Top Films & Series 2024

İlker Çatak says he drew on things that happened at his own school for this psychological thriller, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature. It begins when a maths teacher leaves her laptop in the staffroom with the camera running, hoping to catch a thief. — Carla Nowak has just started teaching maths at the school and still believes she can reach thirteen-year-olds. When money goes missing and the staff decide to search the pupils’ wallets, she thinks it’s wrong and leaves her own laptop filming instead, hoping to catch the thief. What the recording shows her is something she can neither prove nor ignore. — Europa Cinemas Award - Panorama | Berlin Film Festival | 2023 C.I.C.A.E. Award - Panorama | Berlin Film Festival | 2023

Six years after announcing his retirement, Aki Kaurismäki came back with the fourth part of his trilogy and won the Jury Prize at Cannes. It’s a love story for people the world usually forgets: she can’t escape news of the war on the radio, he drinks on a building site, and they meet at karaoke. — Ansa stacks shelves in a supermarket in present-day Helsinki until she’s sacked over a sandwich past its sell-by date. Holappa works on a building site and drinks. They meet one night in a karaoke bar, but before they’ve had a chance to swap names, he’s lost her phone number. — Jury Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2023 FIPRESCI Prize | San Sebastian Film Festival | 2023

If you loved "Perfect Strangers", you'll love this cinematic surprise from Spain for its funny dialogue, snappy editing and perfectly tuned performances, but especially for the shocking twist in the final scene. Please do not reveal it. — Three married couples in therapy are invited by their therapist to a group session. They will gradually air their dirtiest secrets about childcare, jealousy and sex until it all comes to a very unexpected and equally shocking end. — Special Jury Prize | Malaga Film Festival | 2023 Nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Juan Carlos Vellido) | Goya Awards | 2024

One of the most beloved films of recent years, Joachim Trier's comic drama (with generous doses of romance, tragedy and existential despair) is awarded at Cannes for Renate Reinsve, makes it to the Oscars, and reflects on absolutely contemporary personal and social impasses. — Thirty-year-old Julie doesn't know what she wants out of life. And while her boyfriend wants to start a family, she suddenly falls in love with someone else. A chronicle of four years in the life of a young woman who is asked to explore the complicated paths of life and love while struggling for her career. All of which will make her understand herself better and bring her face to face with a more realistic view of who she really is. — Nomination for Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 2022 Nomination for Best International Film | Oscars | 2022 Best Actress (Renate Reinsve) | Cannes Film Festival | 2021 Nomination for Best Actress (Renate Reinsve) | BAFTA | 2022

A film about sexuality like we've never seen before. A liberating exploration of stereotypes and what holds us back, in a mature, touching, and funny romantic comedy filled with humor, sensitivity, and a lot of sex. Starring the great Emma Thompson, perhaps in the performance of her career. — Nancy Stokes is a retired educator craving some action and good sex. Although her husband, Robert, was a good companion, he was never a good lover. He is no longer in the picture, and Nancy seeks adventure with Leo Grande, a gigolo. Neither of them imagined they could communicate beyond their encounter, but Nancy thinks she likes it. And he feels the same way about her. — Nomination for Outstanding British Film | BAFTA | 2023 Nomination for Best Leading Actress (Emma Thompson) | BAFTA | 2023 Nomination for Best Leading Actor (Daryl McCormack) | BAFTA | 2023 Nomination for Best Leading Actress (Emma Thompson) | Golden Globes | 2023

Un Certain Regard award in Cannes for one of those rare directorial debuts that uncover a tremendous new talent. Molly Manning Walker observes without rambling, unearths terror amid words and delivers an astonishing study on consent in a completely contemporary manner. — Three young girls from England travel to Malia to experience the best summer of their lives. They want to live the all inclusive Dionysian experience of the Greek summer: alcohol, clubbing, meeting boys. It is, after all, something of a coming-of-age tradition. But something will happen on the last night, something that they themselves can't quite put their finger on at first. And it's enough to shatter every teenage dream. — Un Certain Regard Award | Cannes Film Festival | 2023 Golden Athena | Athens Film Festival | 2023

