2019

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Monos
The Chambermaid
The Lighthouse
Atlantics
Birds of Passage
Pain and Glory
For Sama
Long Day's Journey Into Night
The Souvenir
Parasite
An Elephant Sitting Still
Synonyms
The Farewell

Burning

Riveting … Jeon Jong-seo in Burning.

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Riveting … Jeon Jong-seo in Burning. Photograph: Allstar/Pine House Film

Sex, envy and pyromania make for a riveting mystery in Lee Chang-dong’s masterfully crafted Murakami
adaptation. Read more.

High Life

Juliette Binoche’s evil doctor and Robert Pattinson’s monkish lab rat consider their crimes in space in
Claire Denis’s stirring English-language debut. Read more.

10

Midsommar

Terrifying … Jack Reynor and Florence Pugh in Midsommar. Photograph: Gabor Kotschy/AP
Florence Pugh is plunged into a terrifying pagan bacchanal in a magnificent folk-horror tale from
Hereditary director Ari Aster. Read the full review.

12

Sorry We Missed You

A delivery driver and his care assistant wife are ground down by the gig economy in Ken Loach’s
ferocious attack on Britain’s zero-hours society. Read the full review.

13

Monos

Our second Apocalypse Now nod in this list is Alejandro Landes’s deeply mad thriller about a wild cult of
teenage bandits who have rituals, guns and a hostage – but no Colonel Kurtz. Read the full review.

14

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Acid … Richard E Grant and Melissa McCarthy.

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Acid … Richard E Grant and Melissa McCarthy. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

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Melissa McCarthy reaches new career heights with her performance as hard-drinking literary forger Lee
Israel opposite an uber-waspish Richard E Grant in this acid delight. Read the full review.

15

Hustlers

J-Lo delivers a standout turn in this snappy caper about a gang of strippers who scam Wall Street
bankers. Read the full review.
16

Border

An outsider with unusual gifts descends on a small community in Ali Abbasi’s exploration of cultural
otherness; a Nordic noir that also features cinema’s weirdest sex scene. Read the full review.

17

For Sama

Extraordinary … For Sama.

Extraordinary … For Sama. Photograph: CAP

One of the most extraordinary documentaries of recent years, this story of a baby in war-torn Syria,
begun while her mother was still pregnant, is impossibly moving, upsetting and uplifting. Read the full
review.

18

Booksmart

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Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut is a riotous blast; a funny, filthy, female Superbad that’s also extremely
smart and strangely sensitive. Read the full review.

19

If Beale Street Could Talk

Barry Jenkins’s sumptuous adaptation of the James Baldwin novel is an emotionally overwhelming hymn
to the power of love and the burn of injustice. Read the full review.

20

Transit
Disturbing … Transit

Disturbing … Transit Photograph: PR handout undefined

A taut and elegant adaptation of Anna Seghers’s 1944 novel, this unfortunately topical tale of stolen
identities, refugees and riot police is deeply and enduringly disturbing. Read the full review.

21

Ash Is Purest White

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Jia Zhangke’s melancholy epic stars Zhao Tao as a resilient gangster’s moll burning with misguided love
in a shape-shifting China. Read the full review.

22

Only You

Laia Costa and Josh O’Connor get the tissues wringing in Harry Wootliff’s impressive debut about a
couple whose relationship is tested by infertility. Read the full review.

24

Harriet

Kasi Lemmons’s belated but remarkable slavery biopic features Indiana Jones-style derring-do and a
barnstorming central turn from Cynthia Erivo. Read the full review.

25

América

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An immensely tender and precarious documentary following three Mexican brothers as they juggle their
work with the care of their 93-year-old grandmother. Read the full review.
26

Capernaum

Powerful … Capernaum.

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Powerful … Capernaum. Photograph: Boo Pictures/Sony/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

Nadine Labaki’s powerful drama sees a Beirut child sue his parents for giving birth to him – before
ending up on the street caring for a stranger’s baby. Read the full review.

27

One Cut of the Dead

Noises Off meets George Romero in this lively and genre-revitalising metafictional horror show by
Shin’ichirô Ueda. Read the full review.

28

In Fabric

Red dress nightmares … Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Red dress nightmares … Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Photograph: Curzon Artificial Eye

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Set in an unearthly department store, Peter Strickland’s bizarre ghost story sees Marianne Jean-Baptiste
battling a frock from another dimension. Read the full review.

