Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #195. Damián Szifron’s Misanthrope

Published on January 5, 2023

Misanthrope

While we’re not expecting this fourth feature to land with the same ripple effects as what occurred when Damián Szifron‘s Wild Tales competed for the Palme d’Or back in 2014, Misanthrope remains a huge curiosity item. Wrapping up in ’21, we find Shailene Woodley and Ben Mendelsohn toplining a project that falls into the genre psychological thriller parameters as in the the Argentinean filmmaker’s 2003 film The Bottom of the Sea. Filmed in Montreal in January of 2021, Szifron co-wrote the project alongside Jonathan Wakeham (who also had Midas Man to be released this year) and it was acquired for 2023 drop by the Vertical Entertainment folks. We’re classifying this one as an import — but could very well be more of an American indie film category. Worth noting: Carter Burwell wrote the score for this one.

Gist: The film written by Szifron and Jonathan Wakeham picks up in Baltimore on New Year’s Eve, as a talented but troubled police officer (Woodley) is recruited by the FBI’s chief investigator (Mendelsohn) to help profile and track down a mass murderer.

Release Date/Prediction: The plan is for an early 2023 release so we’re thinking that SXSW might spotlight the project this March.

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).