Kitano Takeshi

1. Broken Rage (2024)
2. Zatoichi (2003)

1. Broken Rage (2024)
2. Zatoichi (2003)

La Internacional Cinéfila

2011

2012

1. Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
2. Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
3. Leviathan (Lucian Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)
4. Papirosen (Gastón Solnicki)
5. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg)
6. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki)

2013

1. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
2. What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)
3. Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
   P3nd3jo5 (Raúl Perrone)
   The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
   Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
4. Story of My Death (Albert Serra)
5. Why Don't You Play in Hell? (Sono Sion)
6. Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)
   Blue Is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche)
   Viola (Matías Piñeiro)
7. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
8. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
9. Jealously (Philippe Garrel)
   Redemption (Miguel Gomes)
10. Outtakes From the Life of a Happy Man (Jonas Mekas)

2014

1. Horse Money (Pedro Costa)
2. Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
3. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)
4. Maidan (Sergei Loznitsa)
5. Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German)
6. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
7. Jersey Boys (Clint Eastwood)
   The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
8. Welcome to New York (Abel Ferrara)
   From What Is Before (Lav Diaz)
   White Out, Black In (Adirley Queirós)
   The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
   Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund)
9. P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont)
10. Mercuriales (Virgil Vernier)

2015

1. Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
3. Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes)
   Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (Abbas Fahdel)
4. Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo)
5. Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)
   Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)

2016

1. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
2. The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra)
3. Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
4. Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)
5. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
6. The Wind Knows That I'm Coming Back Home (José Luis Torres Leiva)
7. Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (Abbas Fahdel)
8. The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues)
   Hermia & Helena (Matías Piñeiro)
9. Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
   Staying Vertical (Alain Guiraudie)

2017

1. Zama (Lucrecia Martel)
2. The Other Side of Hope (Aki Kaurismäki)
3. Western (Valeska Grisebach)
4. On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sang-soo)
5. The Nothing Factory (Pedro Pinho)
   Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch)
6. The Day After (Hong Sang-soo)
7. Good Time (Josh & Benny Safdie)
8. Ex Libris—The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)
   The Wandering Soap Opera (Raúl Ruiz & Valeria Sarmiento)
   Araby (João Dumans & Affosno Uchôa)
9. In the Intense Now (João Moreira Salles)
10. Lover for a Day (Philippe Garrel)

2018

1. The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard)
2. Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher)
3. La Flor (Mariano Llinás)
   Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
4. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)
5. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)

2019 (+director and film of the decade)

1. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)
2. Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
3. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
4. I Was at Home, But... (Angela Schanelec)
5. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)

2020

1. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
2. The Year of the Discovery (Luis López Carrasco)
3. Days (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo)
5. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (C. W. Winter & Anders Edström)
   My Dear Spies (Vladimir Léon)

2021 (+emerging director)

1. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. Drive My Car (Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
3. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude)
   What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)
4. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)
5. The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazendeiro & Miguel Gomes)
6. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
7. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
   Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
8. A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)
9. Annette (Leos Carax)
10. El gran movimiento (Kiro Russo)

2022

1. Pacifiction (Albert Serra)
2. Dry Ground Burning (Joana Pimenta & Adirley Queirós)
3. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
4. The Novelist's Film (Hong Sang-soo)
5. Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)
6. Unrest (Cyril Schäublin)
7. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)
8. See You Friday, Robinson (Mitra Farahani)
9. Will-o'-the-Wisp (João Pedro Rodrigues)
10. Saint Omer (Alice Diop)
    Nope (Jordan Peele)

2023 (+film books)

1. Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)
2. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
3. Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice)
4. Music (Angela Schanelec)
5. The Delinquents (Rodrigo Moreno)
   Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)
6. Afire (Christian Petzold)
7. Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)
8. The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)
9. Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)
10. Man in Black (Wang Bing)

2024 (+films from 2000-2024)

1. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
   Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)
2. A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
3. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
4. Anora (Sean Baker)
5. All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
6. Pepe (Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias)
7. Dahomey (Mati Diop)
8. Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath)
9. Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed (Hernán Rosselli)
10. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)

2025

1. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
4. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)
5. The Prince of Nanawa (Clarisa Navas)
6. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
7. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)
   Sirāt (Óliver Laxe)
8. Our Land (Lucrecia Martel)
   I Only Rest in the Storm (Pedro Pinho)
9. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
10. Yes (Nadav Lapid)

Jodie Mack

1. Let Your Light Shine (2013)
2. The Grand Bizarre (2018)
3. Something Between Us (2015)
4. Wasteland No. 1: Ardent, Verdant (2017)

1. Let Your Light Shine (2013)
2. Something Between Us (2015)
3. Wasteland No. 1: Ardent, Verdant (2017)

Edward Yang First Draft

Complete first draft for the BFI.

