50. The Rider (2017, Chloé Zhao, USA)

This contemporary western, filmed by a director who was born and raised in China(!), gives us an intimate, absorbing story of a man who needs to get reconciled with another life and future than the one he himself, his family and friends had imagined for him. After a severe head injury, it becomes clear that the rodeo life and identity has come to an end for him. It stimulates us to think about sharp turns in life, when things that have given identity and purpose come to an end and it is time for a transition in life.

49. Summer 1993 (2017, Carla Simón, Spain)

This deeply gripping, intimate portrait of childhood is one of the more memorable child performances on film I know of. The 6 year old, newly orphaned Anna is taken into the home of her uncle and aunt who live in the countryside. It is about acclimatization into a new, unknown family and about how love possibly can overcome suspicion and fear.

48. Capernaum (2018, Nadine Labeki, Lebanon)

This captivating, third feature film of Nadine Labeki is a passionate call for social change. It is the story of the two child protaganists, the 12-year old Zain and the 2-year old Yonas, trying to survive in the poorest, dirtiest slum of Beirut. Zain has run away from an unloving, dysfunctional home and taken the 2-year old under his care. This social-realist drama is a statement on misery, poverty and inequality.

47. Tangerines (2013, dir. Zaza Urushadze, Georgia)

This film opened my eyes for Georgian filmmaking. It is about some Georgian farmers who get caught up in a civil war. They don’t want to abandon their bountiful tangerine harvest when the war starts to invade their tranquil world. Ivo is the old farmer who finds himself needing to give hospitality to wounded soldiers from both sides. Ivo becomes the in-between in this anti-war film that shows how ideologies and allegiances create distance, but diminish in importance when both become dependent on the selfless kindness of this third person Ivo.

46. Zama (2017, dir. Lucrecia Martel, Argentina)

Whenever Lucrecia Martel, one of the leading directors of Latin American cinema, issues a film, I am more than interested. And she doesn’t do that often! After her three feature films of the first decade of this century (The Swamp, The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman), I had to wait to 2017 for Zama, her only feature film of the second decade, Zama. Zama is a historic film about a Spanish officer, placed in Asuncion, who feels miserably isolated and wants to be transferred to Buenos Aires. Zama is a film about a man who is unhappy, waiting on release, in psychological decay. The inner struggles, attitudes and annoyance of Zama become the background of social and racial injustice, and lay bare the colonialism of Martel’s own country’s history. World cinema at its best!