25 - Grand Theft Hamlet (Pinny Grylls, Sam Crane)
Many people must have slipped into virtual worlds during the
long days of lockdown, but few would have done so as productively as out-of-work
actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen. Spending their days driving around in
Grand Theft Auto Online, the pair happened upon a theatre in the game, and
began toying with the idea of staging Hamlet within it. Their initial attempts
are funny to watch – it’s hard to perform a soliloquy when random strangers
keep shooting at you – but slowly the idea takes hold, especially for Mark, who
is finding the loneliness of lockdown harder to deal with than Sam. While Grand
Theft Hamlet is consistently very amusing, often thanks to the incongruity
of these bizarre-looking avatars reciting Shakespeare’s text, it eventually becomes
something inspiring and truly involving, as a small group of GTA players band
together to try and make this unlikely feat happen. You find yourself really rooting for them
to make it work as they figure out the right place to stage each scene and try
to get through it without being ‘wasted’ in some fashion or another – as they
say in the theatre world, the show must go on, even if your lead actor has
fallen off a blimp.
24 - Memories of a Burning Body (Antonella Sudasassi Furniss)
To make Memories of a Burning Body, Antonella Sudasassi
Furniss sat down with three women in their 60s and 70s and spoke to them about their
relationship to sex and sexuality, which was a taboo subject for most of their
lives. She has compiled their testimonies into a single composite character,
who we see as an elderly woman, a young woman and a girl, with Furniss slipping
back and forth between different incarnations of this character as more
memories are revealed. The time-shifts are handled with real elegance and flair,
with the present often slipping into the past within the same set and with a single
movement of the camera, and the original testimonies from the director’s
interviewees, which we hear on the soundtrack, are frank and engaging. What
emerges from this film is a portrait of womanhood that stretches far beyond the
experiences of these three women; a portrait of frustrated desire, pain and
loneliness, trapped in a patriarchal society when a woman is expected to be a
wife and mother only. It’s a beautiful, touching and wonderfully imaginative film.
23 – Rumours (Guy
Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson)
It’s a Guy Maddin film, but not as we know it. Having spent
decades recreating archaic cinema with a deliriously inventive energy and an
offbeat sense of humour, it’s a shock to sit down in front of Rumours and see a
film that just looks…normal? Thankfully, Maddin and his co-creators Evan and
Galen Johnson have approached their political satire with the same weird
sensibility that had defined films like The Forbidden Room and Stump the
Guesser. As the G7 get lost in the woods at their annual summit and attempt to
collectively draft a statement on an unspecified global crisis, they encounter
zombified bog bodies who can’t stop masturbating, a giant brain the size of a hatchback, and an AI
chatbot designed to ensnare paedophiles. Rumours gets increasingly silly but
everyone involved plays it admirably straight, with the film being stolen by Denis
Ménochet as the French President, who is obsessed with sundials, and Roy Dupuis
as the hilariously strapping and square-jawed Canadian Prime Minister, who has
both the German and British female leaders fanning themselves. Rumours is
slipshod as satire and doesn’t hit the frenzied heights of Maddin’s earlier
work, but it's on this list quite simply because it made me laugh loudly for two solid hours.
22 - Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)
When the time comes to make lists of the year’s finest
cinematic achievements, don’t overlook small films like these. This adaptation
of Claire Keegan’s novel is a film that consists of quiet moments and tiny
gestures, but they add up to something extremely powerful. It’s a portrait of
Ireland in the 1980s, when the Catholic Church was all-powerful and
touched almost every aspect of the people’s lives, and when unmarried women who had
fallen pregnant had a very bleak future. The protagonist is Bill (Cillian
Murphy), a coalman who is troubled by his conscience when he gets a glimpse
into the mistreatment of one of these girls, but can Bill really stand up to an
institution as formidable as the Church? His own girls’ education could be
affected, with the school falling under the Church’s purview too, and the
pressure to remain silent and avoid rocking the boat is immense. Cillian Murphy’s
performance here is every bit as great as the one he gave in Oppenheimer last
year; his eyes radiate quiet pain and empathy, and he makes every gesture
count. In this context, a small act of kindness, such as one we see towards the end
of the film, carries astonishing force.
