Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic For all the endless crises in the film business, there are still too many movies to see. What’s more, plenty of them are too good to miss. And so God gave us Christmas to catch up. Of course, the place to see films remains the cinema, which is where you’ll still find several of the best of the year. (Anora for one; a lucky few might track down A Different Man.) But many others are now streamable. Some speak urgently to the world in which we find ourselves. A few are more escapist. The rest fall somewhere in the grey zone between. But together I hope they all fit the brief: a private festival for the festive period. The BeastDo you remember the future? In The Beast, Léa Seydoux and George MacKay work in French and English, and across time. Director Bertrand Bonello takes a pinch of inspiration from Henry James’s novella The Beast in the Jungle, then jumps into eerie science fiction. The movie spans 1910, 2014 and a chilly point two decades from now. Thematic rhymes abound: love and loneliness, premonitions and QR codes. But the real common thread is the ache of nostalgia — for the past and things to come that never were.On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and othersBlitz Steve McQueen could have made this list twice. In documentary Occupied City, he matched images of modern Amsterdam to the story of the city under Nazi control. All four remarkable hours of that film are more than worth your time too.But Blitz is a London movie to the bones, a panorama of the capital ablaze in 1941, radiating out from a single Stepney family. The visual daring is stunning, and yet the film also feels timeless — as stirring as any landmark in British war cinema, even as it upends the clichés of the genre.On Apple TV+La Chimera Excavating the past is a theme in more than one of the year’s best films. In the singular La Chimera, even the look of Alice Rohrwacher’s movie feels archaeological: a vintage grain just right for the setting in 1980s Tuscany. Josh O’Connor stars, working in Italian as an English ne’er-do-well fallen in with ragbag “tombaroli” (tomb raiders) to steal buried Etruscan artefacts. The mood is anarchic but shadowed with sadness — and surprises.On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and othersDahomeyLa Chimera is a tale of treasures being stolen. In Dahomey, director Mati Diop focuses on relics long spirited away from home — until now. At the simplest level, the documentary tracks 26 African artworks looted by France in the 19th century, but now being returned to Benin. Early scenes coolly observe giant iroko wood statues still in Paris, being packed for their journey. Inside the film, though, an explosion of ideas is about to begin around the legacy of colonialism. The rest is a movie of rare and restless intelligence.On MUBI, Apple TV+ and othersFuriosa: A Mad Max Saga“What the hell am I watching?” is a great question for any film to make us ask. You may find it comes up in Furiosa, a wired and wilful action blockbuster. The short answer is the origin story of the post-apocalyptic heroine from George Miller’s last virtuoso Mad Max movie, Fury Road — one built around the otherworldly star presence of Anya Taylor-Joy. Like Francis Ford Coppola’s quickly infamous Megalopolis, the movie marches to no tune but its own. But while Coppola sprawled, Miller and Taylor-Joy keep things taut and kinetic — their movie brutal but a rush.On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and othersHit Man We’ve all seen too many movies about assassins, and Hit Man knows it. Instead, Richard Linklater gives us a hugely enjoyable Russian doll. The promise is a true-ish story inside which lies a screwball lark. Inside that, though, is a chewy meditation on how much of the world we (mis)understand from movies. Glen Powell stars as the New Orleans philosophy professor gone undercover with the cops to impersonate a hired killer. The comedy is nimble; Powell’s chemistry with co-star Adria Arjona pops. And the sting in the tail? We even get something to think about.On NetflixMy Favourite Cake Telling the truth in a hardline regime is always heroic. My Favourite Cake does it in the form of a gentle comic drama. The story might not seem subversive: a wry portrait of a 70-year-old Tehran widow who trains her romantic gaze on a surprised elderly taxi driver. And yet within Iran, the morality police saw the film as criminal on account of such scenes as women at home going without a hijab. It was enough for directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha to face interrogations and the confiscation of their passports. But to watch the film isn’t just a small act of solidarity — it is also a pleasure.On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and othersNo Other Land No Other Land is a film about a place: Masafer Yatta, a string of Palestinian villages in the West Bank whose homes and schools are often torn down by the Israeli military. But this intense and gripping documentary is also about people: the villagers, of course, and two of the four co-directors, Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham. Adra too is from Masafer Yatta. For him, the film comes after years already spent recording tanks, bulldozers and the violence of soldiers. Meanwhile, Abraham is an Israeli journalist whose friendship with Adra gives this deeply human film greater dimension still.On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and othersRobot DreamsThe charming animation Robot Dreams is suitable for all ages. Younger kids will surely giggle. Adults, though, may find themselves with a lump in their throat, albeit having first enjoyed a nostalgic high from the colourful backdrop of 1980s New York. But here the breakdancers, punks and Coney Island day-trippers are cartoon animals, like the melancholy dog at the heart of the movie, who buys a mail order robot as a pal. From that simple beginning, Pablo Berger’s movie spins endless invention and emotional complexity — and all without a word of dialogue.On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and othersThe VourdalakChristmas Eve in Britain isn’t the same without a ghost story — but Adrien Beau’s vampire yarn The Vourdalak will make a fine alternative. The story is an old one, based on an 1839 Russian novel, with a prim French courtier stranded in rural eastern Europe with a strange local family. What follows is a richly gamy gothic horror. The ratio of creeping unease and surrealist comedy is perfectly judged — just right to make sure you wake up on Christmas morning still shuddering.On Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and others
