Shiva Baby 2020 | Directed by Emma Seligman

 5/5

Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby is a fantastic, gripping comedy about what it’s like to feel out-of-place in your mid-twenties and about the constantly shifting power dynamics within relationships. Seligman creates a claustrophobic atmosphere throughout the film and constantly ratchets up an unbearable amount of tension as the film progresses. Tight closeups on our protagonist’s face as she’s in conversation with people we don’t see, the unsteadiness of the handheld camerawork as the tension ramps up, and the horror movie score all work together to keep us on edge. Seligman understands that, as funny as young adulthood can be, it can also be comically horrific for young women navigating parental expectations, the norms of any tight knit community to which you might belong, predatory men, and the prospect of finding your way forward. It’s a sharp, funny, painfully honest about what it means to be a young woman today.

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Labyrinth of Cinema (2019) | Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi

 5/5

Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Labyrinth of Cinema is a gorgeous and deeply moving cinematic experience. It’s a collage of moments and moods, references to previous Japanese films, historical facts and little known incidents, emotional beats and character digressions that all add up to a profound meditation on war, violence, and the power of cinema. The film is densely layered and textured, peppered with literary and cinematic allusions, the screen filled with poetry and historical footnotes that intrude upon the frame – all of which collide in a dizzying time-travel musical fantasia. And yet, with all of the historical and meta-textual references, the film manages to maintain a sense of playfulness and joy, moving toward its powerfully emotional and moving finale. His final film, you can see Obayashi pouring his considerable passion and energy into each frame – and how important he sees the film’s themes and ideas. As the film explores different genres and periods of Japanese cinema, we’ve given the impression that war and nationalism are not just problems of the past, but that these are deeply ingrained problems that need to be addressed on a human level. This is exquisite filmmaking, a work that deserves close examination.

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Downstream to Kinshasa (2020) | Directed by Dieudo Hamadi

 4.5/5

Dieudo Hamadi’s Downstream to Kinshasa is a riveting and gut-wrenching documentary that follows a group of disabled Congolese civilians seeking reparations for atrocities committed by Rwanda and Uganda which left over 1,000 Congolese civilians dead and more than 3,000 wounded. Since their own government has done nothing for more than 20 years to seeking justice on behalf of the victims, the survivors decide to make the long trek to Kinshasa to make their case in person. This is among the best of what cinéma vérité has to offer, Hamadi’s patient camera observing the survivors and their struggle for justice without any showy editorializing or maudlin romanticizing of their disabilities. The film is frank and honest, but there is also a warmth and empathy throughout. We see it in the little moments of connection between the survivors that a film focused solely on the issues might be tempted to leave on the cutting room floor. By cutting to scenes of a theatrical production that the survivors have created to educate others about their situation, Hamadi is also able give us the interiority and background that you’re normally only able able to achieve through the use of talking head interviews or direct addresses to the camera. It’s a really nice touch that allows the survivors to tell their stories as they would like them told. Along with some of Hamadi’s other documentary work, he’s begun to create an essential portrait of the Democratic Republic of Congo through cinema. Hamadi is a masterful documentarian whose work deserves to be more widely known.

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Summertime (2020) | Directed by Carlos López Estrada

 5/5

Carlos López Estrada’s Summertime is a glorious film – a vibrant, joyous, and energetic ode to art, creativity, and that earnest sincerity and passion for justice and equity that seems to define young people in their late teens and early twenties. Even though the film is comprised of a series of vignettes anchored by spoken word poetry, it’s astonishing to see how effortlessly the sequences weave in and out of one another, how narrative through lines emerge, and how perfectly certain beats and moments echo one another throughout the film. López Estrada shoots and edits the film with as much energy and life as the poetry (and the city) that he’s capturing, and all of the first-time film actors are stunning – not just in performing their own work onscreen, but also in building and performing the characters they present within the film. This is one of the most delightful and moving films of the year – a film that begins with isolation and loneliness, and ends with a true sense of community and connectedness.

