Rinus picks his Top 50 Films from the last Decade

5. Leave No Trace (2018, Debra Granik, USA) This third feature film of independent filmmaker Debra Granik is a thoroughly lovable piece of work. There is not a single step out of tune in this character-focused story. Its characters are completely believable and every...

10. Beanpole (2019, Kantamir Balagov, Russia) Beanpole by the young Russian director Kantemir Balagov (born 1991) is both beautiful and brutal. The film grants us a deep look into the wounds and traumas which war and violence cause in people. Beanpole is the account...

15. My Happy Family (2017, Nana Ekvitimishvili, Simon Gross, Ukraine) This Georgian film is an example of storytelling through film at its very best! Thoroughly engaging from beginning to end, it draws us into family issues and relationships that I am sure are not...

20. Mountains May Depart (2015, Zhangke Jia, China) Zhangke Jia is one of the world's great filmmakers. Every one of his films since 2000 has asked the question 'What is China's rapid economic expansion doing to people's relationships?' and his films tell us that it...

25. Frantz (2016, Francois Ozon, France) Francois Ozon is a prolific French film director who has delivered film after film since his feature film debut in 1997. Among them I regard Frantz as the best one so far.  Shot largely in black-and-white, Ozon recreates the...

30. Aquarius (2016, Kleber Mendonca Filho, Brazil)
During this decade the multiple awarded Brazilian writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho issued three films. Each one of them could easily have made it to this Top 50 list. In between Neighbouring Sounds from 2012 and Bacurau from 2019, we find my personal preference: the Cannes

35. Dick Johnson is Dead (2020, Kirsten Johnson, USA) Dick Johnson is Dead is a documentary film about the approaching end of the life of director Kirsten Johnson's father Dick. When her father started to suffer from Alzheimer's disease in 2017, she was determined to...

40. Ida (2013, Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland) This multiple awarded film continues to cast its spell on me regardless of how many times I see it. Who can resist this strong and complex drama, that opens so many issues at the same time? Filmed with such austerity that you...

45. Makala (2017, Emmanuel Gras, France) This documentary film, awarded at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, has stayed vividly alive in my mind as a profound metaphor of life. It is the story of a young family father, Kabwita, living in the Congolese countryside who...

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...