Part 2

ENTRIES IN PART 2:

Raphaël Bassan

French film critic for Bref, le magazine du court métrage and Europe, revue littéraire, and co-founder in 1971 of the Collectif Jeune Cinéma (the first French experimental filmmakers’ distribution cooperative)

My list reflects the films that I enjoyed the most, that moved me the most, and that I remember. To give context and relevance to my selection, I limited myself to films that had a full theatrical release, in France in 2025. I made two exceptions with Star Spangled to Death by Ken Jacobs (1933-2025), a film of 420 minutes made between 1957 and 2004, and Nuit obscure by Sylvain George (2022-2024, 603 minutes). Exceptionals on many levels.

In no particular order.

La Petite Dernière (The Little Sister, Hafsia Herzi)

Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater)

O Riso e a Faca (I Only Rest in the Storm, Pedro Pinho) 

Sirāt (Oliver Laxe)

One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Once Upon a Time in Gaza (Tarzan and Arab Nasser)

Bonjour la langue (Paul Vecchiali)

Zwei Staatsanwälte (Two Prosecutors, Sergei Loznitsa) 

Palestine 36 (Annemarie Jacir) 

Das Verschwinden des Josef Mengele (The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, Kirill Serebrennikov) 

Bonus 1

Sylvain George, a specialist in the work of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, has made a series of films on Europe’s undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. His monumental trilogy Nuit obscure (1. Feuillets sauvages. 2. Au revoir ici n’importe. 3. Ain’t I a Child?) was released in November 2025 in French cinemas. The filmmaker and his followers (migrants) move from Melilla (an autonomous city located on the north coast of Africa in the Rif) to Paris (in Ain’t I a Child?). The filmmaker films, as often in the past, in a thick contrasting black-and-white, which he slows down and dilates. The material of the city, of its archival (images) – humans who, sometimes, as in Švankmajer’s work, extract themselves from the gangue – forms a unique material, a clay that the craftsman-filmmaker grinds and kneads in search of a new and adequate language, capable of thwarting the negative representations of these populations. 

Bonus 2

Star Spangled to Death will be shown in January 2026 (I’m cheating a bit but the death of Ken Jacobs in 2025 can justify this!) by the Centre Pompidou at the MK2 Bibliothèque Cinema, a great event in a main popular theatre! This monstruous film of more than seven hours, as it can be seen today, is mainly constructed from long excerpts from films, educational or propaganda programs, animated films, speeches by personalities (Richard Nixon’s long ‘Checkers Speech’ in 1952), found footage, but slowly edited (there are excerpts from programs or even entire programs of more than thirty minutes). “It’s a social charge to portray a stolen and dangerously sold off America,” said Jacobs, “which allows the jewels of popular culture to accuse themselves.” This film, heterogeneous in its construction, has been retouched for more than forty years and includes three main axes divided between found-footage films, relaxed acting by the actor-improvisers and more contemporary images of anti-Bush demonstrations against the preventive war against Iraq in 2003.

Ivana Brehas

Writer and performer based in Australia.

My favourite discovery of the year was Maya S. Cade’s Black Film Archive, from which I would like to highlight ten films (not ranked):

1. A Day in the Life of Willie Faust, or Death on the Installment Plan (Jamaa Fanaka, 1972) 
2. Top of the Heap (Christopher St. John, 1972)
3. Bone (Larry Cohen, 1972)
4. Cosmic Slop (Reginald Hudlin, Warrington Hudlin and Kevin Rodney Sullivan, 1994) 
5. Four Women (Julie Dash, 1975)
6. Uptight (Jules Dassin, 1968) 
7. Black at Yale: A Film Diary (Warrington Hudlin, 1974) 
8. Sisters in the Struggle (Ginny Strikeman, Dionne Brand, 1991)
9. Statues Hardly Ever Smile (Stan Lathan, 1971)
10. Rockers (Ted Bafaloukos, 1978)

Jutta Brendemuhl

Curator and writer.

2025 brought wild weather. Scouting and programming from Toronto to Berlin, Leipzig to London, the works spoke in rumbles of intergenerational trauma, roars of bodies stretching out of their skins, silences that announce disaster. Often slowed down, sometimes black-and-white, full of clouds, trees, fissures, gale-force winds. 

