Top 10 of 2020

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*Click on the ‘Lists & Logs’ tab to see lists from previous years.

This list will be updated each time I see a film from 2020 (world premiere/imdb date) that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.

  1. DAU. Degeneration (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Ilya Permyakov)
  2. Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito)
  3. Fauna (Nicolás Pereda)
  4. The Last City (Heinz Emigholz)
  5. Days (Tsai Ming-liang)
  6. DAU. Three Days (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel)
  7. Let Them All Talk a.k.a. The Fall of 2019 (Steven Soderbergh)
  8. The Salt of Tears (Philippe Garrel)
  9. DAU. Brave People (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Aleksey Slusarchuk)
  10. The Disciple (Chaitanya Tamhane)

 

Polls Top 10 (Eligible titles [will] appear here.) (Note: This year I started including streaming-only releases on this list; eligibility determined by my whims and moods.)

  1. Liberté (2019, Albert Serra)
  2. The Giverny Document (Single Channel) (2019, Ja’Tovia Gary)
  3. DAU. Degeneration (2020, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Ilya Permyakov)
  4. I Was at Home, But… (2019, Angela Schanelec)
  5. DAU. Three Days (2020, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel)
  6. Fourteen (2019, Dan Sallitt)
  7. About Endlessness (2019, Roy Andersson)
  8. Young Ahmed (2019, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
  9. DAU. Brave People (2020, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Aleksey Slusarchuk)
  10. The History of the Seattle Mariners (2020, Jon Bois)

 

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2020 (for first-time viewings of films made before 2010)

  1. The Fountainhead (1949, King Vidor)
  2. Variety (1983, Bette Gordon)
  3. Stella Dallas (1937, King Vidor)
  4. The Wedding Night (1935, King Vidor)
  5. Happy Here and Now (2002, Michael Almereyda)
  6. Woman on the Beach (2006, Hong Sang-soo)
  7. Street Scene (1931, King Vidor)
  8. Night and Day (2008, Hong Sang-soo)
  9. The Power of Kangwon Province (1998, Hong Sang-soo)
  10. Koyaanisqatsi (1982, Godfrey Reggio)

 

