Art print by Aleksander Walijewski for Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, USA/UK/Ireland, 2023).
In the last roundup, from October, three out of the four most popular posters on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram over the previous six months were posters for Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things (2023)—two teasers and an official-release poster, all by the great Vasilis Marmatakis—which at that time was still almost two months away from its US theatrical run. So it's no surprise that the most "liked" poster since then is also a poster for Poor Things, an art print by the young, prodigiously talented Polish artist-designer Aleksander Walijewski. What was a surprise, however, is that this poster has racked up more than 10,000 likes since early February, making it by far the most popular poster ever on my Instagram, doubling its nearest competitor (Marmatakis’s original Poor Things teaser). And, making it feel as if Movie Poster of the Day is turning into a Lanthimos fan account, this Best Of also includes Marmatakis's teaser for his new film, Kinds of Kindness (2024), and a selection of his brilliant, unsettling character posters.
If it hadn’t been for a recent posting of two gorgeous French posters for Paris, Texas (1984) by the Belgian artist Guy Peellaert (one of the first poster artists I wrote about for Film Comment, over a decade ago), the second-most liked poster of the past seven months would have been another art print by Aleksander Walijewski, this one for Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023), which he dropped at the end of April. Walijewski’s creativity and execution is extraordinary. His Poor Things reimagines the male characters of the film as the mutated hybrids that Willem Dafoe’s Godwin Baxter crossbreeds, all airborne and carrying the disembodied head of Emma Stone’s Bella in a net, while his Zone of Interest, a film many artists have grappled with recently, turns Sandra Hüller’s stolen fur coat into the pluming smoke stack of her husband’s concentration-camp furnaces.
There are no less than four Zone of Interest posters in this Top 20, the others all by Neil Kellerhouse (a designer not quite as closely aligned with one director as Marmatakis is with Lanthimos, but getting there with Glazer). These include his original release poster (my second favorite poster of 2023) and two alternates.
Outside of Lathimos, Glazer, Marmatakis, Kellerhouse and Walijewski, there are plenty of other gems: a Hungarian design for Kes (1970), re-release posters for Le Samouraï (1967) and The Conversation (1974), and, one of my favorites, squeaking in at number 20: a Japanese retrospective poster for the films of the great Georgian director Otar Iosseliani, who died late last year at the age of 89.
Though I prefer to concentrate on theatrical release posters, there are so many extraordinary, self-generated art prints being made these days that I am compelled to post the cream of the crop, and many of those make these lists. This round, in addition to Walijewski’s prints, there are two stunning pieces for Nosferatu (1922) and Past Lives (2023) by Hans Woody and Neven Udovicic, respectively. And I’m pleased as punch that two of my own designs for Kino Lorber, for Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983) and Pham Thien An’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (2023), also made the cut.
So here, in gently descending order, are the top 20 most popular posters of the past six months on Movie Poster of the Day. Please like and subscribe, as they say.
French affiche by Guy Peellaert for Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, USA, 1984).
Art print by Aleksander Walijewski for The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, UK/Poland, 2023).
Character poster by Vasilis Marmatakis for Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos, USA/UK, 2024). Photography by Atsushi Nishijima.
US one-sheet for Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Pham Thien An, Vietnam, 2023). Design by Adrian Curry.
Alt poster by Neil Kellerhouse for The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, UK/Poland, 2023).
US 2024 re-release one-sheet for Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky, Italy/USSR, 1983). Design by Adrian Curry.
Japanese A0 poster for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1992). Design by Eiko Ishioka, artwork by Haruo Takino. See my recent article on Ishioka and Takino here.
Art print by Neven Udovicic for Past Lives (Celine Song, USA, 2023).
US one-sheet by Neil Kellerhouse for The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, UK/Poland, 2023).
Alt poster by Neil Kellerhouse for The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, UK/Poland, 2023).
Teaser poster by Vasilis Marmatakis for Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos, USA/UK, 2024). Photography by Atsushi Nishijima.
US 2024 re-release one-sheet for Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, France, 1967). Designer TBD.
Art print by Hans Woody for Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, Germany, 1922).
50th anniversary re-release poster by Laurent Durieux for The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1974).
1971 Hungarian poster by György Kemeny for Kes (Ken Loach, UK, 1969).
US one-sheet by Akiko Stehrenberger for Good Grief (Daniel Levy, USA, 2024).
US one-sheet by Kevin Gaor for Following (Christopher Nolan, UK, 1998).
Chinese poster by Huang Hai for Black Dog (Guan Hu, China, 2024).
2023 Japanese retrospective poster for the films of Otar Iosseliani. Designer TBD.
You can see previous biannual roundups here, and you can follow Movie Poster of the Day on Instagram for that daily dose of cinephilic graphic pleasure.