As the year comes to a close, reflecting on the new opportunities one has experienced throughout the past year is important. Namely, travelling to new places, meeting new people, growing in new ways, and above all: seeing new movies. In 2024, cinema had a lot to offer me, as from Paris, Texas (1984) to Scream (1996) or Challengers (2024), I had the chance to bear witness to a plethora of films — for better or for worse. (Looking at you Trainspotting (1996) and Poor Things (2023), respectively). Without further ado, I, a movie critic (avid Letterboxd user) and a film scholar (undergraduate with a cinema minor) present the tenth issue of this column: TOP FIRST WATCHES OF 2024.

1. DÌDI/弟弟 

(2024) Dir. Sean Wang

“Mom, are you ashamed of me?”

A raw and rapturous feature-length directorial debut following an impressionable and curious 13-year-old Taiwanese American growing up in the Bay Area in the late-2000s. An ode to first-generation teenagers navigating the cheers and chaos of adolescence, and the lengthy learning that comes with it — how to film, how to kiss, how to skate, how to be a friend, and how to make your mother like you.

2.  PARIS IS BURNING

(1990) Dir. Jennie Livingston

“Some of them say that we’re sick, we’re crazy. And some of them think that we are the most gorgeous, special things on Earth.” 

3.  NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 

(1968) Dir. George A. Romero

“If you have a gun, shoot ’em in the head.”

An independent first feature that became a horror zombie cult classic showcasing a group of individuals seeking refuge inside an abandoned farmhouse to escape from reanimated corpses, including a Black protagonist going beyond racial stereotypes of the period such as the “Magical Negro.” An offering of revolutionary sociopolitical commentary set in rural Philadelphia, presenting a subtext of the counterculture movement of the 1960s. In particular, although zombies may be a threat to the landscape of America, a bigger threat to Americans is violence, especially racial and military-industrial complex violence.

4.  HIGH AND LOW/天国と地獄 

(1963) Dir. Akira Kurosawa

“I’d rather be told the cruel truth than be fed gentle lies.”

5.  BROTHER 

(2022) Dir. Clement Virgo

“Don’t matter how poor you are, you can always show the world you’re not a nobody.”

An adaptation of the award-winning novel of the same name by David Chariandy centering on the relationship between Francis and Michael, two Black Canadian brothers coming of age during the early 1990s. A shout out to Scarborough and Toronto, friends and family, kinship and community, and everything that becomes entangled in between from violence to grief or passion to music, all the while shouting out the past and its memories as both a burden and blessing.  

6.  THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG/دانه‌ی انجیر معابد 

(2024) Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof

“The world has changed, but God has not. Nor his laws.”