Sight And Sound Reveal All We Imagine As Light Their 2024 Best Film

‘How many have you seen?‘ Sight And Sound have revealed the results of their 2024 Best Films Poll and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light taking the coveted top spot.

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner, was voted by around 100 of the world’s top film critics. It was also the first Indian film in 3 decades to be selected in Official Competition at Cannes. Starring Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam, it has the look and feel of a European arthouse classic, exploring the complexities of female friendship, this beautiful, sweeping, emotional film brilliantly captures the frantic pace, the vibrant colours and the heady atmosphere of modern Mumbai.

Director Payal Kapadia said: “When I was at film school, at The Film & Television Institute of India, we used to get a copy of Sight and Sound. We were all excited when the new edition came out and would clamour to read it. The magazine and its writers hold a special place in every cinephile’s heart, so to have my film, All We Imagine as Light at No. 1 in The Best Films of the Year Poll for 2024 is very special to me.”

First and second features play a big part in this year’s poll, with work from emerging filmmakers making a big impression with voters. Directors whose first or second feature make the top 50 include: Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine As Light, 1), Mati Diop (Dahomey, 4), Rose Glass (Love Lies Bleeding, 7), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance, 7), Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor (No Other Land, 9), RaMell Ross (Nickel Boys, 10), Annie Baker (Janet Planet, 14), Alexander Horwarth (Henry Fonda For President, 21), Rich Peppiat (Kneecap, 25), Rungano Nyoni (On Becoming A Guinea Fowl, 25), Matthew Rankin (Universal Language, 25) and Déa Kulumbegashvili (April, 41).

The Top 10 in Sight and Sound’s Best Films of 2024 poll are:
1. ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Payal Kapadia) Review
2.ANORA (Sean Baker) Review
3.LA CHIMERA (Alice Rohrwacher) Review
4.DAHOMEY (Mati Diop)
5.HARD TRUTHS (Mike Leigh) Review
6.CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (Jia Zhang-ke) Review
=7.LOVE LIES BLEEDING (Rose Glass) Review
=7.THE SUBSTANCE (Coralie Fargeat) Review
9.NO OTHER LAND (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor)
10.NICKEL BOYS (RaMell Ross) Review

Sight and Sound Managing Editor Isabel Stevens commented: “Watching All We Imagine as Light at Cannes – even before it won the Grand Prix – confirmed for us at Sight and Sound that its director, Payal Kapadia, is a vital artistic voice in cinema right now. So we’re thrilled that her film has topped our 2024 poll. The way Kapadia marshals the tools of cinema – sound, music, performances, cinematography and how she mixes fiction and documentary – to conjure a singular lyrical atmosphere of desire and yearning really make her stand out. This film makes you look again at the world around you to find beauty in unexpected everyday things and places. Our poll is packed with original, independent and foreign-language films and in fact, all the films in our top ten are proof that there is a world of thriving and exhilarating independent cinema beyond the big studio franchises.”

Sight and Sound’s winter 24/25 issue is available digitally on 9th December and on newsstands from 12th December. The full results of the Top 50 are online now.