Manuel Betancourt

As a piece of observational cinema that borrows from the very visual grammar of nonfiction films, The Zone Of Interest is an instant classic, a masterpiece whose every gorgeously framed shot aims to stun you into silence. And into forceful remembrance as well.

Despite its intimate focus, Memoir of a Snail is a towering achievement. This touching animated film serves as a reminder that Elliot is a humanist who clearly sculpts his “clayographies” (as he dubs his films) from the very essence of life itself.

The documentary, taking its cue from Dion, is not merely looking backward; there’s a path ahead. What exactly that looks like is, as it turns out, being negotiated as the documentary unfolds.

With Orlando, My Political Biography, Preciado has crafted a towering manifesto that’s as nimble in presenting abstracted gender theorizations as it is in capturing moving emotional truths (credit here must also go to the film’s dynamic editor, Yotam Ben David).

Painstakingly conceived and teeming with raw, unbridled energy, Eyimofe offers a sumptuous, keen-eyed look at modern Lagosian life.

The Mother of All Lies is an astonishing work whose maturity comes from El Moudir’s wide-eyed approach to her family history, where memory and history are quite literally reduced to playthings in order to process the unspeakable events they conjure up.

Rather than let its timely concerns be embalmed in didacticism, Alegría has crafted a film about healing generational trauma through new modes of living and experiencing desire — of reshaping the world in a way that feels inclusive and expansive, and which does away with relics of a past that should be left to rot at the bottom of a river.

With May December Haynes has crafted an implausible blend of raw authenticity and stylized histrionics that’s fueled by a curious intellectual inquiry: what role do we play in our own story?

There’s artistry here in how a boy’s world is coming to a close, an elegy for what was and a welcome invitation to see what could yet be.

Close is exquisite, tender, and bruising in equal measure, managing to feel both like an open wound and a balm.

Heartrending yet never maudlin, I’m Still Here is a humanist drama that, in shining a light on insidious injustice, becomes a balm to warn and warm its audiences in equal measure.

Equal parts wistful and sensual, vivid and gentle, Stolevski has gifted us with a swoon-worthy romantic drama that looks at that first blushing crush not as an ephemera in need of being remembered but as a living memory that can pulsate and ache precisely because it’s never left you.

Memory House is, above all, a fable about identities lost and cultural artifacts in need of recovery that doubles as a thrilling and foreboding ride designed to rattle audiences at home and abroad with equal verve.

What begins as a muted marital melodrama slowly boils into a restrained political thriller, with an ease and skill all the more impressive in a first feature.

With a breezy 70 minute runtime, Fauna is a delightful puzzle of a film. Even as it leans heavily into its metafictional conceits, laying bare just how much of its second half, for instance, is pure fantasy (or is it?), Pereda’s actors find ways of unearthing emotionally wrenching moments.

Slow reveals itself to be quite a tender portrait of love and companionship, of what our bodies yearn and want in others, and how we could do well to upend the stories we tell each other about living and loving another.

The Stroll is a powerful piece of trans history-making, a document that feels wounded, lived in, and yet joyfully alive.

This is a gripping and heartbreaking film that goes out with a whimper that hits harder than any kind of bang it could’ve mustered.

At once an intimate portrait of a makeshift family and a treatise on motherhood and motherlands, Bantú Mama is a quiet achievement.

If the film is a tad baggy and unruly that seems by design and thus less a critique than an accurate assessment. But overall and while painting so boldly on such a broad canvas (the film spans decades and calls on its actors and make-up department to work overtime in delineating the passage of time) Maestro emerges as a bombastic aria of a biopic befitting its central subject.

Quippy, zippy, and punchy, this teen-focused take on everyone’s favorite pizza-loving vigilantes is a refreshing reappraisal of a property that could very well have felt stale in 2023.

The Holdovers may peg its tale on a truism that can feel trite (you never know what others are going through). But Payne, Hemingson, and its central trio of actors find welcome nuances within that platitude.

It is Jacobs’ performance that makes “Backspot” such an exciting watch, even as it hits well-known beats and otherwise expected character arcs.

Equally brazen and ambitious, Drew’s film is committed to embracing the zany undertones that have always bubbled under the surface of a comic book tale in which secret identities, arch performances and fabulous outfits (all worn in the dead of night, no less) have always felt like lifelines for queer and trans kids worldwide.

Lavender Men is a heady and meta-theatrical excavation of Lincoln’s long-rumored gay affair that’s wildly ambitious if a tad overstuffed.

Kramer sketches out a feverish queer manifesto on gender that feels both novel and familiar.

Việt and Nam is both simple and cryptic. Its spellbinding pleasures reward a patient audience who’ll be swayed (and may well swoon) over its hypnotic wonders.

Striking a fine balance between lurid voyeurism and grounded naturalism, Mäkelä’s film is a gripping wonder, perhaps a tad too literate, with its nods not only to Ellis but to authors like Jean Genet and Cyril Collard.