The following is an overview of events in 2006, including the highest-grossing films, award ceremonies and festivals, a list of films released and notable deaths.
Evaluation of the year
Legendary film criticPhilip French of The Guardian described 2006 as "an outstanding year for British cinema". He went on to emphasize, "Six of our well-established directors have made highly individual films of real distinction: Michael Winterbottom's A Cock and Bull Story, Ken Loach's Palme d'Or winner The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, Stephen Frears's The Queen, Paul Greengrass's United 93 and Nicholas Hytner's The History Boys. Two young directors made confident debuts, both offering a jaundiced view of contemporary Britain: Andrea Arnold's Red Road and Paul Andrew Williams's London to Brighton. In addition the gifted Mexican Alfonso Cuaron came here to make the dystopian thriller Children of Men." He also stated, "In the States, M Night Shyamalan of The Sixth Sense fame fell flat on his over-confident face with Lady in the Water, but Martin Scorsese's The Departed was his best for years, and he was with Jack Nicholson at last. Apart from that, the best American films were political or very personal. Sadly, Oliver Stone's 9/11 picture World Trade Center was neither. Asian cinema produced a string of elegant thrillers and horror flicks. The best Eastern European movie was The Death of Mr Lazarescu, a devastating look at the Romania Ceausescu left behind him. Most of the best Western European films came from France, with Michael Haneke's Hidden, proving the most widely discussed art-house puzzle picture since Last Year at Marienbad. The award of 18 certificates by the BBFC to Shortbus and Destricted has brought close the abolition of censorship, but not of classification, and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain was a real step forward for the representation of homosexuals in mainstream cinema, though Gore Vidal claims that there's a gay subtext to every western. However, the year's most extraordinary event, or conjunction, was the almost simultaneous release of Tommy Lee Jones's directorial debut The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Who would have predicted in the Sixties, when they were roommates at Harvard and used by Erich Segal as joint models for Oliver Barrett IV in Love Story, that both Jones and Gore would end up as movie stars - if, in Gore's case, accidentally and temporarily?"
Highest-grossing films
The top 10 films released in 2006 by worldwide gross are as follows:
