Wendy joined Screen International in 2015 as a London-based critic. Previously she was a critic for The Times. She also writes for Sight & Sound and is a regular contributor to Reuters television.
Click here for more Screen critics’ top films of 2015
Top Five
- Anomalisa
Dirs Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson
As bitterly funny as it is achingly, luxuriantly sad, Kaufman and Johnson’s stop-motion animation is a flat-out masterpiece. Charting the hotel room existential crisis of a minor celeb in the world of customer interface, Anomalisa manages to combine a melancholy wisdom with hilariously savage jokes about, among other things, chilli con carne, loneliness, isolation and antique Japanese sex toys. Poignant and perceptive voicework from David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan, and the tactile quality of the animation, lend an unvarnished authenticity to these fleeting emotional connections and fumbled clinches. The year’s most profound film about the human condition doesn’t even feature any humans.
CONTACT Hanway Films info@hanwayfilms.com - Spotlight
Dir Tom McCarthy
CONTACT Entertainment One cvanweede@entonegroup.com - Mustang
Dir Deniz Gamze Ergüven
CONTACT Kinology festivals@kinology.eu - Carol
Dir Todd Haynes
CONTACT Hanway Films jls@hanwayfilms.com - Inside Out
Dirs Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen
CONTACT disney www.movies.disney.com
Best Documentary
Behemoth
Dir Zhao Liang
The assault on China’s landscape (Inner Mongolia to be exact) by the forces of industrialisation is viewed through a poetic filter that references Dante’s Divine Comedy and photographer Sebastiao Salgado’s ‘Work’ series. Behemoth (Beixi Moshuo) makes me forever grateful I write about films for a living and don’t have to pick bits of molten pig iron out of my skin at the end of each working day.
CONTACT INA www.ina.fr
Best UK Film
45 Years
Dir Andrew Haigh
The framework of a 45-year marriage starts to crumble under the weight of doubts and ghosts from the past in Andrew Haigh’s subtle, quietly devastating film. It plays out in understated moments, and in Charlotte Rampling’s mercurial face — performance of the year, no contest.
CONTACT The Match Factory info@matchfactory.de
Undiscovered Gem
The Other Side
Dir Roberto Minervini
Minervini’s extraordinary, haunting documentary explores the fringes of US society. We meet gun-toting militias, heavily armed family men spouting a curious blend of ultra-conservative sentimentalism and hate speak; we hang out with the outlaw meth freaks and Xanax-popping grannies, the products of generations of self-medication and privation. Unforgettable.
CONTACT Doc & Film International d.elstner@docandfilm.com
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