Year-End Lists

Erika Balsom: 10 Best Films of 2020, as published by Artforum

[see also 2019, 2018, 2017]

1. Defiant Muses: Delphine Seyrig and the Feminist Video Collectives in France in the 1970s and 1980s [exhibition]
1. Out Of The Shadows: The Pioneering Work Of Atteyat Al-Abnoudy, Assia Djebar, Jocelyne Saab, Heiny Srour [exhibition]
2. The Year of the Discovery — Luis López Carrasco
3. Days — Tsai Ming-liang
4. Route One/USA — Robert Kramer
5. First Cow — Kelly Reichardt
6. Apiyemiyekî? — Ana Vaz
7. Forum 50 Anniversary Program, Berlinale
8. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) — Anders Edström and C.W. Winter
9. małni—towards the ocean, towards the shore — Sky Hopinka
10. La Loupe [Facebook group]

James Quandt: 10 Best Films of 2020, as published by Artforum, "culled exclusively from the superbly curated 2020 New York Film Festival."

[see also 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014]

1. The Woman Who Ran — Hong Sang-soo
2. Days — Tsai Ming-liang
3. The Year of the Discovery — Luis López Carrasco
4. The Pickpocket — Jia Zhang-ke
5. A Night at the Opera — Sergei Loznitsa
6. The Monopoly of Violence — David Dufresne
7. Malmkrog — Cristi Puiu
8. Notturno — Gianfranco Rosi
9. While Cursed by Specters — Burak Çevik
10. Gunda — Viktor Kosakovskiy

Amy Taubin: 10 Best Films of 2020, as published by Artforum

[see also 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2012]

1. The handy, affordable-to-everyone, moving-image camera
2. I May Destroy You — Michaela Coel & Sam Miller
3. Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time — Lili Horvát
4. Time — Garrett Bradley
4. America — Garrett Bradley
5. Gunda — Viktor Kosakovskiy
6. Never Rarely Sometimes Always — Eliza Hittman
7. Tesla — Michael Almereyda
8. David Byrne's American Utopia — Spike Lee
9. Da 5 Bloods — Spike Lee
10. The Monopoly of Violence — David Dufresne
10. MLK/FBI — Sam Pollard
10. Coded Bias — Shalini Kantayya
10. Collective — Alexander Nanau

John Waters: 10 Best Films of 2020, as published by Artforum

[see also 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011]

1. Butt Boy — Tyler Cornack
2. Swallow — Carlo Mirabella-Davis
3. The Hunt — Craig Zobel
4. Why Don't You Just Die! — Kirill Sokolow
5. The Audition — Ina Weisse
6. Deerskin — Quentin Dupieux
7. The Human Voice — Pedro Almodóvar
8. True History of the Kelly Gang — Justin Kurzel
9. American Murder: The Family Next Door — Jenny Popplewell
10. The Trial of the Chicago 7 — Aaron Sorkin
10. Small Axe: Mangrove — Steve McQueen

The New York Times: The 10 Best Books of 2020

[see also 100 Notable Books of 2020, The 10 Best Books of 2019, 100 Notable Books of 2018, 10 Best Books of 2018, 10 Best Books of 2017, 100 Notable Books of 2017, 10 Best Books of 2016, 10 Best Books of 2015, 10 Best Books of 2012]

• A Children's Bible
  Lydia Millet
• Deacon King Kong
  James McBride
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• Homeland Elegies
  Ayad Akhtar
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
  Robert Kolker
• A Promised Land
  Barack Obama
• Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
  James Shapiro
• Uncanny Valley
  Anna Wiener
• War: How Conflict Shaped Us
  Margaret MacMillan

Eliana Dockterman: The 10 Best Podcasts of 2020, as published by Time Magazine

1. Nice White Parents
2. Code Switch
3. Staying In with Emily & Kumail
4. You Must Remember This: Polly Platt
5. Outsiders
6. The Daily
7. Floodlines
8. Dead Eyes
9. Home Cooking
10. Back Issue

Time Magazine: The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020

[see also The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020, The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020, The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s, The 10 Best Fiction Books of the 2010s, The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2019, The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019, Best Books of 2018, Top 20 Books of 2017]

1. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
   Isabel Wilkerson
2. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
   Cathy Park Hong
3. The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
   Wayétu Moore
4. Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir
   Natasha Trethewey
5. The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
   Les Payne and Tamara Payne
6. Vesper Flights
   Helen Macdonald
7. The Undocumented Americans
   Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
8. Having and Being Had
   Eula Biss
9. Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945
   Volker Ullrich
10. Just Us: An American Conversation
    Claudia Rankine

The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2020

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2020, The 10 Best Books of 2019, 100 Notable Books of 2018, 10 Best Books of 2018, 10 Best Books of 2017, 100 Notable Books of 2017, 10 Best Books of 2016, 10 Best Books of 2015, 10 Best Books of 2012]

