6) Ida
Ida is not a big film and it’s not a loud film. Yet its quiet and dignified grace marks it out as something truly special. There’s nothing exactly revolutionary about Ida, but indie darling Pawel Pawlikowski makes up for this lack of innovation by crafting a near perfect drama. The tale of a novitiate nun and her booze swilling aunt taking a road trip across a bleakly Khrushchevian Eastern Europe may sound like some oddball black comedy, but this is filmmaking at its most honest and human.
While its performances are delicately wonderful, the film’s true twin stars are actually its visuals and editing. Clocking in at a very amenable 80 minutes, most of Ida‘s scenes last little more than a couple of minutes, providing this otherwise measured indie drama with oddly breakneck pacing.
And then there’s the cinematography – oh the cinematography. Shot in gorgeous Academy ratio black and white, Pawlikowski frames every single moment of the film with an aching beauty, often placing his solemn yet hopeful characters at the very edge of the screen, as if their God or their pasts or something in between is trying push them aside – into a future where old wounds are forgotten and the horizon is just a touch brighter.