60 films to look for­ward to in 2020 – part 1

The start of a new decade is always a good time to take stock. While there appears to be no end in sight to the increas­ing­ly polar­is­ing cul­ture wars, we think there are still plen­ty of rea­sons to be opti­mistic about the future of cin­e­ma. With that in mind, we’ve picked out 30 forth­com­ing releas­es to add to your watch list, includ­ing new work by some of our favourite film­mak­ers and tal­ent­ed up-and-com­ers we’re ear­mark­ing for great­ness. Check out part two of our 2020 pre­view here, and let us know which films you’re most look­ing for­ward to @LWLies

Released TBA

Joe Lawlor and Chris­tine Mol­loy seem to love mak­ing films, and we def­i­nite­ly love watch­ing them. Expand­ing on themes such as iden­ti­ty, guilt and revenge – pre­vi­ous­ly explored in Helen and Mis­ter John – Rose Plays Julie is a taut psy­chodra­ma telling the sto­ry of a young woman’s attempt to recon­nect with her bio­log­i­cal par­ents who have no desire to meet her.

Released 17 January

Ter­rence Mal­ick spent three years edit­ing A Hid­den Life, a World War Two dra­ma in which August Diehl and Valerie Pach­n­er fight for what is right. Pro­found inner silence dri­ves this inti­mate sto­ry based on the real life of Franz Jäger­stät­ter, a con­sci­en­tious objec­tor turned mar­tyr. Pre­pare for astound­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy, intense per­for­mances and an expe­ri­ence that will stay with you for a while, in the typ­i­cal Ter­rence Mal­ick fashion.

Released 14 February

From shoot­ing cam­paign videos for Pra­da to direct­ing the new adap­ta­tion of Jane Austen’s nov­el. Autumn de Wilde’s first fea­ture-length dra­ma has Man Book­er Prize win­ner Eleanor Cot­ton tai­lor­ing the script and Anya Tay­lor-Joy along­side John­ny Fly­nn star­ring as Emma Wood­house and Mr Knightley.

Released 21 February

The Eng­lish-lan­guage debut from Lour­des and Amour Fou direc­tor Jes­si­ca Haus­ner was one of our high­lights of the 2019 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. Emi­ly Beecham and Ben Whishaw are plant biol­o­gists plunged into a tale of hor­ti­cul­tur­al hor­ror, with themes of moth­er­hood and fer­til­i­ty also com­ing to the fore.

Released 28 February

Girl­hood direc­tor Céline Sci­amma opts for a lack of musi­cal score to empha­sise the pre­cise chore­og­ra­phy of the shot sequences, the rhythm of the bod­ies and the spe­cif­ic cam­era move­ments. This roman­tic dra­ma revolves around a female artist asked to paint a wed­ding por­trait of a young woman at the end of the 18^th century.

Released 31 January

From nation­al hero to FBI tar­get; direc­tor Clint East­wood tells the sto­ry of secu­ri­ty guard Richard Jew­ell (Paul Wal­ter Hauser) whose dis­cov­ery of an explo­sive device saved thou­sands of lives and changed his for­ev­er. The pow­er­ful influ­ence of the media is heav­i­ly explored in this film dri­ven by morality.

Released 7 February

Harley Quinn is back. The Jok­er, not so much. Mar­got Rob­bie stars along­side Mary Eliz­a­beth Win­stead and Jurnee Smol­lett-Bell form­ing the group Birds of Prey, attempt­ing to save a young girl from an evil crime lord. An (almost) all-female anti­hero film? Yes please.

Released 28 February

On an island where time has lost all mean­ing, two chil­dren must fight to secure their long term hap­pi­ness. Benh Zeitlin’s sec­ond fea­ture treads in the paw-prints of 2012’s Beasts of the South­ern Wild, merg­ing fan­ta­sy with human dra­ma. The promis­ing young direc­tor has once again opt­ed to cast unknown child actors.

Released TBA

Based on Joan Didion’s 1966 Orange-Prize win­ning nov­el with the same name, Mud­bound direc­tor Dee Rees’ crime dra­ma stars Ben Affleck, Anne Hath­away, Willem Dafoe and Rosie Perez – all of whom have starred in DC films. A guilt-pro­pelled errand for her father push­es a jour­nal­ist to become the sub­ject of the very sto­ry she is try­ing to break.

Released TBA

Mia Wasikows­ka and Vicky Krieps make the pil­grim­age to the same island that inspired famed Swedish auteur Ing­mar Bergman, before the lines between fic­tion and real­i­ty start to blur. Mia Hansen-Løve’s lat­est sounds like a dream, and we’re expect­ing it to make an appear­ance at a major film fes­ti­val ear­ly in the year.

Released 28 February

In 1993, Elis­a­beth Moss voiced Kim­my Ven­trix in an episode of Bat­man the Ani­mat­ed Series in which an invis­i­ble man attempt­ed to abduct his daugh­ter. Twen­ty sev­en years lat­er she returns to play Cecil­ia in Upgrade direc­tor Leigh Whannell’s lat­est hor­ror, attempt­ing to prove that she is being haunt­ed by some­one nobody can see. Coincidence?

Released 18 December

West Side Sto­ry is Steven Spielberg’s last musi­cal fol­low­ing the fail­ure of his Reel for Reel project. The lat­est film adap­ta­tion of Arthur Laurent’s nov­el, with a screen­play tai­lored by Fences pro­duc­er Tony Kush­n­er, tells the sto­ry of for­bid­den love and the rival­ry between two teenage street gangs.

Released 26 June

Direc­tor Jon M Chu has drawn inspi­ra­tion from Do the Right Thing and Annie Hall to cre­ate a fea­ture-length ver­sion of the Broad­way hit In the Heights. Lin-Manuel Miran­da and Stephanie Beat­riz star in this musi­cal dra­ma about a bode­ga own­er with con­flict­ing feel­ings about retir­ing to the Domini­can Repub­lic after inher­it­ing his grandmother’s fortune.

Released 17 July

Although pub­licly con­firmed by Cruise in a 2002 inter­view, Top Gun’s sequel will be released 34 years after the orig­i­nal – mean­ing that Mav­er­ick is now old­er than Tom Skerritt’s Viper was in 1986. Expect to see plen­ty of high-octane aer­i­al sequences, as Cruise’s con­di­tion for his involve­ment in this project was no CGI.

Released 16 October

The sec­ond mod­ern instal­ment of the Michael Myers/​Laurie Strode saga again stars Antho­ny Michael Hall and Jaime Lee Cur­tis. Announced in Sep­tem­ber 2019, indie sweet­heart Robert Longstreet joins the cast as adult Lon­nie Elam, who bul­lied Tom­my and tried to make him believe that the boogey­man was com­ing after him in the 1978 original.

Released TBA

In 1840s Eng­land, a fos­sil hunter and a young woman devel­op an intense rela­tion­ship that would change both of their lives. Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet star in God’s Own Coun­try direc­tor Fran­cis Lee’s dra­ma, which was filmed in West Dorset where the real Mary Anning lived and worked.

Released 18 December

Direc­tor Denis Villeneuve’s sci­ence fic­tion fol­low-up to Arrival and Blade Run­ner 2049 boasts an awe­some cast, with Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met, Oscar Isaac and Javier Bar­dem among the biggest name. This adap­ta­tion of Frank Herbert’s sem­i­nal nov­el, which the direc­tor describes as ​“Star Wars for adults”, will be split into two films in order to pre­serve the story.

Released 27 November

From Crazy Rich Asians writer Adele Lim and Paul Brig­gs, head of sto­ry on Frozen and Big Hero 6, comes Disney’s Raya and the Last Drag­on. In a reimag­ined Earth inhab­it­ed by ancient civil­i­sa­tions, a war­rior from a king­dom known as Luman­dra embarks on a jour­ney in search of the last dragon.

Released TBA

There are few liv­ing film­mak­ers as irrev­er­ent and inven­tive as Leos Carax. The French surrealist’s long-await­ed fol­low-up to 2012’s Holy Motors details the life of a wid­owed stand-up come­di­an and his young daugh­ter. Adam Dri­ver and Michelle Williams stand to make this Carax’s most wide-reach­ing work. Oh, and it’s a musical.

Released TBA

Star­ring Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodrigues and Richard Jenk­ins, Miran­da July’s Kajil­lion­aire is her first direc­to­r­i­al effort since 2011’s The Future. This crime dra­ma tells the sto­ry of a girl whose life turns upside down when her par­ents include an out­sider in a major heist.

Released 10 April

Expect neo-noir sus­pense, dead­pan com­e­dy and beau­ti­ful cin­e­matog­ra­phy in Police, Adjec­tive direc­tor Cor­neliu Porumboiu’s intri­cate crime dra­ma. A police­man must learn an unusu­al region­al dialect con­sist­ing of hiss­ing and whistling to free a dubi­ous busi­ness­man from a prison in the Canaries.

Released TBA

Eight years after his sen­sa­tion­al debut Martha Mar­cy May Mar­lene, writer/​director Sean Durkin returns with a dra­ma star­ring Jude Law, Car­rie Coon and Oona Roche. An ambi­tious entre­pre­neur and his Amer­i­can fam­i­ly move to his native Eng­land, only to plunge into despair as this life alter­ing event would change their lives forever.

Released TBA

It promis­es to be a big year for The Rid­er direc­tor Chloé Zhao. While there’s the small mat­ter of her MCU offer­ing, The Eter­nals, we’re more excit­ed for Nomad­land. Star­ring Frances McDor­mand, David Strathairn and Lin­da May, this tells the sto­ry of a woman in her six­ties who los­es every­thing in the Great Reces­sion and embarks on a jour­ney through the Amer­i­can West liv­ing as a van-dwelling mod­ern-day nomad.

Released TBA

The Oscar-win­ning Lost in Trans­la­tion pow­er­house duo, Sofia Cop­po­la and Bill Mur­ray, reunite in On the Rocks, the first announced film under the new A24 and Apple part­ner­ship. The film tells the sto­ry of a young moth­er who recon­nects with her larg­er-than-life play­boy father in an adven­ture through New York.

Released 17 July

Almost noth­ing has been revealed about direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan’s return to the sci-fi genre, but we’re ridicu­lous­ly excit­ed all the same. Just check out the first offi­cial trail­er. With Hoyte van Hoytema on DoP duties and an A‑list cast, includ­ing Robert Pat­tin­son, Eliz­a­beth Debic­ki and John David Wash­ing­ton, it doesn’t get much big­ger than this.

Released TBA

Amer­i­can actor-cum-film­mak­er Josephine Deck­er directs Elis­a­beth Moss and Michael Stuhlbarg in this adap­ta­tion of Susan Scarf Merrell’s 2014 nov­el. Inspi­ra­tion strikes when a hor­ror writer and her sig­nif­i­cant oth­er take in a young cou­ple. Fol­low­ing a hand­ful of strong inde­pen­dent fea­tures, includ­ing the sub­lime Madeline’s Made­line, this might be the film to nudge Deck­er into the big leagues.

Released TBA

Todd Haynes is no stranger when it comes to the non-tra­di­tion­al­ist explo­ration of music leg­ends with films like Vel­vet Gold­mine and I’m Not Here. What makes his upcom­ing Vel­vet Under­ground project spe­cial is that it’s Haynes’s first exam­i­na­tion of a music fig­ure with­in the doc­u­men­tary genre. Haynes admit­ted that the film will rely heav­i­ly on Warhol films but also a rich cul­ture of exper­i­men­tal film.

Released 18 September

Sup­pos­ed­ly inspired by Don’t Look Now and Repul­sion, Edward Wright’s first non-comedic hor­ror stars Anya Tay­lor-Joy and Matt Smith. Last Night in Soho tells the sto­ry of a young woman with a pas­sion for fash­ion who mys­te­ri­ous­ly enters the 1960s and meets her idol.

Released TBA

Depict­ing the twi­light years of noto­ri­ous Chica­go gang­ster Al Capone, as por­trayed by a pros­thet­ic-laden Tom Hardy, Fon­zo is cer­tain­ly an inter­est­ing career choice for Fan­tas­tic Four direc­tor Josh Trank. He’s backed up by a sup­port­ing cast of Kyle MacLach­lan, Lin­da Cardelli­ni and Matt Dil­lon though. Fin­gers crossed it doesn’t turn out to be anoth­er Gang­ster Squad/​Legend.

Released TBA

David Finch­er means must see. Ini­tial­ly planned to launch after The Game in 1997, the stu­dio did not agree with Fincher’s pref­er­ence to shoot it in a Cit­i­zen-Kane inspired black and white. At the time, Finch­er want­ed Kevin Spacey to star, but now, almost 23 years lat­er, it’s Gary Old­man in the title role.