2020

Saint Maud

And the homegrown hits just keep coming! I remember seeing Rose Glass’s astonishing feature debut alone in a pokey screening room one cold Tuesday morning and stumbling out in a daze, able only to say the words: “Fuck me!” An electrifying performance by Morfydd Clark [above] is central to Saint Maud’s power, complemented by co-star Jennifer Ehle, whose steely presence becomes a lightning rod for the film’s mysterious power.

Meanwhile Adam Janota Bzowski’s eerily prowling score weaves in and out of Paul Davies’s affecting sound designs with spine-tingling results. That same year, I also got to write about Natalie Erika James’s mesmerising Relic (an Australian horror about Alzheimer’s) and the youth-powered British gem Rocks, directed by Sarah Gavron – films from different sides of the world that both reduced me to tears, in a good way.