The best films of 2020 – all the votes

Critic, UK

1. Beginning
2. Light from the Chocolate Factory
3. Gunda
4. Paris Calligramme
5. Possessor
6. Cidade Pássaro (Shine Your Eyes)
7. Monday
8. Quo Vadis, Aida?
9. Soul
10. Limbo

In this year of pandemic change, the big themes have seen films distill the lessons of #MeToo into films that dealt with patriarchal structures and trauma. Given this, it’s fitting that my film of the year was Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning, which tied it all in with religion, fatherhood and the state through the police (pertinent in a year that will also be remembered for BLM demonstrations and the death of George Floyd).

Another film that made a mark on me that also seemed to fit in with 2020 was Gunda and its undermining of animal welfare from its vegan director; so too did the many films inspired directly or indirectly by Paris ’68.

Programmer-at-large, BFI Southbank, UK

1. The Disciple
2. The Truth
3. About Endlessness
4. Uppercase Print
5. Lovers Rock
6. Henry Glassie: Field Work
7. Never Gonna Snow Again
8. Strasbourg 1518
9. Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful
10. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Inevitably, this year I saw fewer movies than usual, and for various reasons missed acclaimed titles. But for me it was a good year for documentaries; besides those listed I commend Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi), Being a Human Person: Roy Andersson (Fred Scott), Ultraviolence (Ken Fero), The Foundation Pit (Andrey Gryazev) and, best of all, Birds of America (Jacques Loeuille) – not yet widely released, otherwise it would have made my top ten.

Critic, USA

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
2. The Wolf House
3. Vast of Night
4. Beanpole
5. The Nest
6. Bacurau
7. First Cow
8. Vivarium
9. Fire Will Come
10. She Dies Tomorrow

Rounding up a year of filmgoing as merely a long sequence of home-streaming experiences feels rather like itemising a sex life that consists mostly of masturbation – or, more discreetly, perhaps, a year’s diary of hiking adventures you did entirely alone. Or only thought of doing. My list is of course absent of what I’ll see in the fecund last months of the year, but as it is it feels as though a certain type of acidulously composed, quietly menacing demi-art drama is becoming an easy-go-to standard, a situation of which we can hardly complain. There just aren’t any firestarters. Not yet.

Critic and scholar, UK

1. The Year of the Discovery
2. Days (Rizi)
3. I Was at Home, But…
4. First Cow
5. Apiyemiyeki?
6. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)
7. malni: towards the ocean, towards the shore
8. The Inheritance
9. Twice
10. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Critic and curator, UK

1. Days (Rizi)
2. Time
3. Lovers Rock
4. Infinity Minus Infinity
5. Claudette’s Star
6. The Inheritance
7. The I and S of Lives
8. I ran from it and was still in it
9. Rocks
10. Cinetracts ’20

Critic, UK

1. The Assistant
2. Rocks
3. The Girl with a Bracelet
4. Clemency
5. Proxima
6. System Crasher
7. Misbehaviour
8. Make Up
9. Saint Frances
10. Fanny Lye Deliver’d

Features editor, Sight & Sound, UK

1. Time
2. Relic
3. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
4. Lovers Rock
5. The Painted Bird
6. Dick Johnson Is Dead
7. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
8. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
9. The World of Tomorrow Episode 3: The Absent Destinations of David Prime
10. Collective

Critic, Belgium

1. Bacurau
2. Best Before Death
3. Gretel & Hansel
4. Martin Margiela: In His Own Words
5. The Traitor
6. Possessor
7. Relic
8. Shirley
9. Summer of 85
10. The Whistlers

I saw more arthouse films and documentaries than usual, simply because my local arthouse cinemas were rigorous about face masks and social distancing, and the multiplex wasn’t. I walked out of two screenings because I didn’t feel safe. Mostly, though, my habit of sitting in the front row kept me at a reassuring distance from the rest of the clientèle, who as usual preferred to cram all together into the back few rows.

Critic, UK

1. Me and Me
2. Relic
3. Patrick
4. Possessor
5. The Swerve
6. Honeydew
7. Caveat
8. Host
9. La Llorona
10. His House

Frequently dismissed or overlooked at the end of the year or in awards season, genre films reflect our less salubrious thoughts, feelings and actions, while often packing a punch – and these confronting entertainments can be delivered with the very highest degree of artistry, while their very morbidity makes them particularly well-suited to these times of infectious disease and endemic fascism – so my choices are drawn largely from them. My very favourite film of the year is Jung Jin-young’s Me and Me, a genre-fluid enigma about identity, loss and love in a world of change. No film, though, has quite captured the 2020 zeitgeist like Rob Savage’s Host, shot over Zoom in lockdown conditions, and very much harnessing the anxieties of social distancing.

Critic and curator, Brazil/USA

1. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
2. First Cow
3. Days (Rizi)
4. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
5. Ping jing (The Calming)
6. Letter to a Friend
7. Sertânia
8. The Year of the Discovery
9. Never Gonna Snow Again
10. Shiva Baby

Critic, UK

1. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
2. Nomadland
3. Possessor
4. Host
5. Notturno
6. Mandibles (Mandibules)
7. The Personal History of David Copperfield
8. Cuties (Mignonnes)
9. Tenet
10. The Invisible Man

Horror, comedy and, in some cases, horror and comedy seem to have dominated my best viewing in 2020. The resourcefulness of filmmakers to produce engaging brilliant work even in the midst of lockdown has been heartening. Plus the absence of huge tentpole releases has paradoxically made for a bigger tent.

Critic, UK

1. Saint Maud
2. His House
3. Host
4. Dogs Don’t Wear Pants
5. Shirley
6. Possessor
7. Mogul Mowgli
8. Lovers Rock
9. One Night in Miami…
10. And Then We Danced

The one good thing about this horrendous year is the abundance of extraordinary first features, savvy creativity, and audiences showing up for original films irregardless of platform.

Web editor, Sight & Sound, UK

1. Dick Johnson Is Dead
2. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
3. Collective
4. Time
5. The World of Tomorrow Episode 3: The Absent Destinations of David Prime
6. Wolfwalkers
7. David Byrne’s American Utopia
8. Little Women
9. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
10. The Personal History of David Copperfield

Programmer/film journalist, UK

1. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
2. David Byrne’s American Utopia
3. The Intruder
4. Time
5. Mangrove
6. Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes
7. Ema
8. Queen & Slim
9. Jojo Rabbit
10. Color Out of Space

• The boozy truths and wavy fictions of Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets are intoxicating, and the characters are so compelling. It’s a film that makes you want to stay, late.
• Watching David Byrne’s American Utopia in a lockdown heatwave was intense; Spike Lee captures a visceral, intimate sense of being at a live performance, while David Byrne and his fellow performers crackle with playful and political brilliance as new connections are made in the music.
• Natalia Meta creates unease and discord with The Intruder, an Argento-esque vision of controlling relationships and haunted voices.
• Linear time flows into internal time in Garrett Bradley’s stunning study of love and hope in the face of rigid injustice and a racist system that steals time.
• Mangrove is powerful storytelling with incredible vision. Shaun Parkes is brilliant as Mangrove-owner Frank Crichlow, and Mica Levi’s score churns with tightly composed tension that tapers with dissonance.
• Like the Big Bang that kicks off the film, Ema vibrates with violence and chaos, forming new bonds and destroying others in a path of impulse and calculated destruction.
• An inventive take on the partner-in-crime trope, Queen & Slim inverts the crime and brings the racist police system into focus.
• Deep listening becomes an act of channelling in Caroline Catz’s playful and inventive Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes, featuring the legendary Cosey Fanni Tutti.
• Jojo Rabbit walked a fine tightrope between devastation and playfulness – swinging between ridiculing fascists and showing the horrific trail of destruction they create. Waititi showed emotional maturity and pulled it off.
• Color Out of Space was the last film I saw at the cinema before coronavirus landed like a toxic meteor in our collective back garden, and took over my body like a science fiction.

Critic, UK

1. Wolfwalkers
2. Time
3. Children of the Sea
4. Ride Your Wave
5. David Byrne’s American Utopia
6. Lovers Rock
7. Da 5 Bloods
8. Weathering With You
9. First Cow
10. She Dies Tomorrow

I have found both solace and political urgency in animated film this year (to be clear, this is not a new phenomenon), especially in the realm of environmentalism with the likes of Wolfwalkers and Weathering With You tackling the climate crisis from very different, but equally inventive angles. It’s been tempting to drift towards escapist choices (which I have, a little), but that urgency has never felt more vital in my lifetime.

Programmer, VIFF Vancity Theatre/freelance writer, Canada

1. Collective
2. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
3. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
4. Saint Frances
5. Another Round (Druk)
6. The Wild Goose Lake
7. The Painted Bird
8. Time
9. The Truffle Hunters
10. Dick Johnson Is Dead

Critic and curator, USA

1. First Cow
2. Time
3. Dick Johnson Is Dead
4. T
5. Nationtime – Gary
6. Lovers Rock
7. The Inheritance
8. Mayor
9. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
10. This Is an Address

Critic, UK

1. Vast of Night
2. Time
3. The Assistant
4. Finding Jack Charlton
5. Perfect Ten
6. System Crasher
7. Monsoon
8. Waiting for the Barbarians
9. Mr Jones
10. Wolfwalkers

Fear of COVID-19 kept me at home and introspective, but grateful for smaller films, streaming anything and everything on laptop or TV. The predominance of English-language titles surprises me, but I could have also filled a Top 10 with cracking documentaries.

Critic, UK

1. Days (Rizi)
2. The World of Tomorrow Episode 3: The Absent Destinations of David Prime
3. First Cow
4. Da 5 Bloods
5. Tommaso
6. Amanda
7. Time
8. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
9. Mangrove
10. Marshawn Lynch: A History

Inevitably, a number of these films were seen in less-than-ideal circumstances at home, but I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to see Tsai Ming-liang’s Days on the big screen. It was exactly the kind of meditative and immersive experience that I had been craving throughout the long months of lockdown, and a valuable reminder of how uniquely transporting the darkness of the cinema space can be.

Deputy editor, Sight & Sound, UK

1. Atarrabi & Mikelats
2. Days (Rizi)
3. The Woman Who Ran
4. My Mexican Bretzel
5. Cemetery
6. Gold for Dogs (De l’or pour les chiens)
7. The Traitor
8. The Year of the Discovery
9. Ghost Strata
10. The Disciple

Director and writer, UK

1. The Lighthouse
2. Da 5 Bloods
3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
4. True History of the Kelly Gang
5. Summer of 85
6. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
7. A White, White Day
8. The Other Lamb
9. Away
10. Disclosure

Better small than not at all. I’m happy to see a film on a small screen if its content is the main interest, but I have avoided formally ambitious films on small screens and have done no digital film fests. I can wait to be outscaled by Steve McQueen, Josephine Decker, Chloe Zhao and Pedro Almodovar. Also, when I see a movie at the cinema, I remember its images, ideas and emotions more.

I don’t want the cinema of 2020 to be forgotten. I feel that this year has tenderised us, the way meat’s tenderised when it’s battered. No surprise, therefore, that my first seven choices are all films about rage and tenderness. A trio of same-sex films set by the sea – The Lighthouse, Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Summer of ’85 – set me on fire. Their locations made me long for oceans. Their hot house relationships excited.

Critic/curator, USA

1. Beginning
2. DAU. Natasha
3. Days (Rizi)
4. Her Socialist Smile
5. Die letzte Stadt (The Last City)
6. Malmkrog
7. The Salt of Tears (Le sel des larmes)
8. Siberia
9. The Woman Who Ran
10. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)

Barbican Cinema curator and critic, UK

1. Welcome to Chechnya
2. First Cow
3. Limbo
4. Shirley
5. Time
6. Aswang
7. No Hard Feelings (Futur Drei)
8. Disclosure
9. Mangrove
10. Boys State

Appropriately, the fight against injustice is the major theme of many of 2020’s very best works. It was a brilliant year for documentaries and for queer films, and while some of my top ten had to be seen on TVs or desktops through necessity, all gave us cinematic visions which I cannot wait to see on the big screen in the future.

