“Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme” and a powerful one-two punch from Warner Bros. — “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” — are among the American Film Institute’s 10 best films of the year, the organization announced Thursday. On the television side, HBO Max’s “The Pitt,” Netflix’s “Adolescence” and Apple TV’s “Severance” and “The Studio” were included among AFI’s top programs.
The film selections reflect a robust and varied year in cinema, blending box office heavyweights with formally ambitious works. The lineup spans indie auteurs such as Chloé Zhao with “Hamnet” and Clint Bentley with “Train Dreams”; industry veterans like Paul Thomas Anderson (“One Battle After Another”) and Guillermo del Toro (“Frankenstein”); filmmakers hitting new creative heights, including Noah Baumbach (“Jay Kelly”) and Josh Safdie (“Marty Supreme”); stylish visionaries such as Ryan Coogler (“Sinners”) and Yorgos Lanthimos (“Bugonia”); and dependable studio mainstays like James Cameron (“Avatar: Fire and Ash”) and Jon M. Chu (“Wicked: For Good”).
Neon’s international Oscar hopeful “It Was Just an Accident,” from writer-director Jafar Panahi, received the AFI Special Award, which recognizes productions that fall outside AFI’s traditional eligibility rules, including international films and other non-U.S. media. Past recipients include “The King’s Speech” (2010), “The Artist” (2011), “Roma” (2018), “Parasite” (2019), “Belfast” (2021) and “The Banshees of Inisherin” (2022). The designation also helps explain the absence of Neon’s other international standouts: Park Chan-wook’s South Korean black comedy “No Other Choice,” Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian thriller “The Secret Agent” and Joachim Trier’s Norwegian family drama “Sentimental Value.”
The AFI Awards remain one of the season’s most meaningful bellwethers. Over the past decade, AFI’s top 10 films have consistently overlapped with the Academy’s best picture slate, typically matching seven or eight eventual nominees. While an AFI selection doesn’t guarantee Oscar momentum, a miss often signals a steeper hill ahead.
It’s a huge boost particularly for Focus Features, which was shut out from the National Board of Review on Wednesday and Netflix, which once again landed a leading three films on the list.
Which brings us to this year’s notable omissions. Left off the list were Joseph Kosinski’s racing epic “F1,” Kathryn Bigelow’s political thriller “A House of Dynamite,” Bradley Cooper’s family dramedy “Is This Thing On” and Scott Cooper’s Bruce Springsteen portrait “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” All four have been viewed as solid awards contenders, and their absence could complicate their Oscar trajectories. Also missing were consumer-friendly titles such as Rian Johnson’s whodunit “Wake Up Dead Man” and Craig Brewer’s musical love story “Song Sung Blue,” both of which had been expected to resonate with AFI voters.
AFI’s recent history continues to highlight the evolving challenges of eligibility amid an increasingly global marketplace. In each of the last two years, eight AFI selections went on to earn best picture nominations, while films such as “A Real Pain,” “Sing Sing,” “I’m Still Here” and “The Substance” demonstrated how precursor overlaps can diverge from the Academy. In 2023, AFI also omitted international films “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest” under its eligibility rules.
Apple TV
On the television side, AFI’s choices reflect a landscape dominated by prestige dramas, genre experimentation and increasingly auteur-driven storytelling. Apple TV and Netflix led all platforms with three mentions including Emmy-winning comedy “The Studio,” the breakout dystopian thriller “Severance” and its new freshman drama “Pluribus” for Apple; the Emmy-winning limited series “Adolescence,” the political thriller “The Diplomat” and the historical drama “Death by Lightning.”
HBO Max landed two spots: for its Emmy-winning drama “The Pitt” and the crime thriller “Task.” Disney+ and FX rounded out the list with the sophomore season of “Andor” and “The Lowdown,” the critically acclaimed Ethan Hawke–Sterlin Harjo collaboration.
This year’s juries — one for film and one for television — included Lily Gladstone, Lauren LeFranc, Patton Oswalt and Thomas Schlamme; scholars Mark Harris and Leonard Maltin along with representatives from Syracuse University, USC, UCLA and UC Santa Cruz; critics Ann Hornaday, Janet Maslin and Peter Travers; and members of the AFI Board of Trustees. The panels were chaired by AFI Board of Trustees member Jeanine Basinger, chair emerita and founder of the film studies department at Wesleyan University, and AFI Board of Trustees Vice Chair Richard Frank, former chairman of Walt Disney Television and president of Walt Disney Studios.
The AFI Awards ceremony will take place on Jan. 9.
The complete list is below.
AFI Motion Pictures of the Year
- “Avatar: Fire and Ash” (20th Century Studios)
- “Bugonia” (Focus Features)
- “Frankenstein” (Netflix)
- “Hamnet” (Focus Features)
- “Jay Kelly” (Netflix)
- “Marty Supreme” (A24)
- “One Battle After Another” (Warner Bros.)
- “Sinners” (Warner Bros.)
- “Train Dreams” (Netflix)
- “Wicked: For Good” (Universal Pictures)
AFI Television Programs of the Year
- “Adolescence” (Netflix)
- “Andor” (Disney+)
- “Death by Lightning” (Netflix)
- “The Diplomat” (Netflix)
- “The Lowdown” (FX)
- “The Pitt” (HBO Max)
- “Pluribus” (Apple TV)
- “Severance” (Apple TV)
- “The Studio” (Apple TV)
- “Task” (HBO Max)
AFI Special Award: “It Was Just an Accident” (Neon)
