SCFZ

SCFZ Best of 2024

I'm starting up our annual best of the year poll, where we poll our favourite films released last year:

• post a list of your favourite films from 2024
-- you can list no more than half of the 2024 films you have seen, up to a maximum of 10, except:
--- if you have seen between 40 and 59 feature films from last year: then you can list up to 11 films
--- if you have seen 60 or more feature films from last year: then you can list up to 12 films

• ranked ballots are *strongly* encouraged (if you aren't sure how to rank, maybe rank in reverse-order of letterboxd views, to give more weight to films less likely to get other votes). Unless you tell me otherwise, I'll assume your ballot is ranked.
• scoring for ranked ballots will be on the usual 1-2-3-4-...-max scale (so a three-film ranked ballot will award 3, 2 and 1 points to the three films)
• unranked ballots will award the same total points as a ranked one would, but awarding an equal number of points to each film. So a ten-film unranked ballot, say, will award 5.5 points per film
• feel free to post a ballot now and edit it later - no need to let me know about changes unless you make changes on the day of the deadline, which is just before Oscars night. As usual, I'll post the results on Academy Award day, which is March 2 this year
• voters can decide which films are eligible for the poll -- anything released in 2024 is clearly eligible, as are any 2023 festival releases that weren't available for most people to watch until 2024. that said, any film that received support in our best of 2023 poll (https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... scfz-poll/) is not eligible for the 2024 poll

deadline: March 1, 2023 at noon ET


I'll start the never-very-popular Academy Awards poll in a separate thread, nominations were announced today

at this point in the year, my top ten is always a bit hilarious (to me) because i usually haven't seen anything good yet, and that is almost true this year too, so don't take this as a list of recommended films. i will hopefully see enough new movies before the deadline to almost completely replace this ballot:

edit -- the list is slowly improving, i'm confident at least my current #1 will still be near the top after i've watched everything i have time to watch

1. Stress Positions (Theda Hammel)
2. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
3. The Order (Justin Kurzel)
4. Santosh (Sandhrya Suri)
5. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof)
6. Saturday Night (Jason Reitman)
7. A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg)
8. Flow (Gints Zilbalodis)
9. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Soi Cheang)
10. Casa en Flames (Dani de la Orden)
11. Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

1. Merry Christmas (Sriram Raghavan)
2. Un Prince (Pierre Creton)
3. Kottukaali (PS Vinothraj)
4. Meiyazhagan (C. Prem Kumar)
5. Territorio (Jose Celestino Campusano)
6. Ruka on the Road (Shunji Iwai)
7. Raayan (Dhanush)
8. Stress Positions (Theda Hammel)
9. Vaazhai (Mari Selvraj)
10. La Practica (Martin Rejtman)
11. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Soi Cheang)
12. Scorched Earth (Thomas Arslan)

I've only seen 17 films from 2024:

1. Maria (Pablo Larraín)
2. Sons (Gustav Möller)
3. Forever-Forever (Anna Buryachkova)
4. Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass)
5. Dormitory (Nehir Tuna)
6. Crossing (Levan Akin)
7. My Favourite Cake (Maryam Moghadam, Behtash Sanaeeha)
8. The Successor (Xavier Legrand)
9. City of Wind (Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir)
10. Excursion (Una Gunjak)

seen over +80 2024 films so far and I think I'll see up to 100 before the deadline.
still a lot of movies I haven't seen yet, but not many of them will be available before the deadline(Grand Tour releases in March, etc...) I think this will actually be the final list.
Of course, if there's anything more to add, it could change..

two 2023 movies included (these are not mentioned at 2023 poll)

Juror #2
The Beast
All We Imagine as Light
By the Stream
The Voices of the Silenced
Youth (Hard Times)
Chime
Misericordia
All the Long Nights
The Diary of a Sky
Caught By the Tides
Soundtrack to a Coup d’État

also recommandable (alphabetical order)

Dahomey
Daughters
Direct Action
Dying
Nickel Boys
The Invisible Zoo
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
Youth (Homecoming)

First time posting on this forum in a very long time, so let me know if I'm doing anything wrong here!