21 - Red Rooms (Pascal Plante)
The most chilling performance of the year is given by Juliette
Gariépy in Red Rooms. She plays a fashion model who has become fixated on a high-profile
trial involving a man who raped and killed schoolgirls and broadcast his
actions in online chatrooms. As Kelly-Anne, Gariépy conveys an icy
disconnectedness; she seems to have lost all sense of empathy and has become
completely desensitised to violence, with the lure of the forbidden promised by
the dark web becoming increasingly hard to resist. Pascal Plante brings a
similarly dispassionate approach to his direction, and the film does effectively get under the
skin. I’m not entirely sure if it is a wholly successful film or not, but there’s
no question that it is one of the films I have thought about most frequently since I saw it.
What as the internet done to our minds? What effect does the repackaging of
true crime as entertainment have on the way we relate to victims? I couldn’t
help thinking about Red Rooms when I read about the shocking Gisèle Pelicot
trial in France recently. This is the world we have created, and it’s horrifying.
20 - The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)
I wasn’t sure where The Brutalist would land on my list, but
I knew it had to figure somewhere. It was simply too big (or “monumental,” as
per the trailer) to ignore. In the film’s first half I was convinced that this
was the film of the year. I was totally transfixed by the story Corbet was
telling and by his bold, sweeping direction, not to mention the exceptional
work from Adrien Brody, Allessandro Nivola and – best in show – Guy Pearce.
After the interval, The Brutalist started to lose me and I ended up feeling
disappointingly distant from it, but there were still astonishing moments peppered
throughout this second act, and for a film with such a hefty running time, it’s
never boring. The Brutalist is undoubtedly a considerable achievement. It looks
incredible, the performances are mostly exceptional, and it has a sense of
ambition that dwarfs every other film released this year. That wild ambition has
been a hallmark of Brady Corbet’s filmmaking career to date, and in all cases I
have admired his films rather than loved them, but The Brutalist is the closest
his grasp has come to matching his reach, and I am looking forward to watching
it again when that 70mm print returns to London in January.
19 - Dahomey (Mati Diop)
Dahomey is a documentary about the return of artefacts
looted from the Kingdom of Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin) to their rightful
home, and Diop approaches this subject matter in a variety of ways. Part of the
film is an observational portrait of these statues getting carefully packed up
and prepared for shipping, before being unveiled in an exhibition attended by
many Beninese diginitaries, but she also gives us the perspective of one
artefact – a statue of King Ghézo – as it discusses its removal from its
homeland and its time in captivity in a Paris museum from the darkness of its
crate. The low, rumbling voice given to this statue has a haunting quality. But
the real meat of Dahomey lies in its climactic section, which consists of a
debate among Beninese students about the real value of this repatriation – as one
points out, 26 items have been returned, from a haul that contained thousands.
Dahomey packs a lot into its relatively brief running time, but it never feels
overdone and the questions posed by the film should provide food for
thought for many museums around the world.
18 - La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
There’s a real sense of magic in Alice Rohrwacher’s
filmmaking, in the way she evokes a particular time and place and ties the past
and the present together in such imaginative ways. The story of an archaeologist
turned illegal tomb raider is the perfect material for her. We follow Arthur
(Josh O’Connor) as he uses his gift for divination to identify where treasures
are buried beneath the earth, but while his fellow bandits gleefully retrieve
these artefacts and prepare them for sale on the black market, Arthur seems
troubled by his actions and by his own memories. Shot with glorious richness and tactility
by Hélène Louvart, La Chimera is a bewitching film that remains completely
unpredictable and captivating from moment to moment, with Arthur’s behaviour
getting more disconnected and unstable as he is drawn back into the past
through the artefacts and glimpses of his lost love, who seems to be calling
him from beyond the grave. As Rohrwacher has grown as a filmmaker her work has
grown in ambition, richness and mystery, and La Chimera is another beautiful
and dazzlingly imaginative achievement.
