Best of first-half 2011

I am ridiculously late with this entry, which is strange, for this is possibly my favourite blog offering of the year: a mid-year stockage of my personal choices for the best films, performances an directorial and writing efforts without the suffocating immediacy of award ceremonies or the pressure of eligibility rules and dates. We are well past the mid-way point of 2011, so the long delay might well be due to an unconscious act of procrastination on account of a cinematic year that, at least in its first half, was low on genuinely impressive films.

As I turned to my notes, my more or less fresh memories and the entries of this blog to come up with the list below, I've surprised myself by picking Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi's Nader and Simin, A Separation (see clip after the list) as my favourite film of 2011 so far. I really liked the film when I first saw it some months ago (it's a masterly directed, compelling story brought to life by a flawless cast), but I would have never thought back then that, come this time, it would top my best of the year list. Remarkable as the film is, it didn't get under my skin the way Mike Leigh's Another Year, Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer or Jacques Audiard's A Prophet did, the films that topped my first-half-of-the-year (and went on to stay up there until the very end of the year) list in 2010.

Release dates usually wreck any attempt to be accurate when composing such lists. Technically, some of the films included in my list were produced in 2010 (Incendies was nominated for a foreign film Oscar and Balada Triste de Trompeta bagged two awards at last year's Venice Film Festival), while other films that made the cut in my list last year (like Chang-dong Lee's Poetry or Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy) got a 2011 release in the UK and North America. The official release date of the films in the lands I live in is the only decent criterion I've been able to come up with to pass a solomonic judgement.

Perfectly aware that this list will dramatically change in just 10 days, when I'll get back from the San Sebastian Film Festival, and hoping that you also abide by the principle that it's better late than never, here is my choice of the best films, performances, screenplays and directors of 2011 so far. Names and titles appear in alphabetical order; in bold, my choice of winners in each category.

BEST FILM

Balada Triste de Trompeta
Incendies
Jane Eyre
La Piel Que Habito
Le gamin au vélo
Midnight in Paris
Nader and Simin, A Separation
The Tree of Life
X-Men: First Class 

BEST DIRECTOR

Pedro Almodovar, La Piel Que Habito
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Le gamin au vélo
Asghar Farhadi, A Separation
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
Denis Villeneuve, Incendies 

BEST ACTOR

Thomas Doret, Le gamin au vélo
Michael Fassbender, Jane Eyre
Vincent Gallo, Essential Killing
Hunter McCracken, The Tree of Life
Peyman Moaadi, A Separation

BEST ACTRESS

Cécile De France, Le gamin au vélo
Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia
Leila Hatami, A Separation
Saoirse Ronan, Hanna
Mia Wasikowska, Jane Eyre

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Shahab Hosseini, A Separation
Otto Jespersen, Troll Hunter
Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life
Corey Stoll, Midnight in Paris
Kiefer Sutherland, Melancholia

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Sareh Bayat, A Separation
Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life
Elle Fanning, Super 8
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melancholia
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Alex de la Iglesia, Balada Triste de Trompeta
Asghar Farhadi, A Separation
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
André Ovredal/Havard S. Johansen, Troll Hunter

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Pedro Almodovar, La Piel Que Habito
Moira Buffini, Jane Eyre
Ashley Miller & others, X-Men: First Class
François Ozon, Potiche
Denis Villeneuve, Incendies