10/10: Peter Tscherkassky

I feel a bit uncomfortable releasing this list of ten films that came out in the last ten years. Ever since I began spending most of my time in the countryside at the house where my studio is located and where I create my own films, I really regret that I have to miss seeing certain titles by other filmmakers. Most new productions I encounter at the Viennale, Vienna’s annual (and huge) international film festival.

Also, my favorite genre is comedy, and would the task have been to name my ten favorite films of all time, most would have been much older works by directors like Jacques Tati or Billy Wilder. Most of my favorite avant-garde films are older than 10 years. Others, like RR (2007) by James Benning, just missed the time frame.

Additionally, in some cases of my top ten list below, I prefer films the directors made prior to 2008. For example, I love the Coen brothers – and my favorite film they made is still The Big Lebowski (1998; plus I had a really hard time choosing between Burn After Reading and A Serious Man for my list); in the case of Ulrich Seidl, it would be Hundstage (2001); the best film made by my dear friend Apichatpong Weerasethakul, in my humble opinion, is Tropical Malady (2004); I am especially into two films by Eve Heller not based on found footage, Astor Place (1997) and Behind This Soft Eclipse (2003), which show her mastery of the 16mm camera; some of my favorite films by my belly buddy Phil Solomon were made in his Super 8 phase – like Remains to Be Seen (1989); and I consider the strongest work by another good friend, Michael Glawogger, who passed away far too soon in 2014, to be Workingman’s Death from 2005.

In any case, here is what I came up with (in chronological order). I would never dare to claim that these are the best films of the last ten years, but they are films that both highly entertained me and left a truly strong impression as works of cinematic art.

– in chronological order –

1. A Serious Man (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2009)

2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)

3. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

4. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)

5. American Falls (Phil Solomon, 2012)

6. Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012)

7. Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)

8. Creme 21 (Eve Heller, 2013)

9. In the Basement (Ulrich Seidl, 2014)

10. Untitled (Michael Glawogger, 2017)

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10/10 is an ongoing series in which we ask cinephiles to name their ten favorite films from the last ten years (currently, between 2008 and 2018).