Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things is the second of his collaborations with Emma Stone, following the short Bleat and preceding Kinds of Kindness and Bugonia. Adapted from Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel of the same name (a Scottish postmodern landmark long considered unfilmable) by Tony McNamara, who also wrote The Favourite, the film was shot on built sets at Origo Film Studios in Budapest with cinematography by Robbie Ryan.

It won the Golden Lion at Venice 2023 and went on to dominate the awards season. At the 96th Academy Awards it took four prizes (Best Actress for Stone, Best Costume Design for Holly Waddington, Best Production Design for Shona Heath and James Price, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling) and earned eleven total nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. At BAFTA it won Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress; at the Golden Globes it won Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and Best Actress in the same category.

The film is photographed in a mix of black-and-white and saturated Eastmancolor with extreme wide-angle lenses (the famous fish-eye look), and its production design (a steampunk Lisbon, an art-nouveau Paris, an alternate-history London) became one of the most discussed visual achievements of the year. Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef and Christopher Abbott round out the cast. The film also marked Lanthimos' commercial peak: it grossed over $117 million worldwide, by some distance the highest of his career.