Why this might not seem so easy There is perhaps no greater example of the emergence of a specifically 21st-century cinephilia than Edward Yang. A vanguard member of the Taiwan New Cinema movement—which included among its ranks Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wu Nien-jen, and Ko I-chen—he made just seven feature films before his untimely death from cancer at the age of 59, and yet his impact looms large over world cinema, in spite of its long-term inaccessibility. Up until this past decade, just one of his films was readily available in pristine quality, and he only garnered international recognition in the final years of his career, but he has deservedly come to be seen as a towering, widely beloved figure whose signature films—conceivably the most universally praised works in Mandarin Chinese—have a purchase in the cinephile consciousness like few other filmmakers. Yang took a circuitous route to cinema, initially starting out as an engineer in the United States, before an encounter with Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God inspired him to reenter filmmaking, and his sensibility was informed by multiple sources: European modernism, the quotidian relationships that surrounded him, even his lifelong interest in cartoons, which caused each of his film frames to possess a precision and immediacy of intent. Yang's films are defined by their tight-knit connection to Taipei—all set contemporarily, save for one enormous exception—capturing its development and capacity for urban malaise slamming up against traditional values and customs with a constant baseline of essential, subdued melancholy. The social and economic classes of his characters varied, but the balance that Yang struck between observation and understanding made his films dynamic, ever-shifting explorations of an emerging, tumultuous nation. The best place to start - A One and a Two... (Yi Yi) At first glance, it might seem strange to suggest a director's final film as a point of entry. But A One and a Two... (2000) is no ordinary last testament, not least because of Yang's abrupt passing. A three-hour meditation on a Taipei family over the course of a year, it feels more like an archetypal middle-period film, one in which his directorial instincts embraced a certain accessibility while also finding ever deeper fountains of emotion. Though Yang had other projects in the works for the remaining seven years of his life, including an animated film starring Jackie Chan, A One and a Two... stands alone as his one truly humanist film, dealing with each of the three central family members—NJ, the father played by major Taiwan New Cinema screenwriter Wu Nien-jen; the precocious daughter Ting-ting (Kelly Lee); and the mischievous and curious son Yang-yang (Jonathan Chang)—with a profound yet subtle command of all the connections of the modern world, both in the relationships and infatuations that slowly develop or resurface over the course of the film and in more existential reckonings with the mysteries of life and death. Each character, including such memorable figures as NJ's fortune-obsessed brother-in-law and a wise Japanese game designer, carves out an ever-more complete portrait of a city at the turn of the millennium, culminating in a final scene whose plainness of expression yet ineffable yearning feels paradoxically fitting as its director's premature valediction. What to watch next Yang's other greatest work is his only period film: A Brighter Summer Day (1991). Few works earn the appellation "sprawling epic" as vividly as it does, a four-hour magnum opus set immediately after the Republic of China's relocation to the island of Taiwan, largely dealing with the conflict between two gangs of schoolboys. Featuring Chang Chen in his first role and his own father Chang Kuo-chu as a government worker under suspicion from the secret police, its ability to capture the roiling anguish of youth, the totemic force of objects, and a nation's emerging consciousness—the original Chinese title is considerably more blunt, clinical in its revelation of the film's final destination—is virtually without equal. Despite the prominence of these two monumental works, the majority of Yang's oeuvre is composed of ordinary-length feature films, no less incisive or impactful for their normal runtimes. His sense of form was set with his second film, Taipei Story (1985), which starred Hou Hsiao-hsien, the other greatest force in Taiwan New Cinema and whose own interests—chiefly period films, oftentimes outside of urban centers and forthrightly contemplative—were largely separate from Yang's. Here, he ably plays the part of a driftless man in a collapsing relationship with a successful businesswoman played by Yang's then-wife Tsai Chin. His next was The Terrorizers (1986), his most elliptical and clearly Antonioni-inspired. A network film set in motion by a police raid and a photograph, it turns Yang's penchant for occasional, abrupt violence into a structuring force, separate narratives all thrumming on the same, uneasy wavelength. Yang's international renown was first established by the two features between his two most beloved works, which also happen to be his wildest and most unabashedly modern. A Confucian Confusion (1994) is his only out-and-out comedy, a sometimes bitterly satirical take on the roundelay of relationships shaped and compromised by the then-booming Taiwanese economy. The performances are appropriately heightened, yet Yang wisely never loses track of the possibility for moments of pensive grace. Fittingly, his most loving film was preceded by his angriest: Mahjong (1996), an overtly cosmopolitan work involving various gangsters and a French woman played by Virginie Ledoyen. Yang's controlled aesthetic erupts into wild colors and tonal shifts, fascinating in its integration of Western actors on his terms and placing some of his most despairing and tender scenes side by side. Where not to start Yang didn't shy away from genre in his later films, but it can still be a bit bracing, even for his acolytes, to encounter his gorgeous debut feature That Day, on the Beach (1983). Despite its historical interest as both his and legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle's first film, it remains Yang's most under-heralded work, in no small part because of its status as a three-hour melodrama. Moving unexpectedly from present and past as a woman played by the great Sylvia Chang reckons with her friendships and romances, the film is hazier in its affect, and though it rarely aims for the florid emotions traditionally associated with the genre, its openness of intent is an outlier in his filmography and might prove challenging to a newcomer. However, just as with every single one of his films, its cumulative impact and clarity of insight are infinitely rewarding.

