This year has been stranger than the last. In many ways it's been the best I've perhaps ever had and I've done things I never would have thought possible, I went to Japan which has been a dream since I was a pre-teen who couldn't connect with people, made so many friends around the world, removed some poisonous people from my life. I have a job where I actually have to deal with people head-on the whole time rather than simply working behind the scenes to a soundtrack wider than my head and not interacting with anyone for hours at a time. Unfortunately said job is also the source of a few bad things, it saps my energy, takes up a lot of my time, it can be very stressful and in September I had my first major depressive episode in about 5 years. I'm not watching anything like the number of films I used to. A few years back I did the 365 challenge, namely to try and watch one film for every day of the year and I managed it without much problem. This year I watched 89, very possibly the most paltry number since I was a teenager, and missed so many I was excited about, my multiple-times-a-week cinema visits going down to a couple a month if I'm lucky. Regardless, here are my favourite films of this year, the list may not be as far-reaching or full as it has been or as I'd like but here goes. I hope I'll improve in 2018, but for now I deserve all of Shahib Hosseini's stern looks.- The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi - Iran)
- Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Thailand)
- Through The Wall (Rama Burshtein - Israel)
- Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade - Germany/Austria)
- Dear Zindagi (Gauri Shinde - India/Hindi)
- Get Out (Jordan Peele - USA)
- Chi-Raq (Spike Lee - USA)
- The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (UK/Morocco - Ben Rivers)
- Arunoday (Partho Sen-Gupta - India/Marathi)
- Raees (Rahul Dholakia - India/Hindi)
- Old Stone (Johnny Ma - China/Canada)