Who said April Fools' jokes don't lead to great collaborations? The beloved characters of "Kourafelkithra" comics come to life for the first time on our screens in a lively short film that was destined to be Cinobo's debut production. Now, that's a good idea, boss! — Annie is facing problems. Lately, inexplicable events have been complicating her life. Her personal life is collapsing, she's stuck professionally, and she feels desperate. Seeking refuge in Luther's bar, she confides in him, but no one seems to understand her. Meanwhile, a breaking news gives her the final blow. What is true and what isn't? Could it be that she's reading too many comic books after all?

After "The Square", Reuben Östlund again tackles class satire in a delightful black comedy that puts Marx, consumerism and... bodily fluids in a blender against the backdrop of the greek Chiliadou beach. — Carl and Yaya are influencer fashion models whose relationship is increasingly soured by money. Offered free places on a luxury cruise, they find themselves sharing a superyacht with arms dealers and an oligarch, while a cynical Marxist alcoholic captains the ship as things quickly turn upside-down. — Nomination for Best Film | Oscars | 2023 Nomination for Best Director | Oscars | 2023 Nomination for Best Screenplay | Oscars | 2023 Palme d'Or | Cannes Film Festival | 2022 Best European Film | European Film Awards | 2023

The greatest Oscar triumph of the last 15 years. A multiverse martial arts comedy that speaks to the present: Relentless, delightfully absurd, deeply emotional, full of humor, action, and imagination. With Oscar-worthy performances from the legendary Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Ke Huy Quan. — Evelyn, a marginalized Chinese-American, not only struggles to communicate with her father, husband, and daughter but also can't afford to pay her taxes. When she is given the opportunity to leap into alternate universes, she finds a chance to set things right and experience everything she never lived. However, she certainly didn't expect that she would be the one to save all of existence from a massive threat looming ahead. — Best Film | Oscars | 2023 Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 2023 Best Director | Oscars | 2023 Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Michelle Yeoh) | Oscars | 2023 Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Jamie Lee Curtis) | Oscars | 2023 Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Ke Huy Quan) | Oscars | 2023

James Gray freely adapts Dostoyevsky's White Nights to take place on the streets of New York and creates a complex and sensitive romantic drama, which was in the Official Competition at Cannes 2008 and is lead by Joaquin Phoenix's sensational performance. — A man returns to his childhood home in Brooklyn after a suicide attempt. As he recovers, a mysterious and beautiful neighbour with various problems and a tender girl, daughter of the man who will buy the family business, put him in deep emotional dilemmas about how he feels, what he wants and what he should do. — Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2008

If you believe that "every man for himself and the Spanish for crime thrillers", Oscar Aibar's reality-based film is made for you and reveals with mastery and suspense one of the darkest pages of recent Spanish history. — A young journalist interviews an elderly doctor in an attempt to get information about the fate of a police officer involved in a murky case of murder and political intrigue.

Harris Dickinson and Lola Campbell make an unconventional father and daughter in this Sundance winner, and they’ll win you over. Twelve-year-old Georgie lives alone, tells social services someone is looking after her and is sure she doesn’t need grown-ups, until her father appears at the door. — Georgie is twelve and lives completely alone in a house in London. Her mother has died, but the authorities don’t know it, because whenever they check, she produces an adult who’ll swear she’s being looked after. The arrangement works perfectly until somebody knocks at the door: the father she has never met. — Grand Jury Prize | Sundance Film Festival | 2023

