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ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 2004

VOTE THROUGH JUNE 30

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles

Can you please add Torque (Joseph Kahn)?

Added

Please add:

Sepet (Chinese Eye) Yasmin Ahmad
Mei li de xi yi ji (The Beautiful Washing Machine) James Lee

OK. The one great low-budget, very independent-minded movie that I sense few know from 2004 is not yet on the list, a film directed by Shin Jae-In, a Korean female director, something exceedingly rare at the time - Shin Sung-Il Is Lost. If watching orphans black market Choco-Pies in a Korean-Christian home whose wacko directress anathematizes eating altogether sounds like fun, then ...

Also missing from the 2004 eligible titles list, but further down on my own, are two Korean films that work their themes more traditionally, but on opposite ends of the "hopefulness" spectrum - Lee Yoon-ki's This Charming Girl and Kim Ki-duk's Samaria. Missing Japanese films that might find a place low in my rankings are Ishii Sogo's "Mirrored Mind" (part of the Jeonju Digital Project series) and Hiroki Ryūichi's Girlfriend: Someone Please Stop the World. I also like C.S. Leigh's Process (with Beatrice Dalle), Pirjo Honkasalo's 3 Rooms of Melancholia, Nathaniel Dorsky's "Threnody", and Godard's "Priére pour Refusniks (1)". Please to add.

Recs that are on the list. I'm assuming everyone knows Tropical Malady and Rois et Reine. If not ... Maybe less well-known is Lucile Hadžihalilović's warped fairy tale, Innocence. Highly recommended. I also think Straub and Huillet's "Une visite au Louvre" is hilarious.

Thanks, list manager.

All added, although the Honkasalo film was already on the list

Could Walk on Water, Eytan Fox be added.

Not sure if TV movies are considered. If so, could you please add The According to Bush, William Karel.

Yes, TV movies are eligible. I've added both films

Shorts, especially experimental, that are worth tracking down for this year?

My top three will likely be Spartan, Tropical Malady, and Gegen die Wand. Happy to take suggestions for further viewing.

Bill Morrison's Light Is Calling (BFI set)
Jacques Drouin's Empreintes (NFB set)
Kleber Mendonça Filho's Vinil Verde (Neighboring Sounds/Aquarius extra)

First two on my watchlist. Added the third, thanks!

denti alligator wrote: Wed May 20, 2026 11:45 pm Shorts, especially experimental, that are worth tracking down for this year?

One more: Olga Wroniewicz's 1-39-C (from the OOP Anthology of Polish Experimental Animation). Don't watch it while you have a headache!

Emily Richardson‘s Aspect?

I've added all her films from that Lux release

Could you add Goss’ How to Fix the World which is an extra on one of the Kelly Reichardt discs. Visually and narratively stunning pseudo-documentary on the semiotics of education.

Added

yoshimori wrote: Mon May 04, 2026 2:45 pm Recs that are on the list. I'm assuming everyone knows ...

What's the story with Nakashima's Kamikaze Girls? Highly ranked on letterboxd. I'd never heard of it.

I like it. It was one of the first live action movies to break out thanks to the aughts anime fever. It completely lacks the extremity of some other examples from that period like Ichi the Killer and thus probably holds a lot of appeal.

I generally support Nakashima. Confessions and Kanako's World, are his more severe (worldviewwise) films and so the more delightful for me. As knives suggests, Kamikaze Girls - along with, I'd add, Memories of Matsuko - is less "troubling" and capitalizes, genuinely I'm sure, on the pop/otaku/cosplay craze. The newest film, The Brightest Sun, is particularly disappointing in that it's a kind of technical tour de force in the service of the most mainstream conventions and sentiments.