2000s

Gangster film conventions find new life in Jacques Audiard’s magical realist drama A Prophet, grounding the rags-to-riches character arc of Algerian teen and prison inmate Malik El Djebena in the complex racial tensions of a modern-day, multicultural France.

Martin Campbell’s masterfully efficient set pieces paired with Daniel Craig’s complex performance of a man fighting with his ego thrillingly rejuvenates this classic archetype of British film, and together hold Casino Royale up as a remarkable piece of character-driven, action cinema.

Though we can appreciate the immediate impact of Jia Zhangke’s stark, minimalistic aesthetics in painting out a social landscape in decline, the formally ambitious construction of China over a ten-year span reveals an accumulation of small changes set in motion by an increasingly globalising culture, slowly eroding the value of art, tradition, and relationships.