Sometimes the film world is like a cocktail party where the loudest, most demanding guest sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. Meanwhile, the person with the most to say is quietly nursing a cocktail on the margins of the party.
In the same way, the year-end film cycle can often feel like it’s the showy, big-budget, can’t-escape-them films with the multimillion dollar ad campaigns, morning talk show slots, action figures and merch that get all the attention. You’d have to be in a separatist cult to have avoided juggernauts like “Wicked,” “Deadpool & Wolverine” or “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” this year.
But 2024 also delivered a host of smaller, quieter film releases from studios that don’t have the deep pockets necessary to blanket the airwaves, many of them from women, foreign or first-time filmmakers with a surfeit of style and something to say. They include:
Credit: Photo by Agata Kubis
Credit: Photo by Agata Kubis
“Green Border”
“Masterpiece” is not a word you hear bandied about very often in contemporary film, especially when the filmmaker is a 76-year old Polish woman, Agnieszka Holland (“Europa, Europa”), one of the shining lights of international cinema. Her drama — shot in shimmering black and white like the darkest of fairy tales — unfolds with a sense of optimism as a Syrian family with a relative waiting for them in Sweden flies into Belarus with hopes of crossing the border into the European Union. But their best laid plans begin to unravel upon landing, and soon the family is caught up in a brutal limbo, as they become pawns in a political chess game, cruelly pushed back and forth between Poland and Belarus, both countries desperate to off-load these refugees. The degree of cruelty and inhumanity visited upon these hopeful, traumatized people will give you a heart-wrenching window into what the immigrant experience feels like from the inside. Now streaming.
“September 5″
German director Tim Fehlbaum has created a nail-biting thriller about the efforts of ABC Sports journalists to document the abduction of Israeli athletes by Black September Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. The film shows the early days of how an instance of terrorism was broadcast for a wide audience and the efforts to show sensitivity to the victims and their families. But as much as it is about this specific event, “September 5″ is also a film about a predigital news industry and the resourcefulness and creativity required to document a live event in 1972. Fehlbaum’s film also touches on the casual sexism of a 1970s newsroom in this film with multiple layers and lots of ideas to chew on. Coming to Apple TV soon.
“Thelma”
This caper comedy-drama centers on a grandmother Thelma (June Squibb) who goes rogue, borrowing her buddy’s (Richard Roundtree) mobility scooter to find the phone scammers who hoodwinked her out of a chunk of cash. At first glance, the concept feels like something a little too cute for its own good. But first-time director Josh Margolin, inspired by his real-life, charismatic, beloved grandmother, conveys a lot in a very effervescent package: the genuine pain of being old and underestimated but also the comic foibles of Thelma trying to navigate an online world. Now streaming.
“Queer”
Daniel Craig is almost unrecognizable in Luca Guadagnino’s (literally) hallucinogenic adaptation of the William S. Burroughs memoir-adjacent novel centered on a loner writer in an expat community who falls hard for a younger man (Drew Starkey) in 1950s Mexico City. About addiction of many kinds and layered with an anachronistic soundtrack of Nirvana and New Order, “Queer” can recall filmmaker David Cronenberg at his most bold and iconoclastic, but is infused with the romantic yearning that defines so many of Guadagnino’s films. Now playing.
“My Old Ass”
Each year there seem to be more and more films by women directors who tend to bring an utterly different point of view to even the most solid genre standards like the coming-of-age film. In the last 10 years, films about teenagers have become a little more tender, wise and sophisticated. “Eighth Grade,” “Booksmart” and now director Megan Park’s “My Old Ass” fits neatly in those ranks, focused on a snarky 18-year-old Elliott (Maisy Stella) who quickly has her gay, jaded identity scrambled by an earnest, openhearted boy (an adorable Percy Hynes White) who becomes her first real love. Aubrey Plaza, in a more wistful role than her usual wiseacre shtick, is the 39-year-old future-Elliott who appears after Elliott takes psychedelic mushrooms and gives her younger self a glimpse into her future and helps her see the magic in the life she already has. Streaming on Amazon Prime.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Metrograph Pictures
Credit: Photo courtesy of Metrograph Pictures
“The Black Sea”
A charmingly lo-fi film that hearkens back to the shaggy heyday of ‘80s and ‘90s independent cinema from the likes of Jim Jarmusch, this fish out of water story centers on a fast-talking Brooklyn barista Khalid (co-director Derrick B. Harden) who travels to Bulgaria to make what he thinks will be a quick buck. Once there, a series of mishaps strand Khalid without a passport or money, until he stumbles upon a business idea that soon endears him to the locals. Unassuming and gently comic, “The Black Sea” was made on the fly by Harden and co-director Crystal Moselle, and shows how much can be accomplished with a charismatic lead and some filmmaking chutzpah. Streaming in February.
“I’m Still Here”
This Brazilian political drama from Walter Sallas (“Central Station”) centers on a comfortably bourgeois family living in a beautiful home steps from the beach in Rio de Janeiro (a home Sallas often visited as a teenager). Their happiness is ruptured when a group of men whisk Eunice Paiva’s (Fernanda Torres) husband Rubens (Selton Mello) away to a prison where political dissidents are tortured and often disappear under the country’s right-wing dictatorship. Brazil’s current right-wing party leaders promoted a boycott of the film, which has gone on to gross $10 million and has become a hit. If you need a reminder of Atlanta’s incredible diversity, “I’m Still Here” played to packed houses of Brazilian audiences at AMC’s Southlake 24 and opens ITP on Feb. 7 at Tara Theatre.
“No Other Land”
A close-up vision of a Middle Eastern conflict of which we most often only have a bird’s-eye view, this visceral documentary made by an Israeli-Palestinian collective centers on the Palestinian villagers and farmers who are being driven by the Israeli army off the West Bank’s small mountain community of Masafer Yatta — land they have occupied for centuries. One of four co-directors, Basel Adra is the son of an activist and now one himself whose life has been defined by Israel’s Kafkaesque bureaucratic cruelty and dehumanization of the Palestinians, including the destruction of schools, playgrounds and homes. A young Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham is there to document the horror and make the filmmakers’ case for Israel’s crimes. Opening Feb. 7 at Tara Theatre.
“All We Imagine As Light”
A film that can conjure up influences as diverse as Indian cineaste Satyajit Ray and American independent John Cassavetes, director Payal Kapadia’s gorgeously photographed, intimate, carefully observed, lyrical film looks at the lives of two nurses living in Mumbai in their day-to-day work and romantic relationships with an authenticity that feels almost like documentary. Now playing, Tara Theatre.
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