Every year, we invite our staff to pick their top 10 films of the year, as well to answer a few questions about their most memorable cinematic experiences of 2019. Happy New Year from everyone here at the Film at Lincoln Center!

Dennis Lim, Director of Programming

2019 premieres

1. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)
2. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
3. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)
4. Liberté (Albert Serra)
5. Heimat Is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise)
6. I Was at Home, But… (Angela Schanelec)
7. Zombi Child (Bertrand Bonello)
8. Synonyms (Nadav Lapid)
9. Present.Perfect. (Shengze Zhu)
10. The Plagiarists (Peter Parlow)

Eugene Hernandez, Deputy Director and Co-Publisher of Film Comment

1. Pain and Glory
2. Little Women
3. Dark Waters
4. When They See Us
5. Apollo 11
6. The Farewell
7. Varda by Agnès
8. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
9. Parasite
10. Uncut Gems

Florence Almozini, Associate Director of Programming

Synonyms
Transit
Parasite
Ash Is Purest White
An Elephant Sitting Still
High Life
Long Day’s Journey into Night
Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood
Atlantics
La Flor

Chris Stevenson, Senior Director, Marketing, Communications, and Strategy

In no particular order:

Parasite
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (restoration)
Transit
Little Women
Gloria Bell
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
The King
The Irishman
Carmine Street Guitars
Apollo 11

Matt Bolish, Director of Operations & Producer of the New York Film Festival

In no particular order:

1917
Uncut Gems
Knives Out
Marriage Story
Parasite
The Irishman
Hail Satan?
American Factory
The Farewell
Midsommar

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
Memories of Murder

What’s the best older movie you saw again this year?
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

What was your favorite repertory series at FLC this year?
Piotr Szulkin

What’s the best Q&A you saw at FLC this year?

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
Tenet

Dan Sullivan, Assistant Programmer

1. Vitalina Varela
2. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
3. Martin Eden
4. Present.Perfect.
5. Bacurau
6. I Was at Home, But…
7. My Skin, Luminous
8. The Irishman
9. The Plagiarists
10. Parsi

David Goldberg, Director of Marketing & Sales

1. Uncut Gems
2. Parasite
3. Marriage Story
4. Pain and Glory
5. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
6. The Irishman
7. Atlantics
8. Midsommar
9. Martin Eden
10. Little Women

Jordan Raup, Digital Marketing Manager

1. Transit
2. A Hidden Life
3. Long Day’s Journey Into Night
4. Asako I & II
5. Ad Astra
6. The Irishman
7. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
8. Dragged Across Concrete
9. Genesis
10. Dark Waters

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
Sátántangó

What’s the best older movie you saw again this year?
All That Jazz

What was your favorite repertory series at FLC this year?
Jessica Hausner: The Miracle Worker

What was your favorite repertory series elsewhere?
Moments of Grace: The Collected Terrence Malick (Museum of the Moving Image). Runner-up: The Nitrate Picture Show (George Eastman Museum).

What was the best Q&A you saw at FLC this year?

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
Four-way tie: Undine (Christian Petzold), Annette (Leos Carax), After Yang (Kogonada), and Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve)

Ted Vasquez, Chief Financial Officer

Atlantics
Clemency
Hustlers
Jojo Rabbit
Marriage Story
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Pain and Glory
Parasite
Sauvage
The Two Popes

Erin Delaney, Operations Coordinator

1. Bait
2. Long Day’s Journey Into Night
3. I Was at Home, But..
4. Atlantics
5. An Elephant Sitting Still
6. Pain and Glory
7. Midsommar
8. Little Women
9. American Factory
10. Knives Out

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
Filibus

What’s the best older movie you saw again this year?
Girls About Town

What was your favorite repertory series at FLC this year?
21st Century Debuts

What was your favorite repertory series elsewhere?
Punks, Poets & Valley Girls: Women Filmmakers of the 1980s (BAM)

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Manny Lage-Valera, Walter Reade Theater Manager

Apricity (Nathaniel Dorsky)
Black Christmas (Sophia Takal)
Come Coyote (Dani & Sheilah ReStack)
Gemini Man (Ang Lee)
It Has to Be Lived Once and Dreamed Twice (Rainer Kohlberger)
Memento Stella (Takashi Makino)
present.perfect. (Shengze Zhu)
Rushing Green with Horses (Ute Aurand)
So Pretty (Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli)
Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
As part of their great series “Lincoln Kirstein and Film Culture” (programmed by FLC programmer-at-large Thomas Beard!) MoMA showed the unedited (almost four hours) reels from Eisenstein’s Mexican film—a completely transfixing experience where we see the shots over and over again and their meticulousness, usually hidden by Eisenstein’s cuts, comes forth.