29

Beanpole

Kantemir Balagov deploys shock tactics to weigh the horrors of peace against the trauma of war in 1945
Leningrad in this extraordinary movie. Read the full review.
31

Loro

The film Paolo Sorrentino was born to direct and Toni Servillo born to star in didn’t quite live up to that
billing, but this Silvio Berlusconi biopic is still a masterly and fascinating take. Read the full review.

Knives Out

Rian Johnson takes a breather from Star Wars to revisit his Brick roots with this wickedly entertaining
Agatha Christie homage featuring a star-packed cast. Read the full review.

34

Amazing Grace

Had Aretha Franklin approved of Sydney Pollack’s transcendent 1972 documentary, it doubtless would
have shown up on our list closer to the time it was shot. Still, better late than never. Read the full
review.

35

Birds of Passage

Shocking … Birds of Passage.

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Shocking … Birds of Passage. Photograph: AF archive/Alamy

The cost of the Colombian drugs trade to its indigenous people is uncovered in Ciro Guerra’s poetic and
shocking drama. Read the full review.

36

Sunset

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László Nemes follows Son of Saul with a cryptic and hyper-stylish study of the fracturing Austro-
Hungarian empire on the eve of the first world war. Read the full review.

37

Diego Maradona

After Amy and Senna, Asif Kapadia tackles someone still alive in this gripping study of football, euphoria
and catastrophe. Read the full review.

38

Apollo 11

Astonishing … a crowd watch the launch of Apollo 11.

Astonishing … a crowd watch the launch of Apollo 11.

A front-row seat for the moon landings? Few could resist this astonishing documentary featuring
previously unseen footage, released for the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s lunar
walk. Read the full review.

39

Bait

This hypnotic take on tourists – and second home owners – ruining Cornwall launched Mark Jenkin onto
the homegrown cinema scene with immense wit and monochrome style. Read the full review.

40

Foxtrot

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Samuel Maoz’s fierce nightmare vision of Israel, where loss and pain are randomly distributed, offers an
urgent and witty picture of futility. Read the full review.
41

Ray & Liz

Richard Billingham mined his own family for this bleak debut, capturing the claustrophobic loneliness of
a couple cut off from everyone, including each other. Read the full review.

42

Us

Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out was a less obvious slam-dunk, but still an immensely skilful
doppelganger satire with a gobstopping central turn from Lupita Nyong’o. Read the full review.

Colette

Kinky ... Keira Knightley and Dominic West.

Kinky and invigorating, Keira Knightley and Dominic West make a fascinating married couple in this
biopic – released last January – of the much-wronged French novelist. Read the full review.

Dolemite Is My Name

Eddie Murphy’s glorious return is the richly entertaining tale of cult 70s blaxploitation star Rudy Ray
Moore’s rise from nightclub standup to the movies. Read the full review.

45

Rojo

Benjamín Naishtat’s satire, set before the coup that installed a military junta in Argentina, is an enraging
– and informative – parable of iniquity about the fate of the disappeared. Read the full review.

46

Ad Astra

Freud goes intergalactic ... Brad Pitt.

Freud goes intergalactic ... Brad Pitt.

Brad Pitt goes intergalactic in search of long-lost dad Tommy Lee Jones in James Gray’s thrilling Freudian
mashup of Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Read the full review.
47

Atlantique

Mati Diop’s supernatural debut forces young Senegalese lovers to choose between love, duty and
servitude, then adds a surreal twist. Read the full review.

48

The Nightingale

Jennifer Kent follows up The Babadook with some real-life monsters: the men who ran Tasmania’s penal
colonies in the 1820s – one of whom gets some grisly, if just, comeuppance in this gothic thriller.

50

Rolling Thunder Revue

Two legends collaborate and a truckload collide in Martin Scorsese’s epic, freewheeling documentary
unspooling on Bob Dylan’s 1975 tourbus. Read the full review.

2010: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2011: Century of Birthing (Dir. Lav Diaz)
2012: Post Tenebras Lux (Dir. Carlos Reygadas)
2013: 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Dir. Wang Bing)
2014: Winter Sleep (Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
2015: Behemoth (Dir. Zhao Liang)
2016: Frantz (Dir. François Ozon)
2017: Loveless (Dir. Andrey Zvyaginstev)
2018: An Elephant Sitting Still (Dir. Hu Bo)
2019(So far): Sorry We Missed You (Dir. Ken Loach)