By Mark Peranson

The Cinema Scope Top Ten of 2013

1. L’inconnu du lac (Alain Guiraudie)

2. Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)

3. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)

4. What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)

5. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)

6. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)

7. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)

8. Story of My Death (Albert Serra)

9. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)

10. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)

Special mentions: Manakamana (Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez); The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh); Les trois désastres (Jean-Luc Godard); La jalousie (Philippe Garrel); Redemption (Miguel Gomes).

A recap of the scientific rules that went into the compiling of the above. The Cinema Scope Top Ten exists for the sake of posterity, and against the general will of the editor, who nevertheless begrudgingly endorses the outcome (which does not particularly surprise him). Only (and all) films with their first public screenings in 2013 (either theatrical or in festivals) were considered in this tabulation. The final list is an aggregation of secret ballots that were submitted by the magazine’s editorial board, plus selected frequent contributors (those who wrote a piece in each of last year’s issues). All of the films listed above were covered in issues of Cinema Scope (or, in one case, at Cinema Scope Online), although this is not a prerequisite for inclusion. The results were tabulated by the editor, whilst flu-ridden and in between catnaps, and though mathematical errors probably exist, the list remains definitive as of publication.

Mark Peranson