The Year of the Monkey is drawing to a close. Despite the events in the real world, this year at least brought us some soulful films. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to prepare us for the impending yuckiness of future reality. Still, my picks for the best films of the year intriguingly combined sweetness and sentiment with a vicious streak — subtle in some cases, neon-lit in others. All are hauntingly memorable.

10 Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait: Director Ossama Mohammed was exiled in Paris when he teamed up with a young Kurdish woman named Wiam Bedirxan, who was in Homs in western Syria. Bedirxan sent Mohammed video footage of ISIS' atrocities, film that she took herself on the streets, and he turned it into a documentary, also using footage found on social networking services. The result leaves you speechless; it's hard to swallow, much less to understand how this war could still be happening.

9 Tsukiji Wonderland: Long before Tsukiji fish market was slated to move and the fiasco that ensued, director Naotaro Endo was permitted to take his camera into the deepest recesses of the inner market and film the community for an entire year. He had intended the movie to be a loving farewell to Tsukiji, but now it looks like the market will be around for a good while yet, which makes this documentary all the more enjoyable.