100 Best Movies of the 2010's

A Decade of Protests, Resistance, Disillusionment, Dissent & Defiance

The 2010s, to paraphrase Dickens, was both the best of times and the worst of times – albeit, not necessarily in that order.

The decade, on one hand, witnessed the troubling acceleration in odious incidents and trends around the global – civil wars, rise of populist nationalism and neo-fascism, majoritarian tyranny and supremacism, refugee crises and accompanying xenophobic / anti-immigration attitudes, austerity measures, rampant neoliberalism and ever-widening of the classes, total invasion of privacy, and general erosion of human rights. And, if things couldn’t get any worse, it ended with a truly once-in-a-lifetime kind of an event, viz. the outbreak of a global pandemic.

On the other hand, the period also witnessed stirring movements and responses that provided hope (howsoever fleeting) – Waves of anti-Government, anti-Establishment and anti-Status Quo Protests (Jasmine Revolution & Arab Spring, #MeToo & Black Lives Matter, Kashmir & Catalonia, Palestine & Hong Kong, Chile & Bolivia, Yellow Vest Movement & Occupy Wall Street, etc.) – thus also making this the “decade of protests, resistance, disillusionment, dissent & defiance”. This definitely was the decade of Tahrir Square and Taksim Square and Plaza Baquedano and Shaheen Bagh and Ferguson.

Cinema too, unsurprisingly, was influenced, affected and indelibly shaped – both overtly and subliminally – by these complex opposing forces. And, if there weren’t enough, in these ten years – otherwise a blip in human history – cinema experienced tremendous technological, structural and sociological changes too –  from the mushrooming of multiplex to booming proliferation of OTT and streaming services, and from ever irreconcilable chasm between big production houses and micro-cinema to defiant representations and expressions of gender, culture, identity and politics.

Finalizing the list of my favourite films from the 2010s, therefore, did have the above contexts as its backdrop, as nothing – and certainly not the arts – can exist in vacuum.

A few quick statistics to conclude the verbiage: the 100 films are spread across 30 different countries (led by France, USA, South Korea and Chile) and are made by 75 different filmmakers (with 21 having multiple entries overall, and 7 within the Top 50 too); 2012 and 2018 are the best years overall, though superseded by 2019 and 2014 in the Top 50; and, at least 9 trilogies – wholly or partly – feature in the list. And, while I watched a shitload of films before making this list, including all the film of at least 20-odd filmmakers and many or most by numerous others, I had to stop somewhere; in other words, this isn’t a static list but one that will keep evolving and changing.

To cut a rather long story short, this is definitely not a definitive list of great films of the 2010s. Instead, these are ones that’ve resonated with me most among the few (make that many) that I watched, including a stretch of 8+ months – which begun just prior to the draconian lockdowns – during which I literally watched nothing but those from this turbulent, chaotic and strange decade.

 

1. La Flor | Mariano Llinas | Argentina | 2018
2. Phoenix | Christian Petzold | Germany | 2014
3. The Pearl Button | Patricio Guzman | Chile | 2015
4. The Irishman | Martin Scorsese | US | 2019
5. Shoplifters | Hirokazu Kore-eda | Japan | 2018
6. Certified Copy | Abbas Kiarostami | France | 2010
7. Ema | Pablo Larrain | Chile | 2019
8. Laurence Anyways | Xavier Dolan | Canada | 2012
9. Burning | Lee Chang-dong | South Korea | 2018
10. The Turin Horse | Bela Tarr | Hungary | 2011
    
    
    
11. I, Daniel Blake | Ken Loach | UK | 2016
12. Things to Come | Mia Hansen-Love | France | 2016
13. Melancholia | Lars von Trier | Denmark | 2011
14. From What Is Before | Lav Diaz | Philippines | 2014
15. Portrait of a Lady on Fire | Celine Sciamma | France | 2019
16. Cold War | Pawel Pawlikowski | Poland | 2018
17. A Touch of Sin | Jia Zhangke | China | 2013
18. Arabian Nights | Miguel Gomes | Portugal | 2015
19. The Day He Arrives | Hong Sang-soo | South Korea | 2011
20. Lover for a Day | Philippe Garrel | France | 2017
    
    
    
21. The Cordillera of Dreams | Patricio Guzman | Chile | 2019
22. Tomboy | Celine Sciamma | France | 2011
23. Her | Spike Jonze | US | 2013
24. Parasite | Bong Joon-ho | South Korea | 2019
25. Winter Sleep | Nuri Bilge Ceylan | Turkey | 2014
26. Jealousy | Philippe Garrel | France | 2013
27. Leviathan | Andrey Zvyagintsev | Russia | 2014
28. In Jackson Heights | Frederick Wiseman | US | 2015
29. Tony Erdmann | Maren Ade | Germany | 2016
30. Mysteries of Lisbon | Raul Ruiz | Portugal | 2010
    