Other 2020 films I’ve seen

  • Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu) – 6.8
  • The History of the Seattle Mariners (Jon Bois) – 6.8
  • The Lobby (Heinz Emigholz) – 6.7
  • Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) – 6.7
  • Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross) – 6.7
  • DAU. Natasha (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel) – 6.7
  • Tesla (Michael Almereyda) – 6.6
  • Microphones in 2020 (Phil Elverum) – 6.6
  • Inventing the Future (Isiah Medina) – 6.6
  • Hopper/Welles (Orson Welles) – 6.6
  • The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (Anders Edström & C.W. Winter) – 6.5
  • Slow Machine (Paul Felten & Joe DeNardo) – 6.5
  • s01e03 (Kurt Walker) – 6.5
  • City Hall (Frederick Wiseman) – 6.5
  • The Monopoly of Violence (David Dufresne) – 6.5
  • Circumstantial Pleasures (Lewis Klahr) – 6.4
  • The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo) – 6.4
  • Red Post on Escher Street (Sion Sono) – 6.4
  • Time (Garrett Bradley) – 6.4
  • Beginning (Dea Kulumbegashvili) – 6.3
  • Boys State (Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss) – 6.3
  • The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell) – 6.3
  • The Killing of Two Lovers (Robert Machoian) – 6.3
  • So Late So Soon (Daniel Hymanson) – 6.3
  • Build the Wall (Joe Swanberg) – 6.2
  • Atarrabi and Mikelats (Eugène Green) – 6.2
  • Second Star to the Right and Straight On ’Til Morning (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross) – 6.2
  • Maggie’s Farm (James Benning) – 6.1
  • Expedition Content (Ernst Karel & Veronika Kusumaryati) – 6.0
  • The American Sector (Courtney Stephens & Pacho Velez) – 6.0
  • Tenet (Christopher Nolan) – 5.9
  • Isabella (Matías Piñeiro) – 5.9
  • The Nest (Sean Durkin) – 5.9
  • DAU. String Theory (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Aleksey Slusarchuk) – 5.9
  • I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman) – 5.8
  • Kokoloko (Gerardo Naranjo) – 5.8
  • DAU. New Man (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Ilya Permyakov) – 5.8
  • We Are Who We Are (Luca Guadagnino) – 5.7
  • The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror (Raúl Ruiz & Valeria Sarmiento) – 5.7
  • One Night in Miami (Regina King) – 5.7
  • Shithouse (Cooper Raiff) – 5.7
  • Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi) – 5.7
  • DAU. Katya Tanya (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel) – 5.7
  • Intimate Distances (Phillip Warnell) – 5.7
  • Kajillionaire (Miranda July) – 5.6
  • Undine (Christian Petzold) – 5.6
  • Saint-Narcisse (Bruce LaBruce) – 5.6
  • There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse (Nicolás Zukerfeld) – 5.6
  • Short Vacation (Kwon Min-pyo & Seo Han-sol) – 5.6
  • Some Kind of Heaven (Lance Oppenheim) – 5.6
  • French Exit (Azazel Jacobs) – 5.6
  • Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (Werner Herzog & Clive Oppenheimer) – 5.6
  • The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili) – 5.5
  • Mank (David Fincher) – 5.5
  • Dick Johnson is Dead (Kirsten Johnson) – 5.5
  • Palm Springs (Max Barbakow) – 5.5
  • Things We Say, Things We Do: Love Affair(s) (Emmanuel Mouret) – 5.4
  • Shiva Baby (Emma Seligman) – 5.4
  • Gunda (Viktor Kossakovsky) – 5.4
  • Education (Steve McQueen) – 5.4
  • Sportin’ Life (Abel Ferrara) – 5.4
  • DAU. Nikita Tanya (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel) – 5.3
  • Her Name Was Europa (Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy) – 5.3
  • Wife of a Spy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) – 5.3
  • Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen) – 5.3
  • Blue Eyes and Colorful My Dress (Polina Gumiela) – 5.3
  • Enemies of the State (Sonia Kennebeck) – 5.3
  • The Wolf of Snow Hollow (Jim Cummings) – 5.3
  • The Truffle Hunters (Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw) – 5.3
  • Death of Nintendo (Raya Martin) – 5.3
  • Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Jia Zhang-ke) – 5.2
  • DAU. Nora Mother (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel) – 5.2
  • David Byrne’s American Utopia (Spike Lee) – 5.2
  • A Shape of Things to Come (J.P. Sniadecki & Lisa Malloy) – 5.2
  • IWOW: I Walk on Water (Khalik Allah) – 5.1
  • Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen) – 5.1
  • Siberia (Abel Ferrara) – 5.0
  • Uppercase Print (Radu Jude) – 5.0
  • Liminal (Philippe Grandrieux, Manuela de Laborde, Lav Diaz, & Óscar Enríquez) – 5.0
  • Zero (Kazuhiro Soda) – 5.0
  • Identifying Features (Fernanda Valadez) – 5.0
  • The Calming (Song Fang) – 4.9
  • Spring Blossom (Suzanne Lindon) – 4.9
  • Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman) – 4.9
  • Bicentenario (Pablo Alvarez Mesa) – 4.9
  • Summer of 85 (François Ozon) – 4.9
  • All In: The Fight for Democracy (Liz Garbus & Lisa Cortés) – 4.9
  • Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time (Lili Horváth) – 4.8
  • Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine (Alex Piperno) – 4.8
  • maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore (Sky Hopinka) – 4.8
  • Pieces of a Woman (Kornél Mundruczó) – 4.8
  • MLK/FBI (Sam Pollard) – 4.8
  • Last and First Men (Jóhann Jóhannsson) – 4.8
  • Viena and the Fantomes (Gerardo Naranjo) – 4.7
  • A l’abordage (Guillaume Brac) – 4.7
  • Night of the Kings (Philippe Lacôte) – 4.7
  • Orphea (Alexander Kluge & Khavn) – 4.7
  • Nasir (Arun Karthick) – 4.7
  • Purple Sea (Amel Alzakout & Khaled Abdulwahed) – 4.6
  • Los Conductos (Camilo Restrepo) – 4.6
  • Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell) – 4.6
  • Shirley (Josephine Decker) – 4.5
  • There Is No Evil (Mohammad Rasoulof) – 4.4
  • The Year of the Discovery (Luis López Carrasco) – 4.3
  • Night for Day (Emily Wardill) – 4.3
  • Epicentro (Hubert Sauper) – 4.3
  • Nomadland (Chloé Zhao) – 4.2
  • Red Moon Tide (Lois Patiño) – 4.1
  • I Carry You with Me (Heidi Ewing) – 4.1
  • Ammonite (Francis Lee) – 4.1
  • Mangrove (Steve McQueen) – 4.0
  • Minari (Lee Isaac Chung) – 4.0
  • Corporate Accountability (Jonathan Perel) – 3.9
  • Rebecca (Ben Wheatley) – 3.9
  • Tragic Jungle (Yulene Olaizola) – 3.8
  • She Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz) – 3.7
  • The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin) – 3.7
  • Alex Wheatle (Steve McQueen) – 3.7
  • Long Gone Summer (AJ Schnack) – 3.7
  • Ploy (Prapat Jiwarangsan) – 3.6
  • Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner) – 3.6
  • On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola) – 3.5
  • Home Front (Lucas Belvaux) – 3.5
  • The Empty Man (David Prior) – 3.4
  • The Viewing Booth (Ra’anan Alexandrowicz) – 3.4
  • New Order (Michel Franco) – 3.4
  • All the Dead Ones (Marco Dutra & Caetano Gotardo) – 3.1
  • Irradiated (Rithy Panh) – 2.6
  • The Devil All the Time (Antonio Campos) – 2.5