“A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist–moving an audience through a movie […] making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark,” said the late, great Gordon Willis. As our year-end coverage continues, we must pay dues. From talented newcomers to seasoned professionals, we’ve rounded up the examples that have most impressed us this year.
All We Imagine as Light (Ranabir Das)
The most immediate feeling evoked by Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light is love in Mumbai, defined by the way light shines off lamps and shops, how rain glistens off surfaces of roads and vehicles that crowd the streets. This is perfectly captured by cinematographer Ranabir Das, who alternatively shows close, intimate shots of his characters with the damp sweat of the heat on the skin, to more distanced perspectives of them canoodling in buses or holding hands on the road in the midst of the population. It’s a purely romantic sense of frame composition that carries the film on a heavenly cloud. – Soham G.
Anora (Drew Daniels)
Sean Baker’s opus-to-date has been heaped with praise for performances and tastefully homegrown screenwriting and editing, and earned a coveted for its Palme d’Or (America’s first since 2011’s The Tree of Life). But Drew Daniels’ cinematography hasn’t earned as much love as it deserves. The Texan DP got his start with lone-star directors like Trey Edward Shults and Jim Cummings, unsurprisingly showing up on Baker’s radar for the first time with the Texas-shot Red Rocket. Boasting a feature’s-worth of experience shooting Baker’s style, Daniels returns with a refined rendition of the director’s trademark cinematographic glow, capturing the dark, neon-electric imagery of nightclubs as beautifully as the soft-floating snow out the window on a dreary winter morning. Not to mention, there’s a notable new maturity in Daniels’ framing. – Luke H.
The Beast (Josée Deshaies)
Conjuring past trauma, confronting modern-day fears, and imagining future anxieties, the worlds of Bertrand Bonello’s magnum opus The Beast provide startlingly tactile windows into the plights through time of Léa Seydoux’s Gabrielle and George MacKay’s Louis. Mixing the 35mm past with the digital present (not to mention various shifts in aspect ratios and other forms of media), if not for Josée Deshaies’ exacting cinematography, The Beast could’ve felt like a jumbled mess. Instead we have the great cinematic feat of the year, in which the camera works in perfect harmony with Seydoux and MacKay on their doomed paths of loneliness. And having the rare opportunity to see a lead performance from Seydoux on an IMAX screen helped me realize it’s what they were built for. – Jordan R.
Bird and Kinds of Kindness (Robbie Ryan)
Continuing his strong work with Yorgos Lanthimos at the helm, Robbie Ryan’s cinematography for Kinds of Kindness is a bit muted compared to their boldest work. Here he exchanges the distortion of the fish-eye lens with an unsettlingly still style focused on creating closed-off interior spaces. On the other hand, Andrea Arnold’s Bird is almost the direct opposite. Wide-open, fluttering, swerving, but comfortably in its wild movements following two half-brothers and group of vigilantes on a journey with a mysterious stranger. With two movies so disparate in style, Ryan’s ability to adapt to a director’s sensibilities shines. While earning less attention, we should also note Ryan brought a sobering immediacy to Ken Loach’s latest and potentially final film The Old Oak, which got a U.S. release this year. – Soham G.
The Brutalist (Lol Crawley)
One of the year’s––perhaps decade’s––most gripping epics, The Brutalist finds much of its narrative compulsion in the sheer scale of Lol Crowley’s natural, brooding cinematography, which aims to portray the brute grandiosity and unparalleled design of its subject’s architectural marvels as convincingly as seeing them in-person might. Whether the camera is outfitted with a wide lens as it tears smoothly down a country road at dawn, following shakily at the back of immigrants emerging from a chaotic shipping vessel, panning slowly across a cosmically huge Italian marble mine, or lurking in stillness of the shadows of a candlelit parlor, Crowley marvelously uses it to lure us even deeper into the story. Go for the architecture, stay for the camerawork. – Luke H.
