Some may look back on 2019 as the year that new streaming giants emerged to challenge in absolutely no innovative capacity the reign of dominant platforms and the experience for cinephiles got more confusing than ever. But all this jockeying in the mainstream film industry distracts many from the tremendous amount of great movies from all over the word and from talents new and established that premiered this year, along with the robust revivals that appeared at festivals or in cinematheques. As MUBI's programmers, we've again chosen to highlight our favorite films of the year, made up of new premiers in 2019 and a selection of revivals screened in cinemas.
PREMIERES
Daniel Kasman
1. Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Frank Beauvais)
2. Heimat Is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise)
3. 2008 (Blake Williams)
4. State Funeral (Sergei Loznitsa)
5. House of Hummingbird (Bora Kim)
6. About Endlessness (Roy Andersson)
7. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
8. Uncut Gems (Josh & Benny Safdie)
9. Family Romance LLC (Werner Herzog)
10. Delphine and Carole (Callisto McNulty)
Anaïs Lebrun
1. Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Frank Beauvais)
2. I Was At Home, But... (Angela Schanalec)
3. Atlantics (Mati Diop)
4. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
5. Bait (Mark Jenkin)
6. Ramy, "Strawberries," S1E4 (Ramy Youssef)
7. Jeanne (Bruno Dumont)
8. The Orphanage (Shahrbanoo Sadat)
9. Silence of the Sirens (Diana Vidrascu)
10. Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria)
Chiara Marañón
1. My First Film (Zia Anger)
2. I Was At Home, But... (Angela Schanelec)
3. The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)
4. Heimat Is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise)
5. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)
6. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
7. Zombi Child (Bertrand Bonello)
8. Domains (Kusano Natsuka)
9. Endless Night (Eloy Enciso)
10. Un film dramatique (Eric Baudelaire)
REVIVALS
Daniel Kasman
Just Pals (John Ford, 1920)
A Good Lad (Boris Barnet, 1943)
Le psychodrame (Roberto Rossellini, 1951)
Adoption (Márta Mészáros, 1975)
Variety (Bette Gordon, 1983)
Cabra Marcado Para Morrer (Eduardo Coutinho, 1984)
Peaux de vaches (Patricia Mazuy, 1989)
Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992)
still/here (Christopher Harris, 2001)
Le voyage à Vézelay (Pierre Creton, 2005)
Anaïs Lebrun
Funny Girl (William Wyler, 1968)
Uski Roti (Mani Kaul, 1970)
The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
The Last Interview with P. Pasolini (Chris Langdon, 1975)
Tampopo (Juzo Itami, 1985)
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
Hard Boiled (John Woo, 1992)
Kiss of Death (Barbet Schroeder, 1995)
John Wick (David Leitch & Chad Stahelski, 2014)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
Chiara Marañón
Master of The House (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1925)
State Fair (Henry King, 1933)
Indiscreet (Stanley Donen, 1958)
Les Bicots-Nègres vos voisins (Med Hondo, 1974)
India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975)
Our Voice of Earth, Memory and Future (Marta Rodríguez & Jorge Silva, 1982)
The Sky on Location (Babette Mangolte, 1983)
La maison des bois (Maurice Pialat, 1986)
Cézanne (Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, 1989)
O’er The Land (Deborah Stratman, 2009)