1. Sotto le nuvole (Below the Clouds, Gianfranco Rosi, 2025)
   A black-and-white observational wander around a region, a people, their history. I tried explaining to friends what it “is about” and failed, in all the good ways. Now I want to go to Naples and see how Rosi sees.
2. In die Sonne schauen (Sound of Falling, Mascha Schilinski, 2025)
   Narratively enigmatic, emotionally resonant, cinematographically vast. Schilinski circles 100 years of female lifetimes on one porous temporal plain, eliciting empathy for difficult, damaged, defiant characters tossed into the forcefield of the 20th century. Deservedly on the Oscar shortlist.
3. Yunan (Ameer Fakher Eldin, 2025)
   Snuck up on me months after viewing, through the staying power of things left unspoken. The exiled protagonist stands still on a remote North Sea island during a (real) storm for what feels like ages. The German word bildgewaltig comes to mind – literally an image force.
4. Bis ans Ende der Welt (Until the End of the World, Wim Wenders, 1991/2024, restoration)
   Wenders’ prescient epic about technology, desire, and planetary collapse, returned to its 4.5-hour glory. Some visions require decades to come into focus.
5. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)
   The 2026 anthem. Wild, hilarious, naughty, insane, mothering, smothering, political – dark satire unfortunately not a day older than Pynchon’s 1990 Vineland inspiration. Teyana Taylor for Bad-ass Oscar.
6. Climate in Therapy (Nathan Grossman, 2025)
   Scientists too smart for their own good meet an old-school NYC psychiatrist for climate anxiety therapy. This Hot Docs winner holds logic and emotion, showing us what makes life worth living right here right now.
7. Stille Freundin (Silent Friend, Ildikó Enyedi, 2025)
   Oddly ominous yet ultimately soothing in its gentle human-tree relations. A 35mm + 16mm + digital marvel spanning 100 years of loneliness, desire, and inquisitiveness. It passes the enigma test, retaining mystery to entice repeated visits.
8. Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey, 1999)
   Hallucinatory opening piece at London’s moving image exhibition Paradigm Shift, installed so you had to nearly walk (or dance) through the screen. UK rave footage as swaying homage to revelry and tribe – just what the battered 2025 soul needed.
9. Pink Schlemmer (Oliver Husain, 2025)
   A reimagining and queering of Bauhaus master Oskar Schlemmer’s dances from damaged 16mm film. Full disclosure: I commissioned this work, a spin-off across continents, cultures, and generations. Berlinale 2026 festival premiere coming.
10. Tod eines Weltstars. Portrait Udo Kier (Death of a World Star. Portrait Udo Kier, Christoph Schlingensief, 1992)
    The last hours of Udo Kier unfolded into swirling phantasmagoria by Kier with German splatter director Schlingensief in the ’90s. I imagine both enfants terrible making a sequel in heaven (or hell?) right now. RIP.

Samantha Broadhead

Head of Research at Leeds Arts University, UK.

Good Boy (Ben Leonberg, 2025)

Indy is a loyal and loving dog who dotes on his human and the story is told from his point of view. His observations, expressions and reactions as he is tested by unknown threats and ghostly shadows captivate the audience. The horror genre trope that the family pet is the first to die is turned on its head in Good Boy. The last sequences, in the spirit of previous slasher films, evoke the pride and euphoria of the final man/girl/dog.

The Trail (Stefan Muller, 2024)

Very much like Good Boy this is a quiet film that depends on the actor’s expression and reaction to events. The character (Amelia) cannot speak due to a traumatic event in her past and wants to heal by walking in nature. As she walks alone on the trail – adventures begin to unravel. Quiet solitude slowly evolves into a fight for survival, and Amelia is confronted by the inconceivable that transforms her understanding of the universe. 

Prescence (Steven Soderbergh, 2024)

This story is told from the point of view of a ghost who, again, cannot easily communicate and is trapped within a family home. The mystery is slowly revealed and secrets are exposed leading towards a poignant twist at the end.

Weapons (Zach Cregger, 2025)

Many people relate to the game we used to play as children, when we imagined ourselves as superheroes, running about with our coats spread out like wings. This visual motif contributes to the plot as it unwinds like a meandering stream towards a fabulously brutal denouement. 

Push (David Charbonier, 2025)

Pregnant realter (Alicia Sanz) tries to escape from a deranged viewer (Raúl Castillo) and the house she is trying to sell.  The film is beautifully crafted visually and with a nail-biting sense of jeopardy.

Together (Michael Shanks, 2025)

A body horror about being in a loving relationship – what could be better?

Row (Matthew Losasso, 2025)

The tensions, hostilities, gender politics and power struggles between a group of people rowing to survive in a tumultuous sea are remembered through flashbacks. The small boat is claustrophobic but so is the room where the survivor recovers and continues to be trapped.

Bring Her Back (Michael Philippou and Danny Philippou, 2025)

A twisted maternal love threatens two newly orphaned siblings. 

