Feeling Iffy? We’ve got the cure!

More than one year on, many of us are still trying to adjust to the "new normal" and cope with large-scale changes in the way we work and live. New variants that are more infectious, and questions about vaccines are leaving many people uncertain about the future and what lies ahead, and if we will ever get back to "normal" or not.

Spring is a season of rebirth, however, and with that we've got a few new official lists to share with you and help renew the love of cinema that we all share: lists from TIFF and BIFF.

The Toronto International Film Festival has grown to become one of the largest film festivals in the world, and is now seen as the unofficial start of the annual Awards Season. Every September almost 500,000 people come to see around 400 films from all over the world. Every attendee has the opportunity to vote for the People’s Choice Award from among all the feature films playing at the festival. As the largest and most important non-competitive film festival in the world, we feel that Toronto deserves a spot next to Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, Sundance, and FESPACO in the ICM Film Festival Official Gang. Check out TIFF - People’s Choice Award and see the films that Toronto audiences have loved the most, from the relatively obscure Tempest (1982) and Bella (2006), to Oscar Best Picture winners American Beauty and 12 Years a Slave. The Award winner of the past 8 years has gone on to get a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. Will 2021’s Nomadland be the 9th? (adopted from dirty_score)

Although the Asian Cinema: A Field Guide is already official, some people may find it overwhelming, because it is very large and unranked. Therefore we are adopting a smaller ranked list, BIFF’s Asian Cinema 100, voted by 73 experts. Organized by the Busan International Film Festival, it includes films from 20 different Asian countries, and we hope you will find it a useful introduction to Asian Cinema. BIFF also intends to update the list every five years (though the 2020 update was cancelled/postponed because of the pandemic), so we hope that this list will remain current as time goes on, and continues to highlight the best of both classic and contemporary Asian cinema. (adopted from mjf314)

We currently have two official Korean lists. The KOFA list (voted by 62 experts) is a good representation of critics’ favorites, but we adopted the Film 2.0 list because we wanted a better representation of mainstream Korean cinema. However, the Film 2.0 list is already 13 years old, and many great Korean films have been made since then. Additionally, Film 2.0 no longer exists, which means the list will never be updated. Therefore, we are replacing it with a newer list, AMP’s 100+1 Essential South Korean Movies from Asian Movie Pulse, a website dedicated to Asian cinema. It contains many popular Korean movies, both old and new, including some of the biggest hits of the last decade. (adopted from Melvelet)

Additionally, many films have become official since the last adoption round.
The awards season is underway, with the latest roster of nominated films for the Academy Awards announced. But we already have a bunch of award-winning films for the season:

• Borat Subsequent Moviefilm won the Golden Globe in comedy, joining Nomadland, which won in drama
• Da 5 Bloods was named best film by the National Board of Review
• In Sweden Spring Uje spring won the Guldbagge
• In Spain Las niñas won the Goya
• In France Adieu les cons won the César
• In Belgium De Patrick won the Ensor
• In India, Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea won the Golden Lotus
• In Argentina Los sonámbulos won the Silver Condor for the 2020 edition that had been suspended by the pandemic.
• In the United Kingdom, Nomadland also won the BAFTA.
• 8 films were nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and frontrunner Nomadland took home the top prize of the night, along with Best Director and Best Actress.
• The 5 nominees for Best International Picture at the Oscars come from Denmark, Hong Kong, Romania, Tunisia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina, with Thomas Vinterburg's Another Round winning the award.
• And lastly, Mank won Best Cinematography.

In Film Festival news, the Grand Jury at Sundance awarded its main prize to CODA, and Romanian director Radu Jude's latest film Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc won the Golden Bear.

Other lists that got updated with multiple films are TSPDT (29 new films), TSPDT 1001-2000 (100 new films), TSPDT 21st Century (60 new films), and TSPDT 1000 Noir (35 new films in 2021 so far).

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Many thanks,
The iCheckMovies team