Dune: Part Two (Greig Fraser)
Veteran DP Greig Fraser took a nearly insurmountable task composing the visual imagination for one of the most anticipated, feverishly cared-about sci-fi franchises in film history. With a story as imaginative as Dune, readers and fans can’t help conjuring their own imagination while reading the books, the masses automatically carrying strong opinions on cinematographic aesthetic into the screening. Yet, through two entries, Fraser has managed to eclipse everyone’s personal vision of Dune with his own, the lensing, coloring, and camera work both distinctly captivating and reflective of the text in a way that gives the film a textual depth even in silence. As if the numerous cosmic and desert aesthetics seen in Part One weren’t enough, Fraser piles on new unforgettable looks: the ghostly black-and-white of Giedi Prime’s trippy negative daylight, the burnt oranges of a sandy solar eclipse, the chrome of epic war, and a camera in utero. – Luke H.
Eureka (Timo Salminen)
Lisandro Alonso’s long-anticipated, still under-seen indigenous Western boasted Kaurismäki regular Timo Salminen on its black-and-white and Amazonia-set parts, while Mauro Herce (noted recently for Samsara) taking care of its crucial North Dakota section. Utilizing the combination of long camera movements and sustained master shots that Alonso prefers, Eureka’s array of visual contrasts––even within its individual sections––feels like submitting to mild psychedelics, then gratefully emerging into stark sobriety. – David K.
Evil Does Not Exist (Yoshio Kitagawa)
In order to sell his film’s treatise on mankind’s destructive relationship towards nature, director Ryusuke Hamaguchi had to ensure that audiences felt the sheer beauty of the world we’re tearing apart. That’s exactly what Yoshio Kitagawa captures in Evil Does Not Exist, surrounding us with stunning images of crisp water, barren trees in winter, and snowy clearings. There’s a stillness to his frames that make us feel like we’re intruders, each character feeling out-of-place in the breathtaking environment. – Mitchell B.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Simon Duggan)
The hot, burning atmosphere of Furiosa matches Fury Road, even as the film itself does not. There is a sweltering effect that particularly resounds because George Miller and DP Simon Duggan assault the viewer with a sunset-and-saffron color palette. They also evoke some of the best “neo-Western” imagery in recent years with beautiful contrast between interiors and exteriors, as well as silhouettes and doors and windows reminiscent of the train cars of Once Upon a Time in the West. – Soham G.
Gaucho Gaucho (Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw)
Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw chose to shoot Gaucho Gaucho in the Salta region of Argentina because of its mountainous landscapes. They decided on black-and-white after agreeing that color tests didn’t capture their characters and settings accurately. And because they were photographing in harsh conditions, they worked primarily on a 24 to 75 mm zoom lens. As a result, they could depict a largely unknown community with unprecedented majesty, resulting in the best-looking documentary of the year. – Daniel E.
Here (Grimm Vandekerckhove)
A gentle tale of a connection between a Romanian construction worker and Chinese botanist in Brussels becomes swooning and ravishing through DP Grimm Vandekerckhove’s lens. Partnering for the second time with Belgian director Bas Devos, Vandekerckhove shoots Here in 16mm for a gauzy, dreamy look, yet with enough focus to delve deep into the beautifully composed frames. The boxy, almost-square 4:3 aspect ratio enhances the intimacy of close-ups and subtly highlights the majesty of cityscapes and natural environments. With minimal dialogue and unhurried rhythm, Vandekerckhove is given space to flex his craft, shaping a visual language that makes Here a memorable, intensely cinematic experience. – Ankit J.
Here (Don Burgess)
“I said, ‘Bob, this could be the most complicated movie you and I’ve ever done together,” cinematographer Don Burgess recounted in preparing another collaboration with Robert Zemeckis. Here not only tells its story from a fixed camera position, tracing centuries of history through a single location; it also contains nearly no traditional cuts. As scenes flow from one to the next, so must the lighting in one decade complement that of another through wildly disparate ranges of electrical development. Undoubtedly complex, clearly unparalleled. – Scott N.