Night of The Reaper (Brandon Christensen, 2025)

Nothing is what it seems. Night of the Reaper begins as a conventional babysitter horror but quickly develops into a complex puzzle that is full of unexpected twists and turns.

The Conjuring: Last Rites (Michael Chaves, 2025)

There were many watchable horror sequels from well-loved franchises in 2025, however the ninth instalment of The Conjuring series was particularly well-received. The on-going relationship between Ed and Lorraine Warren as they protect families from evil, along with the creepy room of artefacts and the fabulous vintage fashion continues to be a glorious and comforting mix.

Duncan Caillard

Lecturer in Global Creative Industries at the University of Melbourne, and the Vice President of Senses of Cinema.

Ru ni suo yuan (Correct Me If I’m Wrong, Hao Zhou, 2025)

In this devastating documentary short, director Hao Zhou records their experience returning home to a small city in Southwest China, where their family tries to exorcise the ghost of their aborted unborn sister whose possession is supposedly responsible for their homosexuality. Filmed mostly in detached static close-ups, Zhou’s film captures the emotional brutality of conversion therapy and the quiet resilience of queer people balancing their lived identities with the quiet violence of family.

Kōkā (Kath Akuhata-Brown, 2025)

Part surreal dreamscape, part intergenerational road trip, Kath Akuhata-Brown’s debut feature Kōkā is an extraordinary example of Mātauranga Māori filmmaking grounded in Indigenous knowledge and sensitivity to the world. The film is littered with near-invisible treasures and autobiographical details from the filmmaker, and is an intensely personal reckoning with institutional violence, grief, restoration, and the return to whenua (land), all grounded in outstanding performances Hinetu Dell and Darneen Christian.

Koka

Zuopiezi nuhai (Left Handed Girl, Shih-Ching Tsou, 2025)

Shih-Ching Tsou’s solo debut is a confident reworking of the themes she and collaborator Sean Baker have been grappling with since Take Out (2004). Nina Ye’s performance as a child living in the scrum of a Taipei night market rivals Brooklynn Prince’s star-making turn in The Florida Project (2017).

Pow! (Joey Clift, 2025)

“It doesn’t matter how you bring yourself to your culture. All that matters is that you’re here and we’re celebrating together.” Making children’s animation is extremely hard work, and balancing nuance with accessibility is damn near impossible. Joey Clift’s animated short Pow! tells the simple story of a young Native American boy disconnected from his culture who visits a powwow with his family but spends most of his time trying to recharge his Nintendo Switch. I loved this film, and hope families everywhere get to see it. 

Rental Family (Hikari, 2025)

Any other director would have bungled the sentimental premise of an American actor (Brendan Fraser) eking out a living as a pretend family member in Japan, but Hikari sticks the landing. Hikari’s pleasant and compassionate portrait of urban loneliness is a worthy follow-up to the excellent and underrated 37 Seconds (2019).

Phi Chaidai Kha (A Useful Ghost, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, 2025)

If you downloaded my brain into an LLM and told it to write a film specifically for me, it would print out the script for A Useful Ghost. When the vacuum cleaner of a self-described “academic ladyboy” starts mysteriously coughing at night, he invites a charismatic repair man into his home and soon discovers that his vacuum – like many appliances from the same factory – is haunted by the ghost of a deceased factory worker. Nestled behind the film’s highly unusual premise – complete with vacuum cleaner love scenes and anal sex with a semi-translucent ghost – is a deeply political reflection of Thailand’s troubled history of authoritarianism and political disappearance.

Thomas Caldwell

Writer, broadcaster, film critic and film programmer based in Melbourne, Australia.

My ten favourite films with a full theatrical or streaming release in Australia in 2025:

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)
   One of the accidentally defining films of 2025. It nails the depiction of contemporary white supremacists as both repugnant monsters doing incredible harm and as absurd clowns worthy of derision.
2. Straume (Flow, Gints Zilbalodis, 2024)
   The visual storytelling is so graceful and elegant. Seeing this was good for my soul.
3. Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier, 2025)
   Such an engaging, entertaining and satisfying film that it’s almost overwhelming to consider all its moving pieces working together so seamlessly.
4. A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, 2024)
   The many scenes involving the creation, rehearsing and performance of songs are all captivating; there are several shivers down the spine moments.
5. Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here, Walter Salles, 2024)
   When tragedy comes it is gradual and disorientating, not melodramatic. A heartbreaking portrayal of state sanctioned violence.
6. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, 2025)
   A psychedelic and profane bad trip about life, death, and humanity.
7. The Order (Justin Kurzel, 2024)
   Tense and exhilarating, although it’s impossible to shake the dread that the villains are ultimately going to be triumphant in the long run.
8. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)
   One hell of a blend of hangout film, politically loaded horror, and a celebration of a distinctive genre of music and the culture it came from.
9. Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024)
   Unsentimentally conveys the humanity of an impoverished community, but with absurdity and fantasy, reminiscent of Fellini.
10. Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants, 2024)
    Proof again that Claire Keegan’s writing is not just brilliant in its own right, but a beautiful inspiration for filmmakers wanting to make delicate yet devastating films.

