20. “My Father’s Shadow”
Akinola Davies Jr.’s award-winning drama follows two Nigerian boys, Remi (Chibuike Marvellous Egbo) and Akin (Godwin Egbo), as they spend a day with their father as a monumental presidential election festers in the background. Critic Carlos Aguilar wrote, “Remi’s promise, spoken like a prayer that he’ll see his father again in a realm beyond our tangible reality, coats ‘My Father’s Shadow’ with a spiritual yearning that feels sorrowful and personal. And what are films if not materialized visions from an artist’s mind, from memory, desire, and inquisitiveness? It’s through the alchemy of cinema that the Davies brothers have carried out a resurrection of a soul now frozen intact on the screen.” – GE [read our review]
19. “Pillion”
Harry Lighton’s celebrated feature debut is one of the most surprising movies of the year. This unconventional romantic drama finds Collin, a timid English traffic agent (Harry Melling), falling for a mysterious and intentionally domineering biker, Ray (Alexander Skarsgård). As the months pass, Collin’s excitement at finally having a “partner” turns to frustration as he realizes Ray may not be willing to give him the genuine affection he needs. As we wrote in our review from Cannes, “What this collection of bold artists has pulled off is a fascinating portrait of one man coming to terms with his own identity in a genuinely original way. What makes him happy? What makes him content? If the sexual situations make you personally uncomfortable, that’s understandable. It’s also unfortunate because you don’t find transformative stories like this in any medium very often. At least one you believe in.” – GE [read our review]
18. “Sorry, Baby”
A tender, human and yes, funny, film about surviving sexual assault trauma that refuses to turn pain into performance, this directorial debut is serious without being punishing—handled with grace, warmth, and the kind of humor that feels like proof of life. Eva Victor writes, directs, and stars as a reclusive college literature professor struggling with depression after an assault, and the movie’s real subject is time: being stuck in the past, unable to fully arrive in the present, then—almost by surprise—beginning to see a horizon where healing might exist. Victor plays this wounded soul with devastating specificity, letting trauma surface in sideways ways—avoidance, stillness, sudden panic—while the supporting cast forms a net of imperfect humanity: Naomi Ackie is radiant as the friend whose warmth never demands catharsis, just presence; Lucas Hedges and John Carroll Lynch register as people trying, failing, trying again. Framed with an intimacy that never feels invasive and scored by Lia Ouyang Rusli with a delicate ache, it’s a beautiful film that cements Victor as a filmmaker who understands cinema—and feels like they’ll be around for a long time. – RP [read our review]
17. “Splitsville”
A wildly, riotously funny comedy about open relationships that keeps sharpening into something nastier and truer, Michael Angelo Covino directs and co-writes with Kyle Marvin (the duo behind the hilarious “The Climb”) a farce about desire detonating friendships. When Ashley wants a divorce, Carey runs to friends Julie and Paul for comfort, discovers their marriage is “open,” and then crosses the line that turns the experiment into chaos. Dakota Johnson is devilishly good at the center—cool, sly, destabilizing—while Adria Arjona brings grounded bite, and Covino and Marvin weaponize their everyman “good guy” energy into a slow-motion implosion of ego and insecurity. Shot by Adam Newport-Berra with long takes, precise compositions, and framing that lands gags with sharp punctuation, the film proves these two are among the most visually ambitious comedy directors working, using camera placement and timing to make jokes sting harder. Scored by David Wingo and Dabney Morris, it escalates with giddy precision, but the laughs have teeth—the cost isn’t abstract, it’s the trust and friendships that don’t always survive if not handled with care. – RP [read our review]
16. “The Testament of Ann Lee”
A feverish, moody Shaker musical that treats faith like a wound and a weapon, Mona Fastvold’s historical drama (co-written with ‘Brutalist’ helmer Brady Corbet) finds rapture in the aftermath of catastrophe: an 18th-century religious leader rendered as a thrillingly modern incantation, trembling with trauma, purpose, and conviction. Amanda Seyfried is the magnetic core as Ann Lee, accepting her on her own terms and reaching rhapsodic highs that flirt with absurdity but soar anyway because the commitment is total—quivering passion turned into communal force, agony colliding with ecstasy until suffering becomes something transformed, strange, and newly beautiful. The true MVP might be the music: Daniel Blumberg’s haunting songs and score (rooted in Shaker hymns and original material) feel epic and unguarded, and Seyfried’s beastly singing voice turns the film into a spiritual event rather than a period pageant. Shot by William Rexer in memoric, Rembrandt-like images, it’s bold and tactile, a torn fabric of the heart never healed but rewoven into devotion. The supporting cast—Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Stacy Martin, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Abbott—circles like witnesses to a woman remaking pain into doctrine, and the movie’s daring is how much it admires the fable without sanding down its danger: faith as liberation, faith as obsession, faith as a kind of gorgeous delusion you can’t look away from. – RP [read our review]
