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Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama was chilling, Lily Farhadpour charmed in Iran and Paul Mescal was tremendous in a fantasy-romance as our critics select their standout picks of the year
The best films in the US
More on the best culture of 2024
A suave and dapper Hugh Grant draws two Mormon missionaries into a psychological game of terror and manipulation. Read the full review
Kristen Stewart stars in Rose Glass’s bodybuilding noir, a violent story of extreme sport, forbidden love and a lot of murder. Read the full review
Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s deliberately dense but ultimately hopeful examination of how to negotiate family dysfunction with intelligence and humanity. Read the full review
Jacques Audiard’s gangster trans musical about a Mexican cartel leader who hires a lawyer to arrange his transition is carried along by its cheesy Broadway energy. Read the full review
Ryu Hamaguchi’s enigmatic eco-parable about a Tokyo company buying up land near a pristine lake turns into a complex and mysterious drama. Read the full review
The Wizard of Oz musical prequel is brought to the big screen with sugar-rush energy by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande-Butera. Read the full review
Lovingly eccentric ode to a forgotten abstract painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, brought to life by Mark Cousins in this idiosyncratically persuasive film. Read the full review
Fascinating insight into the Taliban’s insular world by documentary-maker Ibrahim Nash’at, revealing the fighters’ lack of purpose after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Read the full review
Gold Rush-style silent comedy combining Chaplin, Keaton and Looney Tunes into an utterly silly movie pastiche, with an army of full-sized beavers. Read the full review
Account of an Israeli and a Palestinian’s remarkable relationship across the divide, after they met when Palestinian villages were bulldozed to make way for the Israeli military. Read the full review
Viggo Mortensen directs, writes, composes and acts in this beautifully shot and sombre film about an old-school hero in a 19th-century frontier community fraught with tragedy. Read the full review
Elene Naveriani’s film, about a single woman in a remote Georgian village whose life is changed for ever after a near-death experience, is a gentle gem about midlife love and loneliness. Read the full review
Paola Cortellesi’s directing debut, in which she also stars, depicts gruelling domestic abuse before finding a way to redemption in a resoundingly sentimental drama set in postwar Rome. Read the full review
Musician and film-maker Baloji’s movie about a Belgian-Congolese man who takes his white wife to DRC to meet the family is complex, risky and bold. Read the full review
Payman Maadi brings a fierce intelligence to his portrayal of an Iranian wrestling champ refugee who is seeking a secure new home for his family in Sweden. Read the full review
The Spirit of the Beehive director Víctor Erice returns after 30 years with an enigmatic tale of a disappeared actor that ruminates on memory, ageing and cinema itself. Read the full review
Europe’s exploitation of Tierra del Fuego at the turn of the 20th century is told in an unsparingly bloody drama-thriller by first-time director Felipe Gálvez Haberle. Read the full review
Luna Carmoon’s deeply strange and compelling study of loneliness and thwarted sexuality shows the ways in which childhood trauma can bloom in adult life. Read the full review
Daniel Craig plays an American expat living indolently in Mexico City in a sometimes uproarious adaptation of William Burroughs’s autobiographical novel. Read the full review
Tyler Taormina’s very warm and rich movie about one huge family’s festivities is a charming hometown study. Read the full review
Argentinian director Rodrigo Moreno’s beguilingly surreal slow-motion heist movie makes for a meanderingly long crime caper. Read the full review
Garrulous essay-movie-slash-black-comedy collage from Romanian film-maker Radu Jude takes swipes from all angles at modern life. Read the full review
Spanish film-maker Lois Patiño’s whimsical meditation on the Buddhist cycle of life is a playfully mysterious invitation to contemplate death. Read the full review
Giacomo Abbruzzese’s drama is a freaky trip into the heart of imperial darkness as it follows Belarusian Aleksei on his journey to join the French Foreign Legion. Read the full review