17 - Universal Language (Matthew Rankin)
Set in Winnipeg but filled with characters who speak Farsi, Universal
Language feels pitched halfway between the worlds of Abbas Kiarostami and Guy
Maddin – a combination that works better than you would ever imagine. Beyond
the influence of these two directors, you might also think about Aki Kaurismäki,
Wes Anderson or Roy Andersson as you watch the film, with Rankin’s deadpan
comic style and frames that are carefully composed for symmetry and colour, but
Rankin’s film has a style and tone that’s all its own. There are some great
running gags here, such as the Stetson-wearing turkey salesman who loses his
prized bird, a child’s attempts to get his hands on a tool that will allow
him to retrieve money from the ice, or the tourist hotspots that include a
briefcase that was forgotten and left on a park bench for years. Universal
Language frequently made me laugh with surprise and delight, but towards the
end of the film, Rankin unexpectedly finds a different emotional texture in a
scene of shifting identities. It’s a strange and wonderful achievement in so
many ways.
16 - Hard Truths (Mike
Leigh)
Mike Leigh’s return to the 21st century is – like
Another Year, Happy-Go-Lucky and All or Nothing before it – a film about happiness
and loneliness, asking why some people are content with what they have while
others are trapped in their resentment and isolation. Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s
performance as Pansy is an astounding piece of physical acting. Her entire body
is clenched like a fist, as if she’s ready to fight anyone who crosses her
path. There is some humour to be had in the film’s first half as Pansy spits
insults at strangers and rants endlessly about the state of things, but
gradually the humour subsides into sadness, as we see the toll her moods have taken on her family, and contrast her with the healthy familial relationships
enjoyed by her sister Chantelle (the invaluable Michele Austin) and her two
daughters. Leigh doesn’t seek to diagnose the source of Pansy’s pain, and there
is no easy redemption or catharsis here, which makes the film all the more
troubling and upsetting. In the most powerful moment, Pansy is asked by
her sister why she is the way she is, and she can only quietly mutter, “I don’t
know.”
15 - That They May Face the Rising Sun (Pat Collins)
It is hard to imagine a more perfect match of author
and director than John McGahern and Pat Collins, whose films have been so
rooted in Irish culture and identity. Having made films that blend documentary
and fiction in the past, he makes the leap to narrative filmmaking here with
great confidence, establishing a gentle pace and letting the film unfold in an
elliptical manner, with the seasons passing and characters coming and going. A
few of these characters make a vivid impression, notably Patrick, played by the outstanding Lalor Roddy, who has a habit of pushing people away before they can see his
vulnerability, and the insights that Collins gives us into the frustrations and
loneliness experienced by these characters are fleeting but piercing. That They
May Face the Rising Sun is a film about appreciating the moments we have and
the beauty that surrounds us, and Collins’ unhurried pace combined with his documentarian’s
eye for natural splendour makes him the perfect filmmaker for a story where the
stuff of life itself is the central character.
14 - Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
Given his propensity for shooting what’s on the page, the success or failure of Clint Eastwood films can often be tied to the strength of their screenplay, and Jonathan Abrams’ script for Juror #2 rests on a premise so cunning it’s amazing we haven’t seen it before. Nicholas Hoult is the juror who slowly begins to realise that he is the one responsible for the death of the woman that the defendant is on trial for killing, and this plunges him into a genuinely thorny moral quandary. Can he allow an innocent man to go to jail for life? Can he risk getting himself locked away, leaving his pregnant wife to raise their child alone? Clint Eastwood has spent much of his career considering questions of justice and he leaves so much room for ambiguity here with his economical direction, drawing a performance of subtle power from Hoult as a man faced with the ultimate question of whether he can or should do the right thing. Juror #2 is so efficiently made and skilfully acted, and it leaves the audience with so much to consider and discuss, it would have been nailed-on box-office hit and awards player not too long ago. The fact that a major Hollywood studio simply can’t be bothered to try and do anything with such a film today is a profoundly depressing state of affairs.