What’s the best older movie you saw again this year?
The pristine print of Abel Ferrara’s Body Snatchers shown during his retrospective, also at MoMA, was revelatory to say the least. A plethora of avant-garde glimpses hidden throughout really stood out this time around cementing it as my favorite Ferrara.

What was your favorite repertory series at FLC this year?
Another Country: Outsider Visions of America which included a rare screening on 16mm of Yolande du Luart’s absolutely essential documentary Angela Davis: Portrait of a Revolutionary, as well as screenings of Haile Gerima’s Bush Mama and Huillet-Straub’s Class Relations and many others!

What was your favorite repertory series elsewhere?
El Cine Quema: The Films of Raymundo Gleyzer at Anthology Film Archives was definitely the best and most important repertory series I attended this year. A filmmaker so revolutionary and dangerous his own government made him disappear. The films are angry and direct without the intellectualism attached to so many ‘political’ films, demanding their audience to do something.

What was the best Q&A you saw at FLC this year?
Pedro Costa talking about his love for the Warhol films during his Q&A for Vitalina Varela.

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
It’s a tie! Monster Hunter and Scénario.

Madeline Whittle, Programming Assistant

1. Uncut Gems
2. Transit
3. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
4. Sunset
5. A Hidden Life
6. Midsommar
7. High Life
8. Marriage Story
9. Under the Silver Lake
10. Parasite

Christopher Torres, Theater Staff

1. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (Martin Scorsese)
2. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
3. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)
4. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)
5. Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie)
6. System Crasher (Norah Fingsheidt)
7. Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho)
8. An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)
9. Family Romance, LLC (Werner Herzog)
10. A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick)

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
Satantago (Bela Tarr) or All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula)

What’s the best older movie you saw again this year?
Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)

What was your favorite repertory series at FLC this year?
21st Century Debuts

What was your favorite repertory series elsewhere?
Prison Images: Incarceration Cinema (Anthology Film Archives)

What was the best Q&A you saw at FLC this year?
Kent Jones interviewed by Eugene for Diane. Hearing Kent talk about my home-state was very comforting.

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
I’m just looking forward to whatever Werner Herzog has decided I must pay attention to. Discovered him for myself back in April and I’ve watched over 40 of his films since.

Lisa Thomas, Director of Publicity

1. Transit
2. Uncut Gems
3. Pain and Glory
4. Martin Eden
5. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
6. Midsommar
7. Parasite
8. Little Women
9. Bait
10. Hustlers

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
Mulholland Dr., Barry Lyndon, Stars in My Crown, Satantango

Benjamin Goff, House Manager

1. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot)
2. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)
3. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
4. Atlantics (Mati Diop)
5. America (Garrett Bradley)
6. Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho)
7. Little Women (Greta Gerwig)
8. Uncut Gems (Josh and Ben Safdie)
9. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
10. The Plagiarists (Peter Parlow)

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
The World, The Flesh, and The Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959)

What’s the best older movie you saw again this year?
Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)

What was your favorite repertory series at FLC this year?
Ermanno Olmi retrospective

What was your favorite repertory series elsewhere?
Modern Matinees: Iris Barry’s History of Film (MoMA)

What was the best Q&A you saw at FLC this year?
The Q&A of The Plagiarists at New Directors/New Films. To steal a line from my friend who I went with, after listening to the Q&A, he said, “It’s like if Tom Townsend from Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan (1990) made a movie.”

