The New York Times asked more than 500 filmmakers and industry figures to name the best films of the 21st century. As much as the resulting list itself, the personal choices of those who took part in the poll offer telling clues about cinema.
One of those names was Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
The 10 films Ceylan chose share a common rhythm. They are films in which time flows slowly, silence speaks and people are left alone with themselves. This is not cinema that tries to persuade or impress its audience, but a world that presents its existence just as it is.
In a way, the list also bears the traces of Ceylan’s own relationship with cinema.
1.About Endlessness – Roy Andersson, 2019
Genre: Drama
Director: Roy Andersson
Cast: Bengt Bergius, Anja Broms, Tatiana Delaunay
In Roy Andersson’s world, people appear as moments frozen in the midst of everyday life. Its scene-by-scene structure sets the weight of life before us without dramatising it, almost as an ordinary reality. Joy and despair stand on the same plane.
This distance – a gaze set not from above but slightly from outside – is territory Ceylan knows well.
2.No Country for Old Men – The Coen Brothers, 2007
Genre: Thriller, Drama, Crime
Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cast: Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin
Violence, chance and fate are intertwined in this film. The circumstances the characters cannot control are as decisive as the choices they make. The tension felt throughout the film feeds less on events than on this sense of inevitability.
It is an atmosphere akin to the “acceptance of what happens” so often found in Ceylan’s filmography.
3.Oslo, August 31st – Joachim Trier, 2011
Genre: Drama
Director: Joachim Trier
Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Hans Olav Brenner, Ingrid Olava
A day on the streets of Oslo unfolds in the company of a mind caught between past and present. There is a weariness in the character’s face, in his conversations and in his bearing. The film makes us feel how memory and regret quietly grow heavier.
This state reveals itself less in words than in the gaps between them.
4.Hors Satan – Bruno Dumont, 2011
Genre: Drama, Crime
Director: Bruno Dumont
Cast: David Dewaele, Alexandra Lemâtre, Christophe Bon
Dumont’s cinema feels no need to explain itself. The landscape is as harsh as the characters. Nature is indifferent to human intentions. Relationships are intuitive; behaviour is often ambiguous.
This ambiguity never settles the viewer somewhere comfortable.
5.Silent Light – Carlos Reygadas, 2007
Genre: Drama, Romance
Director: Carlos Reygadas
Cast: Cornelio Wall, Miriam Toews, Maria Pankratz
Set within a Mennonite community, this film traces the relationship between silence, faith and everyday life. The first light of morning, long takes and recurring rituals make time feel almost physical.
A moral tension runs through the film, yet no explicit judgement is ever passed.
6.The Death of Mr. Lazarescu – Cristi Puiu, 2005
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Director: Cristi Puiu
Cast: Doru Ana, Monica Barladeanu, Alina Berzunteanu
A journey compressed into a single night. Hospitals, corridors, doctors, waiting times… Beyond a certain point, a person stops being a name and becomes a file.
The familiarity of this feeling is what makes the film so shattering.
7.The Turin Horse – Béla Tarr, 2011
Genre: Drama
Director: Béla Tarr
Cast: János Derzsi, Erika Bók, Mihály Kormos
The days repeat one another. The wind drops, the food dwindles, conversations grow sparse. Life slowly withdraws. Tarr’s cinema turns this withdrawal into something close to ritual.
Here, time does not move forward; it wears away.
8.Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Cast: Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee
Past lives, ghosts and the jungle take their place as parts of the same reality. As death draws near, nature and memory become more visible. The film seeks no rational explanation.
Everything seems to be exactly where it should be.
9.Unknown Pleasures – Jia Zhang-ke, 2002
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Director: Jia Zhang-ke
Cast: Wei Wei Zhao, Qiong Wu, Tao Zhao
Youth, unemployment and aimlessness… Drifting through China’s changing cities, the characters struggle to make contact with life. Global images sit side by side with a local sense of being stuck.
A feeling of being caught in between pervades the entire film.
10.Zama – Lucrecia Martel, 2017
Genre: Drama
Director: Lucrecia Martel
Cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lola Dueñas, Matheus Nachtergaele
Waiting, over time, becomes a state of mind. Promotion, return, approval… all are deferred. Zama follows the mental unravelling of a man within the colonial order with an unsettling quietness.
Throughout the film, expectation takes the place of progress.