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In the Same Breath (2021) | Directed by Nanfu Wang

 5/5

Nanfu Wang’s In the Same Breath continues the filmmaker’s probing inquiries into Chinese society, this time exploring the ways the government refused to cooperate with the rest of the world at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wang’s primary focus is on China’s propaganda efforts at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and she traces how, while lockdown efforts may have done a better job of containing the virus than here in the US, the state propaganda machine exacerbated the crisis and led to things being much worse for the entire world. She also draws an uncomfortable line between propaganda in China and that misinformation that runs rampant here in the US, showing that Americans don’t have the moral high ground either. There are so many candid and powerful interviews from inside Wuhan, so many striking images and heartbreaking moments that we just haven’t seen much of yet from the COVID-19 crisis. The film’s ending sneaks up you, presenting a vision of how many lives could have been saved in the past year if there had been better transparency and cooperation between China and the US (especially if we hadn’t had a US president at the time so devoted to disinformation and propaganda designed to make himself look better). It’s an incredible work from one of our great documentary filmmakers, wrestling with important questions.

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Mogul Mowgli (2020) | Directed by Bassam Tariq

 5/5

Bassam Tariq’s Mogul Mowgli is a gorgeous, deeply moving film about familial expectations, the pursuit of your dreams and your art, and the way chronic illness can bring the forward momentum of your life to a standstill. Tariq slowly introduces surreal imagery and elements throughout the film, creeping into Zed’s everyday experiences – a brilliant and haunting way to visually represent the sense of being unable to trust or control your body anymore. And by layering the push and pull of the father’s faith and his flight into Pakistan during the Partition of India, Tariq adds in rich complexity and nuance to the narrative as the film explores parental support and expectations, ruminating on all that we inherit from our parents – the qualities and traits we find admirable and those we resist. Tariq’s tight framing – the close-ups, pushing Zed out of the frame at times, makes the entire film feel so intimate and raw. Of course, it also helps when the film is anchored by an incredible cast – especially Riz Ahmed, whose performance is so incredibly open and vulnerable. This is a deeply moving film, one that leaves you with more to discover and ponder about disability and family and dreams long after the film has ended.

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Censor (2021) | Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond

 4.5/5

Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor is a creepy and effective horror film exploring the effects of grief and how unacknowledged pain and trauma can end up leading us into isolation, wreaking havoc in our lives. The film is anchored by a tour de force performance from Niamh Algar as Enid, a censor working for the British Board of Film Classification, whose grounding and matter-of-fact approach to the material helps us fully believe in the ghoulish twists and turns the narrative takes, her emotional vulnerability in the role allowing us to completely invest in our protagonist’s journey – no matter how dark that journey gets. Bailey-Bond’s visuals are mesmerizing throughout, creating hypnotic and eerily subjective landscapes through the use of highly stylized color palettes and a production design that leaves one feeling as though reality itself is unstable. Sound becomes an essential component in the terror, layering in ominous and unsettling tones, amplifying everyday sounds to the point of menace, and transforming sounds that should be familiar and warping them into something horrific. As Enid continues her work evaluating films filled with violent misogyny – as well as being confronted by her many sexist male colleagues on a daily basis – we see the toll this takes on her in ways both subtle and not-so-subtle throughout the film. This is a haunting and terrifying film – one that crawls under your skin and stays there long after the movie has ended.

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Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) | Directed by Shaka King

 4.5/5

Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah is a thoroughly compelling biopic told through the structure of a political thriller, giving us a more nuanced, complicated, and honest look at the Black Panther Party than most mainstream narrative films have been willing to attempt. In splitting the narrative’s focus between Fred Hampton’s work with Black Panther Party and Bill O’Neill’s work with the FBI to surveil Hampton, King and his screenwriters have almost created two separate films that overlap and merge as the characters’ lives becomes more intertwined. It’s a technique that works surprisingly well, giving us the tender and powerful moments of a Hampton biopic while we watch him form the Rainbow Coalition and fall in love. And in O’Neill’s story, we’re given the beats of a political thriller as we watch a young man in over his head, manipulated and coerced by his handlers to make choices that will haunt him the rest of his life. The two central performances are stellar – Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield each bring such a different and unique energy to their respective roles that keeps us fully invested in both characters’ arcs. King’s use of archival material at the beginning of the film is highly effective, especially in the way it transitions us into the main plot, showing the ways that images of Black solidarity are immediately threatening to white authorities. Like a few other films that have been released in the last few years, the film’s depiction of police racism and brutality is a necessary corrective to Hollywood’s near-constant glorification of the profession. There’s also a timeliness in the way the film shows how uncomfortable it is for the established powers that be (as well as white, paternalistic liberals) when the Black community (or any BIPOC community) demands equality rather than waiting to be granted equality out of beneficence. It’s a powerful film – hopefully just one of many necessary correctives to decades of popular cinema’s demonization of the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement.