I recently submitted a ballot for indieWIRE’s annual Critics’ Poll, which offers respondents a chance to create two separate lists of the best films of the year: one comprised of films which received theatrical distribution (which is described as, at minimum, a one week run in a commercial theater in New York City, essentially the same type of release required for Oscar consideration); and a list of the best films which weren’t distributed commercially in 2008––ie: those which screened only at festivals, and/or in other non-commercial venues, and/or outside of New York. Because I see so many films at festivals, I had a far greater pool of candidates for the latter list than the former. My “true” top ten list would combine films which were made readily available to audiences via studio subsidiaries (such as Synecdoche, NY and Rachel Getting Married), with films that I fell in love with at a festival and may never get a chance to see again, and with films which had the bare minimum New York release, but nevertheless were probably still seen by fewer people than the average distributor-less festival hit (such as Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness). That said, I understand the purpose of making the distinction––even if there was no other benefit to it, there’s always the hope that some smaller theatrical and straight-to-DVD distributors will look to the annual Best Undistributed list as a reference to films they might have missed. After all, 2007’s “winner,” Hong Sang Soo’s Woman on the Beach, was purchased and ended up in theaters barely a week into the new year.

In fact, I think singling out films which are still on the market, and in a perfect world wouldn’t be, is so worth doing, that not only am I revealing here the ten titles I included in the poll, but I’m adding a few bonus films. The following list is presented alphabetically and should be considered unranked, with the exception of the first title mentioned — they all deserve to be seen by wider audiences, but the reception thus far bestowed on the work of one French master in particular is actually a travesty.

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For all the talk about how this was a mediocre year at the Cannes Film Festival, I think I personally saw a higher ratio of good to garbage than is my festival norm. Maybe I’m being Pollyanna-ish; maybe I just went in with lower expectations. Regardless: though certainly I saw films too mediocre to merit mention, it seemed like every day brought at least one new movie that deserved to have the living hell championed out of it. The following list is thus not ranked necessarily by absolute quality, but by how fervently I feel the need to shout the praises of the film in question––in some cases, in opposition to overwhelming derision or indifference.

1. Everything is Fine (above) — This French-Canadian drama, about a suicide pact between four teenage friends and the enigmatic boy left behind, was the true undiscovered gem of this year’s Market. Both cautiously romantic and devastatingly sad, its greatest achievement is the way in which it naturalisticaly depicts a teenager’s personal tragedies (those legitimately large and those that just seem that way) without condescension nor nostalgia. As far as I know, it left the Marche without any form of U.S. distribution.

2. Frontier of Dawn –– It wasn’t the most maligned film in competition––nothing could top the press corps’ universal disdain for Wim Wenders’ The Palermo Shooting––but Philippe Garrel’s richly-layered story of the ultimate doomed romance may have been the most misunderstood. Those who complain of the supernatural turn taken by Garrel’s epic in its third half (and, particularly, the silent-era effects used to achieve it) mostly refuse to engage with the film on its own terms. See my full review here.

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Who would have thought, in 2006, when Old Joy spent a year slowly gathering critical steam after having been all but ignored at Sundance, that Kelly Reichardt’s next film would occasion an item in PEOPLE Magazine? “Michelle Williams Dazzles at Cannes Film Festival,” goes the headline of the story by Brenda Rodriguez. Last night’s Wendy & Lucy red carpet was the first that the actress walked since the death of former partner Heath Ledger, and for the tabloids that’s a major hook. Looking down from the balcony last night at the Debussy, it was a trip to watch the Chanel-clad former Dawson’s Creek star stand on the stage at one end of a line that included Reichardt, Old Joy/Wendy & Lucy producer Anish Savjani, and filmmaker/Wendy & Lucy producer and co-star Larry Fessenden.

When a film this small gets thrust under a spotlight this bright, you worry that the movie itself will be overwhelmed. I do hope this unlikely attention helps Wendy & Lucy get seen, but coming in with high expectations(Old Joy was one of my favorite films of its year), I was a bit underwhelmed.

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The French title of Philippe Garrel’s film in competition here is La Frontière de l’aube; the English translation in the Cannes guide is Frontier of Dawn, but the subtitle at the beginning of the film read, The Dawn of the Shore. Neither title gives any indication of what this film is: a story of amour gone so fou that the natural world becomes subject to the supernatural. Hands down the most accessible Garrel film I’ve seen, it’s still a strange, swoony, genre-bending challenge.

I have to wonder if those critics who dismissed James Gray’s Two Lovers earlier in week will bother to grapple with the similarities between that star-studded American production and Garrel’s infinitely cooler, warm-toned black-and-white capital-A work of Art. On paper, they’re essentially the same film: a Jewish photographer falls for a difficult, substance-dependent blonde; even though that relationship is clearly doomed from the start, it haunts him and prevents him from happily settling into a domestic routine with a still-beautiful but less troubled and exciting brunette. The big difference, at least narratively speaking: in Gray’s film, as the director told Andrew O’Hehir, the protagonist ultimately “does choose life.” Spoiler alert! The resolution to Garrel’s story is the diametric opposite.

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