This film journaling sat as a draft in a digital moth drawer for several months, which may say more about a waning compulsion for listmaking than for my general appetite for filmgoing, which is still hale in tendency and frequency. I projected north of fifty films in 2024 at 2220, while still making it out in front of myriad other screens, from airplane backseats to microcinemas to Euro IMAX megatheaters.

My favorite films were still often ‘small’ and specific, fully unpredictable and with a sense of wilderness and invention. The top and bottom of the first list below were both undistributed films I projected at 2220 Arts – the first by Lois Patiño the most visually spectacular feature I’ve seen in a year, seconded only by the radically self-conscious chiaroscuro of Robert Eggers’s vampire pastische. My other dominant memory of the year was watching the new restoration of Chantal Akerman’s Toute une nuit at LAFM, which was perfection, and which sent me back to Akerman’s neglected 80s films, including a couple home viewings of Golden Eighties (super!).

Here are ten that rise to the top of sustaining memory from 2024:

Samsara – Lois PatiñoUniversal Language – Matthew RankinSoundtrack to a Coup D’Etat – Johan GrimonprezAll We Imagine As Light – Payal KapadiaJanet Planet – Annie BakerSing Sing – Greg KwedarHere – Bas DevosLa Chimera – Alice RohrwacherPerfect Days – Wim WendersInvention – Courtney Stephens

Another ten that struck me as strange, specific or strong in their voices and visions:

A Different Man – Aaron SchimbergThe Beast – Bertrand BonelloChristmas Eve in Miller’s Point – Tyler TaorimaGIFT / Evil Does Not Exist – Ryusuke HamaguchiGood One – India DonaldsonGreen Border – Agnieszka HollandI’m Still Here – Walter SallesNocturnes – Anupama Srinivasan, Anirban DuttaNosferatu (IMAX version) – Robert EggersTotem – Lila Aviles

And in the spirit of journaling, some others that had their moments: Anora, A Real Pain, Challengers, Civil War, Close Your Eyes, Dahomey, Didi, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Hard Truths, Hit Man, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, It’s Not Me, Last Summer, Starve Acre, The Substance.