When asked to name my top ten favourite films, I find I’m less interested in technical brilliance than in the way a story lingers. These are the films that I return to in thought long after the credits roll. Some make me laugh, others leave me quiet with grief, and a few manage to hold both laughter and sorrow in the same breath. Together, they trace a pattern: outsiders searching for dignity, prisoners yearning for freedom, fragile people stumbling toward hope.
The Shawshank Redemption
Hope chiselled out of stone, patient enough to outlast despair. Andy Dufresne’s quiet persistence is a reminder that freedom often comes slowly, through endurance as much as rebellion. Few films leave you so certain that hope is worth the wait.
The Life and Death of Peter Sellers
A haunting portrait of a comic genius undone by the masks he wore. The film reveals both the brilliance and the hollowness of Sellers, a man who could play anyone but never quite knew himself. It’s unsettling, funny, and tragic all at once.
Crime and Misdemeanours
A chilling reminder that conscience can be silenced but never erased. Woody Allen’s moral fable refuses us the comfort of justice neatly served, leaving the unsettling truth that people live on after terrible choices. It lingers like a question you can’t easily shake.
The Elephant Man
Dignity shines brighter than deformity when someone dares to see the man within. John Merrick’s story pierces through cruelty and spectacle, showing that humanity is never measured by appearances. It’s heartbreaking, but also full of unexpected tenderness.
Watership Down
A fable of survival that proves even rabbits can carry the weight of destiny. Beneath the pastoral landscape is a tale of exile, courage, and the building of new community against the odds. It is both brutal and strangely beautiful.
Dead Poet’s Society
Poetry as rebellion, beauty as protest, inspiration shadowed by tragedy. Robin Williams’ Keating lights a fire in his students, urging them to see the world differently, but the cost of such vision is heavy. It is a film that inspires even as it unsettles.
Life of Brian
A comedy of mistaken identity that skewers both power and piety with equal glee. Monty Python’s irreverence is razor sharp, exposing the absurdity of institutions and the follies of human devotion. You laugh, and then you wince at how true it feels.
The Party
Chaos as comedy, and comedy as the mirror of our clumsy humanity. Sellers turns awkwardness into art, showing how easily we stumble into disaster while trying to be charming. The humour is slapstick, but beneath it lies sharp social satire.
La Panthère des Neiges
Silence and stillness reveal a beauty that will not be tamed. This quiet documentary of two men seeking the elusive snow leopard becomes a meditation on patience, wonder, and the humility of being small in a vast world. The absence of spectacle is its gift.
The Shipping News
Out of shipwreck and storm, a tender life is slowly rebuilt on fragile shores. Kevin Spacey’s Quoyle is a man learning to live again, finding belonging in a place both harsh and healing. It’s a story of weathered landscapes and even more weathered souls.
Taken together, these stories are hard to categorise. They hold comedy and tragedy at the same table, outsiders and visionaries in the same frame. Some end in despair, others in hope, but all of them probe the question of what it means to be human—with our frailty, absurdity, cruelty, and capacity for wonder.
And of course, these are simply the films that came to mind today. On another day I might have chosen a very different ten. Perhaps that’s part of the wonder of cinema: different stories speak to us at different times, depending on what we’re living through, or what questions we’re carrying. Movies stay with us not because they are perfect, but because they meet us in a particular moment and give us something we needed then.
The Afterword 
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