Nothing About Us Without Us:A Radical Guide to the Best Films of 2020
Crushed between COVID and the increasing dominance of streaming companies, the future of film festivals, movie theaters, and independent distribution is in danger. Filmmakers making challenging work are facing new obstacles in a profit-driven business that has rarely been hospitable to independent voices. But, despite all the obstacles, this was a year of powerful films challenging patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, and imperialism. Below are some films to watch and inspire us as we fight for a better world.
Feminist filmmakers made many of the best films this year, including three films where the main character has an abortion without regrets — an act common in the world, but rare in the entire history of film and TV (two of those films made my top ten). Rage against patriarchy is the subject in Promising Young Woman, directed by Emerald Fennell (an actor who was also a writer on the TV show Killing Eve). The film is a dark feminist satire about revenge for sexual assault and rape culture. Australian director Kitty Green’s The Assistant follows the life of a woman working for a Harvey Weinstein-type boss, who is never seen onscreen — the quietly moving film shows the many levels of institutional complicity that enables someone like Weinstein. Horror director Leigh Whannell (a writer of the Saw films) re-imagined The Invisible Man as a story of an abusive ex-husband.
In Miss Americana, Taylor Swift says, “I’m trying to be as educated as possible on how to deprogram the misogyny in my own brain,” and this film stands as a statement on her journey in confronting the patriarchal expectations she grew up with. The first sign of Swift’s intentions in this film are with the director she chose, Lana Wilson, who previously co-directed the pro-choice documentary After Tiller. Along her journey, we also learn that Swift has an adorable cat, ate her first burrito at the age of 26, and has a budding passion for women’s rights and LGBT rights.
The weight of patriarchy is also felt heavily in Channing Godfrey Peoples’ Miss Juneteenth. The film follows a mother pressuring her daughter to enter a beauty pageant in small town Texas. Grief, parenthood, and disability are the themes of Stephanie Turner’s moving Justine, released by Ava DuVernay’s Array, which follows a widowed, single mother who takes a job as caretaker to a young girl with spina bifida. Array (which also released several films on my list last year) also released Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca. One of very few trans woman of color able to break through and direct a feature film, Sandoval also wrote and starred in the drama, which focuses on the struggles of an undocumented immigrant living in New York City. Merawi Gerima’s Residue, also released by Array this year, explores gentrification and displacement in Washington DC through the eyes of a Black resident coming home. For anyone who just thinks of DC as downtown and the capital, this local view is heartbreaking and eye opening.
Even with the rise of streaming, international cinema can be hard to see in the US. One film that broke through was Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ Bacurau, a modern anticolonialist western set in a remote Brazilian village. Mexican filmmaker Fernando Frías de la Parra’s I’m No Longer Here simultaneously brings the viewer into a unique youth culture of cumbia music and dancing in Monterrey, Mexico, and also challenges the typical narrative around immigration into the US. The very bloody sci-fi thriller Possessor, directed by Canadian filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg (the son of filmmaker David Cronenberg, who has made some of the best horror and techno-terror of the last forty years), is everything Hollywood director Christopher Nolan wanted his film Tenet wanted to be — an original, thrilling, wild ride of a movie. But while Tenet (one of the few Hollywood films released in theaters this year) was weighted down by pretension and deliberately confusing sound design, Possessor expertly skates between the genres of thriller, horror, and science fiction.
Several films this year experimented with form and content in innovative ways. I’m thinking of Ending Things is the third feature directed by Charlie Kaufman, known for writing some of the most original films of the last few decades, including Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Based on a novel by Iain Reid, I’m thinking of Ending Things is a funny and surreal puzzle of a film. I don’t want to say more, because unwrapping its mysteries is part of its charm. Kajillionaire is the first feature from Miranda July in nine years, but she’s kept busy with various strange projects along the way. If you’ve seen other films by July you may have already formed an opinion on her quirky output. Her latest is a funny and moving story of a child growing up in a family of grifters. The strangest film I saw this year is Bayley Sweitzer and Adam Khalil’s Empty Metal, where Black Lives Matter and telepathy put a punk band on a mission of racial justice and revenge. It’s hard to describe without getting into obscure references, like Liquid Sky meets Green Room.
