The 20 best film posters of 2019

As the year crawls to an end, we’re look­ing back at the finest posters from the past 12 months. From the illus­trat­ed to the comedic, these are our favourite bits of movie mar­ket­ing. Think we’ve missed one? Let us known by tweet­ing us @LWLies.

Although the reboot of Don Mancini’s killer fran­chise wasn’t exact­ly a hit, this series of posters – riff­ing on the Toy Sto­ry 4 teasers – were cre­ative and amus­ing. It’s a shame the film itself couldn’t deliv­er on either the shocks or the laughs.

Designed by P+A

Jen­nifer Kent’s unflinch­ing por­trait of colo­nial vio­lence in 19^th cen­tu­ry Aus­tralia cer­tain­ly made its mark on view­ers, and its strik­ing poster hints at the dark­ness con­tained with­in its sto­ry. It’s hard to look away from Ais­ling Franciosi’s por­trait, just as it’s hard to look away from the vio­lence with­in Kent’s incen­di­ary sopho­more feature.

Designed by Bran­don Schaefer

Some­times a visu­al joke can look a lit­tle tacky, but in the poster for Kim Loginotto’s doc­u­men­tary about pho­tog­ra­ph­er Letizia Battaglia, it works because of the oth­er­wise sparse sur­round­ings. The lit­tle touch of red for the title – in a font that nods to Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s The God­fa­ther – ties it all together.

Designed by Akiko Stehrenberger

Two of Akiko’s designs made our top 20 this year, with good rea­son. This poster for Joe Talbot’s dra­ma explor­ing gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and race in San Fran­cis­co sees lead actor (and the inspi­ra­tion for the sto­ry) Jim­mie Fails stand­ing on the street by the house he’s des­per­ate to reclaim. It real­ly feels like a whole lot of love went into this one.

Designed by BLT Com­mu­ni­ca­tions LLC

After years of try­ing, James Cameron final­ly brought Yuk­i­to Kishiro’s man­ga Gun­nm to the big screen this year, care of direc­tor Robert Rodriguez. Ali­ta: Bat­tle Angel has its fair share of ardent fans, and this poster is def­i­nite­ly one of the bet­ter block­buster offer­ings this year – the swipe of blood on Rose Salazar’s cheek hints at one of the film’s most bru­tal (and bril­liant) scenes.

Designed by BLT Com­mu­ni­ca­tions LLC

The set of twin posters for Noah Baumbach’s Mar­riage Sto­ry reflect the sep­a­ra­tion between Nicole and Char­lie as they live their sep­a­rate lives in Los Ange­les and New York. Peach and baby blue show her warmth and his cool­ness – sure it’s an obvi­ous visu­al metaphor, but when you’re try­ing to illus­trate the ways a cou­ple have drift­ed apart, it makes total sense.

Designed by B O N D

Neil Jordan’s pulpy thriller sees Isabelle Hup­pert on top form as a deli­cious­ly deranged woman prey­ing on kind-heart­ed, naïve young ladies in New York City – name­ly Chloë Grace Moretz. This clever, graph­ic poster serves as a warn­ing, while also fore­shad­ow­ing a key scene in which Moretz dis­cov­ers Greta’s deception.

Designed by P+A

The lush­ness of this poster for Claire Denis’ space epic teamed with that damn­ing tagline is poet­ry. High Life is a film in which hope coex­ists with abject despair; not an easy thing to get across in a poster, but this pret­ty much nails it with­out giv­ing away any­thing of the plot.

There’s some­thing quite sparse about the poster for Ter­rence Malick’s wartime dra­ma, about con­sci­en­tious objec­tor Franz Jägerstätter’s impris­on­ment dur­ing World War Two. In obscur­ing his face the poster reflects the film’s sen­ti­ments about the nature of resis­tance, as reflect­ed in the George Eliot quote which gives the film its name: ​“The grow­ing good of the world is part­ly depen­dent on unhis­toric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the num­ber who lived faith­ful­ly a hid­den life, and rest in unvis­it­ed tombs.”

Designed by LA

The whole mar­ket­ing cam­paign for Jor­dan Peele’s fol­low-up to Get Out was pret­ty inspired, from that trail­er which made good use of Luniz’s ​‘I Got 5 On It’ to the pro­mo­tion­al scis­sors dis­patched to media per­son­al­i­ties around the world. This poster depicts Lupi­ta Nyong’o’s Teth­ered – with her dis­tinc­tive red jump­suit and sin­gle leather glove – and cre­ates an imme­di­ate sense of fore­bod­ing. The cur­sive font seems almost roman­tic, which is…quite some­thing, giv­en the tone of the film.

Designed by InSync Plus

As with the poster for Moon­light, Bar­ry Jenk­ins’ lat­est film uses strong colour gra­di­ents to great effect. Orange and blue could mean so much in the world of Tish and Fon­ny; the tra­jec­to­ry of their love sto­ry, the dif­fer­ent worlds they come from, their feel­ings when togeth­er and apart. But most of all, the poster hints at the fact If Beale Street Could Talk is a love sto­ry with­out at all seem­ing saccharine.

Designed by Zao Dao

Last year we show­cased the Chi­nese poster for My Neigh­bour Totoro – this year Spir­it­ed Away got sim­i­lar­ly beau­ti­ful treat­ment, cour­tesy of artist Zao Dao, in time for the film’s release in Chi­na. Chi­hi­ro and Haku soar high above the clouds in this illus­trat­ed ver­sion of one of the film’s most breath-tak­ing scenes.

Designed by Akiko Stehrenberger

This paint­ed design for the Amer­i­can release of Por­trait of a Lady on Fire con­tains a nifty hid­den visu­al of two women about to kiss – one of those ​‘once you see it, you can’t unsee it’ gam­bits. The high con­trast of flame colours against black mim­ics the film’s tit­u­lar scene, while the hand­writ­ten font feels peri­od-appro­pri­ate as well as romantic.

Designed by BLT Com­mu­ni­ca­tions LLC

Although the first set of posters for Quentin Tarantino’s 10^th film were some­thing of a mis­fire, this one – in the style of the hand-drawn posters of the ​’60s – is a gem. The best part? Why, the tiny Taran­ti­no behind the cam­era just next to a danc­ing Mar­got Rob­bie, of course.

Designed by Julian House at Intro

Julian House also designed the rather groovy posters for The Duke of Bur­gundy and Berber­ian Sound Stu­dio, and this effort is his finest work yet. Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from the shop­ping cat­a­logue seen in the film as well as hint­ing at the demon­ic forces at work in Dent­ley and Soper’s depart­ment store.

Designed by Eclipse

The poster for Todd Haynes’ excel­lent legal dra­ma looks a lit­tle like the cov­er for an old-school spy paper­back, which is fit­ting giv­en how much of the film Mark Ruf­fa­lo spends look­ing over his shoul­der for the wrath of DuPont.

Designed by InSync Plus

Sim­plic­i­ty is under­rat­ed when it comes to film posters, as this one-sheet for Lulu Wang’s The Farewell demon­strates. The fam­i­ly por­trait shows Nai Nai front and cen­tre hap­pi­ly smil­ing while the rest of her fam­i­ly – the ones who know about her can­cer diag­no­sis – look on sad­ly. Although the film does, in the­o­ry, sound awful­ly sad, it also has a lot of humour to it; demon­strat­ed by the play­ful ​‘Based on an Actu­al Lie’ tagline.

Designed by BLT Com­mu­ni­ca­tions LLC

Chang­ing gear com­plete­ly from the bright greens and pur­ples of the Good Time mar­ket­ing cam­paign, there’s only been one poster released for the Safdie Broth­ers’ forth fea­ture. It’s strik­ing for sure, with Adam Sandler’s Howard Rat­ner front and cen­tre, but – like the best posters – gives absolute­ly noth­ing away about the film itself. No quotes, no tagline. Just Safdie, San­dler, Decem­ber. That’s all you need to know.

The visu­al clues in the poster for Bong Joon-ho’s social satire are a scream once you’ve seen the film and can con­nect the dots, but even beyond that, it’s a bold design state­ment that deserves fram­ing. Of par­tic­u­lar note is the title font, with its spikey tips, and the use of white/​black bars to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the Park and Ki-taek families.

Designed by P+A

As well as being our favourite film of 2019, The Sou­venir also ranks top of our poster list. A sim­ple, poignant tagline, serif font with per­fect kern­ing, use of reflec­tion to demon­strate the dis­tor­tion of real­i­ty – it’s a design dream that fits in per­fect­ly with the film’s aes­thet­ic. We’re big fans of this alter­na­tive poster and Sam Ashby’s design for the UK release. Great work all round, folks.