The Colors Within First Draft

Complete first draft for Variety.

Of all of the phrases that could begin a lighthearted animated film, the opening of an invocation popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous is surely among the least likely. But “The Colors Within,” which opens with the Serenity Prayer and its plea for God to grant “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” is no ordinary animated film. It is directed by Naoko Yamada, whose work in anime series (“K-On!”) and films (“A Silent Voice,” “Liz and the Blue Bird”) has established her as one of the medium's most distinctive current voices. Fitting snugly into her oeuvre's focus on youthful hopes and desires, the film follows a trio of teenagers as they form an ad hoc rock band, delving into their personal lives with a refreshingly low-key and compassionate touch. The Serenity Prayer in question is made by Totsuko (Sayu Suzukawa), a student at an all-girls Catholic high school in Japan. Since her youth, she has possessed a unique form of synesthesia where she frequently perceives people as emitting a certain color, visually conveyed by Yamada in a style resembling watercolor painting. One day, she notices the particularly vibrant blue of her classmate Kimi (Akari Takaishi), who suddenly drops out of school. When they reconnect at the used bookstore Kimi works at, they meet Rui (Taisei Kido), a young man interested in music whose vivid green hue causes Totsuko to impulsively form a band with her newfound companions. Even though Kimi is a self-professed beginner guitarist and Totsuko barely knows how to play piano, the trio regularly convene in an abandoned church on the island where Rui lives, having amassed an impressive collection of musical equipment to augment his impressive theremin playing. These practice sessions intermingle with family problems: Kimi has not yet told her grandmother that she has dropped out of school, while Rui's mother want him to continue in the family medical practice. In another film, even one by this director, these narrative beats would take up a considerable amount of oxygen. Yamada, who began as an animator for Kyoto Animation, might be best known stateside for her 2016 feature “A Silent Voice,“ which dealt with the story of a young man's attempts to reckon with and atone for his past as a bully with an abundance of anguish and emotional turmoil, spilling over into its ensemble cast of similarly tormented teenage misfits. Even 2018's “Liz and the Blue Bird,” her most beautiful film thus far, operated with a quiet intensity that informed the depth of feeling present within its central, ambiguous relationship/infatuation. “The Colors Within” is Yamada's first feature film for Science SARU, the anime studio known for the films of Masaaki Yuasa (“Inu-Oh,” “The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl”) and its contributions to “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.” While there are certain differences in animation style from Yamada's KyoAni days— softer edges, paler colors — perhaps the most significant difference comes in her general approach to tone and character. The tumult of her past work is replaced with something more sanguine, a tendency epitomized by the consistent use of Totsuko as the viewpoint character. Though it'd be inaccurate to say that she lacks development, her shifts in personality and self-understanding are much less external than those of her friends, and part of the balancing act of “The Colors Within” lies in its adherence to Totsuko's perspective even as the concerns of others takes center stage. This perhaps comes through most clearly in the film's surprisingly considerate treatment of religion, especially in a scholastic environment. The vast majority of Catholic school clichés are absent, and Totsuko is frequently counseled by Sister Hiyoshiko (Yui Aragaki), a sympathetic teacher whose presence highlights the generative, rather than stereotypically repressive, atmosphere of the school. Her own, peripheral quest for serenity mirrors that of Totsuko's, and by extension Kimi and Rui's, and though “The Colors Within” doesn't aim for the psychological depth of Yamada's past work — notably, the nature of Totsuko's fascination with/attraction to Kimi in particular recedes as the film goes along — its alignment with its characters' emotional currents is cemented by some of Yamada's flourishes: frequent close-ups that draw attention to the expressivity of the characters' bodies, a slightly bouncing "camera" that moves in and out of focus as if the image is pulsing with life, cutaways in the middle of a conversation to end a scene on an unexpected note. All of these little touches coalesce in an extraordinary, uninterrupted 10-minute concert, where “The Colors Within” makes clear that musical proficiency was never the main goal, especially Totsuko. While the three songs performed are catchy and moving in their own ways, and Kimi's lead vocals are especially heartfelt, more remarkable is the pure embodiment of each character's relationship to the music and to one another, a melding of spirits that still retain their individual temperaments. The film ends with an unexpected yet perfect acknowledgement of all of the emotions present in their interactions, registering as an open door with a bright future in plain sight.

Don Hertzfeldt

1. World of Tomorrow (2015)
2. It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
3. The Meaning of Life (2005)
4. Rejected (2000)
5. World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts (2017)
6. Wisdom Teeth (2010)
7. Lily and Jim (1997)
8. Billy's Balloon (1998)

1. World of Tomorrow (2015)
2. The Meaning of Life (2005)
3. Rejected (2000)
4. World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts (2017)
5. Wisdom Teeth (2010)
6. Lily and Jim (1997)
7. Billy's Balloon (1998)

John Smith

1. Being John Smith (2024)
2. Associations (1975)

1. Being John Smith (2024)
2. Associations (1975)