13 - His Three Daughters (Azazel Jacobs)
The latest film from Azazel Jacobs has a classical set-up,
with three daughters coming together in the apartment where they grew up to
care for their father, who doesn’t have long to live. As you might expect, the
three women are very different in ways that lead them to clash: Katie (Carrie
Coon) is the controlling one who has little patience for stoner Rachel (Natasha
Lyonne) – the one who has been their father’s primary carer – while Christina
(Elizabeth Olsen) is the optimistic one who just wants everyone to make peace and get
along. What really elevates this beyond the generic is the specificity
that Jacobs and his actors find in the writing and the performances. These feel
like three real people who are all processing their grief in very different ways,
and their arguments have genuine feeling behind them, with Jacobs using the
confines of the single location brilliantly to generate tension, sadness and
comedy in the encounters between the characters. As 90% of this film takes
place in an apartment (except when Rachel escapes outside to smoke) it’s easy
to imagine His Three Daughters working on stage, but in the last twenty minutes
Jacobs takes a bold dramatic swing, leading to a single cut that is so potent.
12 - Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (Johan Grimonprez)
The tragic story of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba has
been told before, notably by Raoul Peck in his 1990 documentary Lumumba:
Death of a Prophet, but Johan Grimonprez brilliantly weaves Lumumba into a
sprawling geopolitical tapestry in Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat. Assembled from
an extraordinary wealth of archive footage, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat begins
and ends with the 1961 UN Security Council protest led by Abbey Lincoln and Max
Roach, and then he unfolds the whole grim story of how Belgium undermined the
independence of their former colony with the support of the United States, who
dispatched some of the greatest jazz musicians of the time to Africa to win
hearts and minds while distracting from the political manoeuvres taking place
in the shadows. Grimonprez packs an awful lot into this documentary – its 150
minutes are teeming with revelatory facts, images and quotes (all of which are
cited with sources) – but the film never feels like an indigestible or
overwhelming exposition dump. In fact, it’s utterly riveting, with Grimonprez
brilliant cutting to the rhythm of the jazz soundtrack and creating a film that
pulses with a real sense of urgency. As a feat of editing, research and
storytelling, it’s hard to beat.
11 - Eephus (Carson Lund)
I don’t like or understand baseball and yet I’ve always
loved baseball movies, because they always seem to tap into something greater
than merely being a film about ‘America’s Pastime.’ This is a melancholy comedy
about the passage of time, about community and about things coming to an end,
and it all takes place on a baseball field over the course of a single
afternoon. This pitch will soon be demolished to make way for a new school, and
so the men who gather here regularly know that this game will be the last one
they ever have. They’re not just losing their regular game, they’re losing a sense of connection and a reason to get out of the house and meet up with buddies every
week, and as the hours slip away – the sun gradually disappearing to the point
where play can’t continue – the sense of finality grows larger, with the
players absolutely determined to complete this nine innings. First-time
director Lund manages all of this with a relaxed ease but with a keen eye for
character details and an ear for throwaway lines of dialogue: “Is there anything
more beautiful than watching the sun set on a fat man stealing second base?”
10 - Look Into My Eyes (Lana Wilson)
I admit, I was sceptical. I settled on Look Into My Eyes merely
to fill a gap in my festival schedule, and I spent much of the first third of
the film chuckling at the eccentric characters presented to us in Lana Wilson’s
film. This is a documentary about psychics, and it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow
when you meet a medium who specialises in animals, with people paying her money
to try and communicate with their pets. As Look Into My Eyes progressed,
however, I found myself being deeply affected by some of the encounters that
Wilson captures, and struck by the uncanny personal details that some of these
psychics mysteriously pick up on. In interviews, the psychics seem as uncertain
as anyone about where these powers come from and how genuine this gift is, but
what’s clear from the film is that a deep need is being fulfilled here, not
just for the people seeking answers, but for the psychics themselves, all of
whom have some tragedy or trauma in their past that still affects them. I went
in ready to mock, and I came out profoundly affected. Not many films pull that
off.
9 - Anora (Sean Baker)
There’s a bracing energy about Anora that it’s
almost impossible to resist being caught up in. The first part of the film expresses the
excitement that Anora (the amazing Mikey Madison) feels when she stumbles into
a fairytale relationship with Ivan (Mark Eidelstein), the son of Russian oligarch.
