I’ve spent the last several weeks of December doing what almost everyone who writes about film does at the end of the year: compiling, ranking and showing off lists. The only thing is that, for almost every list I put together, everything on it needed to have a public release in 2015. That means every film needed distribution of some sort, disqualifying anything that might not be accessible or lucky enough to score some sort of availability outside of film festivals.

That’s why, like for 2014, I’ve decided to compile another list of great films that don’t have a US distributor. For some of these films, it might not be surprising to see that buyers aren’t clamoring for them (a perception that has nothing to do with the film’s quality); other titles are more surprising in that they still don’t have distribution, given their accessibility and/or accolades. Either way, all of the films on this list deserve the chance of being seen beyond the festival circuit, and hopefully with enough interest or demand that might happen for a good number of these titles. Last year, over half of the films profiled on our 2014 undistributed feature wound up getting distributed; here’s hoping that amount winds up being higher for these 15 films.

Best Undistributed Films of 2015

The Academy of Muses

José Luis Guerín (sort of) returns to narrative filmmaking eight years after his masterpiece In the City of Sylvia, creating an entrancing and dense work done on a micro budget. Starting out as a documentary, Guerín films lectures held by Italian Philology professor Raffaele Pinto (playing himself) about poetry and the role of the female muse as inspiration for male artists. The opening act can feel like a tidal wave of concepts and ideas, but Guerín eventually settles down once he brings in a narrative involving Pinto using several of his students as muses. Shooting on cheap DV with no cinematographer, Guerín pulls off images just as evocative as the ones in Sylvia, once again using reflective surfaces to portray emotions and sensations that could never be summed up properly with words. It’s a film that crackles with energy from beginning to end, and yet another example of great small-scale filmmaking.

Update: Grasshopper Film has acquired US distribution rights for The Academy of Muses.

The Ardennes

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Robin Pront’s directorial debut surprised me back when I saw it at TIFF, as its familiar story of a love triangle between two criminal brothers (one reformed, one just out of jail) and the woman between them sounded all too familiar. But The Ardennes is both sophisticated in its approach and more thematically rich than one would expect, focusing on its characters trying to move on from their past sins by working their way above the poverty line. That gives The Ardennes a powerful and tragic edge, acknowledging how much social, political and systematic factors can muddle the distinctions between good and evil. Combined with great performances from its three leads (especially Veerle Baetens, who works wonders with what could have been a thankless role) and a gut punch of an ending, it’s surprising that The Ardennes is still awaiting US distribution.

Update: Film Movement has acquired US distribution rights for The Ardennes.

The Brand New Testament

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In Jaco Van Dormael’s The Brand New Testament, God (Benoît Poelvoorde) is a mean old drunk who spends his days creating disasters, diversions and annoyances on his computer to toy with humanity. He locks his wife (Yolande Moreau) and 10-year-old daughter Ea (Pili Groyne) in his apartment, worried that if they get out they’ll end up like his son. But Ea rebels against him, leaking out everyone’s date of death before escaping to Brussels in the hopes of recruiting six new apostles. It’s a strange film to say the least, with a premise viewers will have to accept as is if they want to enjoy it. Luckily, Van Dormael is intensely committed to seeing his vision through, and the film is bursting with so many weird ideas it’s easy to get won over by its energetic style. It’s a light, humourous attempt by Van Dormael to confront some of the bigger questions involving existence, and probably the cutest act of blasphemy you’ll ever see.

Update: Music Box Films has acquired US distribution rights for The Brand New Testament.

Despite the Night

After being rejected by the major festivals, Philippe Grandrieux’s Despite the Night (Malgré la nuit) finally unveiled itself at Montreal’s Festival du nouveau cinéma in the fall of 2015, marking another disappointing treatment of one of the most interesting and consistent filmmakers working today. Grandrieux is a director more interested in the dark and insidious, finding unsettling ways to push the boundaries of cinema into new territory, and Despite the Night is more of the same. Lenz (Kristian Marr) returns to Paris searching for a woman from his past, and in the process he enters an intense, destructive relationship with Hélène (Ariane Labed), a disturbed nurse still grieving the loss of her son. Grandrieux has made what might be his most accessible film to date, although that’s not saying much considering narrative has never been of too much interest in his works (it’s best to just surrender to Grandrieux’s intense aesthetics). Few filmmakers are willing to venture into the darkness; Grandrieux dives in headfirst, leaving it up to viewers if they want to dive in alongside him.

El Movimiento

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“1835. Argentina. Anarchy. Plague.” That title card sets the stage for Benjamin Naishtat’s El Movimiento, which quickly establishes its chaotic world by opening with a man getting his head blown off by a cannon at point blank range. From there, the film settles into following Señor (a fantastic Pablo Cedrón) and his two lackeys as they travel the desert, convincing people to join what Señor calls “The Movement” in hopes of unifying the country. Naishtat never bothers delving into what Señor’s movement exactly is (and Señor’s talks are nothing more than vague statements delivered with intensity), a choice that puts the focus more on the quest for power and dominance than ideology. People familiar with Argentina’s history and politics will certainly get more out of El Movimiento, but those unfamiliar should find plenty to enjoy whether it’s the gorgeous black and white cinematography, Pedro Irusta’s aggressive score, or Naishtat’s ability to create such an engrossing sense of time and place over a brief 65-minute runtime.

Happy Hour

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With the distinction between cinema and television getting blurrier by the day, and binge watching becoming more common, along comes Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 317-minute Happy Hour to show the unique pleasures cinema can bring when duration isn’t a restriction. The film follows four women in their 30s, close friends who discover one of them has been trying to divorce her husband for over a year. The woman’s decision to leave her husband, followed by her vanishing from the film altogether, throws the other three women’s lives into turmoil over their own relationships. Hamaguchi lets his film breathe considerably, dedicating large chunks of time to sequences like an art event all four women participate in, a hangout at a bar or a getaway to a resort, and by doing so takes full advantage of his runtime to provide a level of depth rarely seen in film or television. All four women transform considerably by the time Happy Hour’s credits start to roll, and Hamaguchi gives his characters enough time and care to make their changes deeply felt and all the more resonant.

How Heavy This Hammer

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My heritage may make me biased, but 2015 was a good year for Canadian cinema (case in point: at least 3 films on this list are from the Great White North). And while a good amount of Canadian films blew me away last year, it was Kazik Radwanski’s How Heavy This Hammer that left me feeling excited for what the future might bring. Erwin (Erwin van Cotthem), a family man who spends most of his time playing computer games, makes a drastic shift in his life when he suddenly decides to leave his wife, yet finds himself in the same rut as before. Radwanski shoots almost entirely with handheld cameras and in extreme close-up, giving the film have a claustrophobic mood that emphasizes its protagonist’s feelings of being trapped that’s extremely effective. But Radwanski’s greatest skill here is his ability to get inside Erwin’s head without being judgmental, leaving viewers to make up their mind how to feel about him. Seeing something this formally interesting and empathetic come out of Canada only makes me hopeful that this is only the beginning of something much bigger for Canadian cinema.

Invention

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First off: kudos to Soda Pictures, who acquired both Canadian and UK rights to Mark Lewis’ Invention, a film that I never thought would get distribution of any kind considering it’s almost entirely silent. Other than a small piano number opening the film and a Fuck Buttons song used in the conclusion, Invention plays out with no sound whatsoever as Lewis’ camera swoops through three locations: Toronto, Sao Paolo and The Louvre in Paris. The film’s complex shots—using cranes, pans, zooms, tilts and just about every other possible type of camera movement—constantly redefines each space with every passing second, putting an emphasis on how cinema can influence our own perception. Taken on their own, Lewis’ shots are incredible works (the film is actually an anthology of a dozen films by Lewis), but Invention’s real power comes from the way it elegantly reminds viewers of how powerful of a tool cinema can be.

The Missing Girl

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A US indie about one of life’s “late bloomers” isn’t exactly unheard of (Sundance has made an industry of these kinds of films), but A.D. Calvo’s The Missing Girl is a shining example of how much good execution can make even the most familiar material feel fresh again. The film starts out as a mystery: comic book store owner Mort (Robert Longstreet) hires a new employee (Alexia Rasmussen), only for her to disappear shortly after someone connected to an old missing persons case moves back into town. Calvo, with the help of an incredible performance by Longstreet, sets things up to look like Mort taking on the role of amateur detective before deliberately abandoning all feelings of mystery in the film’s second half. It’s a surprising move that pays off well, letting the film’s terrific sense of character take over while making Mort’s character arc much more impacting. With no distribution deal announced as of this time, I hope that someone will come along to help make this hidden gem no longer stay hidden.

One Floor Below

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Radu Muntean’s follow-up to Tuesday After Christmas finds the Romanian director—one of the members of Romania’s “new wave” of cinema—dealing with material similar to Ruben Ostlund’s films (or, for a more specific comparison, Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown). Patrascu (Teodor Corban) overhears an argument between a man and woman in the apartment below his, eavesdropping until the man in the argument catches him listening in. Hours later, the woman from the argument is found murdered but Patrascu doesn’t tell the police about what he heard, and soon the man who caught him starts taking an interest in Patrascu. Muntean’s interests lie strictly with Patrascu and not the circumstances surrounding the murder, preferring to delve into how Patrascu, a successful businessman used to exercising control over everything in his life, deals with getting thrown into a situation where he no longer has the upper hand. It’s a slow boiler that’s hard not to get caught up in, with Muntean’s long, elaborately choreographed takes—a high-wire act in itself—feeding into Patrascu’s attempts to navigate the sticky situation he’s put himself in.

The Other Side

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After completing his Texas Trilogy, Roberto Minervini moves into darker and more political territory with The Other Side. It continues Minervini’s unique blend of documentary and fiction developed in his earlier films, except this time he’s moved from Texas to rural Louisiana, looking at two groups located on the furthest edges of society. The film’s first half dedicates itself to Mark and Lisa, a couple trapped by their drug addictions, before switching over to a militia group preparing itself for what they think is an impending war with the government. It’s impossible to tell between what’s real or staged, and Minervini’s camera remains unflinching in its observation of some of the uglier aspects of both lifestyles. Yet The Other Side always shows a care and understanding towards its subjects/characters, with Minervini exploring the context behind their intense dislike of their government rather than pitying or dismissing them based on their situation. It’s a perspective that, in a time when political divisions get stronger and more abrasive with each passing day, feels more necessary than ever.

Update: Film Movement has acquired North American distribution rights for The Other Side.

Our Loved Ones

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When talking about Anne Émond’s Our Loved Ones, the word ambition springs to mind immediately. For her second feature, Émond creates a multigenerational family story dealing with grief, loss, fatherhood, depression and mental illness among many other big themes, nailing almost all of them with a grace and honesty even some well-established filmmakers might envy. Opening with the suicide of a family’s patriarch, the film hones in on eldest son David (Maxim Gaudette) over the years as he gets married and has two children. It’s only later on in the film that Émond’s elliptical and deceptively undramatic approach pays off, as David begins suffering from the same feelings of melancholy that led to his father’s death. Émond’s portrayal of depression is remarkable in its precision, and when the narrative transitions from David to his daughter Laurence in the film’s final act, Our Loved Ones feels like a true epic done on a human scale. Our Loved Ones’ subject matter will be a tough sell to most audiences, but it’s a powerful experience viewers should have the chance to see for themselves.

Paulina

Winner of the top prize at Cannes’ Critics’ Week in 2015, Santiago Mitre’s Paulina is only further proof of how Argentina has a knack for producing some seriously good directors. Paulina (Dolores Fonzi), a lawyer with a promising career, throws it all away when she decides to finally pursue her passion, moving away to teach high school students in one of the poorer parts of the country. Not too long after starting her job, a group of men (some of whom include her own students) beat and rape her as she travels home one night after visiting a friend. It’s a grim set-up that turns into something more frustrating and complicated as Paulina decides to keep teaching, baffling and infuriating everyone around her. Revealing any more of the story’s twists and turns would be a disservice to what Mitre has crafted, turning Paulina from a captivating drama into a fascinating look at what happens when personal interests clash with ideological ones. Forzi, along with Oscar Martinez (playing her father), both give great performances that help steer the film away from feeling too provocative or contrived.

