AFT Awards: Best Opening

This is the twenty-first category of the 9th 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:
Beasts of No Nation started off on a wildly playful and optimistic note, with its protagonist eagerly talking about how he and his friends made the most of their lives before unspeakable events changed everything.

Other nominees:
99 Homes wasted no time in piling on the moral intensity with one of its two leads showing up to the scene of a suicide and treating it like a business meeting. Grandma revealed its title character’s true nature at the very start with her particular harsh brand of relationship-ending criticism. People, Places, Things sent its main character reeling with a hilariously awkward reveal that his life was about to change whether he wanted it to or not. Anomalisa began with an unexpectedly intimate innocent interaction aboard a plane that was certainly monotonous but not nearly as much as would later become clear.