Academic, critic and curator, UK

1. New Order (Nuevo Orden)
2. A Common Crime (Un crimen común)
3. The Human Voice
4. Courtroom 3H
5. The Mole Agent
6. Mangrove
7. 200 Meters
8. The poets visit Juana Bignoni
9. One Night in Miami…
10. Josep

The films I loved this year were often rooted in a disembodied world, a society in violent flux, with individuals confronting conflict, loss and/or guilt. They captured the sense of an ecosphere – whether private or public – that feels dangerously ‘out of joint’. These films may, with the exception of Almodóvar’s The Human Voice, have been filmed pre-COVID-19 but they eerily capture the zeitgeist of a year where containment and revolt have confronted an unjust and profoundly unequal body politic.

New Order’s visceral power terrified; the creepy horror of A Common Crime disarmed. Both are set in profoundly unequal societies that implode in differing ways. Courtroom 3H provided a space for listening to testimony, and in so doing offered a striking insight into the faultlines of American society, brutally exposed by the murder of George Floyd. Josep provided impassioned storytelling in ’drawing’ the experience of a political refugee in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War with compassion and humanity.

For performances that moved, inspired and engaged – the ensemble cast of Mangrove; Ali Suliman’s desperate father in Ameen Nayfeh’s 200 Metres; Eli Goree as Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay), Aldis Hodge as the athlete and actor Jim Brown, Leslie Odom Jr as singer-songwriter Sam Cooke, and Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X in Regina King’s evocative One Night in Miami…; and Tilda Swinton in The Human Voice.

Almodóvar layered melancholy and madness layered to brilliant effect in a refashioning of Cocteau’s play that felt timely and liberating. I have returned to two small films that I saw at the start of the year for their belief in the power of creativity to encourage us to process the present and re-envisage a better future. The Poets Visit Juana Bignoni was a small gem, a quirky, beautiful film made by two women about creativity, legacy and inheritance, focusing on the well-known Argentine poet Juana Bignozzi. Bignozzi died in 2015, leaving her home to one friend, her belongings to a second friend and her literary estate to a third, the journalist and poet Mercedes Halfon – who co-directs this witty film about the processing of Bignoni’s estate with El Pampero’s Laura Citarella. The Mole Agent was a wry comic documentary, largely set in a care home, with a spry 83-year old amateur spy at its centre. Alberdi’s treatment of ageing and loneliness has an uplifting wit and playfulness that is utterly inspiring. A film of great humanity and warmth.

Film critic/researcher, Sight & Sound, UK

1. The Human Voice
2. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
3. Herself
4. Undine
5. On the Rocks
6. Kajillionaire
7. Saint Maud
8. Little Women
9. The Assistant
10. The Personal History of David Copperfield

I have to admit that for me, cinematographically, 2020 and the lockdown will forever be linked to Almodóvar. The sheer pleasure in translating his candid and charismatic diaries was as immersive as watching any of this films, only topped up by interviewing him for the utter cinematic feast that is The Human Voice. What a desperately needed film treat! And admittedly in another format, I May Destroy You simply blew my brain away…

Critic, UK

1. Altötting
2. And Yet We’re Not Super Heroes
3. Bacurau
4. Genius Loci
5. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
6. Kill It and Leave This Town (Zabij to i wyjedz z tego miasta)
7. On-Gaku: Our Sound
8. Rocks
9. Saint Maud
10. Wolfwalkers

In a normal year I watch more short films than features, but not this time. Programmes of shorts demand a special kind of concentration: we have to recalibrate our focus every ten minutes or so as the subject (and, in animation’s case, often the medium) changes. A dark cinema is conducive to this; less so my laptop set-up in my bedroom, which has doubled up as my workspace for much of the year. Also, the barrage of the day-long Covid live blog leaves me hungry for long-form stuff come TV time. In 2020, then, I gravitated toward features and series – but I’ve carved out space in my list for three exceptional shorts, two of which I saw at virtual festivals.

Critic, UK

1. First Cow
2. David Byrne’s American Utopia
3. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
4. Dick Johnson Is Dead
5. Lovers Rock
6. Saint Maud
7. Nomadland
8. End of the Century
9. No Hard Feelings (Futur Drei)
10. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

Cinephiles can sometimes be guilty of living vicariously through cinema, but in 2020 this was basically a prerequisite. Those missing the ebb and flow of a sweaty house party in high summer or the elation of a live gig were catered for, respectively, by sensuous party movie Lovers Rock and exuberant concert film American Utopia. And if it was the boozy bonhomie of your local howff that you craved, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, a rambunctious portrait of a Vegas dive bar on its final night of trading, was just the ticket.

With lockdown forcing celibacy on single people, two deeply sexy gay romances, End of the Century and No Hard Feelings, reminded us of the thrill of casual encounters with new lovers. Those missing their best friends, meanwhile, had First Cow and Never Rarely Sometimes Always, stories centred on platonic friendships that act as a balm against harsh, unforgiving worlds.

As well as distractions from the new normal, there were reminders of our post-COVID world too. Two stunning studies in loneliness, Nomadland and Saint Maud, showed the darker side of self-imposed isolation, while anyone with death on their mind (particularly the death of an elderly parent) was forced to confront it head-on in Dick Johnson Is Dead, surely the most moving film ever made featuring serial patricide.

Critics, Austria,Germany

1. Amants (Lovers)
2. Bill and Ted Face the Music
3. Septet: The Story of Hong Kong
4. Greyhound
5. Her Socialist Smile
6. Genus Pan
7. Malmkrog
8. Mishima: The Last Debate (Mishima Yukio VS Tōdai Zenkyōtō: 50-nenme no shinjitsu)
9. Robaman
10. Earth and Blood

Critic, UK,Ireland

1. Mamá, mamá, mamá (Mum, mum, mum)
2. A metamorfose dos pássaros (The Metamorphosis of Birds)
3. Generations
4. Nomadland
5. Little Girl (Petite fille)
6. Dick Johnson Is Dead
7. Ochite mi sini, rokljata sharena (Blue Eyes and Colorful My Dress)
8. Never Gonna Snow Again
9. FREM
10. Victoria

Critic, UK

1. Les Miserables
2. Birds of Prey
3. The Perfect Candidate
4. System Crasher
5. Kajillionaire
6. Mangrove
7. The Forty-Year-Old Version
8. Da 5 Bloods
9. The Invisible Man
10. Saint Maud

This year has been unprecedented but the film calendar has not suffered for it. A diverse array of filmmakers have kept cinema alive and smaller films with big themes, characters and narratives have been allowed to shine outside of the shadow of tentpole releases.

Film critic and journalist, UK, UK

1. Nomadland
2. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
3. Soul
4. The Assistant
5. Les Miserables
6. Rocks
7. Calm with Horses
8. Ammonite
9. Mank
10. Babyteeth

I haven’t checked by looking at my votes in previous years, but I can’t help feeling that my list this year is less dominated than usual by films coming hot and heavy at Oscar voters via fall festivals. Too often, I’m sure, my attention has focused disporoprtionately on those.

My ten choices for 2020 include a majority of titles that premiered at 2019 fests or at January’s Sundance, and – without any regard by me to the gender of filmmakers – an even split between films from male directors and female directors. Also: three British/Irish films. I can’t help thinking that a delayed 2021 Oscars season and the general disruption has helped create a more-level playing field in 2020, with a lot less distraction at year’s end from brand new shiny things.

Curator, UK

1. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
2. Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes
3. Saint Maud
4. Rocks
5. Clemency
6. White Riot
7. The Personal History of David Copperfield
8. The Assistant
9. Da 5 Bloods
10. Tenet

Chaos reigns.

Critic, USA

1. Days (Rizi)
2. Dick Johnson Is Dead
3. First Cow
4. Los Conductos
5. Lovers Rock
6. The Inheritance
7. Die letzte Stadt (The Last City)
8. The Woman Who Ran
9. Time
10. Undine

As much as I’ve cherished gorgeous, cinematic images this year – particularly those shown on a big screen, in the dark of the theatre – two films that have stayed the longest with me demonstrated how beautiful and revelatory a reprieve from the visual can be: Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati’s Expedition Content and Nicolás Zukerfeld’s There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Getting on a Horse. And the film that sunk most deeply into my bones during this ceaseless homebound quarantine: Song Fang’s beguilingly simple, stilling The Calming.

Critic, Germany

1. DAU. Degeneratsia (DAU. Degeneration)
2. Nature
3. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
4. Beginning
5. First Cow
6. There Is No Evil (Sheytan vojud nadarad)
7. Undine
8. In Between Dying
9. Los Conductos
10. Mon Amour

Critic,

1. Ammonite
2. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
3. 1917
4. Matthias and Maxime
5. Kajillionaire
6. Shirley
7. Supernova
8. Bad Education
9. Emma
10. Da 5 Bloods

Film critic, the Observer, UK

1. Time
2. Rocks
3. Lovers Rock
4. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
5. Nomadland
6. The Assistant
7. In Sudden Darkness
8. Mangrove
9. The Forty-Year-Old Version
10. On the Rocks

It’s strange to see both the release schedule and the festival circuit painting on a happy face and trudging on, despite the unprecedented blows the film industry has weathered since March. I myself feel a little left behind. I don’t know if these are ten of the year’s best films or if they’ll stand the test of time, but for me they represent a rare collection of worlds I found myself absorbed in – no mean feat in the middle of a pandemic.

Critic and academic, UK

1. Mangrove
2. Wolfwalkers
3. Limbo
4. Make Up
5. The Personal History of David Copperfield
6. Birds of Prey
7. Black Is King
8. Crip Camp
9. Saint Maud
10. Babyteeth

A strange year for cinema, with few opportunities to watch movies in theatres beyond last year’s festival hits (Parasite, Uncut Gems) and the bold, brash and lovable Birds of Prey. Perhaps that’s why my picks for 2020 have tended towards the domestic, with big emotions and important political stories about resistance and self-belief situated in local neighbourhoods (Mangrove), in personal psychodramas (Make Up) or in confined spaces (Limbo). Even the more fantastical and escapist films (Wolfwalkers; Black Is King) speak to the significance of place and belonging, of family and community.

But whether in the home or outside of it, one thing is clear: cinema is a vital part of our lives and integral to how we continue to understand ourselves. Long may that continue.

Critic, USA

1. Beanpole
2. Martin Eden
3. The Woman Who Ran
4. Undine
5. The Salt of Tears (Le sel des larmes)
6. David Byrne’s American Utopia
7. Swimming Out Till The Sea Turns Blue (Yi Zhi You Dao Hai Shui Bian Lan)
8. Dick Johnson Is Dead
9. Vitalina Varela
10. Bacurau

#11. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Jia Zhangke

My footnote would be: there are a number of films I haven’t managed to see, so please snarky Twitterers, don’t shame me for omissions.

Film programmer and lecturer, UK

1. New Order (Nuevo Orden)
2. Lovers Rock
3. Mogul Mowgli
4. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
5. Another Round (Druk)
6. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
7. One Night in Miami…
8. After Love
9. Da 5 Bloods
10. Undine

Critic/curator, UK

1. Bacurau
2. Greed
3. Lynn + Lucy
4. Richard Jewell
5. Color Out of Space
6. She Dies Tomorrow
7. A Hidden Life
8. Vivarium
9. Da 5 Bloods
10. Ema

If the removal of films and cinemas and festivals doesn’t spark a bit of self-analysis among film critics, what will? Critics pleading with audiences and distributors to do specific things was the most proactive step film criticism has taken in years, marred only by the unlikelihood of either camp taking any notice; but good habits have to start somewhere. In the middle of it all, various fine films found their paying audience on various screens with or without our help.

Critic and academic, UK

1. J’Accuse
2. The Truth
3. The Personal History of David Copperfield
4. Little Women
5. The Traitor
6. The Trip to Greece
7. True History of the Kelly Gang
8. Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer
9. Tenet
10. A Rainy Day in New York

At a moment when the future of cinema (and much else) seems in doubt, these have been heartening in a years mainly devoted to exploring the past and catching up on things missed. Polanski’s Dreyfus film is a sober masterpiece about prejudice and justice.

Researcher, executive and critic, UK

1. Rocks
2. Mogul Mowgli
3. Perfect Ten
4. Miss Juneteenth
5. The Old Guard
6. The Half of It
7. His House
8. Host
9. Summerland
10. Monsoon

Considering the madness of 2020 and the ever-shifting landscape of film releases and cinema opening, this year has been an exciting and diverse year for films across the board. It is notable that this list spans genre and narrative, stories from across the globe and is also hugely representative in front of and behind the camera, in progressive and exciting ways. Imagine what’s to come!

Critic, UK

1. Lovers Rock
2. The Human Voice
3. Dick Johnson Is Dead
4. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
5. Rocks
6. Kajillionaire
7. Shirley
8. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
9. Little Women
10. Clemency

I took a lot of joy from David Lynch’s daily appearances on YouTube this year, as well as the hugely impressive online iterations of Il Cinema Ritrovato and the Pordenone Silent Film Festival.

Critic, UK

1. The Assistant
2. Nomadland
3. Kala Azar
4. Apples
5. Mank
6. Wolfwalkers
7. Mangrove
8. First Cow
9. Limbo
10. Last and First Men

Writer/filmmaker, UK

1. Rocks
2. Disclosure
3. Little Girl (Petite fille)
4. The Building
5. The Blind Rabbit

Critic and former Sight & Sound editor, UK

1. Lovers Rock
2. The Disciple
3. David Byrne’s American Utopia
4. Vitalina Varela
5. Mangrove
6. First Cow
7. Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)
8. Rocks
9. After Love
10. Welcome to Chechnya

Choices were limited – survival of the fittest? Cinema died again, in lieu of another rebirth. We have to save our cinemas by going to them – it works practically, if not economically. It remains a better experience than the box in lockdown (although it’s the box that paid for my film of the year). The lesson of The Disciple is that art is about full immersion.

Critic and programmer, UK

1. Day in the Life
2. Vitalina Varela
3. Shirley
4. Relic
5. Undine
6. Ultraviolence
7. Film About a Father Who
8. 180° Rule
9. We Have Boots
10. Up at Night (Nuit Debout)

• This year, my list reflects films that moved me in significant ways, the first of which is Karrabing Collective’s Day in the Life, one of the most extraordinary experimental, political works I have ever seen.
• Vitalina Varela is so stunningly cinematic that watching it felt like a great unveiling.
• I was already a devoted fan of Josephine Decker’s stunning body of work, but Shirley cements for me her moral and visual project of exploring a creative haunting by a Jungian shadow artist.
• Relic possesses the rare ability to balance tonal opposites, scaring and embracing her audience at once, something I consider incredibly impressive for a first time feature filmmaker.
• Undine delivers on expectations and submerges its viewer in lush visual motifs and dense historical complexity, all the while giving an impassioned love story for the ages.
• Ultraviolence is one of the most important and urgent documentaries of the day and it should be mandatory viewing.
• Lynne Sachs’s body of work first came to my attention via Sheffield Doc/Fest’s online focus and I am now completely immersed in her craft.
• Poetic and personal at once, Film About a Father Who invites us into her family with kindness and curiosity.
• 180° Rule floored me during LFF at Home – another debut that is formally astonishing and emotionally wrenching.
• Evans Chan’s We Have Boots has come back to me throughout the year, after first seeing it at IFFR, and it now sits as one of the most important documents of the year in an ongoing resistance we must continue to talk about, support and fight for.
• Nelson Makengo’s Nuit Debout was my BFMAF at home highlight, striking for its imagery and also for its reminder about so many things my privilege allows me to take for granted.

There are many more films that will seem like omissions and perhaps it is only that my eyes await them, as I was unable to see the usual level of films this year, though I have still witnessed great talent, art and beauty.

Critic, UK

1. Babyteeth
2. Kajillionaire
3. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
4. Nomadland
5. Shirley
6. Lovers Rock
7. Ema
8. Bad Education
9. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
10. Saint Maud

Critic, UK

1. The Two Popes
2. Saint Maud
3. The Traitor
4. Tenet
5. Mogul Mowgli
6. About Endlessness
7. Ema
8. On the Rocks
9. Bacurau
10. Wolfwalkers

This isn’t in order of preference, which I always find impossible to decide.

Critic, USA

1. The Year of the Discovery
2. Beginning
3. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
4. City Hall
5. Fauna (Flora y fauna)
6. Her Socialist Smile
7. The Killing of Two Lovers
8. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
9. The Woman Who Ran
10. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)

Critic,

1. Mangrove
2. His House
3. Mogul Mowgli
4. Da 5 Bloods
5. Lovers Rock
6. Shirley
7. The Forty-Year-Old Version
8. Saint Maud
9. Bacurau
10. The Painter and the Thief

It wasn’t the year in film that we expected or hoped for but with so many tentpole films moved to 2021 some wonderful work that may have been overshadowed has been able to shine. I tried to choose films that spoke to me personally but also to the time we presently find ourselves in. When we are so cut off from one another these films acted as a lifeline, reminding of the importance of great art, of human connection, of the world we left behind and of the way it needs to be rebuilt.

Critic, UK

1. Siberia
2. Babyteeth
3. The Disciple
4. Ibrahim
5. Possessor
6. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
7. After Love
8. Stories from the Chestnut Woods
9. The Assistant
10. Delete History (Effacer l’historique)

Critic, UK

1. Away
2. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
3. Dick Johnson Is Dead
4. His House
5. Host
6. Moving On
7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
8. Shirley
9. Time
10. Wolfwalkers

Critic, USA

1. Martin Eden
2. An Easy Girl
3. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
4. The Woman Who Ran
5. The Inheritance
6. Labyrinth of Cinema
7. Shirley
8. The Year of the Discovery
9. Time
10. Nomadland

Critic, UK

1. Ammonite
2. Dick Johnson Is Dead
3. First Cow
4. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
5. Moffie
6. Never Gonna Snow Again
7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
8. Possessor
9. The Trouble with Being Born
10. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection

A strange and challenging year for film, but by no means a fallow one. 2020 invited deeper consideration of how we define and consume cinema, particularly in the temporary absence of bigger screens, and the answer lay in the vision and scope of the storytelling.

I can’t say I wouldn’t rather have first experienced Charlie Kaufman’s astonishing, expansive new film in a cinema than on the sofa, but it hasn’t lingered any less in my mind for that difference. On the other hand, I was lucky enough to see Sandra Wollner’s ingenious debut in a cinema, but would trade that advantage if it meant this profoundly upsetting provocation – banned from certain festivals, and scaring off many a distributor – could get the general release it merits on any size screen.

Looking over my list, it’s not exactly a happy one: perhaps the most upbeat selection here is Kirsten Johnson’s playful gut-punch of a documentary exploring her father’s dementia and imminent death. Put it down to my pandemic mood or simply how the cookie crumbled in 2020. But cinema itself has given us reasons to be hopeful.

Web Editor at Harper’s Magazine, USA

1. Cane River
2. Spree
3. Martin Eden
4. Time
5. Days (Rizi)
6. The Inheritance
7. Chess of the Wind (Shatranj-e Baad) (1976)
8. First Cow
9. The Forty-Year-Old Version
10. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Critic and academic, UK

1. Les Parfumes
2. The Assistant
3. Babyteeth
4. She Dies Tomorrow
5. Rocks
6. Host
7. The Truth
8. Spaceship Earth
9. Family Romance, LLC
10. His House

An impossibly odd year to assess, outside the pipe of festivals and release schedules, audiences fractured by streaming and ways of viewing merging ever more with TV. I’ll be fascinated to see if critics, too, have moved beyond consensus, their viewing dispersed across lockdown platforms.

Critic, UK

1. The Invisible Man
2. Rocks
3. Saint Maud
4. Palm Springs
5. Babyteeth
6. Sea Fever
7. The Assistant
8. Kajillionaire
9. Relic
10. First Cow

I’m surprised and delighted that nine out of my ten best are films directed by women. The fact that my to-watch list still included The 40-Year-Old Version, Nomadland and Never Rarely Sometimes Always means that it could easily been a full house.

Writer, filmmaker; UK

1. Richard Jewell
2. Da 5 Bloods
3. First Cow
4. Lovers Rock
5. Strasbourg 1518
6. Palm Springs
7. La Chichigua (The Kite)
8. Spree
9. The Spider and the Bee

An incomplete list for an incomplete year: globally, a year interrupted. The tactile party vibe of Lovers Rock was redemptive in the year of social distancing, though many of the best films were meditations on captivity. Honourable mentions: Martin Scorsese and Mati Diop’s lockdown shorts; Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, which was an impish squirm from the tightening grip of authoritarianism; Time, which was a poem of perseverance.

Critic and curator, Italy

1. Days (Rizi)
2. The Woman Who Ran
3. DAU. Natasha
4. Slow Machine
5. Fauna (Flora y fauna)
6. First Cow
7. Malmkrog
8. The Year of the Discovery
9. Undine
10. A Shape of Things to Come

Critic, UK

1. Lovers Rock
2. Nomadland
3. Little Women
4. Mangrove
5. Bacurau
6. Ema
7. Saint Maud
8. Vast of Night
9. The Assistant
10. David Byrne’s American Utopia

Given the enforced isolation and self-reflection of the pandemic year, it feels fitting that many of its most resonant films deal with the struggle to assert identity, for individuals and communities alike. The underlying politics of the titles here and others (Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 makes an interesting companion piece to Mangrove) is no accident. Even Spike Lee’s concert movie is fuelled by the chiding of America’s moral decline, presciently offering an answer as to why the Covid crisis became a disaster. There may have been fewer films on offer this year, but those that have seen the light have been so remarkably spot on.

Writer and programmer, UK/Ireland

1. I Was at Home, But…
2. Isadora’s Children
3. The Year of the Discovery
4. Time
5. Kajillionaire
6. Moving On
7. In My Room
8. Again Once Again
9. Point and Line to Plane
10. Receiver

There are several other remarkable films I would have liked to include, such as Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed’s Purple Sea, Pablo Larraín’s Ema, Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, Tsai Ming-liang’s Days, and a pair of especially bold adaptations of great novels: Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden. I excluded some films that did receive wide (streaming) releases in 2020, but that I first saw what feels like a long while ago, such as Frank Beauvais’s Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream and Jodie Mack’s The Grand Bizarre. Other highlights were Alice Rohrwacher’s Viennale trailer Ad una mela, the launch of Arsenal Berlin’s new virtual cinema Arsenal 3 at the beginning of lockdown, and Screen Slate’s series of programmes (presented with Electronic Arts Intermix, Anthology Film Archives, the Brooklyn Rail, among others) streamed throughout the summer via Twitch and Vimeo.

Critic, UK

1. Shirley
2. His House
3. Kajillionaire
4. Lucky
5. Marygoround (Maryjki)
6. The Forty-Year-Old Version
7. The Intruder
8. Another Round (Druk)
9. Dick Johnson Is Dead
10. Birds of Prey

Most of the films I’ve chosen this year I’ve found thrilling or compelling in terms of how they’re formed and what they have to say.

• Birds of Prey is a refreshingly fun take on the break-up movie and His House toys with the haunted house film in an affecting and clever manner; the design and set pieces on both films are incredibly creative.
• The only documentary on my list is Dick Johnson Is Dead, a deeply personal and endlessly inventive film by Kirsten Johnson that acts as daring tribute to a father suffering through dementia and a love letter to the magic of cinema.
• The plight of a black female playwright trying to find her place in the world, creatively and sexually, is tackled with biting wit in Radha Blank’s funny and insightful feature debut The Forty-Year-Old Version – the title itself a play on a Judd Apatow film as a way to make a point about popular storytelling. Blank is quoted as saying, “Throughout history, people have appropriated Black culture. I thought, why can’t we have a self-deprecating Black protagonist of a certain age who comes to a realization of herself?”
• The menopause is something that has been severely underserved in cinema so Daria Woszek’s compassionate, Hopperesque, candy-coloured portrait of womanhood and ’the change’ as liberating in Marygoround frankly came as a joyful and deeply moving surprise.
• Again, in Natalia Meta’s impressively directed psychosexual thriller The Intruder, women’s inner lives are explored from a female perspective and expressed in a unique way with Meta using sound and music to bring her film to a satisfying climax.
• Natasha Kermani’s second film Lucky is a satire written by and starring Brea Grant (who has written and released two great genre films in 2020). It plays with horror tropes to deliver a fresh and provocative take on the slasher film.
• Kajilionaire is a perfectly formed love story that simultaneously toys with the heist movie and pulls together the anxieties and delights of parenting in gloriously surprising fashion.
• Another Round stars Mads Mikkelson in one of his best performances as it investigates the highs and tragic lows of alcohol.
• Shirley digs deep into the writer’s psyche and acclaimed body of work in chilling, alluring and tantalising style and features a great central performance by Elisabeth Moss.

Academic and critic, UK

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
2. Wasp Network
3. A Time to Stir
4. The Assistant
5. Palm Springs
6. Little Women
7. The Traitor
8. Saint Maud
9. Tenet
10. Mank

I’ve given a less than glowing review to Mank, but want to see it again in a cinema – as it deserves.

Contributing editor, Little White Lies, UK

1. First Cow
2. Mangrove
3. Promising Young Woman
4. Nomadland
5. Vitalina Varela
6. David Byrne’s American Utopia
7. About Endlessness
8. Clemency
9. Midnight Traveler
10. The Assistant

Critic, UK

1. Nomadland
2. Pieces of a Woman
3. Soul
4. Tenet
5. Another Round (Druk)
6. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
8. Mandibles (Mandibules)
9. New Order (Nuevo Orden)
10. The Assistant

Some wonderful performances (Vanessa Kirby, Julia Garner, Frances McDormand), some brain-teasing narrative (Tenet, I’m Thinking of Ending Things) and some absolute provocation (New Order). In a difficult year, cinema has still come out fighting.

Critic and curator, UK

1. Lovers Rock
2. Mank
3. About Endlessness
4. Rocks
5. First Cow
6. Time
7. Shirley
8. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
9. Da 5 Bloods
10. Dick Johnson Is Dead

Critic, UK

1. Saint Maud
2. Relic
3. Let’s Scare Julie
4. Host
5. Special Actors (Supesharu Akutâzu)
6. Emma
7. True History of the Kelly Gang
8. Dreamland
9. The Hunt
10. Onania Club

If it counted as a film, Scott Frank’s The Queen’s Gambit would be on my list.

Critic and curator, UK

1. Purple Sea
2. The Observer
3. The End of Suffering (A Proposal)
4. Expedition Content
5. Lulu Faustine
6. The World of Tomorrow Episode 3: The Absent Destinations of David Prime
7. The Viewing Booth
8. malni: towards the ocean, towards the shore
9. Z = |Z/Z•Z-1 mod 2|-1: Lavender Town Syndrome
10. Circumstantial Pleasures

It’s been a strange year and the above list is notable for not including a single film seen on a big screen. It’s difficult to know whether other things I’ve seen might have struck more of a chord in the cinema.

Beyond the ten I’ve selected, other highlights include: the excellent, unrelentingly tense The Invisible Man; Jonathan Perel’s sobering and vital Corporate Accountability; Viktoria Schmid’s infinitely thought-provoking A Proposal to project in Scope; Jennifer Boles’s exercise in archival slow cinema A Reversal; and Chris Peters’s computerised re-imagining of a Sight & Sound favourite, Vertigo A.I.

Fingers crossed for a lot more time spent in the cinema in 2021.

Critic and academic, UK,USA,Nigeria

1. Cuties (Mignonnes)
2. Residue
3. Eyimofe (This is My Desire)
4. The Invisible Man
5. Trouble Sleep
6. Mangrove
7. Time
8. Bacurau
9. malni: towards the ocean, towards the shore
10. The Forty-Year-Old Version

Critic and curator, UK

1. First Cow
2. The Woman Who Ran
3. Martin Eden
4. Time
5. Ema
6. Limbo
7. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
8. The Viewing Booth
9. Lovers Rock
10. Nomadland

Critic, UK/India

1. New Order (Nuevo Orden)
2. Another Round (Druk)
3. The Disciple
4. The Salt in our Waters (Nonajoler Kabbo)
5. The Predators
6. Night of the Kings
7. La Forteleza
8. The Best Families
9. Zanka Contact
10. Hong Kong Moments

Rather than the usual whinge about an ’unprecedented year’ (that much abused phrase), I decided not to bemoan my lot of not being able to attend festivals around the world, rather making the best of what was available to me at home. In the absence of a cinema and audience, festival viewing links cast to my TV was the next best solution and I must say it was a surprisingly intimate and intense experience.

Looking at my list I see a theme of societies and communities in conflict (Zanka Contact, Hong Kong Moments, Night of the Kings, New Order). The Best Families and The Predators felt like natural successors to the class excoriation of Parasite; The Salt in Our Waters in many ways reflect this year’s man vs nature struggle; La Fortaleza and Another Round mirror the two extremes of excess this year has wrought; the restless quietude in The Disciple sums up the year neatly.

Critic, UK

1. Fanny Lye Deliver’d
2. Mangrove
3. On a Magical Night
4. The Hater (Sala samobójców. Hejter)
5. Richard Jewell
6. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
7. Babyteeth
8. Waiting for the Barbarians
9. The Gentlemen
10. Marygoround (Maryjki)

In this strangest, most disturbing of years, when the taken-for-granted experiences of cinema-going and festival attendance were abruptly curtailed, the most accomplished new films that arrived were a deeply appreciated stimulus and sanctuary.

In his sensational ‘Puritan western’ Fanny Lye Deliver’d, Thomas Clay produced a stone-cold British cult classic in the making, while Steven McQueen’s Mangrove was a scorching introduction to the altogether admirable Small Axe. In The Hater, Jan Komasa offered a subversive and gripping take on contemporary Polish reality and online culture, while Babyteeth and Marygoround brought distinctive blends of humour, lyricism and unruliness to their portraits of their female protagonists. I’m Thinking of Ending Things dazzlingly deconstructed the culture-fed nature of fantasy, while Richard Jewell’s government and media critique offered a moral tonic. And leave it to Guy Ritchie to provide the year’s guiltiest pleasure with his hilarious, intricately plotted The Gentlemen.

Managing editor, Filmmaker magazine, USA

1. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
2. DAU. Degeneration
3. Intimate Distances
4. Isabella
5. Labor of Love
6. Mank
7. Martin Eden
8. Notturno
9. The Inheritance
10. The Woman Who Ran

Critic, UK

1. The Disciple
2. New Order (Nuevo Orden)
3. Days (Rizi)
4. Gunda
5. The Trouble with Being Born
6. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
7. Lovers Rock
8. The World to Come
9. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
10. Genus Pan

2020 was not a normal year for looking back on – among other reasons, because under these strange new conditions, it’s been difficult to properly keep tabs on what you’ve seen, and to understand how the conditions of watching affect what particular films mean to you. Given our sudden full immersion in life online, could it be that the films we saw in cinemas – mainly before March, and, for the lucky among us, at live festivals from September on – are those that will really stick with us, while films watched on laptops and TVs will end up lost in an undifferentiated flow of content seen, noted, then half-forgotten?

One thing we’ve learned in 2020 is that the traditional exposure offered by festivals and theatrical releasing means that certain films get talked about substantially, while others significantly miss out. What would have been this year’s Parasite if Cannes had happened? Who would have been the filmmakers and actors in the spotlight if all the usual PR opportunities and festival visits had taken place? Maybe we’ve seen a sort of levelling-out in which all films are suddenly as important as all others – but it may also mean that many works and their creators aren’t getting the shot at importance that they deserve.

So, along with my Top 10 list, I’ll just say, keep an eye on new talents Anna Cazenave Cambet (Gold for Dogs), Giovanni Aloi (The Third War), Janis Rafa (Kala Azar) and the d’Innocenzo brothers (Bad Tales), who also livened up a year that needed its flashes of hope.

Critic/teacher, USA

1. Last Year in Dachau (L’année dernière à Dachau)
2. Bottled Songs: My Crush Was a Superstar
3. Cenote
4. First Cow
5. France Against the Robots (La France contre les robots)
6. Her Socialist Smile
7. MLK/FBI
8. Schoolgirls (Las niñas)
9. Vitalina Varela
10. Women According to Men

The above order is alphabetical. The meditative and solitary aspects of film-watching have increased during the pandemic, when many of us are exiled to our laptops; fortunately, online platforms for post-screening discussions have grown as well.

Curator/scholar, Netherlands

1. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)
2. Apiyemiyeki?
3. Communicating Vessels
4. The Inheritance
5. Happy Valley
6. Ping jing (The Calming)
7. Her Name Was Europa
8. Kala Azar
9. Expedition Content
10. Once Removed

Critic, USA

1. Martin Eden
2. Nomadland
3. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
4. Kajillionaire
5. Mangrove
6. The Nest
7. Welcome to Chechnya
8. The Invisible Man
9. Dick Johnson Is Dead
10. Bacurau

Unwittingly, so many of the best films of the year took on the tone of personal catastrophe: gaslit, frustrated, cut off from the rest of the world. I’m looking forward to a year with a little more oxygen in it.

Associate professor, New York University, USA

1. London and Landlords: An Unfinished Video History
2. Another Round (Druk)
3. Lucky Grandma
4. Lovers Rock
5. The Whistlers
6. South
7. Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin
8. Spaceship Earth
9. Her Socialist Smile
10. A Time to Stir

William Fowler and Matthew Harle’s London and Landlords: An Unfinished Video History – the last I saw before lockdown – was a sad, sometimes eerie and, I now realise, uncannily prescient portrait of the ground being taken from below people’s feet.

Critic and academic, UK

1. Labyrinth of Cinema
2. Nomadland
3. A Dog Barking at the Moon
4. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
5. Ema
6. Cenote
7. Days (Rizi)
8. Shirley
9. The Woman Who Ran
10. Children of the Sea

If 2020 brought much discomfort and disruption, it also pushed festivals to break free of their somewhat limiting geographical spaces. Never before had my festival calendar looked so exciting and at the same time overwhelming, and yet navigating smaller festivals proved to be crucial to my film education in this cursed year. From Berwick Film and Media Art Film Festival to Open City Documentary Festival, images of films watched on my laptop kept resurfacing among my memories. Lisa Spilliaert’s hypnoting N. P, Jessica Sarah Rinland’s meditative Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another and Minh Quý Truong’s animistic The Tree House are just a few of them.

Critic, USA

1. She Dies Tomorrow
2. Shirley
3. Time
4. Kajillionaire
5. First Cow
6. Miss Juneteenth
7. Nomadland
8. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
9. Crip Camp
10. Birds of Prey

Women directors did the best work this year – and yet I worry that the awards season won’t reflect that.

Curator and critic, UK

1. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
2. Days (Rizi)
3. Phantom Ride
4. First Cow
5. The Trouble with Being Born
6. Da 5 Bloods
7. Last and First Men
8. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
9. Air Conditioner
10. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

In this utterly strange year, some things for which I’m grateful:

• for three films (Air Conditioner, The Trouble with Being Born, First and Last Men) exploring the role of technology in post-colonial, post-human and extra-terrestrial futures, and how traumatic pasts will colour all of them (Brandon Cronenberg’s nerve-jangling Possessor could easily have made the list for the same reason);
• for Spike Lee, who gave us one the year’s most righteous entertainments, and once again proved himself to be one of cinema’s great historiographers; for Tsai Ming-liang, still a visionary of modern loneliness and urban hauntology, and who in retrospect may have been making films about Covid all along;
• for Eliza Hittman, who so humanely explored the personal cost of political decisions (this being written in the week of Amy Coney Barrett’s election to the Supreme Court);
• for Kelly Reichardt’s gentle-yet-barbed foray through the early farmlands of American capitalism;
• for Charlie Kaufman’s beautiful, heartbreaking brain;
• for Alchemy Film & Arts, whose festival in May was delivered with all the vim, curatorial care and excitement of the real thing, despite being online, with Stephen Broomer’s phantasmagorical odyssey Phantom Ride – a veritable ghost train of histories both personal and cinematic – capping off a fantastic programme;
• and finally, for Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, a docu-fiction experiment that easily passes for the real thing, its story of Las Vegas barflies enjoying the last hurrah of The Roaring ’20s serving up a cocktail of human solidarity, fatalism and profundity that no other film could match this year. It’s a perfect snapshot of where we find ourselves, and an ode to going out in style – I love this film beyond (double, triple) measure.

Critic and curator, UK

1. I’m No Longer Here
2. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
3. Limbo
4. Vast of Night
5. Mangrove
6. Saint Maud
7. Bacurau
8. Dick Johnson Is Dead
9. About Endlessness
10. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

This unprecedented year has no doubt skewed and limited theatrical releases and the two best films released in UK cinemas this year, Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Parasite, were on my list last year. But the strength in depth of 2020 films, including terrific work premiering on streaming platforms, suggests a future both artistically promising and extremely precarious for the industry itself. Where we’ll be in 12 months time is anyone’s guess.

Critic, UK

1. Dick Johnson Is Dead
2. David Byrne’s American Utopia
3. Bill and Ted Face the Music
4. Wolfwalkers
5. Possessor
6. Da 5 Bloods
7. Undine
8. She Dies Tomorrow
9. Limbo
10. One Night in Miami…

Given so many release delays this year, I restricted my own choices to features that received their world premiere in 2020, as long as they’ve been available to the UK public at large in some channel or other. Despite so many major titles being pushed back, plenty of films of merit have made their way to our screens in this extremely strange period.

An incredible balm released at just the right moment, the earnestly sweet Bill & Ted Face the Music was the year’s most pleasant surprise. With unexpected pathos regarding a life of unfulfilled goals and genuinely touching optimism concerning the power of companionship and compassion in uniting the world for a greater good, it is infectiously enjoyable and borders on profound at times. I’ve seen it twice and was deeply moved by the film’s climax on both occasions.

Critic and curator, UK

1. Everything that is forgotten in an instant (Todo lo que se olvida en un instante)
2. Mat and Her Mates
3. Communism and the Net, or the End of Representative Democracy
4. The Year of the Discovery
5. With Love – Volume One: 1987-1996
6. Camagroga
7. Malmkrog
8. White on White
9. Days (Rizi)
10. Glimpses from a Visit to Orkney in Summer 1995

A terrible year on world-historical terms: that goes without saying. Also, for the most part, a fine year in movies. I should stipulate: this is the best of what I saw this year up to 26 October 2020 at 18:38.

Critic, USA

1. First Cow
2. Undine
3. Martin Eden
4. About Endlessness
5. David Byrne’s American Utopia
6. Ghost Tropic
7. The Truth

Critic, editor, broadcaster; UK

1. Clemency
2. Saint Frances
3. Babyteeth
4. Saint Maud
5. Rocks
6. Carmilla
7. Lynn + Lucy
8. Proxima
9. Les Miserables
10. Fanny Lye Deliver’d

A fantastic year for female directors!

Critic, UK

1. The Painted Bird
2. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
3. Les Miserables
4. Time
5. Rocks
6. Dick Johnson Is Dead
7. Saint Maud
8. Bad Education
9. Wolfwalkers
10. Rialto

Production editor, Sight & Sound, UK

1. Vast of Night
2. Time
3. The Assistant
4. Ammonite
5. Gold for Dogs (De l’or pour les chiens)
6. Wolfwalkers
7. The Human Voice
8. Mogul Mowgli
9. Collective
10. Dick Johnson Is Dead

Critic, UK

1. Siberia
2. The Woman Who Ran
3. A Rainy Day in New York
4. Wasp Network
5. The Truth
6. Richard Jewell
7. Little Women
8. The Roads Not Taken
9. An Officer and a Spy
10. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

A list of my retrospective discoveries from 2020 might be at least as meaningful: Frank Capra’s So This Is Love (1928), Michael Powell’s Bluebeard’s Castle (1963), Bill Gunn’s Stop (1970), Anna Karina’s Vivre ensemble (1972), Claude Chabrol’s Alice ou la dernière fugue (1976), Jane Wagner’s Moment by Moment (1978), Otar Iosseliani’s Chant d’hiver (2015).

Critic, USA

1. Time
2. Gunda
3. Beanpole
4. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
5. Collective
6. Tesla
7. David Byrne’s American Utopia
8. Da 5 Bloods
9. Mank
10. Vast of Night

Digital content producer, BFI, UK

1. First Cow
2. Nomadland
3. Lovers Rock
4. Mank
5. Possessor
6. His House
7. The Invisible Man
8. David Byrne’s American Utopia
9. Sleep (Schlaf)
10. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

While the real terrors were happening out in the real world, it was a landmark year for horror and horror-adjacent films on screen. It certainly would have been very easy to compile ten greats from that genre alone.

Of the many omissions, a word about Host. Rob Savage’s film wasn’t the greatest film of the year but for me was the most important – a quick, sharp feature made for a tiny budget under lockdown conditions and the best example of what can be done by creative filmmakers under the worst possible circumstances.

Critic, curator, filmmaker; UK

1. An Officer and a Spy
2. Bacurau
3. Les Miserables
4. Shirley
5. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
6. Never Gonna Snow Again
7. Stray Dog
8. Saint Maud
9. Lovers Rock
10. The Truth

Critic, UK

1. Days (Rizi)
2. Hopper/Welles
3. Strasbourg 1518
4. Wolfwalkers
5. The World of Tomorrow Episode 3: The Absent Destinations of David Prime
6. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
7. Siberia
8. David Byrne’s American Utopia
9. Lovers Rock
10. Alone

Critic and curator, UK

1. Days (Rizi)
2. The Year of the Discovery
3. Don’t Rush
4. Corporate Accountability (Responsabilidad empresarial)
5. Time
6. The Viewing Booth
7. Ping jing (The Calming)
8. Communicating Vessels
9. Purple Sea
10. The Inheritance

“The moon is beautiful, and if you appreciate the moon then you will probably like my films.”
— Tsai Ming-Liang

Professor in film studies, UK

1. Les Miserables
2. Little Women
3. Cuties (Mignonnes)
4. Da 5 Bloods
5. Bombshell
6. La Daronne
7. The Assistant
8. Dark Waters
9. Queen & Slim
10. The Girl with a Bracelet

I am longing to relive the experience of seeing a film in a crowded cinema.

Critic, academic and curator, USA/UK

1. Apiyemiyeki?
2. Fauna (Flora y fauna)
3. Martin Eden
4. Lovers Rock
5. My Mexican Bretzel
6. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)
7. The Year of the Discovery
8. A Thousand-Year Stage (Qiannian wutai)

Critic, UK

1. Time
2. Midnight in Paris
3. Saint Maud
4. Rocks
5. Dick Johnson Is Dead
6. Days (Rizi)
7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
8. Things We Dare Not Do
9. Bad Education
10. The Woman Who Ran

Academic and critic, UK

1. Only the Animals
2. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
3. Bad Education
4. Les Miserables
5. The Other Lamb
6. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Critic, UK

1. Lovers Rock
2. Collective
3. Nomadland
4. Kajillionaire
5. Richard Jewell
6. Clemency
7. Birds of Prey
8. She Dies Tomorrow
9. The Forty-Year-Old Version
10. The Personal History of David Copperfield

News and features editor, UK

1. Days (Rizi)
2. Lovers Rock
3. David Byrne’s American Utopia
4. Time
5. The Disciple
6. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
7. Striding Into the Wind
8. Alone
9. Hopper/Welles
10. Shadow Country (Krajina ve stínu)

Editor-in-Chief, Sight & Sound, UK

1. Nomadland
2. Lovers Rock
3. Saint Maud
4. Relic
5. Being a Human Person
6. Les Miserables
7. Rocks
8. Lynn + Lucy
9. Bacurau
10. Mogul Mowgli

Critic and curator, UK

1. Richard Jewell
2. Da 5 Bloods
3. Marshawn Lynch: A History
4. Tenet
5. Birds of Prey

Critic/curator, UK/Austria

1. Air Conditioner
2. The Disciple
3. The Fantastic
4. Further Radical
5. Ital Tek: Leaving the Grid
6. 193 Octillion
7. Sun Dog
8. Postdigital Flipbook
9. Similarities
10. Tremendous Cream

“After a lull the epidemic broke out badly in Des Moines and immediately the usual agitation of ’close the theatres’ was started. First the use of influenza masks as a compulsory measure was tried out, with poor results, as patrons either regarded the use of the mask as an imposition or a joke…
“Finally it was decided to permit the theatres to remain open by using half capacity, spreading the seating arrangements through alternate rows. This is working out with fair results and managers say is far better than closing altogether. Programs have been considerably curtailed and less expensive features offered for the time being.”
— The Moving Picture World, 21 December 1918

“Panic in the Streets ends with a cathartic ritual cleansing as the infected criminal and major carrier (Jack Palance) is shot down while scrambling, climbing, fighting, running from the police, and demonstrating a will to escape – and, as implacable as any virus, contaminate the free world.”
— J. Hoberman, the Paris Review, 16 March 2020

Farnoosh Samadi, Iran

Voted for by: Tara Judah

Anya Tsyrlina, Switzerland

Voted for by: Neil Young

Ameen Nayfeh, Palestine, Italy, Sweden

Voted for by: Maria Delgado

Sam Mendes, USA, UK

Voted for by: Steph Green

Marielle Heller, USA

Voted for by: Philip Concannon, Mark Cousins, James Bell

Francisco Márquez, Argentina, Brazil, Switzerland

Voted for by: Maria Delgado

Xiang Zi, China, Spain

Voted for by: Ren Scateni

Terrence Malick, USA, UK, Germany

Voted for by: Tim Hayes

Catarina Vasconcelos, Portugal

Voted for by: Thomas Flew

Woody Allen, USA

Voted for by: Brad Stevens, Philip Horne

Lisa Malloy and J.P. Sniadecki, USA

Voted for by: Giovanni Marchini Camia

Daphne Xu, China

Voted for by: Becca Voelcker

Paul Cronin, UK, USA

Voted for by: Henry K. Miller, Sukhdev Sandhu

Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland

Voted for by: Mark Cousins

Roy Andersson, Sweden

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew, Leigh Singer, Philip Kemp, Christina Newland, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Imogen Sara Smith

Aleem Khan, UK

Voted for by: Michael Hayden, Nick James, Elena Lazic

Romina Paula, Argentina

Voted for by: Ross McDonnell

Fradique, Angola

Voted for by: Andrew Simpson, Neil Young

John Hyams, USA

Voted for by: Matthew Thrift, Samuel Wigley

Andreas Hykade, Germany

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit

Mikhaël Hers, France

Voted for by: Philip Concannon

Nicole Garcia, France

Voted for by: The Ferroni Brigade

Francis Lee, UK

Voted for by: Guy Lodge, Steph Green, Charles Gant, Isabel Stevens

Rebecca Zlotowski, France

Voted for by: Beatrice Loayza

Roman Polanski, France, Italy

Voted for by: Brad Stevens, David Thompson

Levan Akin, Georgia

Voted for by: Anna Bogutskaya

Lia Bertels, Belgium, France

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit

Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark

Voted for by: James Mottram, Naman Ramachandran, Michael Hayden, Katherine McLaughlin, Tom Charity, Sukhdev Sandhu

Ana Vaz, Brazil, France, Portugal, Netherlands

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Julian Ross, Becca Voelcker

Christos Nikou, Greece

Voted for by: Wendy Ide

Alyx Ayn G. Arumpac, Philippines

Voted for by: Alex Davidson

Eugène Green, France

Voted for by: Kieron Corless

Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia

Voted for by: Michael Leader, Mark Cousins

Shannon Murphy, Australia

Voted for by: Alex Ramon, Ella Kemp, Roger Luckhurst, Rebecca Harrison, Anna Smith, Elena Lazic, Andrew Male , Charles Gant

Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles, Brazil

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit, Anne Billson, Tim Hayes, Leila Latif, Demetrios Matheou, Joshua Rothkopf, Leigh Singer, Michael Atkinson, Mike Williams, David Thompson, Chrystel Oloukoi, Molly Haskell, Philip Kemp

Cory Finley, USA

Voted for by: Ella Kemp, Steph Green, Kelli Weston, Kate Stables, Catherine Wheatley

Kantemir Balagov, Russia

Voted for by: Amy Taubin, Molly Haskell, Michael Atkinson

Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia

Voted for by: Kaleem Aftab, Carmen Gray, Robert Koehler, Jordan Cronk

Fred Scott, UK, Sweden

Voted for by: Mike Williams

Paul Duane, USA, UK, Ireland

Voted for by: Anne Billson

Dean Parisot, USA

Voted for by: Josh Slater-Williams, The Ferroni Brigade

Cathy Yan, USA

Voted for by: Craig Williams, Rebecca Harrison, Katherine McLaughlin, Hanna Flint, Jourdain Searles, Charlotte Whitehouse

Beyoncé, Jenn Nkiru, Blitz the Ambassador, Jake Nava, USA

Voted for by: Rebecca Harrison

Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross, USA

Voted for by: Ashley Clark, Beatrice Loayza, Caitlin Quinlan , Michael Leader, Michael Hayden, Matthew Thrift, Andrew Simpson, Ela Bittencourt, Sophie Brown, Jamie Dunn, Samuel Wigley, Robert Koehler, Carmen Gray, Nick Bradshaw, Vadim Rizov, Tom Charity

Jay Roach, Canada, USA

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau

Jason Woliner, USA

Voted for by: Jane Giles, Leigh Singer, John Bleasdale, Nick Bradshaw, James Bell, Violet Lucca

Chloé Galibert-Laîné, France

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss, USA

Voted for by: Alex Davidson

Nick Rowland, UK

Voted for by: Charles Gant

Alfonso Amador, Spain

Voted for by: Christopher Small

Horace Jenkins, USA

Voted for by: Violet Lucca

Emily Harris, UK

Voted for by: Anna Smith

Damian Mc Carthy, UK

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

Carlos Casas, France

Voted for by: Kieron Corless

Oda Kaori, Japan

Voted for by: Ren Scateni, Jonathan Rosenbaum

Mohammed-Reza Aslani, Iran

Voted for by: Violet Lucca

Ayumu Watanabe, Japan

Voted for by: Kambole Campbell, Ren Scateni

Matias Mariani, Brazil, France

Voted for by: Kaleem Aftab

Various, USA

Voted for by: Matthew Barrington

Lewis Klahr, USA

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Frederick Wiseman, USA

Voted for by: Robert Koehler

Ayo Aingbade, UK

Voted for by: Matthew Barrington

Chinonye Chukwu, USA

Voted for by: Jane Giles, Anna Smith, Pamela Hutchinson, Nikki Baughan, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Charlotte Whitehouse

Alexander Nanau, Romania

Voted for by: Amy Taubin, Nick Bradshaw, Tom Charity, Isabel Stevens, James Bell, Charlotte Whitehouse

Richard Stanley, USA

Voted for by: Sophie Brown, Tim Hayes

Maïder Fortuné, Annie MacDonell, Canada

Voted for by: Julian Ross, Matt Turner

Karel Vachek, Czech Republic

Voted for by: Christopher Small

Jonathan Perel, Argentina

Voted for by: Matt Turner

Antonio Méndez Esparza, USA

Voted for by: Maria Delgado

Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht, USA

Voted for by: Rebecca Harrison, Jourdain Searles

Maïmouna Doucouré, France

Voted for by: John Bleasdale, Chrystel Oloukoi, Ginette Vincendeau

Spike Lee, USA

Voted for by: Tim Hayes, Steph Green, Philip Concannon, Michael Hayden, Mark Cousins, Leila Latif, Josh Slater-Williams, Andrew Simpson, Craig Williams, Ian Mantgani, Ginette Vincendeau, Amy Taubin, Hanna Flint, Jane Giles, Christina Newland, Kambole Campbell

Todd Haynes, USA

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau

Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, Ilya Permyakov, Germany, Ukraine, UK, Russia

Voted for by: Carmen Gray, Vadim Rizov

Ilya Khrzhanovsky, Jekaterina Oertel, Germany, Ukraine, UK, Russia

Voted for by: Giovanni Marchini Camia, Jordan Cronk

Spike Lee, USA

Voted for by: Matthew Thrift, Josh Slater-Williams, Nick James, Sophie Brown, Jamie Dunn, Samuel Wigley, Amy Taubin, Molly Haskell, Lou Thomas, Nick Bradshaw, Kambole Campbell, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Imogen Sara Smith, Demetrios Matheou

Karrabing Collective, Australia

Voted for by: Tara Judah

Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Philip Concannon, Matthew Thrift, Matthew Barrington, Matt Turner, Kelli Weston, Jonathan Romney, Andrew Simpson, Ela Bittencourt, Giovanni Marchini Camia, Jordan Cronk, Ren Scateni, Samuel Wigley, Christopher Small, Kieron Corless, Devika Girish, Violet Lucca

Benoît Delépine, Gustave Kervern, France, Belgium

Voted for by: Elena Lazic

Caroline Catz, UK

Voted for by: Jane Giles, Sophie Brown

Kirsten Johnson, USA

Voted for by: Ashley Clark, Guy Lodge, Pamela Hutchinson, Michael Leader, Kelli Weston, Josh Slater-Williams, Nick Bradshaw, Joshua Rothkopf, Leigh Singer, Jamie Dunn, Katherine McLaughlin, Molly Haskell, Thomas Flew, Kate Stables, Christina Newland, Tom Charity, James Bell, Devika Girish, Isabel Stevens

Heinz Emigholz, Germany

Voted for by: Devika Girish, Jordan Cronk

Chaitanya Tamhane, India

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew, Naman Ramachandran, Jonathan Romney, Nick James, Samuel Wigley, Neil Young, Elena Lazic, Kieron Corless

Sam Feder, USA

Voted for by: Mark Cousins, Alex Davidson, Juliet Jacques

J.P. Vakeappa, Finland

Voted for by: Anna Bogutskaya

Elise Florenty, Marcel Türkowsky, Belgium

Voted for by: Matt Turner

Bruce McDonald, Canada, Luxembourg, Belgium

Voted for by: Kim Newman

Julien Leclercq, France

Voted for by: The Ferroni Brigade

Pablo Larraín, Chile

Voted for by: Caitlin Quinlan , Ella Kemp, Demetrios Matheou, Sophie Brown, Ren Scateni, Philip Kemp, Tim Hayes

Autumn De Wilde, UK

Voted for by: Steph Green, Kim Newman

Lucio Castro, Argentina

Voted for by: Jamie Dunn

David Dobkin, USA

Voted for by: Catherine Wheatley

Richard Shpuntoff, Argentina

Voted for by: Christopher Small

Ernst Karel, Veronika Kusumaryati, USA

Voted for by: Julian Ross, Ben Nicholson

Arie Esiri, Chuko Esiri, Nigeria

Voted for by: Nick James, Chrystel Oloukoi

Werner Herzog, Germany

Voted for by: Roger Luckhurst

Thomas Clay, UK

Voted for by: Alex Ramon, Anna Smith, Nikki Baughan

Nicolás Pareda, Mexico

Voted for by: Giovanni Marchini Camia, Robert Koehler, Becca Voelcker

Lynne Sachs, USA

Voted for by: Tara Judah

Gabriel Clarke, Pete Thomas, UK

Voted for by: Andrew Collins

Oliver Laxe, Spain

Voted for by: Michael Atkinson

Kelly Reichardt, USA

Voted for by: Ashley Clark, Caitlin Quinlan , Erika Balsom, Guy Lodge, Wendy Ide, Philip Concannon, Andrew Simpson, Ela Bittencourt, Giovanni Marchini Camia, Ian Mantgani, Nick James, Jamie Dunn, Michael Atkinson, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Alex Davidson, Carmen Gray, Jourdain Searles, Andrew Male , Lou Thomas, Christina Newland, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Kambole Campbell, Devika Girish, Imogen Sara Smith, Violet Lucca

Jean-Marie Straub, Switzerland

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Viera Čákanyová, Czech Republic, Slovakia

Voted for by: Thomas Flew

Stefano Canapa, France

Voted for by: Neil Young

Lynne Siefert, USA

Voted for by: Thomas Flew

Adrien Merigeau, France

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit

Lav Diaz, Philippines

Voted for by: Jonathan Romney, The Ferroni Brigade

Ben Rivers, UK

Voted for by: Kieron Corless

Bas Devos, Belgium

Voted for by: Imogen Sara Smith

Ute Aurand, Germany

Voted for by: Christopher Small

Anna Cazenave Cambet, France

Voted for by: Kieron Corless, Isabel Stevens

Michael Winterbottom, UK

Voted for by: Tim Hayes

Oz Perkins,

Voted for by: Anne Billson

Aaron Schneider, USA

Voted for by: The Ferroni Brigade

Victor Kossakovsky, Norway, USA

Voted for by: Jonathan Romney, Amy Taubin, Kaleem Aftab

Simon Liu, Hong Kong

Voted for by: Julian Ross

Gero Von Boehm, Germany

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew

Pat Collins, Ireland

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew

Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy, Germany

Voted for by: Julian Ross

John Gianvito, USA

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum, Jordan Cronk, Robert Koehler, The Ferroni Brigade, Sukhdev Sandhu

Phyllida Lloyd, Ireland, UK

Voted for by: Mar Diestro-Dópido

Remi Weekes, USA

Voted for by: Anton Bitel, Michael Leader, Leila Latif, Katherine McLaughlin, Anna Bogutskaya, Lou Thomas, Roger Luckhurst, Melanie Hoyes

Devereux Milburn, USA

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

Bing Zhou, Hong Kong

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran

Orson Welles, USA

Voted for by: Matthew Thrift, Samuel Wigley

Rob Savage, UK

Voted for by: Anton Bitel, Roger Luckhurst, Michael Leader, Anna Bogutskaya, John Bleasdale, Kim Newman, Melanie Hoyes

Pedro Almodóvar, Spain

Voted for by: Isabel Stevens

Darol Olu Kae, USA

Voted for by: Matthew Barrington

Angela Schanelec, Germany, Serbia

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Ross McDonnell

Charlie Kaufman, USA

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit, Alex Ramon, Brad Stevens, Ella Kemp, Geoff Andrew, Guy Lodge, James Mottram, Steph Green, Pamela Hutchinson, Michael Hayden, Jonathan Romney, Andrew Simpson, Joshua Rothkopf, Leigh Singer, Michael Atkinson, Henry K. Miller, Lou Thomas, David Thompson, Catherine Wheatley, James Bell, Mar Diestro-Dópido

Fernando Frias, Mexico

Voted for by: Leigh Singer

Samir Guesmi, France

Voted for by: Elena Lazic

Hilal Baydarov, Azerbaijan

Voted for by: Carmen Gray

Mati Diop, France

Voted for by: Ross McDonnell

Tayler Montague, USA

Voted for by: Simran Hans

Otolith Group, UK

Voted for by: Matthew Barrington

Phillip Warnell, USA

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov

Natalia Meta, Argentina, Mexico

Voted for by: Sophie Brown, Katherine McLaughlin

Matías Piñeiro, Argentina

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov

Damien Manivel, France, South Korea

Voted for by: Ross McDonnell

Ruben Fro, Japan

Voted for by: Neil Young

Roman Polanski, France, Italy

Voted for by: Philip Horne

Taika Waititi, USA

Voted for by: Sophie Brown

Aurel, France, Spain, Belgium

Voted for by: Maria Delgado

Miranda July, USA

Voted for by: Ella Kemp, Steph Green, Pamela Hutchinson, Joshua Rothkopf, Ross McDonnell, Katherine McLaughlin, Hanna Flint, Jourdain Searles, Andrew Male , Mar Diestro-Dópido, Charlotte Whitehouse

Janis Rafa, Netherlands

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, Julian Ross

Mariusz Wilczyński, Poland

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit

Laura Sanz, Dominican Republic

Voted for by: Ian Mantgani

Jean-Paul Salomé, France

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau

Jorge Thielen Armand, Venezuela

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran

Jayro Bustamente, Guatemala

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

Sylvia Schedelbauer, Germany

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov

Nobuhiko Obayashi, Japan

Voted for by: Beatrice Loayza, Ren Scateni

Jóhann Jóhannsson, Iceland

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, Andrew Simpson

Mark Rappaport, USA

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Ladj Ly, France

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau, Hanna Flint, Anna Smith, Kate Stables, Mike Williams, Charles Gant, David Thompson, Catherine Wheatley

Gregory Magne, France

Voted for by: Roger Luckhurst

Jud Cremata, USA

Voted for by: Kim Newman

Emily Jacir, Palestine

Voted for by: Ela Bittencourt

Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway

Voted for by: Kaleem Aftab

Ben Sharrock, UK

Voted for by: Caitlin Quinlan , Wendy Ide, Josh Slater-Williams, Leigh Singer, Rebecca Harrison, Alex Davidson, Kaleem Aftab

Sébastien Lifshitz, France

Voted for by: Juliet Jacques, Thomas Flew

Greta Gerwig, USA

Voted for by: Brad Stevens, Demetrios Matheou, Ginette Vincendeau, Philip Horne, Pamela Hutchinson, Henry K. Miller, Nick Bradshaw, Mar Diestro-Dópido

William Fowler & Matthew Harle, UK

Voted for by: Sukhdev Sandhu

Camilo Restrepo, France, Brazil

Voted for by: Carmen Gray, Devika Girish

Steve McQueen, UK

Voted for by: Ashley Clark, Caitlin Quinlan , Ella Kemp, Geoff Andrew, Pamela Hutchinson, Michael Hayden, Matthew Thrift, Leila Latif, Jonathan Romney, Demetrios Matheou, Nick James, Jamie Dunn, Samuel Wigley, Anna Bogutskaya, Ian Mantgani, Simran Hans, Mike Williams, Lou Thomas, Matthew Barrington, Christina Newland, David Thompson, James Bell, Kambole Campbell, Devika Girish, Sukhdev Sandhu, Becca Voelcker , Charlotte Whitehouse

Natasha Kermani, USA

Voted for by: Katherine McLaughlin

Sasie Sealy, USA

Voted for by: Sukhdev Sandhu

Stephen Broomer, Canada

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Fyzal Boulifa, UK

Voted for by: Tim Hayes, Anna Smith, Mike Williams

Claire Oakley, UK

Voted for by: Rebecca Harrison, Nikki Baughan

Cristi Puiu, Romania, Serbia, Switzerland, Sweden, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Voted for by: Giovanni Marchini Camia, Jordan Cronk, Christopher Small, The Ferroni Brigade

Sky Hopinka, USA

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Chrystel Oloukoi, Ben Nicholson

Sol Berruezo Pichon-Rivière, Argentina

Voted for by: Thomas Flew

Quentin Dupieux, France, Belgium

Voted for by: James Mottram, John Bleasdale

Steve McQueen, UK

Voted for by: Alex Ramon, Wendy Ide, Leila Latif, Demetrios Matheou, Joshua Rothkopf, Maria Delgado, Leigh Singer, Nick James, Rebecca Harrison, Sophie Brown, Alex Davidson, Hanna Flint, Simran Hans, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Chrystel Oloukoi, Philip Concannon

David Fincher, USA

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, Amy Taubin, Henry K. Miller, Charles Gant, Lou Thomas, Christina Newland, Vadim Rizov

David Shields, USA

Voted for by: Philip Concannon, Craig Williams

Pietro Marcello, Italy

Voted for by: Beatrice Loayza, Caitlin Quinlan , Joshua Rothkopf, Molly Haskell, Vadim Rizov, Imogen Sara Smith, Becca Voelcker , Violet Lucca

Reiner Holzemer, Germany

Voted for by: Anne Billson

Daria Woszek, Poland

Voted for by: Alex Ramon, Katherine McLaughlin

Pauline Penichout, France

Voted for by: Christopher Small

Xavier Dolan, France

Voted for by: Steph Green

David Osit, UK, USA

Voted for by: Ashley Clark

Jung Jin-young, Korea

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

Roni Moore, James Blagden, USA

Voted for by: Kelli Weston

Hassan Fazili, Qatar

Voted for by: Sophie Monks Kaufman

Philippa Lowthorpe, UK

Voted for by: Nikki Baughan

Toyoshima Keisuke, Japan

Voted for by: The Ferroni Brigade

Channing Godfrey Peoples, USA

Voted for by: Jourdain Searles, Melanie Hoyes

Sam Pollard, USA

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Oliver Hermanus, South Africa

Voted for by: Guy Lodge

Bassam Tariq, UK

Voted for by: Michael Hayden, Leila Latif, Anna Bogutskaya, Philip Kemp, Mike Williams, Isabel Stevens, Melanie Hoyes

David Teboul, France

Voted for by: Carmen Gray

Argyris Papadimitropoulos, USA, UK, Greece

Voted for by: Kaleem Aftab

Hong Khaou, UK

Voted for by: Andrew Collins, Melanie Hoyes

Yoon Danbi, South Korea

Voted for by: Michael Leader, Ross McDonnell

Agnieszka Holland , Poland

Voted for by: Andrew Collins

Nuria Giménez, Spain

Voted for by: Kieron Corless, Becca Voelcker

William Greaves, USA

Voted for by: Ashley Clark

Artavazd Pelechian, Armenia

Voted for by: Carmen Gray

Małgorzata Szumowska, Poland, Germany

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew, Guy Lodge, Ela Bittencourt, Thomas Flew, David Thompson

Eliza Hittman, USA

Voted for by: Ella Kemp, Erika Balsom, Guy Lodge, James Mottram, Pamela Hutchinson, Michael Leader, Kelli Weston, Jonathan Romney, Andrew Simpson, Ren Scateni, Jamie Dunn, Amy Taubin, Elena Lazic, Jourdain Searles, Simran Hans, Kate Stables, Charles Gant, Christina Newland, Tom Charity

Michel Franco, Mexico, France

Voted for by: James Mottram, Naman Ramachandran, Michael Hayden, Jonathan Romney, Maria Delgado

Philippe Lacote, France

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran

Faraz Shariat, Germany

Voted for by: Jamie Dunn, Alex Davidson

Werner Herzog, UK

Voted for by: Sukhdev Sandhu

Chloe Zhao, USA

Voted for by: Beatrice Loayza, Caitlin Quinlan , Ella Kemp, James Mottram, Wendy Ide, Demetrios Matheou, Joshua Rothkopf, Ren Scateni, Jamie Dunn, Jourdain Searles, Simran Hans, Thomas Flew, Mike Williams, Charles Gant, John Bleasdale, Lou Thomas, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Charlotte Whitehouse

Gianfranco Rosi, Italy, France, Germany

Voted for by: John Bleasdale, Vadim Rizov

Polina Gumiela, Germany

Voted for by: Thomas Flew

Christophe Honoré, France

Voted for by: Alex Ramon

Sofia Coppola, USA

Voted for by: Simran Hans, Mar Diestro-Dópido, Philip Kemp

Kenji Iwaisawa, Japan

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit

Tom Six, USA

Voted for by: Kim Newman

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, United Arab Emirates

Voted for by: Julian Ross

Regina King, USA

Voted for by: Michael Hayden, Josh Slater-Williams, Maria Delgado, Anna Bogutskaya

Dominik Moll, France, Germany

Voted for by: Catherine Wheatley

Benjamin Ree, Norway

Voted for by: Leila Latif

Max Barbakow , USA

Voted for by: Andrew Male , Henry K. Miller, Ian Mantgani

Ulrike Ottinger, Germany, France

Voted for by: Kaleem Aftab

Tim Mielants, Belgium, Netherlands

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

Eva Riley, UK

Voted for by: Andrew Collins, Melanie Hoyes

Stephen Broomer, Canada

Voted for by: Andrew Simpson

Kornél Mundruczó, Canada, Hungary, USA

Voted for by: James Mottram

Song Fang, China

Voted for by: Matt Turner, Ela Bittencourt, Julian Ross

Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada

Voted for by: Ross McDonnell

Celine Sciamma, France

Voted for by: Mark Cousins

Brandon Cronenberg, Canada, UK

Voted for by: Anne Billson, Anton Bitel, Guy Lodge, Josh Slater-Williams, Anna Bogutskaya, Elena Lazic, John Bleasdale, Lou Thomas, Kaleem Aftab

Pablo-Martín Córdoba, France

Voted for by: Neil Young

Emerald Fennell, USA

Voted for by: Sophie Monks Kaufman

Alice Winocour, France

Voted for by: Anna Smith, Nikki Baughan

Amel Alzakout, Khaled Abdulwahed, Germany

Voted for by: Matt Turner, Ben Nicholson

Melina Metsoukas, USA

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau, Sophie Brown

Jasmila Žbanić, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Voted for by: Kaleem Aftab

Jenny Brady, Ireland

Voted for by: Ross McDonnell

Natalie Erika James, Australia, USA

Voted for by: Anne Billson, Anton Bitel, Tara Judah, Andrew Male , Mike Williams, James Bell, Kim Newman

Merawi Gerima, USA

Voted for by: Chrystel Oloukoi

Peter Mackie Burns, Ireland

Voted for by: Kate Stables

Clint Eastwood, USA

Voted for by: Alex Ramon, Brad Stevens, Tim Hayes, Craig Williams, Ian Mantgani, Charlotte Whitehouse

Masaaki Yuasa, Japan

Voted for by: Kambole Campbell

Kawasaki Minoru, Japan

Voted for by: The Ferroni Brigade

Sarah Gavron, UK

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit, Jane Giles, Roger Luckhurst, Pamela Hutchinson, Matthew Barrington, Kelli Weston, Nick James, Anna Smith, Juliet Jacques, Simran Hans, Andrew Male , Kate Stables, Mike Williams, Charles Gant, Nikki Baughan, Christina Newland, Melanie Hoyes

Alex Thompson, USA

Voted for by: Anna Smith, Nikki Baughan, Tom Charity

Rose Glass, UK

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit, Ella Kemp, Jane Giles, Leila Latif, Kelli Weston, Demetrios Matheou, Leigh Singer, Rebecca Harrison, Jamie Dunn, Anna Bogutskaya, Hanna Flint, Anna Smith, Andrew Male , Philip Kemp, Kate Stables, Mike Williams, Henry K. Miller, David Thompson, Kim Newman, Mar Diestro-Dópido