Tag

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Only one of six (!) films Sion Sono made in 2015, Tag should prove to be a delight for fans of the director’s gonzo works like Why Don’t You Play in Hell? or Tokyo Tribe. Anyone familiar with Tag already (it won several awards at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival) should know about its opening sequence already, a kind of deranged remake of The Happening that’s more surprising and entertaining than anything M. Night Shyamalan has done in more than a decade. After that, Sono just keeps the strangeness coming at full force, as the film’s lead transforms into three different women while avoiding death at every turn, whether it’s from gun-toting teachers, malevolent gusts of wind or pig men. Sono, a master when it comes to pacing, never slows things down for a second, and his ability to throw out as many insane ideas he can think of means it’s impossible to guess what will happen from one second to the next. Hopefully, Tag will be the first feature of Sono’s six from last year to score US distribution, and help further expose Western audiences to one of the most prolific and singular directors in the world right now.

Uncertain

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Uncertain fell off people’s radars after winning an award at Tribeca in 2015, a shame considering it was one of the best documentaries of last year. The title comes from the town directors Ewan McNicol and Anna Sandilands profile, a small city with a population of 94 sitting on the border between Louisiana and Texas. The film profiles three men ranging from 21 to 74, all of whom have their own present hardships or tumultuous pasts primarily dealing with addiction. At the same time, the film periodically looks at a crisis happening in the town when an invasive weed spreads throughout the local lake, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem and threatening to end people’s ability to fish for food and income. McNicol and Sandilands tie together both the aquatic weed’s stranglehold on the town with the vices and conditions of its three subjects, creating a metaphor so perfectly intertwined with the film’s themes it gives Uncertain’s final moments—a brief glimmer of hope amid a grim reality—an emotional resonance that lasts long after the credits roll.

No one can say that Anne Émond doesn’t have ambition after watching her sophomore feature Our Loved Ones. Taking place over two decades and following three generations of a family in rural Quebec, Émond opens her film with the family’s patriarch hanging himself. From there, she focuses on David (Maxim Gaudette), the youngest son who ends up getting married and having two children as the film quickly moves through time. David eventually starts showing signs of an intense depression as his daughter Laurence (Karelle Tremblay) grows up and goes off to college, and soon finds himself facing a battle that’s similar to the one his father lost.

Émond’s film is remarkable in its unflinching and realistic portrayal of the cumulative power of depression. The way she handles time, and how she uses seemingly innocuous and naturalistic moments between characters to develop such a strong, sensitive and moving film is the sort of thing one would expect from a well-established master instead of an up and coming filmmaker. It’s a bold work, especially in the way Émond is willing to suddenly switch the focus from David to Laurence partway through the film and not lose momentum. We’ve already raved about the film, and after having its North American Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival we were able to sit down with Anne Émond (who’s already in the middle of production on her third feature) to talk about Our Loved Ones.

Tell me about the origin of your film.

For about 15 years, I’ve been wanting to tell this story. I did another film before this called Nuit #1, but this could have been my first film. Our Loved Ones is quite complicated because the structure is elliptical, and it’s a bigger film with a lot of actors, so in terms of production it was easier for me to finance it as a second feature. It’s a very personal story. I think all movies are a little autobiographical, and this one is very autobiographical. It’s quite a dark and complex subject, but all those characters in the movie, I know them. I had the feeling that I could talk about this subject with legitimacy, so I felt that I could truly make this film.

What was autobiographical about it?

That’s hard. In fact, I don’t want to talk about it. I think what was really important to me was to make a movie that people will love and understand and feel even if they don’t know that it happened.

What struck me immediately about the film is how you handled time, and how elliptical the film is. Did you always intend to make the film this way?

I knew I wanted to make a film about life passing by. It’s a film about memory and what parents give to children, so in this way I was sure it would be a long period of time. At the beginning, I wasn’t sure how to tell it. I wrote the screenplay with flashbacks, where we’re in the present with Laurence and then the story would come out through flashbacks. It didn’t work for me. The chronology was more interesting. I think it’s quite cruel because we lose the main character and the film is not over. David is the main character and then Laurence is the main character. But it’s quite elliptical and it’s a challenge. Some people like it, but for other people it’s hard to accept. I tried to make it soft. I think it’s quite a simple story, it’s easy to follow, so I could do these jumps in time.

Did you feel that by having such a large scope it would be more respectful to the themes you were covering?