    
    
31. Faces Places | Agnes Varda | France | 2017
32. Two Days, One Night | Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne | Belgium | 2014
33. Amour | Michael Haneke | Austria | 2012
34. The Image Book | Jean-Luc Godard | France | 2018
35. Haider | Vishal Bharadwaj | India | 2014
36. Stories We Tell | Sarah Polley | Canada | 2012
37. The Look of Silence | Joshua Oppenheimer | Denmark | 2014
38. In the Intense Now | João Moreira Salles | Brazil | 2017
39. It Must Be Heaven | Elia Suleiman | Palestine | 2019
40. No | Pablo Larrain | Chile | 2012
    
    
    
41. Taxi Tehran | Jafar Panahi | Iran | 2015
42. About Endlessness | Roy Andersson | Sweden | 2019
43. Le Passe | Asghar Farhadi | France | 2013
44. Ida | Pawel Pawlikowski | Poland | 2013
45. Tabu | Miguel Gomes | Portugal | 2012
46. Certain Women | Kelly Reichardt | US | 2016
47. Post Mortem | Pablo Larrain | Chile | 2010
48. The Favourite | Yorgos Lanthimos | UK | 2018
49. Pieta | Kim Ki-Duk | South Korea | 2012
50. Elena | Andrey Zvyagintsev | Russia | 2011
    
    
    
51. Clouds of Sils Maria | Olivier Assayas | France | 2014
52. Roma | Alfonso Cuaron | Mexico | 2018
53. Graduation | Cristian Mungiu | Romania | 2016
54. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood | Quentin Tarantino | US | 2019
55. Holy Motors | Leos Carax | France | 2012
56. Before Midnight | Richard Linklater | US | 2013
57. A Separation | Asghar Farhadi | Iran | 2011
58. Wild Tales | Damian Szifron | Argentina | 2014
59. Patterson | Jim Jarmusch | US | 2016
60. A Pigeon Sat on the Branch Reflecting on Existence | Roy Andersson | Sweden | 2014
    
    
    
61. Zama | Lucrecia Martel | Argentina | 2017
62. Hospitalité | Koji Fukada | Japan | 2010
63. Sieranevada | Cristi Puiu | Romania | 2016
64. Grass | Hong Sang-soo | South Korea | 2018
65. The Good Girls | Alejandra Márquez Abella | Mexico | 2018
66. Pain and Glory | Pedro Almodovar | Spain | 2019
67. Frances Ha | Noah Baumbach | US | 2012
68. The Act of Killing | Joshua Oppenheimer | Denmark | 2012
69. Blue Jasmine | Woody Allen | US | 2013
70. The Handmaiden | Park Chan-Wook | South Korea | 2016
    
    
    
71. In the Shadow of Women | Philippe Garrel | France | 2015
72. Nostalgia for the Light | Patricio Guzman | Chile | 2010
73. Ash is Purest White | Jia Zhangke | China | 2018
74. Mad Max: Fury Road | George Miller | Australia | 2015
75. Spotlight | Tom McCarthy | US | 2015
76. Le Havre | Aki Kaurismaki | Finland | 2011
77. Blue is the Warmest Colour | Abdellatif Kechiche | France | 2013
78. When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism | Corneliu Porumboiu | Romania | 2013
79. The Unknown Girl | Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne | Belgium | 2016
80. Tuesday, After Christmas | Radu Muntean | Romania | 2010
    
    
    
81. Miss Lovely | Ashim Ahluwalia | India | 2012
82. Elle | Paul Verhoeven | France | 2016
83. Like Someone in Love | Abbas Kiarostami | Japan | 2012
84. Loveless | Andrey Zvyagintsev | Russia | 2017
85. Joker | Todd Phillips | US | 2019
86. Barbara | Christian Petzold | Germany | 2012
87. Eden | Mia Hansen-Love | France | 2014
88. After the Storm | Hirokazu Kore-eda | Japan | 2016
89. Arekti Premer Galpo | Kaushik Ganguly | India | 2010
90. Poetry | Lee Chang-dong | South Korea | 2010
    
    
    
91. A Useful Life | Federico Veiroj | Uruguay | 2010
92. The Strange Case of Angelica | Manoel de Oliveira | Portugal | 2010
93. Paradise: Faith | Ulrich Seidl | Austria | 2012
94. The Wild Pear Tree | Nuri Bilge Ceylan | Turkey | 2018
95. An Elephant Sitting Still | Hu Bo | China | 2018
96. The Skin I Live In | Pedro Almodovar | Spain | 2011
97. Gangs of Wasseypur 1 & 2 | Anurag Kashyap | India | 2012
98. Inception | Christopher Nolan | US | 2010
99. The Death of Stalin | Armando Iannucci | UK | 2017
100. First Cow | Kelly Reichardt | US | 2019