The films on this list are selected from the pool of new films that were shown in a public theatre at least once in the Toronto area between January 1st and December 31st, 2013. This includes all films screened during festivals such as TIFF and Hot Docs, short films and films that may have been released in other countries in 2012. No re-releases or re-issues were eligible. This list also excludes festival films that were included among my selections last year, but only made their way to public theatres this year. Finally, you can have a look at my Oscar-eligible ballot of the year’s best here. Without further ado…

1. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
2. Redemption (Miguel Gomes)
3. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zurcher)
4. Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonca Filho)
5. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
6. When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (Corneliu Porumboiu)
7. Wadjda (Haifa Al Mansour)
8. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
9. Closed Curtain (Jafar Panahi, Kambozia Partovi)
10. Night Moves (Kelly Reichardt)
11. No (Pablo Larrain)
12. At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman)
13. The Broken Circle Breakdown (Felix van Groeningen)
14. The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh)
15. Blood Brother (Steve Hoover)
16. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
17. Miss Violence (Alexandros Avranas)
18. Blue Is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche)
19. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
20. Ernest and Celestine (Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner)
21. The Grandmaster (Wong Kar Wai)
22. A Hijacking (Tobias Lindholm)
23. Inside Llewyn Davis (The Coen Brothers)
24. Manakamana (Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez)
25. The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann)

Honorable Mentions: Fill the Void (Rama Burshtein), Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron), Drug War (Johnnie To), The Unspeakable Act (Dan Sallitt), Her (Spike Jonze)