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A24 is a New York distributor and production company, not a single style, so “A24 movies” covers everything from quiet family dramas to horror that people argue about for weeks. We split this list in two. The first ten are dramas about family, memory and growing up. The last six are tense, strange or frightening. Every film here was released in the United States by A24; some were distributed by other companies elsewhere.
If you are new to A24, start here. These films are mostly small in scale: a family, a summer, a few years of someoneʼs life. Most are under two hours.
Directed by Celine Song
Two childhood friends from Seoul meet again in New York more than twenty years later; she is now married. The film keeps its drama small, a bar, a walk, a wait for a car, and lets the lives not lived sit in the silences. A good first A24 film for almost anyone.
Directed by Greta Gerwig
“I wish that you liked me.” “Of course I love you.” “But do you like me?” A last year of high school in Sacramento, and a running argument between a mother and a daughter that only makes sense once the daughter has left home. Quick, funny and ninety-four minutes long.
Directed by Barry Jenkins
In three chapters, the film follows one man in Miami from a small, bullied boy to a guarded adult. It stays close to the few moments when he lets himself be seen: a swimming lesson, a night on the beach, a meal in a diner. Won Best Picture in 2017.
Directed by Charlotte Wells
A woman looks back, through old camcorder footage, on a resort vacation in Turkey with her young father when she was eleven. The dance to “Under Pressure” is the scene people remember. The film is about what a child could not see at the time, and it hits hard near the end.
Directed by Lee Isaac Chung
A Korean American family moves to a trailer in rural Arkansas so the father can start a farm. The grandmother arrives from Korea, swears at cards and plants minari by a creek, where it grows without help. The film watches the family hold together with the same patience.
Directed by Lulu Wang
A family stages a wedding in China so everyone can say goodbye to a grandmother who has not been told she is ill. Billi, raised in New York, thinks the secret is wrong. The film is funny and sad at once, and fair to both sides of the argument.
Directed by Sean Baker
A summer at a lilac-painted budget motel near Disney World, seen at a six-year-oldʼs height. The kids run wild and the film is often very funny; the adultsʼ money troubles stay just out of focus until they donʼt. Willem Dafoe plays the patient motel manager.
Directed by Bo Burnham
The last week of middle school for Kayla, who posts advice videos nobody watches and freezes at pool parties. It is painfully accurate about being thirteen online. You may watch parts of it through your fingers, but it is kind to her.
Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp
A one-inch shell with one googly eye lives with his grandmother in an Airbnb, and a documentary filmmaker starts recording them. It is small and funny, and turns out to be about loneliness and family. Good for kids and adults watching together.
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson
A five-year-old boy has lived his whole life in one small room with his mother, who was abducted years before he was born. The first half is tense; the second half, about the world outside, is the part that stays with you. Heavy subject matter, handled with care.
These six are harder going. Two are horror, one is a two-hour panic attack, and one is set next to Auschwitz. Read the notes before choosing one for a group.
Directed by Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
A laundromat owner in the middle of a tax audit learns she must travel between versions of her life to save the multiverse. There are hot-dog fingers and kung fu fights, but underneath is a plain story about a mother and a daughter trying to understand each other. Loud, long, and more moving than it looks.
Directed by Alex Garland
A programmer is flown to his reclusive bossʼs house in the mountains to test whether a humanoid robot, Ava, is truly conscious. Almost the whole film is conversations between three people in a glass-and-concrete house, and it gets tenser with each one.
Directed by Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie
Adam Sandler plays a New York jeweler who owes money to everyone and keeps making bigger bets to get out of it. Everyone talks over everyone and the synth score never lets up. It is exhausting on purpose; watch it when you are in the mood for that.
Directed by Robert Eggers
Two lighthouse keepers, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, are stranded on a rock off New England in the 1890s, drinking, arguing and slowly losing their grip. Shot in black and white in a nearly square frame. Grim, very odd, and often darkly funny.
Directed by Ari Aster
After her mother dies, a woman who builds miniature houses watches her family come apart. It starts as a drama about grief and then becomes one of the most frightening horror films of its decade. Not a good pick if you scare easily or are grieving yourself.
Directed by Jonathan Glazer
The commandant of Auschwitz lives with his family in a house with a garden that shares a wall with the camp. You never go inside; you hear it. The film shows ordinary domestic life going on next to mass murder, and it is deliberately hard to sit through.
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Twelve family dramas about care, memory and distance, from Tokyo Story, Yi Yi and Eat Drink Man Woman to Shoplifters, A Separation and Aftersun, with viewing notes and a double bill.
Twelve horror films for beginners, rated from barely scary to genuinely frightening: Coraline, Shaun of the Dead, What We Do in the Shadows, The Others, Get Out, A Quiet Place, Ringu and more.
Fourteen puzzle films and twisty thrillers, from Rashomon and Memento to Mulholland Drive, Primer, Coherence and Arrival, with a spoiler-free guide to how confusing each one is.
