Films to Watch While Fighting to End Colonialism
A Revolutionary List of the Best Films of 2023
For the best revolutionary films from previous years, see my lists for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and earlier. Also, check out my list of the best revolutionary films of all time. You can also follow my film reviews through the year on Letterboxd.
In 2023, the most important filmed images came from Palestine. The most important filmmakers were the more than 83 journalists killed in Gaza in the last three months. No film release last year can compare with that urgency.
However, amidst the toy marketing that has become Hollywood’s main focus, many films this year subverted dominant narratives and did what film has always done best — build empathy for those whose stories are often left out of the official histories. If we want to change the world, we need to change the stories that are told, and who tells them. Below are the best films this year, from the perspective of challenging power.
This is an anti-colonial film list. That doesn’t mean every film meets the same political criteria, or even has a political focus. It does mean that I look for voices that Hollywood has silenced, and stories that have been ignored. I try to keep the reviews short, and avoid spoilers — because I get joy from seeing a film without knowing too much about it in advance.
There were a lot of great films this year. Below are the films that almost made my list, and below that are my top twenty of the year.
British filmmaker Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper is a sweet drama about working class struggle, focusing on a young girl living alone. Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn takes class struggle to the homes of the very rich. Directed by Belgian-Congolese rapper Baloji, Omen (Augure) is a fascinating and wide-ranging view of culture clash, tradition, magic, and family. R.M.N., from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu (who directed the 2007 abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) takes on the anti-migrant racism gripping Europe. AV Rockwell’s A Thousand and One explores the struggles of a single mother in New York. Nathan Tape’s Off Ramp is also about class — and evil cops — with a beautifully filmed story set among the Juggalos.
German filmmaker Ilker Çatak’s The Teacher’s Lounge explores themes of bureaucracy, racism, and criminalization that will be familiar to teachers everywhere. Celine Song’s Past Lives is a heartbreaking story about unfulfilled love. Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s drama Mutt is a day in the life of a young trans man in NYC. Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction is about how the publishing industry and Hollywood gets everything wrong, but also about how people inherit trauma. Colman Domingo is excellent in George C. Wolfe’s Rustin. Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyia’s Nyad may not be as true a story as they’d like you to think, but is worth seeing if you enjoy a story of quirky lesbians in their 60s.
Adele Lim’s Joy Ride is a delirious look at what an R rated comedy can be. Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’ Theater Camp is a sweet funny mockumentary love letter to all the theater nerds in the world.
Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike’s Last Dance explores the power of desire, and of outrageously sculpted bodies in beautifully choreographed motion. Ira Sach’s Passages is a sexy addition to the genre of films about dating people who are a mess. British filmmaker Raine Allen Miller’s Rye Lane is a cute film about an extended meet-cute and first date.
Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid is a crazy surreal delirious nightmare of a film that earns its three hour runtime through indelible haunting scenes. Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is beautiful, poetic, nearly silent tale of a life in Mississippi. I don’t know if any other film has looked like this, or felt like it. Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario (produced by Ari Aster) is a wild ride. If you like crazy Nicholas Cage movies (a genre all its own), you’ll like this.
Nailah Jefferson’s documentary Commuted is a powerful and important contribution to the cinema of abolition. Noah Collier and Emily Mackenzie’s documentary Carpet Cowboys is so much beyond what you ever expected from the world of carpets.
Danny & Michael Philippou’s Talk to Me is a scary and original horror movie.
And now the 21 best films of the year:
21) Polite Society is Crazy Rich Asians meets Scott Pilgrim, with a bit of Get Out. Director Nida Manzoor’s recent tv show, We Are Lady Parts, was a fresh and smart and moving story of a group of young Muslim women starting a punk band. This film solidifies that she is an original and unique talent. I can’t wait for what she does next.
20) Unrestricted soulless capitalism is the villain, cops are evil and squatters fight back in Kibwe Tavares and actor Daniel Kaluuya’s The Kitchen, which feels like City of God in a dystopian future.
19) Director Sam Green (in close collaboration with musician JD Samson) created an experimental exploration of what sound is, what it means, what it represents. 32 Sounds was shown mostly in bespoke screenings, with headphones given to everyone in the audience, and it reminded me of the magic of what film can be.
18) Native filmmaker Billy Luther’s Frybread Face and Me is a sweet coming of age story, released by Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing and executive produced by Taika Waititi.
