This year started as it usually does for Cinema Femme with the Sundance Film Festival. Although we didn’t get the kind of coverage we’d like, as we were covering mostly remotely (we will be there in 2025!), we still found some of our favorite films of the year at the festival, including our #1, #3, #8, and #9 films. Read our full coverage here.
Other films that came out this year caused some viewers to feel more seen then ever before, specifically with our #2 pick, “I Saw the TV Glow,” directed by Jane Schoenbrun. To be a young adult, a Queer person, and embracing a new identity couldn’t be understood more through the lens of warped 90s television (“Goosebumps”, am I right?!). Big wins for independent films this year at the box office were earned by “The Substance” (#4) and “Anora” (#7). Both films were the recipients of big awards this year at the Cannes Film Festival, with outstanding performances by Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Mikey Madison.
Other independent films that floated beneath the radar we saw as the gems of the year were “Bird” (Andrea Arnold) and “Girls will be Girls” (Shuchi Talati). Some of our writers were not exactly happy with this year’s films in general, and shared some outstanding TV shows that they felt should be on your radar, specifically with Netflix’s “Diarra from Detroit” and “One Day” and HBO’s “Get Millie Black.” There were also many films we loved that went straight to streaming, like our #10 pick “Will & Harper,” and our honorable mention, “Out of My Mind,” on Disney+, directed by Amber Sealey.
We are so happy that most of our contributors voted for Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s “Ghostlight” in our top five of the year, including our two foreign corespondents who live in Europe. Chicago’s filmmaking community is making an impact all over the world. How exciting! Read our contributor Matt Fagerholm’s amazing interview with the cast of the film here.
Thank you for our reading our online pages! Next year, we are so excited to bring our digital/print magazine back, which will feature interviews with Tina Romero (“Queens of the Dead”), Elizabeth Woodward (“You Resemble Me,” “Another Body”) and more! Subscribe here.
10. Will & Harper – directed by Josh Greenbaum
One of the year’s most uplifting treasures is Josh Greenbaum’s documentary following the risk-laden road trip undertaken by two long-time friends, veteran “Saturday Night Live” writer Harper Steele and the star whose career she helped launch, Will Ferrell. After Steele comes out as transgender, Ferrell—who has never been more vulnerable onscreen—decides to enlighten himself by getting to know his friend on a whole new level, while enlisting Kristen Wiig to pen the picture’s titular song, which if there is any justice, will land an Oscar nomination.
-Matt Fagerholm
9. Sugarcane – directed by Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat
Co-directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie won the jury prize for directing in the U.S. documentary category for their debut feature as collaborators. A well-deserved award, NoiseCat and Kassie delicately weave together a multigenerational story about the long-lasting effects of Indian boarding schools on Native peoples. “Sugarcane” takes place largely on a reserve in Canada as an investigation unfolds looking for buried missing children at the shuttered Saint Joseph’s Mission School.
Julian and his family bravely reveal their experiences at the school alongside several other victims. From suicide, to alcoholism, and difficulty with familial closeness, none of the children from these schools walked away the same as when they went in. Through the act of revisiting the school grounds, participating in ceremony, a visit to the Vatican and honest conversations, the subjects of the film work towards a place of healing for themselves and generations to come.
8. Thelma – directed by Josh Margolin
“Thelma” is a film that is unshakeably certain of itself. Its identity and intentions are clear, and executed at the peak of their potential with care, truth, and unabashed reality. Hilarious and moving, the film strikes a phenomenal balance between character investment and plotty excitement. Margolin’s script effortlessly transitions between these deeply empathetic asides and into sequences of pure slapstick amusement. With comedy as its platform, the film leaps off the precipice and becomes so much more mid-air, taking its viewers on a journey through each and every emotion, and landing gracefully with the ignition of the desire to hug your grandparents a little tighter next time.
Sundance 40 Review: June Squibb Shines in the Splendid Comedy, “Thelma”
Sundance 40: Kicking off January with “Thelma” star June Squibb and producer Zoë Worth
7. Anora – directed by Sean Baker
Mikey Madison delivers a towering, endlessly entertaining and uncommonly moving performance as a Brooklyn sex worker whose marriage to Ivan (a hilarious Mark Eidelshtein), the horny son of a Russian oligarch, is endangered once the news reaches his parents. Though this Palme d’Or winner is not interested in following any romanticized Hollywood formula—after all, one of the recurring themes in director Sean Baker’s work has been the shattering of illusions—there is something all the more satisfying and cathartic about the film’s sobering final moments.
-Matt Fagerholm
6. Girls will be Girls – directed by Shuchi Talati
“Girls Will Be Girls” displays an affinity for female coming of age with stunning nuance and strength. It raises only the question of its subversive title: what does it mean for girls to be girls? It means having the natural behaviors of growth discouraged and even punished but finding power and autonomy despite it. It means bumping heads with your mother and learning to see her as a girl who had to grow, not simply the adult woman you’ve always known. Yet Talati’s film isn’t mawkish or sanitized in exploring its themes. Rather, it’s irrevocably rooted in the real and present.