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)

Matt Dinda, Corporate Partnerships Manager

I didn’t see nearly as many international releases this year as I’d hoped to (from Genese to Sunset to An Elephant Sitting Still), so I have much to catch up on in 2020!

High Life
Little Women
Marriage Story
Midsommar
The Nightingale
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Pain & Glory
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Uncut Gems

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
Thanks to the Criterion Channel I spent most of April and May voraciously consuming everything they had by Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy. I’d seen select films by each of them, but was able to fill in quite a few blind spots. Varda highlights include Jacquot de Nantes, Le Bonheur, One Sings the Other Doesn’t, and Lions Love. Demy highlights include The Young Girls of Rochefort (which is absolutely perfect), Donkey Skin, and Bay of Angels.

What’s the best older movie you saw again this year?
My husband and I watch Todd Haynes’ Carol every time we put up our Christmas tree and it will always be the best “older” movie I saw again in any year.

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
Ammonite. A romance between queer fossil hunters (Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan) in 19th century England. My ticket is bought.

Amanda Bogacz, Development Systems Associate

1. Queen & Slim
2. Clemency
3. Midsommar
4. Parasite
5. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
6. The Farewell
7. Little Women
8. The Nightingale
9. Marriage Story
10. Pain & Glory

Alexandra Siladi, Membership Manager

1. The Irishman
2. Parasite
3. Uncut Gems
4. The Lighthouse
5. Ad Astra
6. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
7. Ash is Purest White
8. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
9. Marriage Story
10. Genesis

What was your favorite repertory series at FLC this year?
Make My Day: American Movies in the Age of Reagan

What was the most memorable experience you had at FLC this year?
Bringing my parents to the Joker special event and the fact we all had the same reaction to the film (this never happens!).

Tyler Wilson, Assistant Programmer

Asako I & II
Black Mother
Climax
An Elephant Sitting Still
In Fabric
La Flor
The Irishman
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Parasite
The Souvenir

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
Dune, Afonso’s Smile, The Souvenir: Part II

Bradford Burdick, House Manager

1) Avengers: Endgame
2) Little Women
3) Marriage Story
4) Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
5) Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
6) Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
7) Captain Marvel
8) The Report
9) The Souvenir
10) Transit

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
The Night of the Hunter

What’s the best older movie you saw again this year?
Casablanca

What was your favorite repertory series elsewhere?
Make My Day: American Movies in the Age of Reagan.

What was the most memorable experience you had at FLC this year?
The most memorable experience I had during NYFF was when my former film professor was featured in Projections and I got to see him for the first time since graduating. The most memorable Q&As for me this year were any and all of those with Mariano Llinás because he is hilarious.

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
No Time to Die

Manuel Santini, Exhibition Manager

Babylon
The Cave
The Edge of Democracy
Marriage Story
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Parasite
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Uncut Gems
Us
The Whistlers
Honorable Mention: not Beach Bum

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
Elle

What was your favorite repertory series at FLC this year?
21st Century Debuts

What was your favorite repertory series elsewhere?
BAM – Black 90s: A Turning Point in American Cinema

What was the best Q&A you saw at FLC this year?
Portrait of a Lady on Fire @ WRT, NYFF

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
The Fred Hampton movie Jesus Was My Homeboy

Matthew Gill, Theater Staff

Transit
The Irishman
Little Women
Vitalina Varela
When They See Us
Synonyms
The Dead Don’t Die
Uncut Gems
The Souvenir
Los Reyes

What’s the best older movie you saw for the first time this year?
Ashes & Embers – Haile Gerima

What’s the best older movie you saw again this year?
Fantastic Planet – René Laloux

What was your favorite repertory series at FLC this year?
This is Cinema Now: 21st Century Debuts

What was your favorite repertory series elsewhere?
Abbas Kiarostami: A Retrospective at IFC.

What was the best Q&A you saw at FLC this year?
When Richard Linklater came before the release of Where’d You Go, Bernadette, I got to ask him about the writing routines he mentioned keeping in a documentary PBS released around the release of Boyhood. Giving myself and many others the permission to relax a little bit, he told me he no longer made a point to write in his journal every day.

What’s your most anticipated movie of 2020?
First Cow – Kelly Reichardt