Canada who go on a road trip to find the missing elder daughter. Where Rustic Oracle was a quiet character drama, Fancy Dance is a bit more sensational, complete with some forgivable plot contrivances. Incredible performances from the entire cast, including Chrystle Lightning who made our past list of most exciting emerging actors at TIFF 2020, elevate the film and make it essential viewing.
Listen to us discuss Fancy Dance on the podcast
Fancy Dance is streaming pretty much worldwide.
8. Slow (Marija Kavtaradze, Lithuania)
Premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.
Slow has never screened in a Toronto cinema.
I first saw Slow at Sundance 2023, and I instantly knew it was something special. Director Kavtaradze has an incredible knack for not just blocking but for depicting touch and intimacy on film. Here’s Lindsay Pugh on the film from the intro to her interview with Kavtaradze:
“Lithuanian writer-director Marija Kavtaradze’s second feature, Slow, is a tender, crushing film about two people in love who struggle to make their relationship work. Elena (Greta Grineviciute) and Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas) are instantly smitten with each other but run into a roadblock when Dovydas clarifies that he’s asexual.
Kavtaradze told me that while writing, she “felt that [both characters] have this deep belief that they aren’t lovable, which they trigger even more in each other. [Elena] thinks, “Of course, he doesn’t desire me because I’m not lovable.” [Dovydas] thinks, “I can’t give her what she wants. I’m not enough.” If they could overcome their insecurities and preconceived notions about how a relationship should look, they might see alternate paths forward; instead, they try and fail to please each other while frequently neglecting their own needs.”
Read Lindsay’s interview with Slow director Marija Kavtaradze
Listen to us discuss Slow on the podcast
7. Pictures of Ghosts (Kleber Mendonço Filho, Brazil)
Premiered in Cannes Classics at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
Pictures of Ghosts has never screened in a Toronto cinema outside of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Here’s an excerpt from my glowing TIFF 2023 Review:
“Kleber Mendonça Filho’s creative nonfiction documentary Pictures of Ghosts is an ode to the public and private spaces where we live our lives and how they hold our memories. The first section is the story of his apartment in Recife that he’s lived in for decades — first as a child, then as an aduStlt. It has also been the set for his film, Neighbouring Sounds, a creative space for film production, and the site of so many important moments in his life. The second section of the film explores the cinemas of downtown Recife, many of which have been closed down and boarded up, and how these important meeting grounds are also sites of memory and history.
Pictures of Ghosts feels like the documentary counterpart to Mendonça Filho’s film Aquarius, which was about a woman who had lived in the same apartment throughout her life, filled with memories, much like Mendonça Filho’s home in Pictures of Ghosts. That commitment to geographical space Mendonça Filho had in Aquarius is on display in Pictures of Ghosts. Here, Mendonça Filho mixes old home movies of people traversing the halls of his apartment with present-day footage that follows the same path through it.”
Read the rest of the review of Pictures of Ghosts
Read my interview with Mendonça Filho on Aquarius and its obsession with an apartment
Download the first two ebook chapters FREE!
Explore the spectrum between fiction and nonfiction in documentary filmmaking through films and filmmakers pushing the boundaries of nonfiction film.
6. Music (Angela Schanelec, Germany)
Premiered in Competition at the 2023 Berlinale where it won Best Screenplay (much to Schanelec’s surprise and confusion).
Music only screened in Toronto twice for its theatrical release.
In Music, Angela Schanelec continues her exploration with loose adaptations of classic texts, which began with I Was at Home But… (Hamlet), here tackling Oedipus Rex. Set in the modern day, the film is about a young man finding his way in the world, with loose gestures toward Oedipus — his ankles are injured (as Oedipus was when abandoned as a child), he’s going blind, and he unknowingly marries his mother, a prison guard he befriends during his stint in prison. He’s also a singer, hence the film’s title, and the film builds up to a cathartic musical number. If you’ve seen I Was at Home But…, you already know that Schanelec knows how to turn a well-placed song into a fun and emotionally devastating, memorable moment.
The overwhelming response to the film when it premiered at Berlin was admiration and bafflement. You can read critics trying to figure out what to say about this film that demands a second viewing, and a thorough reading of the Oedipus Rex Wikipedia page so you can spot the obscure references. I was googling the play as I watched the film to keep up. Schanelec is an incredible director of bodies in space: she is so attentive to how characters move and are placed within the frame and with respect to each other. The film is also largely set on the Greek seaside, offering beautiful vistas. I’m still figuring out all that the film is doing, but it’s a film that lingers and invites rewatches.
5. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude, Romania)
Premiered in Competition at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival.
In 2022, Radu Jude gave an incredible career interview to Seventh Row, where he talked about being obsessed with watching TikTok videos. That obsession comes to fruition in Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World. It’s a bleak comedy about Angela (Ilinca Manolache), who drives around by day (sometimes, for 16 hours a day) making workplace safety videos . By night, her Neo-Nazi persona, a parody and a man named Bobita, is a TikTok star spouting misogyny and right-wing propaganda. It’s a way to take out her frustrations at a job where she persuades workplace injury victims to talk about the importance of wearing protective gear to avoid injuries like theirs when the real problem is systemic — too long hours, poor conditions, etc.