Girls Will Be Girls Movie Review – RogerEbert.com (Peyton Robinson)
5. Bird – directed by Andrea Arnold
As in her 2009 indie hit “Fish Tank,” directed by the visionary Andrea Arnold, “Bird” takes us on a unique coming of age tale. We follow the life of 12-year-old Bailey (astounding newcomer Nykiya Adam) who lives with her devoted but chaotic single dad Bug (Barry Keoghan, “Saltburn”) and wayward brother Hunter in a squat in Gravesend, north Kent. Approaching puberty and seeking attention and adventure, Bailey’s fractured home life is transformed when she encounters Bird (Franz Rogowski, “Passages”), a mysterious stranger on a journey of his own. This film is filled with moments that stay with you (another dance scene by Barry!) while accentuating the beauty of British skies and green landscapes along with the grit of lower-class strife. The film premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
-Rebecca Martin Fagerholm
BIRD– Press conference – English – Cannes 2024
4. The Substance – directed by Coralie Fargeat
If you thought director Coralie Fargeat’s previous picture, “Revenge,” was overflowing with strikingly lensed blood, just wait till you get a load of her new Cannes prize-winner, a 140-minute epic that moves at the speed of a bullet aiming to pierce every misogynistic trope in its path. Demi Moore delivers her most galvanizing work to date as a 50-year-old actress branded over the hill by her disgusting boss pointedly named Harvey (Dennis Quaid, as loathsome here as he is in “Reagan”). Desperate to keep her career afloat, she takes a mysterious black-market drug that promises to birth a younger version of herself (the ever-exhilarating Margaret Qualley). Brilliantly subverting the male gaze while inventively paying homage to everything from Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” to Carpenter’s “The Thing,” this one-of-a-kind marvel is guaranteed to be one of the year most talked-about titles, and deservedly so.
Femme Film Friday: “Apartment 7A,” “The Substance,” “My Old Ass,” “The Outrun,” and “A Mistake”
3. My Old Ass – directed by Megan Park
On the heels of her masterful directorial feature debut, “The Fallout,” which launched the star-making year of Jenna Ortega’s career, Megan Park has followed it up with one of the most endearing coming-of-age films in…well, ages. “Nashville” star Maisy Stella, whose song “While You Sleep” was featured in “The Fallout,” makes one of 2024’s most luminous screen debuts as Elliott, a teen whose experimentation with mushrooms leads her to encounter her older self (a pitch-perfect Aubrey Plaza). Though the marketing suggests that much of the film centers on this fantastical pairing, Park is more interested in exploring Elliott’s inner evolution, as she finds herself attracted to a man (“Wednesday” star Percy Hynes White) for the first time. With echoes of “Arrival” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” this lovely, sneakily profound film is guaranteed to leave you taking less in your life for granted. Now that “My Old Ass” has expanded nationwide, you frankly can’t miss it, nor should you. And yes, requesting “Two tickets to see ‘My Old Ass’” will have you laughing even before you enter the theater.
Femme Film Friday: “Apartment 7A,” “The Substance,” “My Old Ass,” “The Outrun,” and “A Mistake”
2. I Saw the TV Glow – directed by Jane Schoenbrun
An uncompromisingly bold vision from an exciting director, Jane Schoenbrun, who had captured the attention of such cinematic heavyweights as Martin Scorsese, this haunting character study utilizes imagery both endearingly retro and deliciously Lynchian to visualize certain truths of the transgender experience never before tackled in such a way on film. Brigette Lundy-Paine delivers a stellar performance as a teen who pulls her introverted peer (Justice Smith) into her obsession with a mysterious TV show from their youth.
-Matt Fagerholm
1. Ghostlight – directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson
Five years after helming one of my all-time favorite films, “Saint Frances,” writer/co-director Kelly O’Sullivan and co-director/producer Alex Thompson have done it again with their latest feature. It is a phenomenally powerful ode to the ways in which theatre and its tight-knit community can help us grapple with wounds too painful to articulate in everyday life. During the Q&A following the film’s Chicago premiere, I acknowledged the Mount Rushmore of local talent assembled both on and in front of the stage, including the legendary Deanna Dunagan (so unforgettable in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit”). One of the only key cast members not in attendance was Dolly DeLeon, the stunning actress who stole “Triangle of Sadness” and is captivating here as the community theatre actress who recruits a shattered man (Keith Kupferer) to perform in her scrappy production of “Romeo and Juliet.” What makes this film so special, above all, is its trio of tour de force performances from the Mallen Kupferer family: theatre veterans Keith (whose work here warrants comparison with De Niro) and the utterly electrifying Tara Mallen (founder of Chicago’s Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, which elevates female playwrights) as well as their marvelous daughter, Katherine Mallen Kupferer (on the heels of co-starring in one of of 2023’s best films, Kelly Fremon Craig’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”). They instantly emerge here as one of the most exciting acting families in modern movies.
