19: Favorite Movies of 2021
A SORT OF HAPPY NEW YEAR MESSAGE - Kathleen Norris
I have a contradictory attitude concerning “best of the year” lists. I dislike them, but I sometimes use them to guide me to films I may have overlooked. My unease comes from sense that such lists often favor films that have been heavily promoted but will seem less worthy once the hype fades away. And I suspect that all too often the lists don’t serve the viewer as much as they enhance the ego of the person making them.
So I won’t be offering a “best of the year” list, but I will comment on some films, new and old, that entertained, moved, or inspired me this year. I’ll be writing about some of these movies in future issues of SoulTelegram, but here’s a glance. One of the most powerful films I saw was the Iranian director Mohammed Rasoulof’s There Is No Evil. I was curious about it because after the film won the major prize at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival, the director was sentenced to prison in Iran for promoting “propaganda against the system.” He couldn’t go to Berlin to accept the award, because like another Iranian film director, Jafar Panafi, he’s been forbidden to leave the country or make more films.
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