Screen’s critics have selected their top films of 2023, plus the best documentaries and standout performances.
Fionnuala Halligan
Screen’s executive editor, reviews and new talent
Top five
1. Anatomy Of A Fall (Justine Triet)
An extremely hard year to choose, but I’m a sucker for a procedural and Triet’s feminist interrogation manages to layer one into an astute and rousing examination of society’s attitudes to clever women — in this case, one who may also be a killer. Just like the good old days of noir but with a modern twist, and that showcase argument about shared marital responsibilities is a pièce de résistance. Sandra Hüller is fantastic, and Snoop the dog gives Lassie a run for his money.
Tim Grierson
Screen’s senior US critic, based in Los Angeles, has written for the publication since 2005
Top five
1. The Zone Of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Human beings are not monsters — it is what they do that makes them monstrous. Glazer’s shattering fourth feature strips away the clichés of the Holocaust drama, presenting a fascinating skeletal story of a soulless Nazi couple (the chillingly blank Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller) enjoying their privilege in the literal shadow of a concentration camp. The cameras stare impassively at this bourgeois pair, not so that we can empathise or understand, but so that we can take the full measure of their moral blindness — and perhaps our own. The Zone Of Interest’s glare never relents and never lets us look away or forget.
2. Past Lives (Celine Song)
3. Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
4. His Three Daughters (Azazel Jacobs)
5. Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell (Pham Thien An)
Wendy Ide
Ide joined Screen in 2015 as a UK-based critic, and is also the chief film critic for The Observer
Top five
1. The Zone Of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Glazer’s chilling, formally daring drama is exceptional for its rigorous composition, for the uncomfortable textures of its sound design, for Sandra Hüller’s remarkable performance as Hedwig Höss, a bustling, upwardly mobile Nazi wife, and for Mica Levi’s incredible, unnerving score. A work of uncompromising originality, The Zone Of Interest is an extraordinary achievement that reaffirms Glazer as one of the most consistently intriguing filmmakers working today.
2. How To Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker)
3. Totem (Lila Aviles)
4. Housekeeping For Beginners (Goran Stolevski)
5. Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Jonathan Romney
A longtime contributor to Screen, Romney also writes for Film Comment, Sight & Sound and The Observer, and teaches at the UK’s National Film and Television School
Top five
1. The Zone Of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Glazer’s audacious drama confronts the enduring ethical and dramatic questions of how to represent the Holocaust — or not represent it. The horrors of Auschwitz remain hidden behind a wall, but unsettlingly audible, in a depiction of the domestic life of Rudolf and Hedwig Höss, the camp commandant and his wife. An entirely fresh and challenging response to the theme of the ‘banality of evil’, the film makes us see Nazism in a new light, but also asks us to think about our time and our own capacity to accept the unacceptable.
2. Daaaaaali! (Quentin Dupieux)
3. The Delinquents (Rodrigo Moreno)
4. Music (Angela Schanelec)
5. Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World (Radu Jude)
- Click here for more of Jonathan’s top films of 2023, best documentaries, and performance of the year
Allan Hunter
Hunter has worked for Screen since 1990. He is based in Edinburgh and recently retired as co-director of Glasgow Film Festival
Top five
1. Killers Of The Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)
A majestic, flawlessly crafted history lesson from Scorsese in which he confronts the dark deeds that scar the soul of America. Working with some of his most trusted collaborators, he has created a careful balance between dramatic sweep and individual experience, expansive landscapes and claustrophobic interiors, crime and punishment. Lily Gladstone’s wise, gentle Mollie is the quiet heart of a film unflinching in how it calls out the greed and duplicity of white men who believe they should rule the world.
2. Past Lives (Celine Song)
3. Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)
4. Anatomy Of A Fall (Justine Triet)
5. The Holdovers (Alexander Payne)
Nikki Baughan
Screen’s deputy reviews editor
Top five
1. The Zone Of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Every one of Glazer’s creative decisions is a powerful reminder of things unseen yet impossible to ignore, from DoP Lukasz Zal’s meticulous framing to Mica Levi’s visceral score and the uneasy sound design. It is anchored by an incredible performance from Sandra Hüller as a woman whose desire to do the best for her family is recognisably human, but never detracts from the monstrous evil in which she is wilfully complicit.
2. Anatomy Of A Fall (Justine Triet)
3. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Anna Hints)
4. The Teachers’ Lounge (Ilker Catak)
5. When Evil Lurks (Demian Rugna)
Lee Marshall
Marshall joined Screen in 1996 as an Italy-based film critic. He also writes on travel, design and culture for a range of UK, US and Italian publications
Top five
1. The Zone Of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
There is a physiological phenomenon known as the ‘negative picture illusion’, whereby staring at a picture for a length of time burns a kind of reversal print on the retina. Glazer’s free adaptation of Martin Amis’s Auschwitz-set novel is a dramatic negative picture illusion of the Holocaust, perhaps the first work of art to take an utterly clear-eyed view of how humans could do that to other humans.
2. Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)
3. Past Lives (Celine Song)
4. The Taste Of Things (Tran Anh Hung)
5. Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
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