Critics’ choice: These are the ten best films of 2016
The BFI (British Film Institute) has conducted its annual Sight & Sound poll, asking 163 critics and curators to pick their five best films of the year, and coming out on top is a German comedy about a dad playing pranks on his estranged daughter.
Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann was the number one choice, a Palme D’Or competitor that has been quietly attracting strong reviews for its humour, inventiveness and intriguing twists.
European cinema has a good showing in this year’s top 10, with rape revenge thriller Elle, Ken Loach’s eyeopening political film I, Daniel Blake and French drama Things to Come (which also stars Elle’s Isabelle Huppert) all making the cut.
Oscar contender Moonlight was also placed high up, along with dreamy road trip movie American Honey and Jim Adam Driver- starrer Paterson (a favourite here at the Indy).
The top 10, which includes ties, and their critics abstracts are as follows:
1. Toni Erdmann
Cannes
4. Certain Women
Kelly Reichardt articulates a familiar experience: the sus- outline of a bleak economic landscape. — Pamela Hutchinson
6. I, Daniel Blake
ance so carefully between the push and pull between guilt and responsibility that the film is emotionally exhausting. — Nick James
8. Things to Come (L’Avenir)
Wry, humane and thought- ful… the film treats its destabilising cluster of crises with extraordinary restraint. It presents the hard, complex business of surviving life in a disarmingly simple way. — Kate Stables
9. Paterson
A quietly utopian film, and a balm to watch. Its minimal narrative and attractively downbeat setting hark back to the Jim Jarmusch of the 80s and 90s.