#clmx

“Everybody is crazy here.”

WINNER:

Claire Mathon, Atlantics / Portrait of a Lady on Fire

With Atlantics, Claire Mathon’s photography is hazy and meditative, featuring luminous shots of the Atlantic where the ocean is vast and violent, a kind of portal to another dimension. Stunning shots of mirrors, wind flowing through drapes, and silhouettes evoke the ghostliness of Diop’s vision. With Portrait, her images are painterly, again paying close attention to an unruly ocean, but even more to exquisitely framed shots of the female form through a distinctly feminine gaze- hands, cheeks, armpit hair. Superlative work twice over.

NOMINEES:

Jarin Blaschke, The Lighthouse

Misty, washed out black and white photography packed into a tight aspect ratio to keep things claustrophobic, featuring stunning contrast of lights and darks and inspired use of closeup to hone in on the horror of this cabin fever two-hander where every shot is frame-worthy.

Benoît Debie, Climax

Boldly colorful, wild photography that drastically switches gears in each of its acts, from tight, still, posed shots in our introductions to the dancers, to that meandering and swirling single tracking shot that takes us through the meat of this jukebox freakout, proving once again Debie is at his best when collaborating with Noé.

Mátyás Erdély, Sunset

Erdély takes the same toolkit of his stunning work on Son of Saul and makes another film with it, this time perhaps even more impressively, playing with the contrast of dark, oppressive interiors and the blinding light of the Hungarian summer, finding even more stunning, propulsive images in his favored shallow focus to make this claustrophobic thriller sing.

David Raedeker, The Souvenir

WINNER:

Hustlers- Jason Markey, Lorene Scafaria

"This is a story about control / My control / Control of what I say / Control of what I do / And this time, I'm gonna do it my way." Janet Jackson sets the tone for this rollicking study of agency featuring inspired needle drops like Britney Spears's "Gimme More" and, most memorably, Fiona Apple's "Criminal" alongside a slew of Chopin piano etudes, brilliantly echoing the film's themes of objectification, exploitation, empowerment, and sisterhood while conjuring a crystal clear sense of time and place.

NOMINEES:

Climax- Steve Bouyer, Pascal Mayer, Gaspar Noé

The soundtrack to Climax is so integral to the fabric of the film that each artist featured gets their own sleek title card- Cerrone, Aphex Twin, Gary Numan, Giorgio Moroder, Daft Punk, and even the Rolling Stones. Gaspar Noé no doubt wants to remind us of his impeccable taste, but also knows his erotic freak out is nothing without these artists' work.

Sorry Angel- Christophe Honoré, Frédéric Junqua

Sorry Angel leans heavily into its musical selections to evoke not only a distinctly gay, artsy, and French early 90's sonic identity, but also the enormity and ambiguity of feeling that the film so often strives for and achieves- Anne Sylvestre's "Les gens qui doutent," Cocteau Twins' "I Wear Your Ring," Ride's "In a Different Place," Cowboy Junkies' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," and a particularly silly sing-along to M/A/R/R/S's "Pump Up the Volume" are standouts.

The Souvenir- Ilona Cheshire, Joanna Hogg

Everything in Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir is a meticulously recreated artifact from her youth- the opulent dining rooms, the clothes she wore, the conversations and ideas she had, even an exact replica of her apartment where the view she would have had from her window is replicated by blowing up photographs she'd taken from those very windows in the early 80′s. The soundtrack is no different, where "Passion of Lovers" by Bauhaus or "Shipbuilding" by Robert Wyatt will drop in suddenly and fall away just as abruptly to make room for a snippet from a Verdi opera, fitting perfectly into the idiosyncratic rhythm of Hogg's film that suggests the fragmented, abstract nature of memory.

Waves- Meghan Currier, Randall Poster, Joe Rudge, Trey Edward Shults

THIS IS SO GOOD 😍😍😍

Can't wait to hear more new music from him 🖤🖤🖤