Justine Triet had put a trial and a dog in one film before “Anatomy of a Fall”, only the first time it was a comedy. Victoria, a lawyer, has a friend accused of attacking his girlfriend, a sole witness with four legs and an ex who is blogging about the whole thing. — Victoria practises law in Paris and is bringing up her two daughters alone. When her friend Vincent goes on trial for trying to kill his girlfriend, with the victim’s dog as the only witness, she takes the case. That’s when the rest of her life starts to unravel. — Official Selection - Critics' Week | Cannes Film Festival | 2016 Nomination for Best Film | César Awards | 2017 Nomination for Best Actress (Virginie Effira) | César Awards | 2017

An anarchist creator condenses all the conflicts of the time from the Civil War to the regime change (Metapolitefsi), through an allegorical story in the form of a modern tragedy. Papatakis draws inspiration from a true incident somewhere in Spain, to talk about a wounded homeland. — During the Greek dictatorship, a young man flees for Paris, where he seeks help from a lonely, misanthropic distant relative who owns a fur processing workshop. He carries with him the photo of a singer whom he presents as his sister, creating a series of misunderstandings which drag him into a vicious circle of successive lies and fantasies. The furrier will fall in love with the girl in the photo. — Best Screenplay | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 1986 Hellenic Association of Film Critics Best Film Award | Thessaloniki Film Festival | 1986

Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) shot this on three film stocks, with Josh O’Connor (“Challengers”) as an Englishman in Italy who can sense where Etruscan tombs lie. That’s useful to people who live off buried treasure, but he isn’t in it for the money. Everyone has a chimera, and he’s chasing his. — In 1980s Italy, Arthur gets out of prison and goes straight back to the tombaroli, a gang of petty thieves who dig up Etruscan graves and sell whatever they find inside. He has the gift for finding the tombs, and they have the knack for emptying them. They want the money, while he’s looking for a love from his past. — Official Selection - International Competition | Cannes Film Festival | 2023 European Production Designer | European Film Awards | 2023

Maintaining his familiar style, but more delightful and poignant than ever, Yannis Economides takes us to a small town in Greece, when erotic passion intersects with greed for money, the corpses start piling up one by one. — A charming woman decides to leave her businessman husband for a nightclub owner and former folk singer. But she doesn't stop there as she takes a million euros with her. The husband misunderstands, and vows revenge. Meanwhile, the underworld of the night, in the small provincial town, goes into a frenzy around the illicit couple. And the icing on the cake: the dreadful mothers of the two brothers won't just sit back and do nothing.

After the worldwide success of 'Under the Tree,' Icelandic director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson makes his English-language directorial debut with the genre that established him, namely, the comedy that highlights the absurdity of human existence. — A diverse group of people with long-standing fears of airplanes is put to the test on a flight from London to Iceland. Will they manage to find a way to confront their fears and work together to spread their wings... and fly?

Sally Rooney’s novel became a pop-culture phenomenon on screen and made stars of Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones as Connell and Marianne, forever drawn together and pushed apart like magnets. One sentence could put things right between them, and neither can bring themselves to say it. — In a small town in the west of Ireland, Connell is the popular boy who plays football, while Marianne, in his year at school, has no friends and doesn’t seem to want any. When something sparks between them, they agree that nobody at school will ever know. The arrangement survives for years, through Dublin and through other relationships, and in all that time they never quite manage to say what it is.

It may have been described as sci-fi, but Russell T. Davis' gripping series describes with chilling accuracy our contemporary political landscape, from economic collapse to the rise of the populist far-right, predicting our bleak present as early as 2019. - As Britain slowly turns into a dictatorship throughout the years, the lives of a typical busy family from Manchester converge on one crucial night in 2019.

The team behind “Normal People” adapts Sally Rooney’s first novel, about Frances and Bobbi, who were a couple before they were best friends. When a well-known writer and her husband take an interest in both of them, one of the two goes on keeping what she really wants to herself. — Frances is in her twenties, studying in Dublin alongside Bobbi, who is both her best friend and her ex-girlfriend. In the evenings the two of them perform Frances’s poems at slam nights, and at one of them they meet Melissa, a writer, and her husband Nick, an actor. Soon the tension between Frances and Nick is impossible to miss.