2023 Was the Best Year for Cinema in the 21st Century

While many critique recent trends in film, the 2020s have already given us several modern classics, and 2023 stood out. It was the year of Barbenheimer and Asteroid City, Poor Things and The Zone of Interest, with a sense that filmmakers were taking real risks and trusting audiences with complexity and ambiguity.

Several films exemplified that boldness. American Fiction follows a frustrated novelist (Jeffrey Wright) whose satirical book about the publishing industry becomes a runaway success and forces him to confront questions of identity; Sterling K. Brown co-stars. All of Us Strangers turns a simple premise—an isolated screenwriter (Andrew Scott) forming a relationship with a neighbor (Paul Mescal) while encountering visions of his deceased parents—into a meditation on grief and connection under director Andrew Haigh.

Past Lives, Celine Song’s assured debut, traces two childhood friends (Greta Lee and Teo Yoo) separated by immigration as they reconnect and reflect on destiny and the choices that shape a life.

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