With one third of 2023 left, the "impatient" International Federation of Film Critics has selected the best film of the year on August 23, the latest work "Dead Leaves" by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki.

"Dead Leaves" poster

In fact, this award selected by the International Federation of Film Critics should be more appropriately called "the best film in the world in the past year", because its screening range is from July 1, 2022 to July 1, 2023 All films that have been released to the public during the period. In the end, "Dead Leaf", "Tal" and "The Banshee of Inisherin" were shortlisted, and 669 members of the International Federation of Film Critics distributed all over the world selected "Dead Leaf" as the finalist. champion.

The International Federation of Film Critics was established in Brussels, Belgium in the summer of 1930. It was originally composed of film journalists and film critics from Italy, France and Belgium. Now its members have covered more than 50 countries and regions around the world, and it is the largest and most influential film critic organization in the world. These professional film critics and film journalists either join the membership individually or collectively—for example, the Japanese film critic organization called the Japan Film Pen Club is one of its members, and the famous Japanese film scholar Tadao Sato, who died last year, , because he was not a member of the Japan Film Pen Association, he joined the International Federation of Film Critics as an individual during his lifetime. Whether it is an organization or an individual, members of the alliance are required to pay annual membership fees. At present, the International Federation of Film Critics is headquartered in Munich, Germany. Every year, it independently selects films at Cannes, Berlin, Venice and other film festivals, and awards the International Federation of Film Critics Awards (also translated as FIPRESCI Awards) to the winning films.

As for the best film of the year award, established in 1999, all members of the alliance select the best films in the past twelve months, and the awards are presented at the opening ceremony of the Spanish San Sebastian Film Festival held in September every year. The first work in history to win this award was Cai Mingliang's "The Hole" released in 1998. For more than 20 years since then, the award has been awarded every year except in 2020, which was suspended for one year due to the epidemic.

The Empty Room, Three Weeks and Two Days in April, The Shadow Writer, The Tree of Life, Adele's Life, Boyhood, Mad Max: Fury Road, Tony Erdmann, Cards such as Rome" and "Drive My Car" have won this honor. Spanish director Almodovar ("All About My Mother" and "Floating Flowers") and Austrian director Michael Haneke ("White Ribbon" and "Love") are two winners. The American director Paul Thomas Anderson has reached the top three times - "Magnolia", "There Will Be Blood" and "Phantom Thread". Now, counting this "Dead Leaf" and the previous "Man Without a Past" and "The Other Side of Hope", Kaurismaki has also won three awards, tied for the highest with Anderson.

"Dead Leaf" stills

At this year's Cannes Film Festival, "Dead Leaf" won the Jury Prize, which is equivalent to the third place. The more important Palme d'Or and the Jury Prize consisted of "The Anatomy of Falling Death" and "Area of Interest". "Divide up. At present, on the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes", "Dead Leaf" has a rare 100% full score of freshness, which shows that the nearly 30 film critics who rated it are different from the perception of the Cannes Film Festival jury. Why Dead Leaves is this year's IFAC Best Film of the Year nominee.

"Dead Leaves" tells the emotional experience between Ansa, a female supermarket worker in Helsinki, and her boyfriend, a construction worker who is greedy for things in cups. Like Kaurismaki's previous works, it captures the joys and sorrows of small people, and is also one of his so-called "working class tetralogy". The final chapter following "Lonely Shadow in Paradise", "Ascension" and "The Match Factory Girl" is expected to be screened successively in Europe and the United States starting in September this year.