Best Films of 2023

Afire - Oliver Parker (Screen Co-Editor)
Departing from more nail-biting politically driven thrillers, Christian Petzold crafts a looser, more lightweight film with Afire. Set on the German coast, with an ominous forest fire slowly approaching, the film revolves around a few days in the life of a writer struggling to finish his second novel. His ill-tempered personality and mild neurosis causes him to be in constant conflict with the people around him, lashing out when they try to offer support and friendship.

Petzold creates a tone that fluctuates between tragic, comedic and tense: often being all three of these at once. It's through the mundanity of real life that he manages to craft a world that feels wholly real and relatable. With the ever burning German sun and the lapping of the Baltic sea providing glimmers of beauty and romanticism that punctuate the moments of sadness. A beautiful film that offers few answers to its beguiling ambiguities, yet it stays on the brain long after the credits roll. 
Available to rent on Amazon.

The Eight Mountains - George White (Screen Co-Editor)
Some films are more than just a film - they’re a lesson, a fable that sticks with you long after the credits roll. Well, considering I saw Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian drama way back in May and I still think about it on a daily basis, it’s safe to say The Eight Mountains is one of those. 

Covering relationships, friendships, brotherhood and parenthood; hyper-masculinity, ego, chasing dreams and accepting (or struggling to accept) failure, it’s a genuine masterpiece that has so much to say without very much happening, and one that everyone would be better off from seeing. Also, the gut punch of Daniel Norgren’s Everything You Know Melts Away Like Snow is perhaps the single best use of a song in cinema history. Okay, gushing over. 
Available on the BFI Player. 

Suzume - Gemma Cockrell (Assistant Editor)
As a huge fan of everything Makoto Shinkai has ever directed, Suzume was my most anticipated film of 2023, heightened by the four long months that I had to wait before it arrived here in the UK after it was initially released over in Japan back in November last year. 

Protagonist Suzume is a defiant and strong-willed female lead, who sets out to save Japan in this supernatural animated thriller which tackles important topics, namely the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 that killed nearly 20,000 people. The perfect film for a solo cinema trip, this is one well worth seeing on the big screen, if you ever get the chance.
Not yet available to stream.

Sick of Myself - Francesca Beaumont
Norwegian tragicomedy ‘Syk-Pike’ satires contemporary culture's absurd clamour for attention with a seamlessly Scandinavian sense of humanity that escalates emotion and unrelenting vanity to egoist extremity over the short span of 95 minutes. 

Up-and-coming Director Kristoffer Borgli uses conceited young woman Signe’s dangerous descent into self-obsession as a conduit through which he dissects the most obnoxious, self-aggrandising traits that sit within us all, perfecting a film that is equal parts amusing as it is deeply disturbing. 
Available on the BFI Player.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One - Joanna Hoyes
As much as it may not be the most obvious choice - and I don’t select it for its originality or surprise factor - I genuinely enjoyed Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. I think that when you leave a cinema, you should feel something; whatever emotion it may be, you should always have a reaction. This film was so full of action and stunts that I practically ran out of the theatre high on my own adrenaline. I also loved how many great female actors were cast and the different characters they all played to complement the film’s plot. 

Incidentally, one of the worst films I saw was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – please don’t bother – however, it was the film I remember most this year, as my boyfriend proposed to me the next morning. 
Available to rent on Amazon. 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - Jamie Morris 
2023 hasn’t been kind to the MCU, with dwindling critical and commercial success spelling an uncertain future for the franchise. However, the conclusion to James Gunn’s epic Guardians saga is an exception to this trend. 

Vol. 3 jettisons a number of MCU conventions – while the signature self-aware comedy remains, it’s at times an unusually sombre and violent entry in the Marvel canon that lands some serious emotional gut-punches. Furthermore, there’s virtually no set-up for future instalments here – Gunn gets complete freedom to give these characters a satisfying send-off, putting his trilogy on a par with the sci-fi genre’s very best.
Available on Disney Plus.

Tchaikovsky's Wife - Farzad Azimbeik
Kirill Serebrennikov’s latest feature film is his first experience in biopic film and period drama, and a major point in his oeuvre. As the title expresses, Tchaikovsky's Wife explores the life and sadistic love story of Antonina, a young girl who fatally bounds into a doomed marriage with Tchaikovsky, who discovered his homosexuality in the peak of his career.

The film is a direct critique on themes such as the nineteenth-century noble milieu in Russia, infectious poverty, and the unholy marriage between orthodoxy and patriarchy. Serebrennikov masterfully executes his unique editing and visual style, which place the narrative on a feverish verge between reality and delusion. The audience encounters the mental and emotional collapse of Antonina and her failing attempts to regain a losing life – a life she never had, and only lived in her mind.
Not yet available to stream.

Saint Omer - Aaron Roe
So often the courtroom drama has been defined by desk-slamming bursts of passion, shock witnesses bursting through the door or the rousing melodrama of an underdog lawyer. But in Saint Omer, Alice Diop's extraordinary fiction debut showcasing two mesmerising performances, these passions lurk under the surface of languid gazes.

Diop's slow-burner centres on the trial of Laurence Coly, a woman accused of murdering her fifteen-month-old daughter. Sensing a compelling story, Paris-based novelist and academic Rama observes the proceedings, collating evidence for her publisher. Don't let this film's poise fool you – as the parallels between the two women become more defined, the feature becomes a hypnotic dissection of generational trauma, motherhood and witchcraft. 
Available on MUBI.