"This came out in late 2018, only I saw it in January this year in Budapest. I’m going to sneak it into this list, as it was ironically and frustratingly overlooked by many film writers when it won a FIPRESCI award in Cannes despite the abundance of articles complaining about the dearth of films from women in the festival that year. Zsófia Szilágyi’s micro-budget debut film about motherhood in present-day Budapest deserves all the praise it can get. At first, I didn’t regard the kids in the film as that much of a handful. No industrial-strength tantrums, nothing spilt or broken, no fussiness at dinner and so on. But maybe the focus is more on the logistics of parenthood rather than especially difficult moments with one’s children. I was initially too focused on what was missing from the film and in the process overlooked many other great qualities – the beautifully naturalistic acting, the relentlessness of getting three kids from different sets of A-B and back within a busy city and the sound design that teased out the various everyday noises we’d normally cancel out. Also, the kids do give the parents a run of sorts for their money, but more of a jog than a run. The acting really is first class and all across the board. I have no idea how Szilágyi got such great performances from kids so young. The dad isn’t around much and it’s pretty much a solo show for the mother struggling with work and kids. There’s a wonderful shot of her at the window of an all-night pharmacy buying painkillers for her son and looking beyond exhausted. There’s also a brilliant altercation between the mother and some typical alpha male in a car park. My favorite moment was with the “orrszi porszi,” which is a vacuum adapter that goes up toddlers’ noses. It’s the kind of gross-out contraption that you’d expect to find in an early John Waters film, but Hungarians swear by it. The Brits think the Hungarians are crazy vacuuming snot and the Hungarians think the Brits are crazy not doing anything about snot and maybe that’s why the film wasn’t picked up for distribution in the UK. The film’s strength is in showing us most of the moments that are glossed over in more regular fare such as the time it takes to dress young kids, the repetition and the complete lack of time for oneself. Although it’s very different from Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman,” it still shares the dedication to a perspective and experience that is normally deodorized from cinema. I have to confess to being confused by the protagonist’s use of a mobile phone whilst driving, but then again, should all protagonists be perfect or is this an example of how pushed she is with all the multi-tasking she has to do with work and parenthood?"