17) Manohla Dargis wrote in her review of May December “There are instances when it seems as if you’re watching two overlaid movies: the original and its critique.” To me, this is a good description of director Todd Haynes’ entire career. You can tell he was a cinema studies student, with one foot in queer theory as he makes his films. This film reminds me of Safe, another film by Haynes that both performs and subverts a movie of the week subject.
16) It’s a cliche of many independent films to focus on some rarely seen subculture. Kelly Reichardt stands apart from those indie cliches, bringing new levels of care and empathy. Her latest, Showing Up, is a portrait of life in a hippy-ish arts college that is beautifully felt in every detail.
15) Director Andrew Haigh beautifully explores longing and loss and queer desire. His new film All of Us Strangers is a continuation of the mood and emotions he explored in his 2011 classic Weekend.
14) When Gareth Edwards’ The Creator was released, there was a lot of talk about the foresight in having AI as a major plot point. However, looking back, the real foresight was in having it be an anti-colonial science fiction parable released just before the Israeli war on Palestinians. The film is a mashup of Terminator, Children of Men, Blade Runner, and lots more. The lack of originality earned the film some criticism. But if you’re going to steal from previous films, those are great ones to choose.
13) Zackary Drucker and Kristen Parker Lovell’s The Stroll is one of two major documentaries this year about Black trans women sex workers, made by trans filmmakers. The Stroll focuses on the area of meatpacking district where Black trans sex workers worked for decades, along the way telling a story of activism, sisterhood, and gentrification, with footage I haven’t seen of Sylvia Rivera & Marsha P. Johnson, as well as interviews with current community leaders like Ceyenne Doroshow.
12) Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun is a wild, cynical, funny, sexy, morbid, absurd, ambitious queer satire about sex (lots of sex), class, suicidal ideation, and ketamine.
11) Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is a vampire in Pablo Larraín’s El Conde. Does that make it a horror movie or just a statement of fact?
10) Trauma, consent, and silence are the themes of Molly Manning Walker’s harrowing How to Have Sex, a beautifully directed and acted story of British teenagers on a Spring Break.
9) Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Martins’ Mars One explores the struggles of a working class family, from sexuality to class struggle to alcoholism and the pressures of family expectations. Ava Duvernay’s Array Films also distributed this film, bringing it some of the wider exposure it deserves.
8) The rich are horrifying and brutal in Infinity Pool, Brandon Cronenberg’s latest violent science fiction horror thriller nightmare. Karim Hussain’s cinematography creates a psychedelic orgy — both literally and metaphorically — and Mia Goth is the villain of the year.
7) I recently heard a talk by Mariame Kaba where she said an alternate title for her recent book could be, “we live in a fucking society.” I thought about that phrase while watching Leave the World Behind. Under the guise of a disaster movie, director Sam Esmail has made a film about collective responsibility, how we are disconnected from each other, and the ways we don’t realize how much we actually need each other. The advertising industry (where one of the main characters works) spends billions of dollars telling us we need products, not each other. This is a film that challenges capitalist individualism (although in a way that was confusing for many viewers).
6) D. Smith’s Kokomo City changed what I imagine a documentary can be. It is the most beautifully shot documentary I’ve ever seen, showing the beauty and power of the films’ subjects — Black trans women sex workers.
5) Emma Seligman’s Bottoms is over the top humor, rooted in well-thought out characters and deeply queer. I hope this is the future of Hollywood comedy.
4) Monica Sorelle’s Mountains, a drama set amidst gentrification and displacement in Miami’s little Haiti, is an incredible accomplishment. It’s personal, political, smart, and emotional. It’s rooted in a specific community, but universal in its emotions and experience.
3) I am grateful to director Daniel Goldhaber for How to Blow up a Pipeline, a film about activists that doesn’t make cops or corporations or FBI informants the heroes. This is filmmaking that is accountable to movements, and to hope and radical change.
2) What does it mean to be an anti-colonial artist? Cory Finley’s Landscape with Invisible Hand explores life under colonial occupation in perhaps the only way many people in the US can understand — through a story of alien invasion. The result is funny and smart and more relevant every day.
1) Watching Poor Things, I felt a joy and excitement that this is what is possible from film. Yorgos Lanthimos has created a visionary spectacle that is also revealing about the lives we live. This is a bitter and effective satire on patriarchy and a celebration of women’s resistance.