If you’re seeking lighter pleasures: Osmany Rodriguez’ Vampires vs. the Bronx is a simple but charming horror-comedy that uses vampires in an extended metaphor about gentrification. Max Barbakow’s comedy Palm Springs, starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, is not particularly original, challenging, or political, but it was the funniest, and one of the more romantic, films to come out in a year in which we all needed diversions. Eugene Ashe’s Sylvie’s Love is a fairly retro romance set in the 50’s and 60’s, with a charming performance by Tessa Thompson at its center — but its simplicity is part of its charm and relevance. Adam Rehmeier’ Dinner in America feels like a punk cult classic that came out in 1986, like Repo Man.
Among the important documentaries this year, Sam Feder’s Disclosure is a crucial and thorough expose of Hollywood’s long history of transphobia, and a challenge for media makers to do better. Garrett Bradley’s Time tells the life story of formerly incarcerated New Orleans activists Fox and Rob Rich, using (mostly) their own words and video, building to a moving and ethereal ending.
Early in 2020, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association restored and re-released two important radical documentaries from 1972. Filmed at the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, William Greaves’ Nationtime Gary is a snapshot of the radical dialogue of that political moment. Francine Parker’s F.T.A. (An acronym with various meanings, including Fuck The Army) documents a tour that Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and other Hollywood radicals headlined, going on (or nearby to) military bases in the US and Asia, in an attempt to organize soldiers against the war.
The 2020 Top 14 Films for Radicals
14) Mank — David Fincher is one of Hollywood’s most celebrated and mainstream filmmakers, but in films like Fight Club he has also created subversive work that challenges corporate power and masculinity. His newest film is a celebration and critique of old Hollywood (made to look and sound like it was filmed in the 40s), and also a class-conscious and very relevant attack on a media industry creating right wing propaganda — focusing on socialist Upton Sinclair’s campaign for governor of California and the role Hollywood played in crushing his campaign and lifting up his conservative opponent.
13) Minari — Lee Isaac Chung’s deeply moving autobiographical story of an immigrant Korean family in rural Arkansas, beautifully filmed by Lachlan Milne, and excellent performances by the entire cast, including the child actors (Side note: Steven Yeun has had an amazing and fascinating career since he left The Walking Dead — and he is excellent here).
12) Saint Frances — Director Alex Thompson and writer and star Kelly O’Sullivan have created a feminist comedy that is unafraid to dive head first into topics most films avoid, from abortion to postpartum depression to many discussions of period blood. Saint Frances is funny, charming, surprising and manages to be radical just by showing everyday aspects of life that most films avoid.
11) Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom — August Wilson’s play about (among other things), surviving as a Black artist in a white supremacist culture, was powerfully adapted by acclaimed theater director and playwright George C. Wolfe, with deeply moving performances by a dream cast, including Colman Domingo, Viola Davis, and Chadwick Boseman in his final role.
10) Sound of Metal — The story of a punk drummer who rapidly goes deaf and needs to decide what that means for his life, every aspect of this film brings the viewer into the perspective of the main character — played by Riz Ahmed in a perfect performance — with innovative use of sound design and naturalistic performances. Filmmaker Darius Marder has said this is not a film about a disability, but about deaf culture, and that empathy — and difference with how deafness is usually shown by Hollywood — shows clearly.
9) Forty Year Old Version — Writer/director/star Radha Blank’s refreshing and delightful debut feature is a semi-autobiographical comedy about a playwright dealing with hitting 40, working with racist and creepy theater producers, facing insecurities in her love life, and feeling she hasn’t lived up to her promise and talent.
8) Shiva Baby — A perfect debut from filmmaker Emma Seligman. An incredible how-to on creating a film with a low budget, limited (and mostly unknown) cast, mostly one location, and making it feel cinematic. With her wise and hilarious script, and excellent use of music and lenses, Seligman uses every tool at her disposal to bring out the drama in small moments.
