AFT Awards: Best Opening

This is the twenty-third category of the 8th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Click here to see previous years of this category. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them.

The winner:
A Most Violent Year started off on the perfect note to capture its tone: a suspenseful hijacking of a truck on a highway entering New York City that left its victim irreversibly devastated.

Other nominees:
Cold in July may not have been the same movie by its end as it was at its start, but the brutal, unsettling first scene was a fantastically chilling and frightening introduction to its dark subject matter. Lilting opened with a nonchalant, warm reunion of a mother and son that subtly and powerfully revealed the weight of an absence still not fully felt. Listen Up Philip let loose its comedy from its first moment by explaining just the kind of person its protagonist is. Annie asserted its purpose with its first scene, proudly and unapologetically owned its remake status and its rewriting of a classic musical.