She’s tasting the lifestyle of the 1% and securing her future, away from the
daily grind of the strip club – the American Dream is hers for the taking. When
reality hits in the shape of the heavies that Ivan’s parents send to anull this
marriage, the film switches modes instantly, and the rest of the film has the
nervy sensation that anything can happen. Watching Anora, I had the same giddy
thrill that I get from watching Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild, with which it
shares a taste for breakneck tonal shifts and a cast of characters who all draw
the eye, and feel like people you’d happily follow off into their own movie.
The standout for me is the increasingly exasperated Karren Karagulian as Toros,
whose reaction to getting the news about Anora at a family christening is
priceless, and who delivers lines like, “I don't have Instagram! I'm an adult,
man.
8 - Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath)
The title comes from a 1976 episode of Maude, a sitcom
spinoff from All in the Family that starred Bea Arthur. This is one of the more
unexpected clips to be found in Alexander Horwath’s essay film, which explores
American history and culture through one of the most iconic of movie stars. Although
Howarth digs into Fonda’s own biography, this is as much a film as much about
what he represented as who he was. Fonda was the everyman and the ideal – a
personification of dignity, honesty and justice – and Horwath’s film uses Fonda’s
movies to look into wider issues of American politics and society, from HUAC to
the movie-star president Reagan, whom Fonda clearly despised and perceptively
saw as someone whose policies would ultimately lead to disaster. Henry Fonda
for President runs for three hours, but it’s a completely engrossing film for
the entire running time, with Horwath using well-chosen clips to make illuminating
connections and compelling arguments throughout.
7 - A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
The Substance was one of the most talked-about films of
2024, but I wish as much attention had been paid to this picture,
which touches on some similar ideas about self-image and the desire for change.
Sebastian Stan begins the film hidden by prosthetics as Edward, a shy and unhappy
man suffering from neurofibromatosis, and when a doctor suggests a new miracle
cure that can eradicate his growths, he jumps at the opportunity. Reinventing
himself as Guy, he is now living the life he always wanted, but the emergence of
another neurofibromatosis sufferer named Oswald (Adam Pearson, brilliantly funny) sends his newfound
confidence off-kilter and reminds him of the man he used to be. Schimberg’s
brilliant conceit here is to make Oswald such an outgoing, charming bon-vivant; a man who has not let his condition hold him back in any way, and who lives
life in an effortless manner that exposes Edward’s deep-rooted neuroses. A Different
Man walks a tricky line of humour and empathy and never falters. It’s one of
the year’s funniest movies, but it also has perceptive things to say about the
way we see ourselves and how we choose to live our lives.
6 - Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke)
Over the course of the past two decades, Jia Zhang-ke has
essentially been telling one story, the changing face of China in the 21st
century, and in some ways Caught by the Tides feels like a culmination of that project.
The film begins in 2001, around the time that Beijing was awarded the 2008
summer Olympics, and it ends in during the era of COVID-19, but what makes the
film unique is the way Jia has constructed it, building a loose story out of footage
that he shot over the year for other projects. What makes such a film possible
is the fact that Zhao Tao is the mainstay of all of Jia’s films, and he she is
at the heart of this one as a woman searching for her lost lover (played by another
Jia favourite, Li Zhubin). Zhao has already proven herself to be the world’s
finest actresses with her previous collaborations with her husband, but here Jia finds new way to
showcase her gifts, by having the character be silent throughout the film and
letting Zhao’s expressive eyes and body language carry the narrative. Seeing
the passage of time play out in this way, with the actors visibly and naturally
ageing over the course of the film, makes Caught by the Tides one of Jia’s most
touching films.
5 - The Taste of Things (Tran Anh Hung)
One of my favourite moments in any film this year was the wide-eyed look of delight and happiness on the face of Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire) when she first bites into
the baked Alaska that has been prepared by Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) in The
Taste of Things. Tran Anh Hung’s film is about how making and serving food can
be an act of love, and how important it is to indulge and appreciate these
moments, because eating – like love – can be an ephemeral pleasure. Watching
Binoche and Benoît Magimel work side-by-side in the kitchen preparing these
dishes becomes a wholly involving experience. We are drawn in not only by the
skill and knowledge that these characters possess – creating food we can almost
smell and taste – but by the evident love and respect that exists between them.
Cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg finds shots throughout the film that
capture both the intricacy of their cooking and the bubbling chemistry between
the actors, with a love story developing between Dodin and Eugénie that grows
into something almost unbearably moving by the end.
4 - All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
I had greatly admired A Night of Knowing Nothing, Payal
Kapadia’s 2021 debut feature, and while All We Imagine as Light touches on
similar themes, it feels like Kapadia is operating on a whole other level here.
The film is captivating from its opening moments, with footage of the bustling
streets of Mumbai playing under voices from people who came to the city
to pursue their dreams; in a few moments Kapadia evokes the millions of
melancholy narratives in this city, before she zeroes in on the three women who
anchor her film. They all work at a Mumbai hospital: Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is a
head nurse, whose husband has long been away working in Europe; Anu (Divya
Prabha) is a younger, more romantic nurse who has just moved in with Prabha;
and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is a cook at the hospital who is being evicted from
her home and doesn’t have the necessary papers to secure her position. Through
these three generations of women, Kapadia explores loneliness, disconnection
and desire. Her gaze is meditative and curious, and her film is filled with
poetic, resonant moments.
3 - About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
The protagonists in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films are frequently
difficult people to like, and the prickly, egotistical Samet in About Dry
Grasses is one of his most frustrating but intriguing creations. As played by
the outstanding Deniz Celiloğlu, Samet is a schoolteacher in a small town who
feels he is too good for this province and these people. Over the course of About
Dry Grasses’ 197 minutes, Ceylan explores Samet’s misanthropy and selfishness
through the key relationships in his life, notably Nuray (Merve Di̇zdar), a
woman he gets set up with but has little real romantic interest in, until her attraction
to his friend and colleague Kenan (Musab Ekici) triggers a competitiveness in
him. As ever with Ceylan, About Dry Grasses unfolds in a series of long,
discursive conversations, but the film never feels overly verbose or dragging
because each of these characters feels so real and every scene is framed and
lit so beautifully. It’s another stunningly crafted film from a master
director, although a startling fourth-wall break in the picture’s third act suggests
a filmmaker still willing to push himself in new directions.
2 - Scénarios / Presentation of the Trailer of a Film “Scénario” (Jean-Luc Godard)
Two films. The first runs for 18 minutes and the second for 34. Together they constitute the final statement of one of cinema’s supreme artists, who chose to end his life in 2022 shortly after finishing Scénarios. Made in a similar collage/scrapbook style to Phony Wars, the film continues Godard’s ceaseless consideration of the image and how we relate to the world through cinema, and there is something so affecting about hearing his croaky voice on the soundtrack knowing that he finished this film the day before he checked himself into a Swiss clinic. The second film, essentially a kind of behind-the-scenes documentary, shows Godard thinking through his project by cutting and pasting images into his notebook. It’s a true privilege to see this footage, and to spend just a few more minutes in the company of a man who never stopped trying to reimagine the possibilities of cinema until the very end. I found the whole experience overwhelmingly moving. "One more image at the end, which is meaningless."
1 - No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor)
No Other Land’s production was wrapped in October 2023, just as Hamas launched their attack on Israel, leading to a bombardment from Israel that has destroyed Gaza and killed tens of thousands of people. Over the course of the past year, countless politicians and media figures have referred to October 7th as the inciting incident that Israel had every right to defend itself against – they often make it sound like it was an unprovoked attack out of the blue – but by that time, the four Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers who collectively made No Other Land had been shooting for four years, and in the film Basel Adra recounts the decades of oppression that he and his family have experienced. This is a documentary about people who have long been second-class citizens in their own homeland, and have had their homes forcibly taken from them and destroyed so the Israeli occupiers can obtain more land and build more homes for settlers. We see families being pushed into living in caves, and at one point a school is torn down with the children and their teachers having fled the building just moments before. The inhumanity and cruelty is staggering and enraging. No Other Land is a film that has been made with great courage and empathy, and one wonders how anyone could fail to support the Palestinian cause after seeing the indefensible injustices being shown here. It’s the one 2024 film that I think every single person should see, but the film’s continued failure to secure distribution in the United States, despite its universal acclaim, is a disgrace, and very telling.
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