Aseem Chhabra lists his favourite 2024 films that he watched at film festivals in Berlin, Cannes, Toronto and India.
It’s that time for the year to track its very best. These are personal choices, although the lists are curated from a life-long experience of seeing what works, with the audiences, other critics and in my case, how the films I select impacted me.
My one criteria for selecting the Top 10 international films is to think of works that surprised me.
They offered a unique cinematic language, ideas and visual experiences that are new and fresh.
A look at my Top 10 International Films, ranked.
10. Little Jaffna, France
Inspired by Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur, Little Jaffna is French-Tamil actor/film-maker Lawrence Valin’s ode to his community.
Valin plays Michael, a cop, assigned the job of infiltrating the Tamil Tigers in Paris. He is supposed to make friends with the group, win their confidence to learn how they raise money and fund the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
Little Jaffna is a stunning action thriller, one of the best South Asian Diaspora films in a long time.
It is packed with colourful street scenes in Paris’ Little Jaffna neighbourhood, the local festivals, parades and even a boisterous scene inside a movie theatre where Michael and his friends watch Vijay in Atlee’s Tamil film Theri.
9. Crossing, Turkey/Georgia
In Swedish Director Levan Akin’s film, a middle-aged Georgian retired schoolteacher searches the streets of Istanbul for her trans niece, who has been missing for a long time. She is joined in her efforts by a young man who she met in Georgia and claims to know where the niece is living.
Mzia Arabuli, a 70-year-old actress with a radiant but weathered face, is Lia, the schoolteacher, while Lucas Kankava plays her goofy accidental companion, Achi.
Crossing has heart-wrenching moments as Lia walks up and down the steps of run-down buildings in Istanbul, knocking on doors, asking random trans sex workers if they know her niece. But it is also a story about a rare connection between two random people, an older woman and a young man. They start off on a wrong footing but become close, caring, friends.
Crossing won the Teddy award, given to the top LGBTQ film at this year’s Berlinale.
8. Universal Language, Canada
If Wes Anderson and Aki Kaurismäki were to give birth to a film baby, it could be something in the form of Canadian film-maker Matthew Rankin’s absurdist film Universal Language.
Practically everyone in snowbound Winnipeg speaks Persian.
The film is a bizarre but a likable amalgamation of Iranian culture in cold Canadian Winterland.
With delightfully interwoven threads of narratives, like two women find frozen cash which they try to retrieve, a man travels a distance to meet his mother, a tour guide takes tourists to odd spots in Winnipeg, Universal Language becomes quirky and equally charming.
But it remains the most original film of the year.
Winner of the audience award in the Director’s Fortnight section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Universal Language is Canada’s official entry for the Best International Film Oscar.
7. The Substance, US/France
This year, the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes was awarded to the French film-maker Coralie Fargeat, writer and director of The Substance, definitely the most audacious and bold film of the year.
In The Substance, Fargeat explores show business and the world of television where women are supposed to look young and perfect. Any sign of aging and television executives will immediately replace the anchor. Or in this case, the star of an aerobics show.
Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a famous aerobics instructor. When Elisabeth is fired from the television station because of her age, she resorts to extreme measures to change her appearance.
She takes shots of a green substance that creates a chemical reaction in her body.
The result is Sue (played by Margaret Qualley, Andie MacDowell’s daughter), a younger version of Elisabeth, who emerges out of her body.
The violence of one person exiting another takes on an extreme form as Elisabeth and Sue (essentially one person) start to compete with each other.
The Substance goes beyond most horror films in its highly imaginative and terrifying moments. The result is a rare, not to be missed cinematic experience.
The Substance is streaming on MUBI.
6. My Favourite Cake, Iran
Inspired by conversations over a gossipy lunch with her single, widowed friends, a 70-year-woman Mahin (Lili Farhadpour) sets out to find an older male companion for herself. She meets up with a cab driver Faramarz (Esmaeel Mehrabi) and brings him home for one night. They drink wine, dance and she bakes him a cake.
None of this would seem odd, except My Favourite Cake is set in contemporary Iran where women without hijabs, drinking alcohol and mixing with the opposite sex for pleasure are considered taboo subjects that can result in criminal prosecution.