The film is a brutal and thoughtful critique of how capitalism destroys lives and bodies and then forces us to become complicit in the destruction of others. It’s also a hugely inventive film as only Jude can deliver. Densely packed with ideas, subplots, and formal experiments, this 2.5 hour film speeds by and delivers some of the biggest laughs of the year. The film is an investment, in time and intellectual energy, but it offers more to consider than many filmmakers do in their entire career. I don’t think I’ll be watching it a million times, but I’m still thinking about it months later.
Read our interview with Radu Jude
4. Green Border (Agnieszka Holland, Poland)
Premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival in Competition. It won the Special Jury Prize.
Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border is an urgent, fiercely political film about the ongoing migrant crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border. Seeing echoes of the Holocaust in this modern day story of desperate people looking for asylum in a propaganda-filled and hostile world, Holland shot the film in black and white to hearken back to documentary footage of WWII.
Told from multiple perspectives of people affected by the crisis — a border guard, a family of migrants, a group of activists — Holland’s film is inherently humanist and weaves a portrait of the complexities of the problem for everyone involved. Even well-intentioned people can commit atrocities, and looking away is often easier than trying to do your bit in what seems like an insurmountable problem. Though harrowing, I found the film inspiring (and what Holland has to say about it perhaps even more so): a reminder that we can do something in the face of the world’s cyclical descent into totalitarianism.
Listen to my interview with Agnieszka Holland on Green Border
3. Limbo (Ivan Sen, Australia)
Premiered in Competition at the 2023 Berlinale.
Limbo did not receive a theatrical release in Canada.
Director Ivan Sen’s (Mystery Road, Goldstone) latest foray into the detective genre, Limbo, places a white cop, Travis (Simon Baker), at the centre of an investigation to re-open a twenty-year-old case about the disappearance of an Indigenous teenager named Charlotte. The film is less about the case or the detective tasked with potentially reopening it and more about the people for whom it never became a cold one. So many years on, the case lives in the silences between the words, in evidence that points to truths but can’t prove them.
Shot in black-and-white by Sen, who also serves as screenwriter, cinematographer, and composer, the film is an impeccably made film in which all of the elements of production (including production design and costumes) are perfectly working in tandem to tell the story. It’s an Australian Indigenous noir that’s more about mood and character than about solving the unsolvable, which is unfortunately the case with many missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Read my interview with director Ivan Sen
Limbo is now on VOD in Canada, Australia, and the US. I’m not sure what the plans are for the UK.
2. Mambar Pierette (Rosine Mbakam, Cameroon)
Premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight
Mambar Pierrette did not receive a theatrical release in Toronto.
Rosine Mbakam’s Mambar Pierrette is a work of docu-fiction (more fiction than creative nonfiction) based on the story of her family member Pierrette who plays the titular character, but it marks Mbakam’s first move away from nonfiction. It follows a week in the life of Pierrette, a seamstress in the midst of peak season, which also means it’s a time of high risk for theft. Everything that could go wrong does go wrong, both personally and professionally, but Pierrette weathers the storm with aplomb and resilience. Life is hard, but she gets through it.
Legendary documentarian Chris Hegedus once told me, “The thing that film does is it drops you into a world.” And that’s exactly what Mambar Pierrette does. As we follow Pierrette on her day-to-day activities, we discover the way of life in Douala, Cameroon. It’s as if we’ve been dropped right into the streets and into the homes of the people living there. Pierrette’s encounters with her clients, family, friends, and acquaintances broaden Mbakam’s canvas. Though born and raised in Cameroon, Mbakam now lives and works in Belgium, but always returns to her home country for her work in an act of decolonization. Like her documentaries, Mambar Pierrette is not just a character portrait but a look at how colonialism continues to affect the lives of everyone in the country in ways big and small.
Mambar Pierrette is now streaming in Canada, the US, and the UK.
1. Here (Bas Devos, Belgium)
Premiered at the Berlinale in the now cancelled Encounters section in 2023.
Here did not receive a theatrical release in Toronto.
I first saw Bas Devos’s exquisite film of urban wanderings and brief encounters, Here, over a year ago at the 2023 Berlinale, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. The film follows Stefan (Stefan Gota), a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels, who is planning to return home for a vist — or perhaps a longer sojourn. So he makes soup out of the remaining contents of his fridge and spends the film wandering the city to deliver batches of soup to all his friends. It’s a smart device to offer us a window into Stefan’s life — his sister, his friends from Romania, and the people he meets along the way — in just a few days (think Oslo, August 31st levels of summing up a life economically).
The film is a story of alienation and connection. Devos shoots the city as something that doesn’t quite belong to Stefan — he’s always looking outside into the world from the glass of a bus window or the construction site where he works. It reminded me of Edward Yang’s Taipei in Taipei Stories. Stefan spends much of the film alone, wandering the streets, but he has some chance encounters: a woman who has a plot in a community garden and offers to get him on the waitlist, and most importantly, a woman (Liyo Gong) doing her doctoral thesis on moss. It’s a quietly feel-good film of existential ponderings and fleeting connections.
The film already had its theatrical release in Canada, the US, and the UK, with VOD to follow hopefully later this year. It will be streaming on Criterion Channel in September.
