The best international films released in 2024 (so far)

The most lucid socio/political/cultural satire that America has given birth to in these years of “conversation“. In reality the novel that inspired the film, Cancellation by Percival Everett, was published in 2007, but Cord Jefferson’s first work (!) speaks to today and today. Jeffrey Wright is immense, in the role of the writer who is “not black enough” compared to what the (especially white) public demands today. Oscar for best non-original screenplay, here directly on Prime Video.

The first production entirely “Made in USA” by Luca Guadagnino is a film that is pure aesthetic enjoyment: from the photography (complete with a subjective view of the ball) by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom to the costumes by JW Anderson, up to the techno music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross . But which, thanks also to the three formidable protagonists (Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist), becomes a hymn to fluidity without ever being a pedantic “rally”. Indeed: there is lightness, coolness, sensuality. What we want from Cinema (with a capital letter, yes).

A kind of Killers of the Flower Moon, but not in the Red Earth: in the Tierra del Fuego. The Argentine collective El Pampero, who recently gave us the fluvial and remarkable Trenque Lauque, strikes again. This time behind the camera is Felipe Gálvez Haberle, who tells a story of executioners and prey with the eye of adventure cinema à la Herzog. Thinking big, but without ever forgetting the humanity at the heart of this parable, and telling together the story of a country capable of becoming universal. From us on MUBI.

Another tour, another unmissable Argentine fresco. Three hours (but very quickly) to tell the story of Morán and Román, two bank employees who improvise, in fact, criminals. But with moderation: they are satisfied with the amount they would be entitled to if they continued to work until retirement. A subject that is part ofordinary life of a people and a country to become, also in this case, a collective discourse and feeling of a time (and a theme) that concerns us all. This too on MUBI.

After it sculpt by David Lynch, Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic passes into the hands of Denis Villeneuve and – we saw it in the first chapter – becomes “other”, while remaining extremely faithful to the original. The sequel raises the stakes, becomes even more political, gives more space to the characters (Zendaya’s Chani first and foremost) and features sequences from the annals of science fiction d’auteur (see the black and white fight starring a very remarkable Austin Butler). And “Timmy” Chalamet’s Paul Atreides also grows with the film.

The director of Weekend, 45 years old and the TV series Looking he takes a “straight” Japanese novel from the 1980s, imbues it with his real-life experience and gives birth to one of the most poignant and elegant queer dramas of recent years. The neighbors – and “coincidental” – Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal are the protagonists of this one ghost story actually tangible and touching (sorry), which looks to the past (see also the splendid music playlist) to talk about present identity crises. In the last Awards Season she would have deserved more.

How to talk about (geo)politics today? With a fresco, in rigorous black and white, which only lets the facts speak. But the news does not extinguish the pathos, given that behind the camera there is a veteran of European cinema (often on loan to Hollywood) who has always focused on her feelings. However, there is no rhetoric in the story that intersects the destinies of refugees from the Middle East, activists and new executioners at the very hot border (see the doc MUR by Kasia Smutniak) between Poland and Belarus. A punch in the stomach, but someone has to give it. And if a 75 year old lady does it, it’s even stronger and more beautiful.

Twenty years ago Sideways – Traveling with Jack, Alexander Payne reunites with Paul Giamatti and entrusts him with perhaps his best role ever. That of an anti-professorFleeting moment who however becomes, in his own way, an everyday hero. But there is no molasses in the story of this “forced” Christmas at college between him, the campus cook (an Oscar-worthy Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and a student with the lust for life (the revelation Dominic Sessa). Classic cinema, openly Seventies, out of time and at the same time capable of interpreting the incommunicability of our present.

A great success (even here) for a film about an interrupted love story, yes, but above all about the threads that bind us to our past, to our origins, to everything we have left behind and that will never return. Celine Song writes and directs a “subtraction” K-drama that relies on excellent performances (Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and the magnificent supporting John Magaro), leading us by the hand to one of the most poignant (and intelligent) endings of recent years. A title destined to stay.

Let’s stay in the East, but let’s go to Japan, for another film that was an accident (incredible but true) at our box office: total takings of 5.5 million euros. Veteran Wim Wenders returns to Tokyo to tell a story of only apparent simplicity. Hirayama (the extraordinary Kōji Yakusho, awarded at Cannes) cleans public toilets, reads, rides his bike through the streets of the city, listens to the Velvet Underground… and he’s fine with it. Not a film about the rhetoric of small things, but a masterpiece that tells us that every life is possible, and possibly beautiful.

While in the theaters there is the most divisive Kinds of Kindnessthe memory of the remains very fresh Barbie steampunk born from the Greek bad boy (based on a novel by Alasdair Gray). Between goth and comedy, the story of Bella Baxter (an Emma Stonetotal“: and in fact it was second Oscar) is immediately exemplary, for how it manages to tell the emancipation of a young woman without proclamations but with absolute freedom. Which is also that of a director who, having become mainstream, always remains profoundly indie, and knows how to invent a world every time.

Hayao Miyazaki’s latest (?) film takes us back to the atmosphere of The wind picks up, his previous masterpiece. But at the same time he pushes the pedal of existentialism and philosophy even further, taking the pencil back in his hand and drawing on the screen, with epic and visionary humanism, his imaginative testament, the letter of a grandfather to a grandson about a life that is worth worth living: because yes, after every loss (and every war) there is still a tomorrow. This too was a success (and also a bit unexpected) at our box office.

A young Iranian champion named Leila is making waves at the world judo championships. But her victories are a problem for the Islamic Republic, because at some point they could lead her to face her Israeli colleague: and the regime considers the possibility of losing to Israel humiliating for Iran. A story of sport, but also of life and death, in black and white which serves to tell us that – in the words of co-director and actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi – “maybe one day the life of Iranian women will be in color again” .

An epic old school of the frontier (this time the European one) with the codes of the western and a magnificent protagonist: Mads Mikkelsen. A kind of survival thriller of the Danish star against everyone: there is the man vs. nature (the arid and sterile land), David against Goliath (a very powerful and sadistic villain and an aristocracy, that of 18th century Denmark, indifferent and complicit), work against privilege, morality against the absence of morality . And then boundless landscapes, romance, revenge, even redemption. Grandeur European in purity, to be recovered.

The title that has probably most shocked, divided and caused discussion in this cinema season. Awarded with the special jury Grand Prix at Cannes 2023 and arriving in our theaters almost simultaneously with the Oscars (it won two), it is, even before a film, an immersive experience that makes us reflect on the Holocaust and all that which left (even today: see the results of the recent European Championships) like nothing else seen on the screen so far. Between horror, estrangement and a warning that shouts loud and clear to our present. A masterpiece, period.