• The Aosawa Murders
  Riku Onda
• The Beauty in Breaking
  Michele Harper
• The Beauty of Your Face
  Sahar Mustafah
• Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
  Carl Safina
• Beheld
  TaraShea Nesbit
• The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win
  Maria Konnikova
• Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
  Kim Ghattas
• Blacktop Wasteland
  S.A. Cosby
• The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World
  Patrik Svensson
• The Boy in the Field
  Margot Livesey
• Breasts and Eggs
  Mieko Kawakami
• A Burning
  Megha Majumdar
• Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party
  Julian E. Zelizer
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
  Isabel Wilkerson
• A Children's Bible
  Lydia Millet
• Cleanness
  Garth Greenwell
• Deacon King Kong
  James McBride
• The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
  Les Payne and Tamara Payne
• The Death of Jesus
  J.M. Coetzee
• The Death of Vivek Oji
  Akwaeke Emezi
• Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
  Anne Case & Angus Deaton
• Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time
  Ben Ehrenreich
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
  Deepa Anappara
• A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane
  Samanth Subramanian
• The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
  Wayétu Moore
• The Duke Who Didn't
  Courtney Milan
• Earthlings
  Sayaka Murata
• Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
  Barbara Demick
• The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking)
  Katie Mack
• Everywhere You Don't Belong
  Gabriel Bump
• Exercise of Power: American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World
  Robert M. Gates
• Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World
  Lesley M.M. Blume
• Feed
  Tommy Pico
• Felon
  Reginald Dwayne Betts
• The Glass Kingdom
  Lawrence Osborne
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution
  David Paul Kuhn
• Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
  Robert Kolker
• His Only Wife
  Peace Adzo Medie
• Homeland Elegies
  Ayad Akhtar
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold
  C Pam Zhang
• Hurricane Season
  Fernanda Melchor
• The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World
  Barry Gewen
• Jack
  Marilynne Robinson
• Just Us: An American Conversation
  Claudia Rankine
• Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
  Cho Nam-Joo
• The King at the Edge of the World
  Arthur Phillips
• Little Eyes
  Samanta Schweblin
• The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist
  Adrian Tomine
• Luster
  Raven Leilani
• The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III
  Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
• Man of My Time
  Dalia Sofer
• Memorial
  Bryan Washington
• Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir
  Natasha Trethewey
• The Memory Monster
  Yishai Sarid
• The Mercies
  Kirin Millwood Hargrave
• Minor Detail
  Adania Shibli
• The Mirror & the Light
  Hilary Mantel
• Missionaries
  Phil Klay
• Monogamy
  Sue Miller
• 97,196 Words
  Emmanuel Carrère
• Notes on a Silencing
  Lacy Crawford
• Obit
  Victoria Chang
• Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America
  Candacy Taylor
• Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl
  Jonathan C. Slaght
• A Peculiar Indifference: The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America
  Elliott Currie
• A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith
  Timothy Egan
• A Promised Land
  Barack Obama
• The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War--a Tragedy in Three Acts
  Scott Anderson
• Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980
  Rick Perlstein
• Real Life
  Brandon Taylor
• Red Pill
  Hari Kunzru
• The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War
  Michael Edward Gorra
• Saint X
  Alexis Schaitkin
• Sea Wife
  Amity Gaige
• The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
  John F. Callahan and Marc C. Conner (editors)
• Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
  James Shapiro
• Sharks in the Time of Saviors
  Kawai Strong Washburn
• Shuggie Bain
  Douglas Stuart
• The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World
  Sarah Stewart Johnson
• Sisters
  Daisy Johnson
• Soul Full of Coal Dust: A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia
  Chris Hamby
• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
  Erik Larson
• The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia
  Emma Copley Eisenberg
• This Is All I Got: A New Mother's Search for Home
  Lauren Sandler
• Tokyo Ueno Station
  Yu Miri
• The Tunnel
  A.B. Yehoshua
• Uncanny Valley
  Anna Wiener
• The Undocumented Americans
  Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
• Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
  Brian Greene
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice
  David Hill
• The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
  Joseph Henrich
• Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
  Alex Ross
• War: How Conflict Shaped Us
  Margaret MacMillan
• Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions
  Jeffrey Selingo
• Why I Don't Write
  Susan Minot
• A Woman Like Her: The Story Behind the Honor Killing of a Social Media Star
  Sanam Maher
• Writers & Lovers
  Lily King
• Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country
  Sierra Crane Murdoch

Nick Levine: Best Albums of 2020 as published by BBC Culture

• Fiona Apple — Fetch the Bolt Cutters
• Chloe x Halle — Ungodly Hour
• Bob Dylan — Rough and Rowdy Ways
• Dua Lipa — Future Nostalgia
• Róisín Murphy — Róisín Machine
• Run the Jewels — RTJ4
• Rina Sawayama — Sawayama
• Nadine Shah — Kitchen Sink
• Taylor Swift — Folklore

Time Magazine: The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020

[see also The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020, The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020, The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s, The 10 Best Fiction Books of the 2010s, The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2019, The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019, Best Books of 2018, Top 20 Books of 2017]

1. The Vanishing Half
   Brit Bennett
2. Shuggie Bain
   Douglas Stuart
3. The Mirror & the Light
   Hilary Mantel
4. A Children's Bible
   Lydia Millet
5. Homeland Elegies
   Ayad Akhtar
6. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
   Laura van den Berg
7. A Burning
   Megha Majumdar
8. Deacon King Kong
   James McBride
9. Where the Wild Ladies Are
   Aoko Matsuda
10. Breasts and Eggs
    Mieko Kawakami