Rezwan Shahriar Sumit, Bangladesh, France

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran

Mark Landsman, USA

Voted for by: Philip Horne

Pilar Palomero, Spain

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Neasa Hardiman, Ireland, UK, Sweden, Belgium

Voted for by: Andrew Male

Sammo Hung, Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, Yuen Woo-ping, Johnnie To, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark, Hong Kong

Voted for by: The Ferroni Brigade

Geraldo Sarno, Brazil

Voted for by: Ela Bittencourt

Bohdan Sláma, Czech Republic

Voted for by: Samuel Wigley

Amy Seimetz, USA

Voted for by: Tim Hayes, Roger Luckhurst, Josh Slater-Williams, Michael Atkinson, Jourdain Searles, Kambole Campbell, Charlotte Whitehouse

Josephine Decker, USA

Voted for by: Anne Billson, Beatrice Loayza, Ella Kemp, Steph Green, Pamela Hutchinson, Michael Leader, Leila Latif, Tara Judah, Ren Scateni, Katherine McLaughlin, Anna Bogutskaya, Alex Davidson, Jourdain Searles, Christina Newland, David Thompson

Emma Seligman, USA

Voted for by: Ela Bittencourt

Abel Ferrara, Italy, Germany, Mexico

Voted for by: Brad Stevens, Matthew Thrift, Jordan Cronk, Elena Lazic

Alex Kasses and THISDISPLAY, Austria

Voted for by: Neil Young

Michael Venus, Germany

Voted for by: Lou Thomas

Paul Felten, Joe DeNardo, USA

Voted for by: Giovanni Marchini Camia

Pete Docter, Kemp Powers, USA

Voted for by: James Mottram, Charles Gant, Kaleem Aftab

Morgan Quintance, UK, USA

Voted for by: Sukhdev Sandhu

Spaceship Earth, Matt Wolf, USA

Voted for by: Roger Luckhurst, Sukhdev Sandhu

Shin’ichirô Ueda, Japan

Voted for by: Kim Newman

Eugene Kotlyarenko, USA

Voted for by: Ian Mantgani, Violet Lucca

Gregor Božič, Slovenia

Voted for by: Elena Lazic

Jonathan Glazer, UK

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew, Matthew Thrift, Ian Mantgani

Luke Hefferman, UK

Voted for by: David Thompson

Wei Shujun, China

Voted for by: Samuel Wigley

Francois Ozon, France

Voted for by: Anne Billson, Mark Cousins

Jessica Swale, UK

Voted for by: Melanie Hoyes

Dorian Jespers, Belgium

Voted for by: Neil Young

Harry Macqueen, UK

Voted for by: Steph Green

Jia Zhang-ke, China

Voted for by: Molly Haskell

Nora Fingscheidt, Germany

Voted for by: Andrew Collins, Hanna Flint, Nikki Baughan

Keisha Rae Witherspoon, USA

Voted for by: Ashley Clark

Christopher Nolan, USA

Voted for by: James Mottram, Craig Williams, Philip Kemp, Henry K. Miller, John Bleasdale, Philip Horne, Jane Giles

Michael Almereyda, USA

Voted for by: Amy Taubin

Kitty Green, USA

Voted for by: Andrew Collins, James Mottram, Wendy Ide, Roger Luckhurst, Ginette Vincendeau, Elena Lazic, Simran Hans, Andrew Male , Henry K. Miller, Charles Gant, Jane Giles, Nikki Baughan, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Mar Diestro-Dópido, Isabel Stevens, Demetrios Matheou

Javier Fuentes-León, Colombia, Peru

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran

Pallavi Paul, India

Voted for by: Juliet Jacques

Tatjana Kononenko & Matilda Mester, Germany

Voted for by: Juliet Jacques

Jacqueline Lentzou, Greece

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Maija Blåfield, Finland

Voted for by: Neil Young

Radha Blank, USA

Voted for by: Leila Latif, Katherine McLaughlin, Hanna Flint, Simran Hans, Chrystel Oloukoi, Violet Lucca, Charlotte Whitehouse

Guy Ritchie, UK

Voted for by: Alex Ramon

Stéphane Demoustier, France

Voted for by: Nikki Baughan, Ginette Vincendeau

Alice Wu, USA

Voted for by: Melanie Hoyes

Jan Komasa, Poland

Voted for by: Alex Ramon

Pedro Almodóvar, Spain

Voted for by: Maria Delgado, Pamela Hutchinson, Mar Diestro-Dópido, Isabel Stevens

Craig Zobel, USA

Voted for by: Kim Newman

Kevin Jerome Everson, USA

Voted for by: Matthew Barrington

Ephraim Asili, USA

Voted for by: Ashley Clark, Beatrice Loayza, Erika Balsom, Matt Turner, Julian Ross, Vadim Rizov, Devika Girish, Violet Lucca, Matthew Barrington

Leigh Whannell, USA

Voted for by: Joshua Rothkopf, Hanna Flint, Andrew Male , John Bleasdale, Lou Thomas, Chrystel Oloukoi

Robert Machoian, USA

Voted for by: Robert Koehler

Robert Eggers, USA, Canada

Voted for by: Mark Cousins

Maite Alberdi, Chile

Voted for by: Maria Delgado

Sean Durkin, USA

Voted for by: Joshua Rothkopf, Michael Atkinson

Chloé Galibert-Laîné, France

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Gina Prince-Bythewood, USA

Voted for by: Melanie Hoyes

Malgorzata Szumowska, USA, Ireland, Belgium

Voted for by: Mark Cousins, Catherine Wheatley

Vaclav Marhoul, Czech Republic

Voted for by: Kate Stables, Tom Charity, James Bell

Haifaa al-Mansour, Saudi Arabia

Voted for by: Hanna Flint

Armando Iannucci, UK

Voted for by: Jane Giles, Rebecca Harrison, Philip Horne, John Bleasdale, Mar Diestro-Dópido, Nick Bradshaw, Charlotte Whitehouse

Laura Citarella, Mercedes Halfon, Argentina

Voted for by: Maria Delgado

Pietro Castellito, Italy

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran

Sally Potter, UK

Voted for by: Brad Stevens

Philippe Garrel, France, Switzerland

Voted for by: Jordan Cronk, Molly Haskell

David Lynch, USA

Voted for by: Ian Mantgani

Dean Kapsalis, USA

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

Marco Bellocchio, Italy

Voted for by: Anne Billson, Philip Horne, Philip Kemp, Henry K. Miller, Kieron Corless

Michael Winterbottom, UK

Voted for by: Philip Horne

Sandra Wollner, Austria, Germany

Voted for by: Guy Lodge, Jonathan Romney, Andrew Simpson

Gregory Kershaw, Michael Dweck, USA, Greece, Italy

Voted for by: Tom Charity

Hirokazu Koreeda, France

Voted for by: Brad Stevens, Geoff Andrew, Roger Luckhurst, Philip Horne, David Thompson, Imogen Sara Smith

Fernando Meireilles, UK, USA, Italy, Argentina

Voted for by: Philip Kemp

Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, Israel, USA

Voted for by: Caitlin Quinlan , Matt Turner, Ben Nicholson

Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania

Voted for by: Anne Billson, Sukhdev Sandhu

Diao Yinan, China

Voted for by: Tom Charity

Joaquin Cocina & Cristobal Leon, Chile

Voted for by: Michael Atkinson

Hong Sang-soo, Korea

Voted for by: Beatrice Loayza, Brad Stevens, Caitlin Quinlan , Kelli Weston, Giovanni Marchini Camia, Jordan Cronk, Ren Scateni, Robert Koehler, Molly Haskell, Vadim Rizov, Kieron Corless, Devika Girish

C.W. Winter, Anders Edström, USA, Sweden, Japan, Hong Kong, China, UK

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Jordan Cronk, Julian Ross, Robert Koehler, Becca Voelcker

Don Hertzfelt, USA

Voted for by: Philip Concannon, Matthew Thrift, Ben Nicholson, Nick Bradshaw, James Bell

Mona Fastvold, USA

Voted for by: Jonathan Romney

Luis Lopez Carrasco, Spain, Switzerland

Voted for by: Beatrice Loayza, Erika Balsom, Matt Turner, Ela Bittencourt, Giovanni Marchini Camia, Ross McDonnell, Christopher Small, Robert Koehler, Kieron Corless, Becca Voelcker

Mohammad Rasoulof, Germany, Czech Republic, Iran

Voted for by: Carmen Gray

Bruno Santamaría Razo, Mexico

Voted for by: Kelli Weston

Sasha Wortzel, USA

Voted for by: Ashley Clark

Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, Lesotho, South Africa, Italy

Voted for by: Guy Lodge, Ela Bittencourt, Robert Koehler

Garrett Bradley, USA

Voted for by: Andrew Collins, Ashley Clark, Beatrice Loayza, Caitlin Quinlan , Philip Concannon, Michael Leader, Matthew Barrington, Matt Turner, Kelli Weston, Ross McDonnell, Sophie Brown, Samuel Wigley, Alex Davidson, Amy Taubin, Jourdain Searles, Simran Hans, Kate Stables, Christina Newland, Nick Bradshaw, Tom Charity, Chrystel Oloukoi, James Bell, Kambole Campbell, Devika Girish, Isabel Stevens, Violet Lucca

Abel Ferrara, Italy

Voted for by: Philip Concannon

Alexei Dmitriev, Russia

Voted for by: Neil Young

Alain Kasanda, France, Nigeria

Voted for by: Chrystel Oloukoi

Justin Kurzel, Australia

Voted for by: Kim Newman, Philip Horne, Mark Cousins

John Smith, UK

Voted for by: Erika Balsom

Ken Fero, UK

Voted for by: Tara Judah

Christian Petzold, Germany, France

Voted for by: Michael Hayden, Josh Slater-Williams, Giovanni Marchini Camia, Tara Judah, Carmen Gray, Molly Haskell, Mar Diestro-Dópido, Devika Girish, Imogen Sara Smith

Nelson Makengo, D. R. Congo

Voted for by: Tara Judah

Radu Jude, Romania

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew

Andrew Patterson, USA

Voted for by: Andrew Collins, Demetrios Matheou, Leigh Singer, Michael Atkinson, Amy Taubin, Isabel Stevens

Sofie Benoot, Liesbeth De Ceulaer, Isabelle Tollenaere, Belgium

Voted for by: Thomas Flew

Pedro Costa, Portugal

Voted for by: Nick James, Tara Judah, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Molly Haskell, Sophie Monks Kaufman

Lorcan Finnegan, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium

Voted for by: Tim Hayes, Michael Atkinson

Ciro Guerra, Italy, USA

Voted for by: Alex Ramon, Andrew Collins

Olivier Assayas, France, Brazil

Voted for by: Brad Stevens, Henry K. Miller

Evans Chan, Hong Kong

Voted for by: Tara Judah

Makoto Shinkai, Japan

Voted for by: Kambole Campbell

David France, USA

Voted for by: Joshua Rothkopf, Nick James, Alex Davidson

Viera Čákanyová, Slovakia, Czech Republic

Voted for by: Christopher Small

Rubika Shah, UK

Voted for by: Jane Giles

Michael Pilz, Austria

Voted for by: Christopher Small

Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, Ireland, France, Luxembourg

Voted for by: Alex Dudok de Wit, Andrew Collins, Wendy Ide, Michael Leader, Matthew Thrift, Josh Slater-Williams, Nick Bradshaw, Rebecca Harrison, Kate Stables, Kambole Campbell, Isabel Stevens, Philip Kemp

Saeed Nouri, Iran

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Andrew Norman Wilson, USA

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Ismaël El Iraki, France, Belgium, Morocco

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran