Josef Krebs

Made by British film and stage director, producer, and screenwriter Sir Sam Mendes, Empire of Light is set in the English seaside town of Margate of 1980-81 (where I grew up) in a two-screen cinema. Regular life for duty manager Hilary (Olivia Colman), the box-office and concession staff, and the projectionist is gradually changed after handsome, young black man, Stephen (Micheal Ward), is hired by the manager (Colin Firth) to be a ticket taker.

Based on incidents from writer-director Kenneth Branagh's own childhood in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and set against the outset of the Troubles in 1969, this bloody masterpiece—a joy from beginning to end—is a moving comic-tragedy on both personal and historical levels, one that's filled with warm sentiment, great Irish humor, and a touching sense of loss.

The messiah here is Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), preaching and gathering disciples to join him in his efforts to help feed and free the people. Judas is Bill O'Neal, the follower who's secretly working for the oppressive force—the Chicago PD and the FBI circa 1968, who see the BPP as more of a threat than the Russians or the Chinese.

Closing an almost 50-year career that began with Un Chien Andalou, writer-director Luis Buñuel—aided by screenwriting partner Jean-Claude Carrière—created a trio of subversive amusements that savagely poke fun at pillars of French society, including church, military, and figures of the establishment. The master surrealist did so by playing with and disrupting conventional narrative structures, questioning the validity of his protagonists' rationality, and reducing their self-serving behavior and values to nonsense while upsetting cinematic expectations of viewers.