From Barbie to Babylon: The 15 best films of 2023

When it comes to cinema, 2023 has been a year of extremes. Barbenheimer. Industry strikes. Cancelled projects. Rallying audiences. Political censorship. To spend it writing about the industry and its art has involved ricocheting between hope and despair, between having faith that cinema will flourish again, and having to watch it fight tooth and nail for its very survival.

There were, however, 15 films that demonstrated empathy, vision, and creative courage. They showed that, whatever the future holds, we can at least be sure that great art will always prevail.

Here, based on UK release dates, are the best films of this past year.

15. Reality

Playwright Tina Satter’s feature film debut is rooted in sheer, minimalist terror, and made urgent by its approximation to the truth. Reality, as in the film version of the play Is This A Room? that Satter staged in 2019, is a verbatim adaptation of the FBI’s interview with US Air Force veteran and NSA-contracted translator Reality Leigh Winner, on 3 June 2017. Winner was accused of leaking an intelligence report on the attempted Russian hacking of voter rolls during the 2016 election, and sentenced under the 1917 Espionage Act. But these weren’t the actions of a well-trained spy, but of an ordinary person whose humanity turned her by law into a criminal.

We watch Winner (Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney) fuss over her pets as her home is invaded by an army of men who speak in low, casual grunts. She apologises for the mess and tries to find a private space where she can talk to the pair in charge, Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchánt Davis). They speak with mechanical politeness, as we, the audience, start to fathom the profound denial at work here. No one says it in these ripped-from-reality transcripts, but by the end of the day, this woman will be in jail.