A woman embarks on a journey to the American West living as a nomad in a caravan, following losing everything due to the economic collapse of 2008. The story of this modern nomad, who masterfully gives life to actress Frances McDormand (Fargo, Moonrise Kingdom), has been chosen as the best film of 2021 by the Girona Film Critics Collective, which, as every year, has compiled a list of the best films that have been shown throughout the year in Girona cinemas.
The film by Chinese-American director Chloe Zhao, which won the Oscar for Best Picture, received 28 votes, in a “very tight” vote in which it surpassed by only one vote in the new version of the film. The classic West Side Story signed by Steven Spielberg, who has been second ex-aequo with The Roulette of Fortune and Fantasy, by the Japanese Ryusuke Hamaguchi, “one of the revelations of the film scene of the season,” as reported yesterday the collective in a statement.
Among the ten most voted films this year are First Cow, by Kelly Reichardt (with 21 votes), and Petit Maman by Céline Sciamma and the Spanish Quién lo impide by Jonás Trueba (both with 20 votes). The association points out that three of the top six films on the 2022 list have been directed by women. They close the ranking of the critics of Girona Annette (16 votes) of the always unpredictable Leos Carax, in seventh position; Titane, by Julia Ducournau and Las cosas que decimos, las cosas que hacemos, by Emmanuel Mouret, in eighth and ninth position and Quo Vadis Aida? by Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanic, who closes the list.
This is the 31st edition of the list of best films of the year, votes that have been held uninterruptedly since 1990. The Critics Collective met for the first time by choosing Los Stephen Frears scammers as the best film of that year. On this occasion, five members of the Critics’ Group voted: Anna Bayó, Imma Merino, Àngel Quintana, Guillem Terribas and Francesc Vilallonga.
Nomadland succeeds Pietro Marcello’s Italian Martin Eden, which was the winner in 2020. This is the second year in the last three years that the film chosen by the critics of Girona as the best of the year coincides with the one that wins the Oscar of the Hollywood Academy. The collective already coincided with the Oscars in 2019 when it chose the Korean film Parasitos by Bong Joon Ho, while the romantic drama The Invisible Thread, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, became the most voted film of the year 2018.
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