Sorry, Hollywood. Indie studios have officially taken over the poster game. Of the 25 films listed below, I can count the number of legacy studios on one hand (even that’s putting Focus Features under the Universal umbrella). Yes, some of that has to do with a strike-enforced lack of releases beyond true tentpoles and their glossy, Photoshopped marketing campaigns, but it’s also a continued reluctance to take risks in all facets of production. I get that they don’t need to––those types of films sell themselves––but a bit of ingenuity still increases public perception.
Some of it probably has to do with the strain of contractual obligations as far as billing and credits go with blockbuster fare (why most of the best posters are teasers rather than finals), but there are ways around such stipulations if you’re willing to push the envelope. We know the designers themselves are; it’s now a matter of getting suits to trust them despite the “safe” option whispering in their ear like a devil.
Thankfully, pre-sale festival sheets, international originals, and artist commissions are still helping to balance the scales. With an ever-growing stable of designers working on tributes and alts to either get a foot into the game or just scratch a creative itch (a quartet of my favorite “unofficial” posters are shown below), not choosing the outside-the-box concept is starting to feel intentional rather than merely systemic.
Either way, 2024 proved another strong year across the board with 50-plus one-sheets making my shortlist before finally whittling things down to these 25. There are a lot of familiar firms and artists included, but also a nice selection of newcomers who I hope will keep budging themselves through the door, ensuring the artform remains fresh for years to come.
Challengers by Neven Udovicic, illustration by Fiorenzo Masino Bessi; The Substance by Akiko Stehrenberger, inspired by William Ely Hill’s My Wife and My Mother-in-Law; A Different Man by Maks Bereski; Civil War by Nuno Sarnadas.
Honorable Mention:
#25 – Hundreds of Beavers (Kyle Hilton); #24 – Kinds of Kindness (Vasilis Marmatakis); #23 – Booger (Mary Dauterman / Vodka Creative); #22 – Saturday Night (BLT Communications, LLC); #21 – Conclave (Time Tomorrow / Empire Design); #20 – Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Midnight Marauder); #19 – Trap (GRAVILLIS); #18 – Music (Tony Stella); #17 – The Girl with the Needle (Paul Wilson / Yellow1); #16 – Vermiglio (Brandon Schaefer / Jump Cut); #15 – The Taste of Things (MOCEAN); #14 – Crossing (MUBI Lab); #13 – Daaaaaalí! (Check Morris); #12 – Sasquatch Sunset (Aleksander Walijewski); #11 – Evil Does Not Exist (Le Cercle Noir)
Top Ten:
#10 – La Cocina (AllCity)
Simplicity reigns supreme with AllCity’s La Cocina. Not just because it’s a masked-out image on a solid color with black type, but also through its expert use of compositional balance. The left side is intrinsically heavier due to the text all stopping before the center vertical, so it becomes the imagery’s job to even things out. You might not think a lone lobster can do it, but help from the slant created by the actors’ heights and the the tilted pizza tray see-saw us down to the floor so the crustacean can reinforce our equilibrium before scurrying away. And once you get the layout working, you can pretty much do anything aesthetically to build intrigue upon it. That means picking a fun font, interlocking the “Os” in Rooney Mara’s name, and adding some existential humor by way of a winding receipt that traps the cooks so their prey can escape.
#09 – Gaucho Gaucho (Michael Koelsch)
If your subject is a community of cowboys that seemingly exists outside time, why not enlist an illustrator to manufacture a poster that follows suit? Enter Michael Koelsch and the decision to pay homage to vintage westerns of Hollywood’s bygone era with Gaucho Gaucho‘s bold, drop-shadowed titles in quotations and detailed portraiture framed amidst action-packed vignettes tied together by sunset yellow and canvas beige. You can smell the mud and manure as you imagine spying this gorgeous piece nailed to the side of a saloon. You can see the scripted buzzwords flashing onscreen as a silent trailer with orchestral accompaniment grabs your attention with its exotic Argentinian locale. This one-sheet transports us through our nostalgia to discover how these men and women kept the culture of our past alive and well in their present.
#08 – Nosferatu (P+A)
It’s rare that a character set catches my eye, but P+A’s homogenized series depicting Nosferatu cast members proves the campaign cliché still has some juice. Again, minimalism is key. Strip away the saturation of color to mimic the black-and-white nature of the silent classic. Blow-up the title treatment’s creepy lowercase calligraphy to act as a labyrinthine path from left to right. And shroud the actors’ faces beneath shadow from the bridge of the nose upwards so the glint of their eyes become sinister pinpricks of supernatural intrigue. It’s pure claustrophobic mood. Dread incarnate. Mesmerized humans caught under the spell of a malicious presence their tiny minds cannot begin to fathom. Necks awaiting the descenders from the “f” and “t” to transform into fangs ready for blood. The only thing missing is a tiny silhouette of Max Schreck’s iconic pose caught within those bright pupils.
