2024’s dramas won lots of awards and international praise. You’ve been hearing about them all year, audiences and critics have been sharing their thoughts. We’ve picked the 10 best dramas and romances of 2024 so you can choose a great movie for your next movie night.
Content
- Anora
- The Brutalist
- Challengers
- The Nickel Boys
- September 5
- The Room Next Door
- All We Imagine as Light
- The Seed of the Sacred Fig
- It Ends With Us
- Janet Planet
Anora
IMDb: 7.5/10
2024, Comedy, Drama, Romance
USA, R
Director: Sean Baker
Top Cast: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov
An inspiring story about immigrants. Ani is a young sex worker from Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. On a private call, she meets Vanya, the spoiled son of a Russian billionaire. Parties, a sudden trip to Las Vegas — and an impulsive wedding. When they learn about the marriage, Vanya’s parents bring in “family fixers” and try to annul the union. So the fairy tale about two lovers turns into a tense, funny, and bitter ride across New York.
Anora won the Palme d’Or. But the PolBox.TV editors warn: there is a lot of Russian spoken in the film, and there is also Armenian.
The Brutalist
IMDb: 7.3/10
2024, Drama
USA, R
Director: Brady Corbet
Top Cast: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce
This is a film about a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor, Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), who emigrates to the United States in 1947. In Pennsylvania, he is taken under the wing of a wealthy industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Over thirty years, their dependent relationship — client and artist — will lift Laszlo to great heights and break him morally, turning the “American dream” into a costly and painful price of talent.
Brady Corbet received the Silver Lion for directing. In the U.S., the film was released by A24.
Challengers
IMDb: 7.2/10
2024, Drama, Romance, Sport
USA, R
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Top Cast: Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor
Three tennis professionals: Tashi (a former star who became a coach), her champion husband Art, and his former best friend Patrick. They end up in a long-running romantic and career deadlock. Sports tournaments and years of relationships come down to a match at a Challenger Tour event, where not only the score but their past is decided. The guys compete for Tashi’s attention and for the tournament win.
For realistic tennis, the actors went through a “tennis camp” with tour legend, and Coco Gauff’s coach, Brad Gilbert.
The Nickel Boys
IMDb: 6.9/10
2024, Drama
USA, PG-13
Director: RaMell Ross
Top Cast: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
The film takes place in Florida in the 1960s. Idealistic Elwood and the more cynical Turner are two Black teenagers who end up in the brutal reform school “Nickel.” This school is not for the faint of heart: systemic violence and racism thrive here. Their friendship is the only thing that keeps them sane. But the consequences of what they go through will be felt many years later.
The film is based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name. The movie is shot in the first person, the camera is literally “through the eyes” of Elwood and Turner. The story refers to the real case of the Arthur G. Dozier reform school, which was closed in 2011 after a series of investigations into the nightmare that happened there.
September 5
IMDb: 7.1/10
2024, Drama, Thriller
Germany, R
Director: Tim Fehlbaum
Top Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin
The events took place in Munich during the 1972 Olympics. The ABC Sports team suddenly turns from sports commentators into live reporters covering the capture of Israeli athletes by the group “Black September.” The film shows the events from inside the TV center: a young producer, Jeff (John Magaro), and his boss, the legendary Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), make decisions on the edge of ethics and the capabilities of the technology of that time.
The story is focused almost entirely in ABC’s control rooms and studio spaces, it’s a “procedural” thriller about making decisions on live television.
The Room Next Door
IMDb: 6.8/10
2024, Drama
Spain, PG-13
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Top Cast: Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro
Writer Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and her long-time friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a former war reporter with a terminal diagnosis, meet after many years. Martha asks for help in deciding on a voluntary end of life, and for both of them begins a gentle but painful “rehearsal of farewell”, a conversation about love, duty, and the right to choose one’s own end.
The film won the “Golden Lion” at Venice 2024, the first top award from a major festival in Almodóvar’s career.
All We Imagine as Light
IMDb: 7.1/10
2024, Drama, Romance
India, France, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, USA, Belgium, Rating not specified
Director: Payal Kapadia
Top Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam
Two nurses from Kerala, Prabha and Anu, live and work in bustling Mumbai. Their personal lives are stuck: Prabha receives a strange gift from a husband who left long ago, and Anu can’t find a private space for her feelings in the overcrowded city. To take their minds off things, they plan a trip to the sea. This small journey changes how they see love, freedom, and themselves.
It’s the first Indian film in Cannes’ main competition in 30 years, and Payal Kapadia is the first Indian woman director in this section in decades.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
IMDb: 7.6/10
2024, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Iran, PG‑13
Director: Mohammad Rasoulof
Top Cast: Soheila Golestani, Missagh Zareh, Setareh Maleki
The film shows Tehran during the 2022 protests. Iman, an investigative judge at a revolutionary court, gets a promotion, but in his family, distrust and fear grow, especially after the mysterious disappearance of his service pistol. The paranoia at home is just a reflection of the split in society.
Director Mohammad Rasoulof shot the film secretly in Iran and, shortly before the premiere, fled the country after being sentenced to 8 years in prison and flogging. Real cellphone videos from the protests are built into the film.
It Ends With Us
IMDb: 6.3 /10
2024, Drama, Romance
USA, 16+
Director: Justin Baldoni
Top Cast: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Jenny Slate
Lily Bloom starts a new life in Boston and falls in love with a charming neurosurgeon, Ryle. But when her first love returns to her life, Lily has to face real abuse in her relationship. Can she break the repeating family cycle?
Although the story takes place in Boston, most of the filming was done in New Jersey. Production was halted because of the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes in 2023 and resumed in January 2024.
Janet Planet
IMDb: 6.1/10
2023, Drama
UK, USA, 16+
Director: Annie Baker
Top Cast: Zoe Ziegler, Luke Philip Bosco, June Walker Grossman
The story takes place in Western Massachusetts in the summer of 1991. Eleven-year-old Lacey watches as her mother, Janet, charming but vulnerable, lets three people into their lives, one after another. From these quiet episodes comes a child’s coming-of-age story and a complicated love for her mother. The film is shown mostly from Lacey’s point of view and is divided into three chapters, one for each “guest” in Janet’s life.
