The Télérama Cinema Festival is soon back! For one week, our favorite films of 2024 will be screened in 450 theaters. Also see, five feature films in preview. The program in detail.
By The Cinema Service
Published on November 18, 2024 at 11:30 a.m.
Tleading edge and the French Association of Art House Cinemas (Afcae) are organizing, from January 22 to 28, 2025, the 27th edition of the Télérama Cinema Festival. A selection of the fifteen best films of the year 2024 chosen by the editorial staff of Telerama will be offered in some 450 arthouse theaters at a price of 4 euros per place, upon presentation of the event pass, valid for two people, to be found in the numbers of Telerama from January 15 and 22, 2025 as well as on Télérama.fr and the application Télérama. For eight years, films presented in previews have been added to this selection, chosen in consultation with Afcae.
In mid-October, a call for a vote was launched by Telerama with the support of BNP Paribas among under-26s to vote for their favorite film of the year. Nearly 7,000 young people voted, and the winner is Le Comte de Monte Cristo, by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, which is therefore integrated into the festival programming. Here is the complete selection.
The top 15 of the year 2024
s “The Seeds of the Wild Fig Tree”, by Mohammad Rasoulof
In Tehran, a father appointed as an investigator at the revolutionary court, his wife and their two daughters begin to tear each other apart, while an uprising shakes the country. A masterful manifesto for freedom in Iran, which moves from closed family circles to a dizzying thriller. Read our review.
r “Mercy”, by Alain Guiraudie
The return of a city dweller to the Aveyron village where he lived sets off a wind of madness. A dark, disturbing and delirious farce. Alain Guiraudie is at the top again, a decade later The Stranger of the Lake. Read our review.
r “The Ghosts”, by Jonathan Millet
A former detainee tortured in a Syrian jail has joined a secret cell tracking torturers hidden in Europe. A relentless mental and physical thriller, heavily documented based on true events. Read our review.
s “The Delinquents”, by Rodrigo Moreno
Two Argentine bank employees steal twenty-five years of salary to never have to work again… Between a social film, a utopian western and an ode to free time, an original and wildly romantic heist story. Invigorating! Read our review.
s “In his image”, by Thierry de Peretti
Adapted from a novel by Jérôme Ferrari, the film tells the story of Corsican nationalism from 1979 to the dawn of the 21st century, through the lucid gaze of Antonia, an independent photojournalist and woman of doubt. A song of luminous melancholy. Read our review.
r “The Substance”, by Coralie Fargeat
One of the surprises of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, body horror as gory as it is mental about female self-hatred. Worn by Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, an impressive visual experience. Read our review.
s “The Story of Souleymane”, by Boris Lojkine
Forty-eight hours in the shoes of Souleymane, an undocumented deliveryman in a hostile Paris. Boris Lojkine signs a breathtaking social thriller with a formidable non-professional actor, Abou Sangaré. Read our review.
s “Flow, the cat who was no longer afraid of water”, by Gints Zilbalodis
The fabulous odyssey of a little black cat in a majestic world, little by little engulfed by water. An animated film like no other, of incredible beauty and originality. An aesthetic shock! Read our review.
r “The Area of Interest”, by Jonathan Glazer
Rudolf Höss, Nazi commander, lives with his wife and children in a “charming” pavilion adjoining the Auschwitz camp. A peaceful existence x-rayed through a distressing and interrogative device. Impressive. Read our review.
r “The Apprentice”, d’Ali Abbasi
New York, between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. How young Donald Trump, a political novice (Sebastian Stan), learns ignominy from a powerful lawyer (Jeremy Strong). A scathing script, breathtaking actors. Read our review.
r “Emilia Perez”, by Jacques Audiard
Double awarded at Cannes 2024 (collective female performance prize, jury prize), this transgender musical comedy combines film noir and the excesses of telenovela. After so many years of watching men fall, Audiard watches women struggle. Moving and controlled. Read our review.
r “All We Imagine as Light”, de Payal Kapadia
In Mumbai, two nurse friends, from different generations, each experience a complicated love story. A beautiful portrait of women, which mixes material life and floating states of mind, harshness and sensuality. Read our review.
r “The evil does not exist”, by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
The author of Drive My Car fascinates with a film whose mystery haunts for a long time. From an exercise in musical style, he draws a work as splendid as it is disturbing on the delicate balance between men and nature. Read our review.
r “Borgo”, by Stéphane Demoustier
New supervisor at Borgo prison, the rigorous Mélissa (Hafsia Herzi) acclimatizes to Corsica and its troubles, which reveal her in a new light… The effectiveness of a thriller and the complexity of a woman's portrait brought together in a very intense film. Read our review.
r “Madame Hofmann”, by Sébastien Lifshitz
Sylvie Hofmann is a nursing executive who works tirelessly in a hospital in Marseille. A magnificent documentary and portrait of a woman, a sort of secular and heroic saint, who gives herself with an open heart and does honor to the mission of the public hospital. Read our review.
The favorite of the under 26s
q “The Count of Monte Cristo”, by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière
A public triumph in theaters, this new adaptation of the novel by Alexandre Dumas is supported by a remarkable cast (Pierre Niney, astonishing as an avenging hero, in the lead) and a clever screenplay. Read our review.
The previews
r “Maria”, by Pablo Larraín
The last days of Callas, in 1977, in Paris, when the diva remembers her love affair with Onassis and seeks to find her voice again… After Jackie Kennedy (Jackie) and Lady Di (Spencer), the Chilean filmmaker tells the story of another 20th century icon bruised by life and men in a sumptuous setting. And offers Angelina Jolie her best role. Read our article.
r “A Real Pain”, de Jesse Eisenberg
Two New York cousins travel together to the land of memory: the Poland that their Jewish grandmother once left to flee the Nazis, but also the more intimate territory of their relationship and their respective cracks. A subtle, intelligent and sensitive road movie, brilliantly directed by actor-director Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and his accomplice Kieran Culkin (the series Succession).
r “The Attachment”, by Carine Tardieu
“I don’t know anything about children,” Sandra warns. It is on this neighbor, however, that little Eliott sets his sights when his life turns upside down. The kid, his sister and their father will carve out a place in the heart of the single girl, through a delicate and luminous drama, carried by the excellent Pio Marmaï and an immense Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.
r “La Pampa”, by Antoine Chevrollier
Friends for life and death, Willy and Jojo are two high school students who are fans of motocross. One day, Willy discovers Jojo's secret by accident… A deeply moving initiatory story, served by young actors who burst onto the screen, as well as the always impeccable Damien Bonnard and… Artus, in an astonishing counter-use.
r “My favorite cake”, by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha
In Tehran, a septuagenarian widow dreams of a man chasing away her boredom… From tender comedy to melancholy, this funny and moving film takes a unique look at Iran today, through a woman who remembers freedom of the country in his youth and tries to find it again, defying the prohibitions.