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (J. Michael Muro)
Kevin Costner’s mission to revive the majesty of the Western genre wouldn’t be complete without J. Michael Muro’s vast canvas offering vivid life to the array of characters contained within this world. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 traces myriad storylines through canyon passages, snowy mountains, newly constructed towns, pilgrim trails, and more. Muro’s lens is able to give each community its own distinctive vision whilst allowing them to still feel part of a whole, all slowly inching their way towards an inevitable collision. And few shots this year can compare to the image of Costner reflected in a trough of water moments before a violent showdown. – Mitchell B.
The Human Surge 3 (Victoria Pereda)
A relative unknown, cinematographer Victoria Pereda is making a name for herself among deep-cut cinephiles and on the festival circuit, where Eduardo Williams’ hyper-experimental The Human Surge 3––the followup to 2016’s thematically similar but visually miles apart The Human Surge (not shot by Pereda)––has made waves since its Locarno debut in 2023. It’s most notable for Pereda’s novel camerawork, which wields wobbly fish-eye-wide lenses hanging what feels like several feet over any subjects’ head. In fact, Pereda photographed The Human Surge 3 with the Insta360 Titan (possibly the first feature to be shot with one successfully), a 360-degree VR camera outfitted with eight co-operating lenses. If nothing else, it signals a daring cinematographic mind––one to keep our eye on. – Luke H.
Hundreds of Beavers (Quinn Hester)
The never-ending cavalcade of gags throughout Hundred of Beavers draw liberally from a host of influences: silent cinema, Looney Tunes, even video games. Hester’s black-and-white cinematography seamlessly melds all such ancestors into one cohesive package, acknowledging the film’s low-budget roots without ever breaking the spell of its 19th-century world. From the jump, the camera adopts modern set-ups, ensuring that a gag is never held back by constraints of any old-school references. Hester’s camera matches with director Mike Cheslik’s editing to consistently present complicated sight gags in the clearest, most concise manner––all engineered for maximum audience amusement. – Caleb H.
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Dinh Duy Hung)
Vietnamese cinema has been at the forefront of intimately capturing of a national land. From The Scent of Green Papaya to Song Lang to Viet and Nam, it tends to linger on imagery, keep a sense of quiet and stillness, and allow the sensorial aspects of its urban and rural landscapes to envelop the viewer. Such is pushed to the nth degree in Đinh Duy Hưng’s cinematography for Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell. Taken almost fully in still frames, the film allows viewers to exist within each setting as a keen observer, its sensations of trickling water, misty clouds, and crackling fires creating a hypnotic sensorial experience. – Soham G.
I Saw the TV Glow (Eric Yue)
The look and the light is everything in I Saw the TV Glow: director Jane Schoenbrun and DP Eric K. Yue achieve their effects with the aura of the interior and exterior spaces they shoot, lighting here as critical as production design and art direction. The contrast is just so, sometimes in the same scene or shot: standard-def broadcast resolution, its sickly colors winning a battle against the signal, bleeding into darkness-caked suburban basements, with both light sources bringing about transformation. – David K.
In a Violent Nature (Pierce Derks)
One love-it-or-hate it aspect of In a Violent Nature is how the camerawork is so distant and observational for much of the movie. It’s certainly a different approach for the genre, cinematographer Pierce Derks’ camera heavily utilizing tracking shots as we follow our lumbering villain. Then it comes in close for those brutal kills, reverting back to genre convention, making the dichotomy within its style jarring and effective in eliciting both tension and shock. – Soham G.
Janet Planet (Maria von Hausswolff)
For last year’s cinematography roundup, I wrote on Maria von Hausswolff’s beautiful 35mm work on the Icelandic feature Godland, and the Swedish DP brings her talents stateside this year for Annie Baker’s directorial debut Janet Planet. Blocking within the typically static frame is playful and consciously off-kilter. In one comical reveal, a long take is disrupted when you realize Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) has been in the room listening to the two adults the entire time, and as she stands up and walks across the room, her head is cut off in a way often not seen on film. The Pulitzer-winning playwright’s cinematic debut is a triumph––not only because she is such a talented writer, but because she made a film that is a film first, and with Hausswolff’s 35mm camera work, Janet Planet captures the mellow, dream-like feeling of living near the woods in the summer of 1991 as a pre-teen with your mother as your best friend. – Caleb H.
