Despite, you know, the writer and actor strikes that effectively halted people making movies, 2023 will be looked back upon as a year of truly excellent cinema. Filmmakers like Jonathan Glazer returned after nearly a decade of silence. Greta Gerwig, one of the OG queens of off-beat New York cinema, managed to make history with Barbie’s stratospheric success. That was one of a few surprises: Wonka wound up being good; every superhero film seemed to flop; Studio Ghibli made history as the first Japanese animated film to debut at number one at the US box office.
If you’ve been busy, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. These are i-D’s 40 favourite films of the year. For context: the films chosen here have made the cut based on their release date for ticket-paying audiences – not festival releases. As a result, a handful of our favourites will be carried into 2024. Mark your calendars for that instalment, but in the meantime – enjoy!
40. Suzume
New anime legend Makoto Shinkai twists this story of a high schooler into a profound parable for the end times.Wonka
39. Bottoms
The team behind Shiva Baby revive the 90s high school comedy with a sapphic twist.
38. Reality
Sydney Sweeney turns out her best performance to date in this drama about the arrest of American whistleblower Reality Winner.
37. Wonka
The Timothée Chalamet-starring origin story about the famed chocolatier is charming and beautifully crafted.
36. The Holdovers
The Idol’s Da’vine Joy Randolph continues her 2023 streak of caring for rebellious teenagers with this snow-tipped and touching 70-set film.
35. Eileen
Ottessa Moshfegh’s depraved book about a lonely Massachusetts secretary got a movie adaptation starring Thomasin Mckenzie and Anne Hathaway working at full wattage.
34. Talk to Me
Horror finds its freaky new voices in the Philippou brothers, who direct this Australian possession film picked up by A24.
33. The Delinquents
A ruminative and perfectly written Argentinian comedy-slash-love story about a bank robber and his accomplice.
32. American Fiction
Succession consultant Cord Jefferson makes his directorial debut with this slick and eviscerating publishing satire.
31. A Thousand and One
Teyana Taylor proves she’s a multifaceted talent — and one of America’s best young actors — in this Sundance prize-winning drama about a mother taking back the son who she was estranged from in her youth.
30. Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese’s big, long film about betrayal, love and murder in the Osage community marks out Lily Gladstone as an immaculate screen star.
29. Occupied City
Steve McQueen’s prescient, behemoth (4.5 hour) documentary digs up the rubble of Amsterdam, telling the stories of its Jewish and traveller communities who were sent to concentration camps during the Nazi occupation.
28. Earth Mama
British filmmaker Savannah Leaf’s directorial debut tells the story of a young pregnant woman growing up in the Bay Area.
27. Barbie
Greta Gerwig’s risky take on the iconic Mattel doll wound up being the most successful film of 2023.
26. Skinamarink
Kyle Edward Ball’s experimental horror gnaws at the bones of all who see it; a haunted house film with a spectral, sinister twist.
25. Saltburn
Riotous, ridiculous and oh so depravedly sexy – Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi play besties in this 00s-set posh person thriller.
24. The Iron Claw
Unsuspecting audiences come for the fights and leave emotionally devastated by Sean Durkin’s tragic and beautiful cinematic ballad for the Von Erich wrestling family.
23. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
Produced by A24 and Barry Jenkins’ Pastel (Aftersun), Raven Jackson’s profound directorial debut charts the life of a Black woman in Mississippi.
22. Scrapper
Charlotte Regan’s social realist drama about a young girl mourning her mother and the hapless dad that comes back into her life won the Sundance U.S. Dramatic – Competition prize.
21. Asteroid City
A new colourful world from Wes Anderson, albeit imbued with the poignancy of life after grief — one of his very best.
20. Rye Lane
A film that could revive the classic British romcom; Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson play two Peckham locals who run into each other at exactly the right moment.
19. Memory
Jessica Chastain turns out her best performance in a decade in this drama about a care worker running into a man from her past who’s suffering from early onset dementia.
18. The Taste of Things
Food is the gorgeous love language spoken in this affectionate, gorgeous looking period drama about a cook and a gourmet whose relationship blooms in the heat of the kitchen.
17. Anatomy of a Fall
The Palme d’Or-winning whodunnit tearing up awards season.
16. Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos’ mad-hatter and inspired take on the Alasdair Gray novel, starring Emma Stone as a sex-obsessed, baby-brained Frankenstein woman. Sweeter than it sounds.
15. Evil Does Not Exist
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car follow-up is a quiet and complex story of holding onto tradition and routine in the face of gentrification.
14. Orlando, My Political Biography
A fascinating mix of fact and fiction, writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado tells the story of Virginia Woolf’s classic, using 26 trans and non-binary folk to play the titular character.
13. Rotting in the Sun
Sebastian Silva’s Mexico City-set movie about gay debauchery, performative panic and suicidal ideation, starring Jordan Firstman as a meta version of himself.
12. Oppenheimer
A wordy, yet exhilarating insight into man’s capability for evil.
11. Passages
The X-rated Parisian bisexual ménage à trois movie that sent audiences into a spin this summer, and introduced Franz Rogowski to his most adoring audience yet.
10. Past Lives
Celine Song’s masterfully formed romantic drama about a woman stuck between her past and present marks the arrival of a stunning new filmmaker.
9. Kokomo City
A documentary about Black trans sex workers in America, this Sundance award-winning film expertly captures the difficulties of what it’s like to exist in a society stacked against you, as well as the beauty of being who you were born to be.
8. Priscilla
Sofia Coppola’s knotted, stunning realisation of the life of Priscilla Presley is as quietly confident as its subject; an ornate visual work with a barbed and brilliant soul.
7. La Chimera
This masterpiece by Alice Rohrwacher about a British archaeologist in mourning, finding solace in a gang of Etruscan artefact robbers has a deep, if subtle, emotional message running through it – one that rises from the earth at its ending.
6. May December
Todd Haynes’ comedy-cum-psychodrama about an actor, a sex offender and the guileless soft boy stuck in between their influence is the year’s craziest Oscar contender.
5. How to Have Sex
Consent and the canniness of girlhood were common themes in this year’s movies. They coalesced perfectly in Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut, a blindingly accomplished first feature about a group of teenagers on holiday in Malia after finishing their exams.
4. The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki’s second swan song film (the guy just can’t retire!) saw him confront the might of his own legacy and the future of what he’s built, told from the perspective of a curious young boy coaxed into an alternate reality by a cunning heron. Boundlessly imaginative and brilliant.
3. The Zone of Interest
The mundanity of evil licks every frame of Jonathan Glazer’s devastating work of art. This, an adaptation of the Martin Amis novel of the same name, is a relationship drama about the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife, set almost entirely in the house positioned outside of the camp. You never cross the wall and almost never see violence, only its byproducts: bloodied boots, the clothes of those taken from their homes. But you hear it constantly: the hum of the incinerator running constantly in the background, punctuated by gunshots, screams, the barks of dogs and, on occasion, an insidious score by Mica Levi.
2. Di Humani Corporis Fabrica
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel’s documentaries have taken isolated (trawler fishermen in Leviathan) and grotesque (a real-life cannibal in Caniba) subjects and told us about their lives in strange, unsettling ways. In their latest non-fiction film, the subject to receive the same treatment is more pragmatic: the human body. Shot over several years in a Paris hospital, the film captures the myriad ways in which our bodies betray us, like the loss of memory or sight; the complex birth of a baby; brain injuries — and shows us how the ingenuity of science acts as a remedy. Not for the squeamish, the film transforms everything from caesarean births to keyhole surgery into stunning, confrontational art pieces. An abrasive and challenging work of documentary filmmaking – you may never see anything like it again.
1. All of Us Strangers
In a near-empty tower block in East London, a screenwriter named Adam reflects over images of his childhood home and the parents he lost in a tragic accident 30 years ago. When he returns out of curiosity, his mother and father — unchanged from the way they were before they died — greet him, happy he’s returned. Thus starts Andrew Haigh’s stunning cascade into the roots of our own grief; of the ephemeral nature of the people we cling to, and the conversations we never got to have. Based on a Japanese novel by Taichi Yamada, it feels like the culmination of Andrew Haigh’s 15 years in cinema, gently touching on the complex hallmarks of the films he’s made before. But it also, and the same could be said of his pristine acting ensemble – Andrew Scott, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell, Paul Mescal — feels like a beginning of a new chapter. This film is taut, ghostly and gorgeous, and a landmark work of queer cinema.