There are a lot of films about suicide, some good and some bad. Usually when people kill themselves in a film there is always a very precise reason, like his wife is gone or he has cancer, something like that. There’s always a precise reason. But I wanted to make a film about a man who has everything and who just has this melancholy. To me, this is over a lifetime. I want to show a man who is so happy to have children, but it comes with the fact that they grow up, and it’s eventually like a cruel story because you can’t do anything. Life goes by, and you will lose some people that you love. So that’s why time was so important.

You start the film off with David, his mother and four siblings finding out about their father’s death, but you eventually hone in on just David. The only other sibling we really see a lot of other than David is his brother André. What made you want to keep the focus on just one family member?

At the beginning [of writing] there were 13 brothers and sisters. It was a very big family, but it was too complicated to shoot so I chose those 5 characters. I think it’s perfect because you feel they are really close. And it’s important André is there because I think he has everything to commit suicide. He’s the one who’s drinking, he has no family and no job, and he also [found his father] at the beginning, so it’s a little bit surprising that it’s David who’s suicidal.

What made you choose to set the film in the Lower Saint-Lawrence region of Quebec?

Well, I was born there! [Laughs] I love this place. Since I was young I knew those landscapes, and I wanted to shoot them. Nature is very important in the film because David feels safe in this place. He has the river, the house, the mountain, the forest, and in this small area he feels safe. To me, he’s okay, but it’s a small perimeter of security. And it’s important because once Laurence is able to [go into] the world things becomes bigger. She can go to Montreal, she can go to Barcelona, and she can get out of this little place.

David has this melancholy and heaviness in his life. It’s an issue that’s entirely internal for him, and it’s difficult to communicate it to others. How did you make sure viewers would be able to understand what David is going through?

For some people, it seems to work. They feel it, they feel this melancholy. That’s what I wanted. I think it has to do with acting. Maxim Gaudette is quite nice. Even when he is smiling, he has these sad eyes. We started shooting the movie about 2 weeks after Robin Williams killed himself, and we talked about him so much. We watched interviews with Robin Williams, and you can see it in his eyes. It’s easy to see now because he’s dead, but when you look back you see this man is smiling and laughing, but he’s not okay. I tried to give David moments alone in the film to show people he’s not fine, but he cannot say that to his family. He’s not able to share this depression.

What was the casting process like to find Maxim Gaudette and Karelle Tremblay?

It was quite important because this film is about a family. We started with David. I chose [Maxim] because I was completely in love with his acting. He’s perfect to me, and I think he’s very sensitive. And then we chose Karelle Tremblay, but we looked for Karelle for one year. We saw maybe 45 young girls. I wanted a small, blue-eyed blond girl, and Karelle is not like that at all. She’s brown haired and strong and a little bit boyish, but I liked her so much. She’s 19 and has quite a difficult part in the film, and she’s very good.

[Maxim and Karelle] had fun together. They are like father and daughter now. The shooting was magical, all of the cast became like a family because we were on location far away from our families. We were sleeping in small campers for two months, drinking beers and having fun, so we were a family by the end of shooting.

You have a pretty memorable soundtrack with songs like Blind Melon’s “No Rain” and Pulp’s “Common People.”

The songs were chosen at the writing stage. I already knew I wanted those songs. I don’t know how it happened. One night I was with my friend and we remembered this song by Blind Melon. It was like we never heard this song anymore, and we were so happy and dancing to this song at 33 years old [Laughs]. And I thought that’s the song the characters should listen to.

To me, it’s nostalgia. I thought that maybe not every family has this particular drama, but every family has dramas, memories, and songs. I also needed music to [establish] the period of time. I use it for that, and also because they’re just good songs.

The film feels very complex in the way it handles characters. Things are never black and white. There’s a lot of sensitivity toward everyone in the film. What was it like trying to achieve this while writing the screenplay?

It was hard. Nuit #1 was a dark, cruel, in your face kind of film. It was easy to be edgy. I think Our Loved Ones is not an edgy film. It’s quite different in terms of themes and direction. When I screened Nuit #1, a lot of people walked out in the middle because they couldn’t take it. I didn’t want to do that again. To me, the subject in Our Loved Ones is so important, so serious and realistic that it had to be generous. It had to be for a lot of people. But I didn’t want to make this perfect family story. I worked a lot on the writing about that.

