Team FC
Martin Scorsese's most recent genre effort was adapted from Dennis Lehane's novel by Laeta Kalogridis, whose screenplay made viewers alternate between scratching their heads and questioning their sanity.
Writing partners Akhtar and Kagti created some of the most endearing men of mainstream Hindi cinema in the former's second feature, imbuing them with depth that is often sacrificed at the altar of "manliness".
Piku felt real from the get go, flawed, fun, even a little annoying, almost as though one were likely to bump into someone like her on the footpath. Her unconventional relationships with men made her all the more unique.
Actor-turned-director Konkona Sensharma drew from a short story by her father Mukul to produce this melancholic, subdued period drama about a young man on the edge of a precipice.
Sciamma movingly explored the depths of the relationship between the artist and the muse through two women caught in a heady romance in eighteenth-century France.
Gerwig took on Louisa May Alcott's hallowed text, bringing a lightness to the weighted legend of the novel and re-rendering some memorable characters and moments in a manner that has, sadly, long lost favour.
The revenge drama got a gut-wrenching twist in Fennell's brutal directorial debut, which questioned conventional ideas of innocence and "good guys", apart from being a consistently solid genre piece.
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