Barack Obama shares his top movies of 2023, including “The Holdovers ”and “Rustin”

The former president included three movies that he produced.

Barack Obama has revealed his top movies of 2023.

The politician-turned-producer shared 13 of his favorite movies of the year on social media. He began by shouting out three films from his production company, Higher Ground: civil rights biopic/Colman Domingo vehicle Rustin, apocalypse thriller Leave the World Behind starring Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali, and music documentary American Symphony starring Jon Batiste. “I’m biased since these movies were produced by Higher Ground, but these are in fact three of the best movies I saw this year,” he wrote.

Obama also listed 10 non-Higher Ground productions, including Alexander Payne’s boarding school dramedy The Holdovers, Matt Johnson’s corporate biopic BlackBerry, Christopher Nolan’s historical epic Oppenheimer, and Cord Jefferson’s satire American Fiction. International picks include Justine Triet’s French courtroom thriller Anatomy of a Fall and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Japanese slow-burn drama Monster. Rounding out the list are Celine Song’s romance Past Lives, Ben Affleck’s Nike dramedy Air, Nida Manzoor’s action-comedy Polite Society, and A.V. Rockwell’s family drama A Thousand and One.

“Earlier this year, writers and actors went on strike to advocate for better working conditions and protections. It led to important changes that will transform the industry for the better,” Obama wrote in his caption. “Here are some films that reflect their hard work over the last year.”

Notable omissions from Obama’s list include Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, Poor Things, andSpider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Obama has shared a list of his favorite movies every year since 2018, his first full year out of office. This marks his shortest list to date, as prior years have ranged from 14 to 18 entries. His lists typically consist of critically acclaimed titles from around the world, though Obama’s taste isn’t necessarily a predictor of awards success — he left future Best Picture Oscar winners Green Book and CODA off of his lists in their respective years.

Earlier this week, Obama shared his list of favorite books of the year, including titles like James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life, Benjamin Labatut’s The Maniac, Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, and Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America.

UPDATE 12/28/23: Obama followed up on Thursday to share that he has now seen The Color Purple and is adding it to his list of favorites for the year.

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