Japanese journalist Shiori Itō’s rape case against a prominent TV executive that triggered Japan’s #MeToo movement. Read the full review
Saoirse Ronan is mesmerising in sobering addiction drama adapted from Amy Liptrot’s memoir. Read the full review
Gripping French courtroom drama that tackles antisemitism and history by reconstructing the 1976 trial of voluble and charismatic leftist Pierre Goldman. Read the full review
Cillian Murphy stars in a piercingly painful drama about Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, an absorbing Dickensian story based on recent history. Read the full review
Mati Diop’s interrogative reverie about looted African sculptures is a realist jeu d’esprit about the legacy of plunder. Read the full review
Vivid, intense biopic of heiress turned terrorist Rose Dugdale (it was released as Rose’s War in the US), the wealthy debutante who joined the IRA, abetted an art heist and bombed a police station. Read the full review
Agnieszka Holland’s brutal and timely drama shines a dark spotlight on the horrors faced by refugees in the exclusion zone between Poland and Belarus. Read the full review
Based on the true story of a young Jewish boy kidnapped by papal authorities, Marco Bellocchio’s antisemitism drama lays bare tyranny, bigotry and the abuse of power in the Catholic church. Read the full review
Jodie Comer plays a young woman whose baby arrives just as an environmental crisis devastates the society around her, in an all-too-believable disaster drama. Read the full review
Ralph Fiennes is broodingly compelling as a cardinal caught up in murky Vatican intrigue around choosing the next pontiff. Read the full review
Intelligent film from Levan Akin in which a Georgian woman and her young sidekick head to Istanbul in search of her estranged trans niece. Read the full review
Gleeful Korean somnambulist psycho-chiller, with Lee Sun-kyun as an actor struggling to control his night-time excursions. Read the full review
The son and grandson of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss bring healing to a death-camp survivor in Daniela Volker’s engrossing documentary. Read the full review
Set in Vietnam, this realist yet dreamlike exploration of midlife crisis and regret is a wondrous meditation on faith and death. Read the full review
This weirdly wonderful story of two misfits finding solace in a creepy TV show is set to be future classic. Read the full review
Amazing performances from six-year-old Louise Mauroy-Panzani and Ilça Moreno Zego in a sensitive drama about a kid and the nanny who has to leave her. Read the full review
This monumental film from Steve McQueen tracks day-to-day life in Amsterdam under Nazi rule and asks hard questions of what we think about the gulf between past and present. Read the full review
Alexander Payne’s story of a cantankerous teacher holed up for Christmas with a wayward teen and the school cook is expertly told with gentle, grownup comedy. Read the full review
Johan Grimonprez’s fascinating documentary suggests that the US used jazz legend Louis Armstrong in a “cool war” offensive to assassinate Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba. Read the full review
Emma Stone gives a hilarious, beyond-next-level performance as the experimental subject of a troubled Victorian anatomist in Yorgos Lanthimos’s toweringly bizarre comedy. Read the full review
Set in 1980s Tuscany, Alice Rohrwacher’s captivating film follows a lovelorn Englishman plundering Italy’s historical artefacts with a bizarre gang. Read the full review
Sean Baker’s tragicomedy features Mikey Madison as an escort betrayed by a bratty oligarch’s son in a non-love story that offers a more realistic take on sex work than Pretty Woman. Read the full review
Payal Kapadia’s dreamlike and gentle modern Mumbai tale is an absorbing story of three nurses that is full of humanity. Read the full review
Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of Martin Amis’s chilling Holocaust drama pulls the banality of evil into pin-sharp focus. Read the full review
Charming portrayal of a 70-year-old Iranian’s appetite for romance, with Lily Farhadpour as a woman fiercely determined to revitalise her mundane existence and taste a better life. Read the full review and read an interview with the directors
Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott are tremendous in Andrew Haigh’s beautiful fantasy-romance about a screenwriter who visits his childhood home to find his parents – who were killed in a car crash – still living there. Read the full review
