Best British Films of 2024: Is cinema dying? That’s the question on everybody’s lips in an age of plummeting box office figures and rising blockbuster budgets, hoping another spandex suit will be the silver bullet that fixes up enough ticket sales to fund another superhero flick (wittily parodied by The Franchise this year, available on HBO and NowTV). Martin Scorsese, Sam Mendes (The Franchise), Mathieu Kassovitz, and David Lynch are unanimous in their publicized belief that cinema is clutching its last breath on death’s door, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone completely. Film is a stubborn master, beloved by all and crowd surfing along the mighty few who still believe in storytelling for storytelling’s sake, rather than for profit.
Steve McQueen and Alice Lowe are just a couple of names on this list who still believe in the values of originality, creativity, authenticity, and artistry—in the power of real filmmaking. Let’s hope cinema can take a turn for the Lazarus and receive some resuscitation under the pumping hands of independent filmmakers, working tirelessly to bring us a synergy of fresh takes, complex characters, and charismatic cinematography. Organizations like the BFI, Film4, and MUBI are thankfully still booming, and allow Britain to remain one of the top dogs of the industry. Popes, drag queens, and flash floods—these ten films were the highlights of British cinema in 2024.
10. Wicked Little Letters
It’s all well and good watching the nation’s best movies, but where are all the laughs? Must it always be war, gangsters and losing our loved ones? Wicked Little Letters kickstarts our list with a slap on the knees, and although it’s been ten months since it was released, we’re still thinking about Olivia Coleman dropping the C-bomb in a stifled 1920s Britain. Playing the diehard Catholic Edith Swan, it’s all tea trays and needlework for Coleman’s spinster protagonist, whose famed British charm (with a penchant for the mischievous) makes Wicked Little Letters a loveable gem. Even those averse to cursing can’t help but laugh when it’s Coleman saying it, who runs off giggling like a schoolgirl who’s just said crap for the first time.
When Edith starts receiving foul-penned letters, her faint heart can’t take it, and she gets the bumbling small village coppers involved. Obviously, it’s all pinned on the Irish lass who runs around barefoot and likes a pint, played by Jessie Buckley with searing charisma. It’s no The Wolf of Wall Street, but Wicked Little Letters is Britain’s entry to cinema’s archive of highest swear counts—a record otherwise crowded by gangsters (Uncut Gems, Straight Outta Compton, Reservoir Dogs, Casino). How very British for director Thea Sharrock to make her addition in good humor, with the film’s top button still done sophisticatedly up (albeit, pants down).
9. The End We Start From
The term “apocalypse movie” immediately brings to mind skeletons of the walking dead, cascading down barren highways with bits of flesh hanging out of their rotting mouths. Or else, exploding suns, state-sized meteorites, or merciless viruses tearing through quarantine tents in time to the rhythm of whining ambulances. Mahalia Belo strips back all of that like paint from a worn-out house in The End We Start From, adapted from the novel by Megan Hunter. The two deliver a simplified vision of Armageddon that focuses on motherhood, isolated natural hideouts, and the inevitable loneliness of being family-torn in unfamiliar lands, no matter how busy the campsite is.
Jodie Comer carries the entire flooded movie on her shoulders, escaping a waterlogged London to fight for her and her newborn baby’s survival. Despite getting bombarded with tragedy, Comer’s unnamed protagonist remains hopeful, kind, nurturing, and steadfast in her mission to rebuild a home. The End We Start From received mixed reviews from viewers, but critics agreed Belo’s meditative survival flick is arresting, honest, and gripping in equal terms. Just don’t be fooled by the marketing team—Benedict Cumberbatch is only actually in one scene!
8. Timestalker
Being part of a film crew means long days, high pressure, tight deadlines, night shifts, and a chaotic working environment, but watching Timestalker, you just know the wardrobe department was having the time of their lives. Unlike Agnes (Alice Lowe—triple threat writer, director, and star) who’s stuck in a time loop of heartbreak, playing out the same unrequited love opening-of-a-romcom scenario over and over again across different centuries. Hopping (or rather, face-planting) between timelines is what allows the make-up artists and set designers of Lowe’s sci-fi-infused dark comedy to have a field day. From a Sofia Coppola-looking 18th century to Black Mirror’s 1980s San Junipero, the aesthetic of Timestalker puts the fun of a disco ball on steroids. But don’t worry—it’s not all style over substance.
As Lowe proved in her directorial debut Prevenge, she has a natural talent for wit and artistic storytelling, as Agnes slogs through generational trauma more literally than those holistic TikTok gurus who watched one YouTube video on shamanism. Timestalker goes beyond the perm and leg warmer fashion of the Latchkey Generation with hints of classical 80s British comedy (Blackadder has been tirelessly compared to it), modernized for contemporary viewers. The question is, will Agnes get the romcom ending she’s so desperate for?
7. Femme
Nathan Stewart-Jarrett was one of the Misfits cast members who lingered on past his expiration date so that most people assumed he didn’t have much else to offer. Then his performance in Marianne Elliott’s version of Angels in America blew that theory right out of the water. Doing away with any notion of typecasting, Stewart-Jarrett strutted the stage in the complete opposite fashion to his Misfits character, and now, seven years later, he’s brought his panache for drag to the screen. Unlike his word-vomiting character in Angels in America, Jules from Femme is quiet and nervy—though you wouldn’t think it from his show-stopping nightclub acts, clad in knee-length braids and heels.
After a closeted drug dealer attacks Jules, he resigns from the stage and becomes sullen, detached, and disembodied. Whiling the nights away alone with his vape and Kleenex. A string of coincidences lands Jules in bed with his attacker, chipping away at clandestine revenge by posting hidden sex tapes online. Femme is a timely, poignant, and darkly enticing thriller, directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping as an extension of their BAFTA-nominated short film. Although Stewart-Jarrett takes center stage, George MacKay’s gritty roadman act is nothing to be brushed over.
6. The Outrun
Saoirse Ronan’s first appearance in this list knocks us between London and the Orkney Islands, where Rona returns home from rehab. It’s not a new story—whiskey-handed characters slurrily swearing off addict accusations are part and parcel of cinema, as it’s, unfortunately, part and parcel of life. Although familiar, such stories speak to the human experience—to internal hardships, battles for control, fractured relationships, trauma, escapism, and acceptance—and therefore will never not hit hard. Rona is based on the real-life Scottish journalist Amy Liptrot, who penned her memoirs once her hand was steady enough to put pen to paper again. Ronan’s characteristically knock-out performance reaches deep into the heart of viewers, see-sawing between Rona’s moods and relapses.
Rona is at one time dizzying, gobby, and prone to bouts of public sobbing, and the next she is shy, reflective…absorbed in her headphones and seaweed inspections. Solitude in nature is a well-versed road to recovery, and following the support of therapy, family, and professional programmes, Rona aurifies her way from bleeding on the kitchen floor to oneness with ocean waves. Director Nora Fingscheidt leaves us comparatively lighter than we would be after most addict movies—such as Requiem for a Dream or Beautiful Boy—refreshed and inspired by Amy’s noble, ongoing victory.
5. Bird
Right off the bat, if you were to watch the trailer for Bird (and you were cinematically informed), you’d know it’s from the director of Fish Tank and American Honey. Sharing the same tight ratio, urban setting, young female protagonist, and handheld camerawork as her other movies, Andrea Arnold speaks from her own experiences growing up on a council estate with a sweet sixteen mother. A stylistic auteur without being predictable, Arnold’s signature at the bottom corner of her movies is what guarantees their quality—plus, this one has Barry Keoghan in it.
Always a champion of giving young actresses their first shot, Arnold cast Nykiya Adams as twelve-year-old Bailey, who lives in a graffitied flat with her gangster-spittin’ father Bug (Keoghan). Boxcutter knives and gold chains make up Bailey’s less-than-Disneyland upbringing, which Arnold gives us a peek into with her mesmerizing slice-of-life flick perfect for any Sean Baker fan (The Florida Project, Anora, Red Rocket). Bird is a choleric coming-of-age example of art-meets-realism, and viewers who enjoyed the fantasy twist in The Green Mile will best appreciate this experimental knock-out (sometimes literally…)
4. Kneecap
Ireland has sprung out several superlative titles in recent years, from The Banshees of Inisherin and Belfast, to That They May Face The Rising Sun and Bring Them Down. Small Things Like These was also lauded as a quietly thrumming coal-dusted slow-burn in 2024, but Britain didn’t have any say in it—unlike Kneecap. An obnoxiously loud beatboxing comedy that won multiple BIFAs this month. The fictional origin story of real-life hip-hop triangle Kneecap, Rich Peppiatt’s political musical is nothing you expect, and better.
Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh portray their mythologized selves, howling through police interrogations and making records all night on a straight cocaine bender—the true rockstar way, without any actual rock. Just crude rap bars, though most listeners wouldn’t know it because it’s all in Irish. When the Republicans catch a whiff of Kneecap’s sold-out shows, the trio faces a chain of obstacles against the backdrop of a post-Troubles landscape. History became legend. Legend became myth, and some viewers probably walked out thinking Kneecap is a true story. Except, it’s less The Lord of the Rings and more like Brassic.
3. Conclave
Audiences love a plot. While students and critics pick apart the emblematic camera angle of a psychological study, most viewers are hungry for suspense, thrills, and the drip-feed answer to whodunnit. Based on the novel by Robert Harris, Conclave uses a different (but equally tense) blueprint to ask this question. Instead of a murder mystery or kidnapped princess, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) asks us “Who should be the next Pope?” It’s unlikely that logline jumps out at any thrill-seekers, but words like “betrayal”, “secrets”, “scandal”, “affairs” and “bombs” certainly will…and Conclave is bursting with them.
Edward Berger’s clandestine papal mystery is led by the sturdy steamrolling prowess of Fiennes, whose dramatic speech will no doubt go down as a memorable line in cinema (“If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore, no need for faith.”). Religious fanatics were probably nodding in their seats the whole monologue…then tutting at all the shattered sacred vows for the rest of the film. Lawrence muddles through the shame of the Christian underbelly, pulling out the junk that was brushed under the carpet by the ankles and inspecting it in the full light of an absorbed audience.
2. Blitz
Steve McQueen is a director you can bank on—12 Years a Slave, Hunger, Small Axe, Widows, Occupied City. Clearly a history kid in school, McQueen winds the clocks back to a blue-collar 1940s London for his epic war drama Blitz. Being World War Two, it’s the women wearing the blue collars in Blitz (Saoirse Ronan quite literally), while the men rush off with rifles they didn’t even know how to use. Trench life and beach landings/evacuations are covered ground in cinema, so McQueen takes a step back to the domestic sphere, where nine-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan) is evacuated from German bombings. Or so his mother (Ronan) thinks, anyway. However, like Jodie Comer in The End We Start From, George is determined to circle back home through the ruin.
While Ronan marches around an East End reminiscent of Charles Dickens and Jack the Ripper—the old-fashioned Big Smoke with rats and cobbles and clanky Underground hideouts—George is on his own Empire of the Sun-esque adventure. Sadly, he doesn’t stumble upon Narnia during the evacuation, but a pile of rubble and human bones. Eyes bejeweled by bomb fires rather than the dazzle of starry-lit dreams, George makes Blitz an intriguing and sentimental wartime odyssey that marries Hugo with All the Light We Cannot See. It would be no surprise if McQueen also used William Blake’s “London” in the pitch deck.
1. Hoard
It’s always uplifting when a low-budget indie film makes big waves. Hayley Squires—star of the similarly popular low-budget indie flick I, Daniel Blake—gives another tear-jerking portrayal of a struggling mother in Hoard, this time complexified with an unusual mental illness. “Hoarders” are often mocked and misunderstood in society—treated like grotesque popcorn entertainment for reality TV shows like Hoarders or Sort Your Life Out. When you really think about it—as director Luna Carmoon does—hoarding is actually a tragic disease. One with a cruelly ironic twist, keeping all these things you’re afraid of losing until you can’t find them beneath the clutter. Inspired by Carmoon’s own grandmother, Hoard explores how whacky the human psyche can be, and how little we really know what’s going on behind closed doors.
With compassion and curiosity, Hoard inspects the mind of a troubled woman with a fever for tinfoil through flashbacks of a grieving daughter, played by Saura Lightfoot Leon and Lily-Beau Leach. Paralleling the unique mother-daughter plotline is another dysfunctional relationship, as Maria’s sort-of brother develops feelings for her. Illegal feelings. Rising A-lister Joseph Quinn tends to play the oddballs and anti-heroes (or in Gladiator II’s case, the outright villain), but Hoard sees him able to pull off a Cockney macho heartthrob too. Admittedly, a perverted one with a few screws loose. Maria’s narration reads like contemporary poetry, and you can almost smell this movie festering on the screen.