Megalopolis (Mihai Mălaimare Jr.)
For as wacky and unhinged as Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating architecture comedy epic turned out to be, the film’s cinematography is anything but. Measured, technically wondrous, immensely creative, even monumental at times, Mihai Malaimare Jr.’s vision is a wonder to behold––perhaps the film’s greatest, most consistent strength. When the montage loses focus, character motivations suddenly don’t track, or plotting takes an inexplicable left turn, Malaimare Jr.’s compositions are (almost) always enchanting, covering a creative range almost as wide as cinema itself. It’s rare that a DP as strong as Malaimare Jr. (who notably shot The Master) gets to play with camera and style as freely and with as much money as he does here, courtesy of Coppola’s staunch creative-freedom-first ethic, which kept narrow-minded financiers and exec types from vetoing any idea. – Luke H.
Nickel Boys (Jomo Fray)
Where most films have found their place on this list for aesthetics, textures, and tasteful restraint, RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys––which flourishes in all three categories––has earned its place on additional merits: novelty and no-fucks-given. When Hardcore Henry forgettably hit cinemas in 2015, it all but guaranteed the immediate death and eternal lack of interest in first-person filmmaking. Nine years later, Nickel Boys cinematographer Jomo Fray has proven Henry was nothing more than a false start for the divisive approach. Working almost entirely in first-person, the DP behind last year’s brilliantly shot All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt uses the method to innovative effect, capturing gorgeous, contemplative, abstract slices of life from a perspective previously unseen, imperatively slotting the viewer into the lead’s body in a film that asks us to walk a devastating mile in his shoes. – Luke H.
Nosferatu (Jarin Blaschke)
In Nosferatu, Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography is so pristine in its vision of total darkness (and what lurks in the shadows) that the film should be prohibited from ever being streamed, where shoddy bitrates can never truly do justice to the nocturnal palette. As Eggers and Blaschke have proven so adept before, the many one-takes give a sense of a total command, granting more power to the actors while genuine scares are mined from the patient pans across rooms to uncover horrors that lurk in the corners. It’s also with a plethora of indelible wintry images, no counter-programming for the holiday season: as seen above, a shot of snow falling in the middle of the night as a carriage approaches in the far distance is among the most evocative cinematography of the year. – Jordan R.
Trap, Challengers, and Queer (Sayombhu Mukdeeprom)
It’s great to notice a DP’s authorship besting a powerful director’s own: when the house lights went down at Lady Raven’s Philly headline show in Trap, audience-manned glow sticks provided both visual distinction and carefully reflected light, expanding upon the surrealist hospital sequence cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom devised in Cemetery of Splendour. It gave one of Shyamalan’s best films even more juice, whilst Mukdeeprom also reveled in the bigger budgets regular collaborator Luca Guadagnino now commands, enhancing Queer and Challengers’ whirligig mise-en-scène. – David K.
Vermiglio and The End (Mikhail Krichman)
After a five-year break, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s regular DP Mikhail Krichman has returned in 2024 with a bang… or should I say a flash? With Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End and Maura Delpero’s Silver Lion-winning Vermiglio, the Russian DP has taken a sudden interest in shiny whites. Where the former is set in a bright, textured salt mine underground, the latter is set amidst a snowy mountain village in wintery 1940s Italy. The overwhelming presence of crisp-clean snow combined with the time period lends a stunning vintage silver-to-pewter glow to the powder as strong as the sun’s blown-out natural sheen through windows and on faces. To top it off, the chilly blues that beautifully dominate the color palette make it hard to look away, hearkening to the wintery tones of last year’s R.M.N. – Luke H.
Honorable Mentions
- Aggro Dr1ft
- Black Dog
- La Cocina
- Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
- The Devil’s Bath
- The Girl with the Needle
- Good One
- His Three Daughters
- It’s What’s Inside
- Limbo
- Longlegs
- Maria
- National Anthem
- Rebel Ridge
- Red Island
- The Room Next Door
- Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus
- The Settlers
- Sing Sing
- Universal Language