Team Screen’s top films of 2024

Screen’s editorial team has selected their top five year films of the year plus their favourite scene.

In order to be eligible for the list, a film must have had a festival premiere and/or theatrical release in the past 12 months. There are five points for first place; four for second; three for third; two for fourth; and one for fifth, with these scores tallied to produce an overall top five (seen at the bottom).

Matt Mueller (editor-in-chief)

1. All We Imagine As Light
2. A Complete Unknown
3. Emilia Perez
4. The Brutalist
5. September 5

Favourite scene: In a film with its fair share of hard-to-forget sequences, I’m going with Demi Moore’s first injection of the substance in The Substance and the emergence of Margaret Qualley’s Sue into the world. Favourite might be pushing it, but for shock factor and expert execution alone, it’s hard to beat.

Louise Tutt (deputy editor)

1. The Substance
2. Kneecap
3. The Outrun
4. The Last Showgirl 
5. Lee

Favourite scene: All the scenes in My Favourite Cake, which, yes, is my way of getting a sixth film on to my list.

Jeremy Kay (Americas editor) 

1. Anora
2. Nickel Boys
3. The Brutalist
4. I’m Still Here
5. All We Imagine As Light

Favourite scene: Zoe Saldana singing ‘El Mal’ in Emilia Perez, spinning through a ballroom of well-heeled corrupt guests and forcing them to hear what they never wanted to hear.

Orlando Parfitt (head of digital) 

1. The Holdovers
2. Conclave
3. Dune: Part 2
4. The Substance
5. Made In England: The Films Of Powell & Pressburger

Favourite scene: Demi Moore’s face being washed off the Hollywood Walk of Fame at the end of The Substance.

Charles Gant (awards/box office editor)

1. Anora 
2. All We Imagine As Light
3. The Brutalist
4. Black Dog
5. A Complete Unknown

Favourite scene: I didn’t unqualifiedly love The Substance, but the scene where Elisabeth (Demi Moore) gets ready for a date, suffers a crisis of confidence and ends up not leaving her apartment: was brilliantly conceived, performed and executed.

Michael Rosser (Asia & Middle East editor)

1. All We Imagine As Light
2. Anora
3. Kneecap
4. The Substance
5. All Shall Be Well

Favourite scene: In an age where we’ve seemingly seen it all, the New Year’s Eve finale of The Substance proves cinema can still pack a visual punch. The Hollywood Walk of Fame never looked so good.

Tim Dams (Europe editor)

1. Anora
2. The Substance
3. Loveable
4. Babygirl
5. Emilia Perez

Favourite scene: Dennis Quaid gorging on prawns in The Substance is right up there. But it’s the moment in Norwegian director Lilja Ingolfsdottir’s Loveable where a wrung-out Maria (played by Hegla Guren) curls up on the couch in her therapist’s office and quietly starts to cry. Cue waterworks from the entire audience.

Ben Dalton (senior reporter, UK & International)

1. Anora
2. Nosferatu
3. Wicked
4. Babygirl
5. Grand Theft Hamlet

Favourite scene: Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle cooking up a grotesque feast while bitterly mimicking the chat-show appearance of Margaret Qualley’s Sue is a deliciously funny skewering of modern beauty standards – and the contemporary celebrity complex.

Mona Tabbara (senior reporter, UK & Ireland)

1. Sing Sing
2. There’s Still Tomorrow
3. Kneecap
4. Grand Theft Hamlet
5. Bird

Favourite scene: Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini’s characters teaming up for a very public takedown in Conclave, almost derailed by Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence not being able to work the printer. 

Ellie Calnan (reporter, digital) 

1. Anora 
2. Sing Sing
3. Kneecap 
4. The Substance 
5. Conclave / Wicked 

Favourite scene: There are several scenes from The Substance that will stay with me for years to come but I have to say the Ozdust Ballroom scene in Wicked was near perfection. It had me desperately trying to stifle my sobs in the hope that the only other two journalists in the cinema wouldn’t hear me.

Gabriella Geisinger (locations editor)

1. No Other Land
2. A Real Pain
3. Black Box Diaries
4. All We Imagine As Light
5. Conclave

Favourite scene: In A Real Pain, David (played by writer-director Jesse Eisenberg) makes an aside about Poland kicking out Jews for being cheap, while he and Benji (Keiran Culkin) are actively trying to avoid paying train fare in a brilliant, unpretentious and natural interjection of humour (the kind that underpins deep trauma) that made me laugh aloud in the cinema.

Mark Salisbury (contributing editor)

1. Anora
2. Perfect Days
3. September 5
4. Civil War
5. Nosferatu

Favourite scene: The Anora house invasion, and a red velvet-suited Zoe Saldana singing and dancing at a charity event in Emilia Pérez.

Wendy Mitchell (contributing editor)

1. The Girl With The Needle
2. The Substance
3. Nickel Boys
4. Nosferatu
5. Kneecap

Favourite scene: The “Father Figure” scene in Babygirl. Harris Dickinson is invited to intern at Screen International at any point. 

Silvia Wong (Asia editor)

1. An Unfinished Film 
2. Perfect Days
3. The Way We Talk

Favourite scene: Watching Indonesian filmmaker and artist Garin Nugroho’s black-and-white silent film Samsara with a live performance of the film score that combines electronic music with traditional Gamelan music and singing was a mesmerising and immersive experience. 

Rebecca Leffler (France correspondent)

1. Emilia Perez
2. Sing Sing
3. The Seed Of The Sacred Fig
4. The Most Precious Of Cargoes
5. The Count Of Monte-Cristo

Favourite scene: No spoilers, but the last scene of The Seed Of The Sacred Fig because it is an explosive denouement, and made even more extraordinary when juxtaposed with the final images of real documentary footage from Iran that serve as a gut-punch reminder that the ostensibly fictional thriller we’ve been watching on the screen is actually a mirror of reality. 

Elisabet Cabeza (Spain correspondent)

1. Anora
2. All We Imagine As Light
3. I’m Still Here
4. Black Dog
5. The Seed Of The Sacred Fig

Favourite scene: Any of the car journeys taking the bullfighter and his entourage to and fro from the bullring in Albert Serra’s Afternoons Of Solitude, a documentary masterclass.

Sandy George (Australia correspondent)

1. Black Dog
2. Dying
3. The Moon Is Upside Down
4. Anora
5. Black Box Diaries

Favourite scene: The female subjects in Songs Inside are mostly in prison as a result of trauma, including Clancy. “I lose my shit when I drink,” she says, suggesting it flows from the ghosts of her past. “They were meant to look after me and they didn’t,” she adds, referring to her parents. It’s heartbreaking.

• Screen critics’ top films of 2024