Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #101. Anthony Chen’s Drift

Published on January 12, 2023

Drift

The second 2023 Anthony Chen film on our list (the other being The Breaking Ice at the #191 spot) is definitely more indie and working with an international conflux. Starring Cynthia Erivo, Alia Shawkat, Ibrahima Ba and Honor Swinton-Byrne, this book to film project was filmed in Greece in May of last year. Based on the book A Marker to Measure Drift, Drift is about relocating, escaping, surviving but never truly getting away. Susanne Farrell and Alexander Maksik adapted the screenplay.

Gist: Drift follows a young Liberian refugee named Jacqueline (Erivo) who has barely escaped her war-torn country to a Greek island. She offers massages to tourists in exchange for one or two euros to battle her hunger, while her daily struggle for survival keeps the memories that haunt her at bay. She meets an unmoored tour guide (Shawkat) and the two become close as they each find hope in the other.

Release Date/Prediction: This was selected for the Sundance Film Festival – Premieres section.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).