01. The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams) - 2023 premiere
02. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello) - 2023 premiere
03. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
04. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
05. No Other Land (Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, & Yuval Abraham)
06. Matt and Mara (Kazik Radwanski)
07. Eureka (Lisandro Alonso) - 2023 premiere
08. Pictures of Ghosts (Kleber Mendonça Filho) - 2023 premiere
09. Coup de chance (Woody Allen) - 2023 premiere
10. La chimera (Alice Rohrwacher) - 2023 premiere
11. Trap (M. Night Shyamalan)

Seen only 8 so far, but loved 6 of them!

Top 4

01. Trap (M. Night Shyamalan) [9/10]
02. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (Kevin Costner) [8/10]
03. The Dead Don’t Hurt (Viggo Mortensen) [7/10]
04. Slide (Bill Plympton) [7/10]


worthless: Anora (Sean Baker) [4/10]

connordenney wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 5:22 pm First time posting on this forum in a very long time, so let me know if I'm doing anything wrong here!

welcome back! as long as there's a good reason to count all of the 2022-2023 premieres as "2024 films", then the ballot looks perfect.

1. The Girl with the Needle 2024 Pigen med nålen Directed by Magnus von Horn
2. Flow 2024 Straume Directed by Gints Zilbalodis
3. Being John Smith 2024 Directed by John Smith

Seen 55. Will try to watch 60 before the due date. I'll add italics to the films that only had festival releases until 2024 in case they are ineligible. I'm not sure about Hundreds of Beavers because it started having festival releases at 2022. I'll leave it out of the list for now.

1. The Primevals - David Allen
2. A Different Man - Aaron Schimberg
3. The Apprentice - Ali Abbasi
4. Chime - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
5. Bramayugam - Rahul Sadasivan
6. The Substance - Coralie Fargeat
7. Anora - Sean Baker
8. Rumours - Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, & Galen Johnson
9. Local Legends: Bloodbath! - Matt Farley
10. One More Shot - James Nunn
11. Better Man - Michael Gracey

Looks like another back-to-back great year. Would have loved it if expanded to 20 slots

Seen 74 so far (going by IMDB year). There are a few 2023 releases I really want to vote for, especially Terrestrial Verses, but don't see anyone else voting for it, and it does go against how I was raised (by IMDb message boards).

Here's my top 12:

1. All We Imagine as Light (2024, Payal Kapadia)
2. The Substance (2024, Coralie Fargeat)
3. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024, Mohammad Rasoulof)
4. Anora (2024, Sean Baker)
5. A Real Pain (2024, Jesse Eisenberg)
6. Bird (2024, Andrea Arnold)
7. The Apprentice (2024, Ali Abbasi)
8. Crossing (2024, Levan Akin)
9. Keyke mahboobe man / My Favourite Cake (2024, Behtash Sanaeeha, Maryam Moghadam)
10. Feng liu yi dai / Caught by the Tides (2024, Jia Zhang-ke)
11.Bramayugam (2024, Rahul Sadasivan)
12. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2024, Rungano Nyoni)

Runner ups:

Une langue universelle / Universal Language (2024, Matthew Rankin)
Black Box Diaries (2024, Shiori Itô)
Fekete pont / Lesson Learned (2024, Bálint Szimler)
My First Film (2024, Zia Anger)
I Saw the TV Glow (2024, Jane Schoenbrun)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024, George Miller)
Girl with the Needle (2024, Magnus von Horn)
Dahomey (2024, Mati Diop)
Memoir of a Snail (2024, Adam Elliot)

Still really want to see Afternoons of Solitude, I'm Still Here, Miséricorde, April, The Brutalist, and Nickel Boys.