Directed by Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, it is a joyous celebration of life with fabulous performances. It is also a subversive tale focusing on loneliness of older people and the struggles of women in an oppressive theocratic state.
When the film premiered at the Berlinale, Iranian authorities forbade the two directors to leave the country. But since they had anticipated this reaction from the government, the film-makers managed to get the film out of the country in time for the world premiere.
5. How to Make Millions Before Gandma Dies, Thailand
Anyone who has cared for an ailing family member will connect to this sensitively made film about a teenager who steps in care for his terminally ill grandmother. His intentions are to inherit the old lady’s home before she wills it to one of her adult children. But over time, the two start to care for each other.
Director Pat Boonntipat’s debut film became a surprise hit in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. Audiences were seen tearing up during the film’s emotional moments.
But the film has its heart in the right place and Boonnipat creates a beautiful lived-in world of a cancer-stricken old lady who despite her condition wakes up early in the morning, and makes congee to sell at a street corner stall.
The star of the film is Usha Seamkhum, 78, who is a first-time actress. Her warm, yet street-wise and shrewd Amah will remind the viewers of their own grandmothers.
You can watch this film on Netflix.
4. Souleymane’s Story, France
In French Director Boris Lojkine’s film, Souleymane (Abou Sangare) is an undocumented immigrant from Guinea, living in Paris, delivering food to customers, whenever he gets the opportunity, while also preparing for his asylum application interview.
Souleymane lives stressful days and nights, as he survives riding bicycles through the streets of Paris, fighting the traffic, with the constant fear of getting caught by the police.
Winner of the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, Souleymane’s Story is a heart-wrenching, truthful account of a world where desperate migrants from Africa, the Middle East and even India manage to reach North America and Europe. Their daily struggles is a reminder of how privileged our lives are in comparison.
3. Babygirl, US/Netherlands
Inspired by the films of the Dutch film-maker Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall), Director Halina Reijn (Bodies, Bodies, Bodies) has created a gripping thriller for the 21st century.
Babygirl is the Basic Instinct(also directed by Verhoeven) of our times.
A high-powered CEO Romy (Nicole Kidman) is sexually dissatisfied in her marriage. Quite unexpectedly, she starts an intense relationship with a young intern in her office, Samuel, played by British actor Harris Dickenson (Beach Rats and the Cannes Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness).
Kidman has not been this sexy and vulnerable since she acted opposite her ex-husband Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut.
Here, she walks a dangerous line — a caring mother, wife and business executive, who loses control of her sense of what is right and wrong.
Towards the middle of Babygirl, Dickenson does a seductive shirtless dance twirling around Kidman, to the late singer George Michael’s song Father Figure. That dance itself is worth the price of the ticket for the film.
2. No Other Land, Israel/Palestine
A Palestinian teenager started to film the plight of the Palestinians living in a community of 20 villages on the mountains of West Bank. This documentation becomes the basis of Basel Adra’s documentary No Other Land.
He recounts his community’s daily struggle as Israeli soldiers demolish homes around him, and arrest protestors and activists.
Adra is joined by Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist who sympathises with the Palestinian cause.
No Other Land was made before the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza that has killed over 40,000 Palestinians. But it is a sharp reminder of how difficult life has been for the Palestinians in their own homeland for the last 70 plus years.
At one point in No Other Land, a journalist asks a Palestinian woman whose house has been demolished if she has any place to go to.
‘I have no other place,’ she says. ‘It’s our land. That’s why we suffer for it.’
1. Anora, US
Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora is a hilarious take on the life of a Brooklyn-based young sex worker Anora (played by a very likeable Mikey Madison) and her chance encounter in a strip club with Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the spoilt son of a Russian oligarch. The film is blast until the quietly devastating ending.
Anora‘s intense energy is propelled by the acting of it its lead characters and fluent camerawork by Drew Daniels.
The audience also discovers another brilliant Russian actor in a supporting role, Yura Borisov (Compartment No 6), with a calm stoic face, playing Igor, who is charged with taking care of Anora as he slowly falls in love with her.
Anora tops the indie films that Baker has been making for many years including Florida Project and the iPhone shot Tangerine, a drama about trans sex workers in Los Angeles.
Anora is a refreshing American film and may just win the Oscar for Best Picture.
