


If you haven’t already noticed, those feelings of uncertainty and instability you’ve been experiencing all year long aren’t just the result of another stomach-churning election and an increasingly bizarre news cycle, they’re products of fictional media, too. This year has been filled with films that contend with the concept of power and the broad spectrum of ways it can be wielded. Take “Conclave” (perhaps the most on-the-nose choice given that it was released just weeks before the election), a movie about how major global power changes hands and the internal battles occurring within these sequestered systems.
Audiences were fascinated by how quickly favor turns in Edward Berger’s film, but it felt all too familiar watching men grovel and gripe over authority, at least until a twist changes the ranks. “Conclave” is a well-made film, but one we’ve fundamentally seen before. Far more memorable were the movies that didn’t just save their big, prickly ideas for the end, but dared to challenge the norms by the start. Often, these movies saw women in the driver’s seat, controlling the action and calling the shots. 2024 was the year when these characters — and the actors who embodied them — either didn’t play by the rules or stuck their necks out to dispute them. It was a year of bold, striking performances, where women defied power structures to take it back for themselves.
Here, then, are nine of the year's best films, boasting some of the most unapologetic, delightfully power-hungry performances in recent memory.






Performance artist and filmmaker Zia Anker already had a hit with “My First Film” while it was still a pandemic-era Zoom presentation about her experience making a movie that went untouched by every festival and distributor she could get it in front of. This year, Anker adapted her piece into a metafiction film about a young woman, Vita (Odessa Young), who sets out to make her debut feature, only to run into a litany of problems that come with being an independent artist. Vita is halted by industry roadblocks and her film is constantly beset by personal difficulties, while Anker’s candid screenplay layers fiction and fact to transform the movie into an empowering artistic manifesto. “My First Film” is a blisteringly honest look at how failure — as crushing as it can be — is its own gift, and often, a necessary component in the search for our true creative voice.



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