7) Sorry We Missed You — Although made before the pandemic, socialist filmmaker Ken Loach’s drama about a family trying to survive in the gig economy (the dad works for a company clearly meant to be Amazon) perfectly dramatizes the ways working people are being crushed in the era of Jeff Bezos (whose fortune has dramatically increased during COVID). Loach has made two dozen films about working class struggles, and continues to tap into the ways capitalism is fundamentally unfair and violent.
6) The White Tiger — Capitalism, democracy, and criminal justice are all rigged in Ramin Bahrani’s The White Tiger. This is a film about class struggle, and caste struggle, that makes it clear that hard work or playing by the rules are meaningless in this system. An important, angry, passionate, cynical, and spectacular film, a mood perfectly captured by the soundtrack, from the opening beats of Beware Of the Boys (Panjabi MC as remixed by Jay Z) to the end credits crawl over Jungle Mantra (by Divine, Vince Staples and Pusha T).
5) Wasp Network — French filmmaker Olivier Assayas is not always political, but his films Carlos (about the armed revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez aka Carlos the Jackal) and Something in the Air (about French student anarchists among the uprisings of May, 1968) are essential viewing. His latest film is based on a true story of an aspect of the US war on Cuba that is mostly unknown in this country, even among many activists.
4) Nomadland — Filmmaker Chloé Zhao directs a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors playing versions of themselves, with professional actors Frances McDormand and David Strathairn fitting right in among a moving naturalistic and empathetic story of life among a community of near-homeless people living out of vans and other vehicles while doing mostly seasonal work in an economy that has left them behind.
3) Crip Camp — An undertold story of the disability rights movement in the 70s, directed by James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham, this film lets disabled organizers tell their own stories of resistance and victory. Beginning with a camp for disabled young people (which co-filmmaker Lebrecht attended), Crip Camp moves through sit-ins and protests to laying the groundwork for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
2) Never Rarely Sometimes Always — I saw Eliza Hittman’s third feature in January of 2020 — which feels like a lifetime ago — and it still haunts me. Featuring emotionally perfect performances from a mostly young and inexperienced cast, the film takes you into the struggle of a teenager (with the help of her cousin) seeking an abortion in the maze of restrictions (steadily getting worse) we are living under. The film is personal and political in the best possible ways.
1) Small Axe — The best film of 2020 is actually five films. Steve McQueen, director of the films 12 Years a Slave, Shame, Hunger and Widows, has created an unprecedented accomplishment with Small Axe. In the fall of 2020, McQueen released five feature films, any one of which would top my list of best films of the year. All the stories focus on West Indian communities in England from the 60s to the 80s — most of them based on true stories. Common threads link the movies, from C.L.R. James (who appears as a character in the first film and an influence in the 4th film), to music and visual motifs, to struggles against structural racism and police violence. In the first film, Mangrove, a restaurant owner and young militants are pulled together into activism against police harassment (the film also features a central trial much more real and inspiring than the Aaron Sorkin travesty of liberalism The Trial of the Chicago 7, which also came out this year and is best avoided).
The second film, Lovers Rock, captures the energy and magic of a beautiful house party, finding Black joy against the shadow of repression. Red, White and Blue, the weakest of the group, focuses on a (mostly futile) attempt by a Black officer to challenge racism within the London police department. Alex Wheatle tells the true story of a young man’s journey from foster homes to prison to a career as a novelist. And Education shows parents and community organizers fighting against schools that are pushing Black children into “special schools” for learning disabled where no learning or care takes place.
The films have been released as a group under the name Small Axe (from the Jamaican proverb), and each film highlights organizing and leadership by those most affected, whether they are prisoners, victims of police violence, or parents and children facing education apartheid — there is not a white savior to be found in any of these stories. Seen individually or together, they represent an output that would be incredible for one filmmaker to release in a span of ten years — to have them all come out in one year establishes McQueen as one of the greatest filmmakers of our era.
For the best revolutionary films from previous years, see my lists for 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and earlier. Also, see this list of the best revolutionary films of all time, or see all of my articles on Medium here.