Our Loved Ones is currently seeking US distribution.

I recently had the great privilege to program a small film festival at my local theater. The theme I chose was “Directed By Women,” in an effort to celebrate and spotlight women directors. I tried to make the offering of films as varied as possible, presenting everything from Oscar-winning fare to indie documentaries—and films both foreign and domestic. The directors whose films I chose ranged from Ida Lupino (The Hitch-Hiker) to Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker). If only I had seen Our Loved Ones before then, I would have begged to include Anne Émond’s film on the roster.

The story begins with the death of a family’s patriarch. Of the decedent’s five children, two are sons. The elder son, André (Mickaël Gouin), who discovers his father’s body, lies to his younger, more sensitive brother David (Maxim Gaudette), as well as other family members who were not present, about the circumstances surrounding their father’s death. There is no malfeasance behind the false explanation, only a desire to shield the younger son and others from the painful truth.

As years and decades pass, David grows up, grows older, and comes into his own. He has both professional and artistic success as a maker of marionettes, he is able to employ André (at their mother’s behest—but still), and he has two beautiful children of his own. That said, and setting aside these successes, David still lives with the specter of his father’s passing, and his relationship with his teen daughter Laurence (Karelle Tremblay) presents challenges he doesn’t expect.

Our Loved Ones (Les êtres chers) is only the second feature from writer/director Anne Émond, but what she puts onscreen shows such tremendous confidence—the film feels like it has come from someone with 10 times her experience.

It starts with the film’s narrative (or the lack thereof). Our Loved Ones doesn’t tell a story so much as it observes one man’s life; that man is David. It hits the two key points in his life it needs to hit (and early) to get the observation going: his father’s death and his introduction to the woman in his life, Marie (Valérie Cadieux). From there, Émond takes something of a highlight reel-approach to her film, skipping huge chunks of David’s life and presenting moments along his timeline. These moments, however, are not typical highlight reel fare. They aren’t the kind of “this is your life” moments many have come to expect from films. They are, however, meaningful later in the film.

This is the real magic of the screenplay. The film has a definitive beginning and, more importantly, a definitive end. But the middle, despite being critical to the conclusion, isn’t driving the film to the end. Émond selects moments that are key to the life she wants us to observe, not the life’s moments we think we should see.

More of that confidence shines in the way Émond presents David’s life, as it demands a lot from the viewer in terms of intelligence and faith. This 102-minute tale spans decades (which is so ambitious for most veteran filmmakers, let a lone a sophomore). As such, Émond must make great leaps forward in time, but when she does, those leaps aren’t announced. There is no subtitle or title card presenting the year in which the new action is taking place; it simply happens. For example, there is a scene early where David and Marie have just met, and they are carefully walking on a frozen lake at night. Cut to the next scene, and not only is it warm and sunny, David and Marie are living together. Cut to the scene after that, and they are at his mother’s house with their baby.

It’s jarring at first because it’s an approach that belies the usual spoon-feeding most movies offer viewers and instead requires the viewer to pay close attention for things in the film that indicate where it is along David’s timeline. This jumping—sometimes far, sometimes not—to points in David’s life that aren’t the usual key moments in a person’s life also requires faith from the viewer that Émond has planned on the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. It is.

Despite this praise (which is wholly earned), Émond’s confidence is a little higher than her storytelling skill. There is an event early in the film that aches to be addressed and never is. There is a shocking moment late in the film that comes as some considerable surprise—a moment that is key to the film’s end—but it feels contrived, like Émond wasn’t sure which points to insert into David’s timeline to support this particular moment and instead decided the viewer would simply make some necessary connections to earlier, tangentially related moments. In a film that demands a lot, this is asking for a little too much. Kudos to Émond for not wavering on her approach, but that kind of resolve comes with a price.

Still, this film is mesmerizing in the story it tells and the way it tells it, with a wonderfully soulful performance from acting veteran Gaudette as David, as well as a captivating turn from relative newcomer Tremblay as Laurence. There is great father/daughter chemistry between the two, which is also key to the film’s success. With Our Loved Ones, Anne Émond boldly makes the movie she wants to make, not the movie she thinks the audience is expecting.