#07 – Family Portrait (Caspar Newbolt / Version_Industries)
Much like the film’s commentary on absence versus presence, Caspar Newbolt’s poster for Family Portrait hinges upon the dynamic shared by those two states. Whether the hunt for a mother to take the Christmas card photo she enlisted them to take or pointed words read by the daughter searching for her so she can fly back home (“Where did my mother go when she would leave her empty gaze fixed on me?”), there arrives a shift from opposition to coexistence––we still have presence through absence and can be absent despite our presence. Thus Newbolt cuts the eyes out of Joshua Johnson’s The Westwood Children and places them upon a textured wash of color that thematically erases the bodies while simultaneously promising they’ll exit the fog next. It’s an illusion. Just like the photo. Because a finished product was never the goal; the portrait was simply an excuse to physically reunite one more time… just in case next year proves too late.
#06 – The End (Mark McGillivray / GrandSon)
The skill necessary to distill a two-and-a-half-hour narrative into one image should never be taken for granted. Mark McGillivray and GrandSon prove it with their depiction of The End. They bring us into the mansion-like bunker of a family that has psychologically unraveled over two-plus decades of knowing nothing but the lies they tell each other to stay sane. There’s internalized song-and-dance distraction in the background. Heroic-yet-compromised figures of contingent reason in the middle. And, at the fore, the desperation to cling to an illusion of safety so reality’s nightmare remains at bay. Tie it together with the title’s bright green ribbon of grandeur and you start to grasp what the film’s absurd juxtapositions of form and genre foster: a prison of one’s own making where freshly painted delusions protect from the truth of our evils.
#05 – Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (Sol Pagliai / photo by Juda-khatia Psuturi)
With a collage that could have easily been composed in a haphazard and lazy way, Sol Pagliai’s poster for Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry instead finds success through impeccable precision. The focus on Eka Chavleishvili (courtesy of Juda-khatia Psuturi’s photography) is never compromised by text or imagery. The framing of her background to just let her elbows push out through the sides renders the outside salmon into both a background and frame. The different blackberries sprinkled throughout rarely repeat, augmenting the whole’s artificial depth while refusing to confuse our attention. Add a smear of jelly to enhance Chavleishvili’s own distracted sightline angled off the page and there finally arrives a hint of conflict to this otherwise utopian scene. Love does have a tendency to complicate things. So: is she unbuttoning her blouse to enjoy the mess, or buttoning up to avoid it?
#04 – A Traveler’s Needs (Brian Hung)
Brian Hung has become a fixture atop these posts the past few years, with good reason. From his early posters for Hong Sangsoo (meandering lines, repeated motifs) to his recent, brilliant use of mixed media via collage and painting, the designer has shifted styles again with A Traveler’s Needs, adopting a faux-woodcut appearance via blinding color. What a bold choice to go top-to-bottom green offset with bright pink. It’s as loud as Isabelle Huppert’s wardrobe and just as representative of nature through a graphic printmaking lens. You get lost in the mammoth wall of foliage’s mazes before glimpsing skyscrapers in the distance and deciding to return to the secluded serenity of this outdoor escape. Is its otherworldly sheen a product of the makgeolli we assume fills her thermos? Maybe. Perhaps it’s her boulder perch that activates the makgeolli so it can soothe her soul.
#03 – The Universal Theory (Derek Gabryszak & Hannah Christ)
While a captivating image removed from the film it advertises, Derek Gabryszak and Hannah Christ’s poster is also very accurate in its portrayal of what occurs during The Universal Theory. This is a multiversal tale with a vantage from the changing world rather than any one character changing it. I don’t want to spoil why; I’ll simply say that the mode of alteration is less a portal than a dice roll. And the more times it gets used, the greater the inability for the world to keep up; echoes from each shift remain to complicate matters and impact the noir rabbit hole into which Johannes has fallen. Torn pieces of the same photograph layered atop each other and positioned above and below a line of demarcation is thus a fantastically intuitive way to give this conceit visual form. As reality slips around them, they unwittingly become copies of themselves on a carousel of infinite possibilities.
#02 – Yuni (Table Six)
Why a TIFF Platform winner like Yuni took three years to finally be released in the United States is a question for another time, but I’m ecstatic Film Movement stepped up to do so––I can finally include Table Six’s gorgeous festival sheet from 2021 on this list. The confidence to not only use an image dulled by rain but also draw over it with what appears to be crayon for a second layer of weather is impressive to behold. It screams defiance to the norm just like Arawinda Kirana’s glare supplies a similar sense of temerity. The title’s “y” and “i” are handwritten at the same angle to mimic those artificial rain drops; its playful juxtaposition on the white area above the image lends a postcard feel of intimacy. This isn’t a mass-produced poster, but a personal invitation into the world of this young Indonesian woman who refuses to let the world dictate who she is.
#01 – Good One (Tracy Ma / photo by Eric Ruby)
What an image by Tracy Ma for Good One. She takes a photograph by Eric Ruby and paints over it in a way that isolates a crouched Lily Collias at its center––consuming her whole while also blocking out the external noise. There’s a lot to cover too. That comes with being an unwitting third wheel once their camping quartet becomes a trio. Not only must her Sam combat the rhetoric deployed by her father and his best friend, but she must also play peacekeeper when the rhetoric between them grows too volatile for her sanity and safety. The difference now, as opposed to the past, is that she refuses to continue being their mother-wife hybrid. Those chaotic brushstrokes thus adopt a third metaphor as pent-up emotion preparing to be unleashed––Sam rising with agency to escape the fire and reveal how it was never her job to protect them. They were supposed to be protecting her.