Author: Seth Harris

Honorable Mentions: Longlegs, Cuckoo, Love Lies Bleeding, Sasquatch Sunset, Furiosa, In a Violent Nature, Ghostlight, Janet Planet, Rebel Ridge, Good One, The Apprentice, Problemista, The Boy and The Heron, Last Summer, Flow, and All of Us Strangers

His Three Daughters (directed by Azazel Jacobs)
Listen to our full review here

Three women (Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen) come together as their father is in the final days of hospice care. The audience is thrown into the middle of the situation, quickly figuring out that these sisters’ relationships are tenuous at best. Coon’s middle child swoops in and tries to take over the situation from eldest child, Lyonne. The youngest child, Olsen, is considered a flighty, flakey type but pushes back on her sister’s misconceptions about her. Azazel Jacobs has constructed a very human story about aging and family that never drowns in maudlin sentiment. This mix of empathy and reality is one of the best films I saw all year.

Here are the films that weren’t new in 2024, but they were new to me. Of all my first-time viewings this year, these movies stuck with me.

Mandabi (1968, directed by Ousmane Sembene)
Read my full review here

In 2024, I discovered the films of the late Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene. Most of Sembene’s work is focused on the colonial/post-colonial era. He looks at how even when the colonizer has been (mostly) physically removed, their specter remains in social and economic structures. That sounds very academic, but Sembene can make it easy to digest and genuinely hilarious in a film like Mandabi. A Senegalese man receives money from a nephew working in Paris. He’s meant to disperse this money in a specific way to particular people, but once news of the money gets around the community, everyone starts showing up to call in debt or plead their case. If you want an introduction to West African cinema, I think Mandabi is a great jumping-off point and had me cracking up many times.