María Elena de las Carreras

Fulbright scholar and film critic from Argentina. Has a Ph.D. in film studies, and lectures on film history and aesthetics at Cal State Northridge and UCLA.

I have been reviewing documentary submissions for the Social Impact Media Awards for a few years. It is an annual competition run by the non-profit organization SIMA Studios, that also curates documentaries and media projects, through its online platform.

Here are four remarkable observational documentaries, released in 2025, richly deserving promotion and a worldwide audience.  

Cutting through Rocks (Mohammadreza Eyni and Sara Khaki, 2025)

Filmed over eight years, it follows Sarah Shahverdi, a quietly defiant woman in rural Iran, running for office in her village. In their first documentary feature, Iran-born U.S.-based married directors Eyni and Khaki capture the patriarchal structures of an Islamic society: early marriage, barebones education, no property rights for women. The metaphorical title is made explicit in the courthouse sequence where the sharia law is pitted against the will and desires of young women wanting a different life. An ethnic twist on the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi, Farhad Farhadi and Marjane Satrapi. Best international documentary at Sundance 2025.

Mistress Dispeller (Elizabeth Lo, 2025)

Director/cinematographer Elizabeth Lo follows the interaction of four people over three years. At the centre is a “mistress dispeller,” a professional hired by the wife to break up the relationship with her husband younger’s lover. In her second documentary feature, Lo mixes long takes and probing close-ups to examine marriage and culture in contemporary middle-class China, where traditional customs and Western influences clash. A preface notes that it was made with the consent of the four protagonists, before and after the filming, making the production of this vérité film even more thought-provoking than the documentary itself. 

Seeds (Brittany Shyne, 2025)

In her debut documentary feature, Shyne magnificently captures place, people, past and prayer, ingredients that create a culture. Recording the toils and joys of African American farmers in Georgia and Mississippi, this ethnographic documentary, filmed in a vérité style with a small crew over nine years, is both the portrait of a resilient community as well as the record of a way of life that is passing. The film eschews a romanticized or ideological view of farming life in the South; its harshness and beauty are on the screen, without a narrator’s commentary. Best U.S. documentary in Sundance 2025.

Yurlu / Country (Yaara Bou Melhem, 2025)

This Australian documentary evolved from being initially an investigative journalism piece about the effects of deadly contamination into the courageous fight of an ethnic group to preserve their legacy and ancestral land. Maitland Parker is the charismatic aboriginal elder on a mission to bring awareness to asbestos tailings in his homeland, the beautiful Wittenoom Gorge in Western Australia – the Yurlu of the title. Typical of ethnographic documentaries, oral storytelling and ceremonial activities are combined with a fly-in-the-wall approach to document what will be the last months of elder Parker, who died of an asbestos-related disease before the filming was over. Archival footage provides not only a historical background about past and present mine-development by Australian companies but also a revealing time-capsule of fraught race relations.  Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is a clear influence in capturing a landscape that is both beautiful and doomed.

Michael J. Casey

Critic for Boulder Reporting Lab, Boulder Weekly, KGNU’s “After Image” and MichaelJCinema.com.

The world didn’t make a lick of sense in 2025, and neither did the cinema. Many great filmmakers produced subpar offerings, franchises ran out of steam, and too many heavily praised flicks elicited nothing more exciting than a shoulder shrug. Still, these ten stood tall in a world besieged by mediocrity.

• Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh, 2025)
• Eephus (Carson Lund, 2024)
• Yek tasādof-e sāde (It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, 2025)
• Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, 2025)
• Natchez (Suzannah Herbert, 2025)
• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, 2024)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)
• Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)
• Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, 2025)
• Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton, 2025)

Damien Cassar

Filmmaker, Academic, PhD Candidate (University of New England) and Cinephile based in Sydney (Gadigal).

Top 5 Released Films Seen in 2025

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)
2. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)
3. Yek tasādof-e sāde (It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, 2025)
4. Eddington (Ari Aster, 2025)
5. Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier, 2025)

Terror, disorientation, fragmentation, fantasy/reality, estrangement.

Sentimental Value

Top 5 Never Seen Before Films of the Year

1. Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)
2. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021)
3. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)
4. Red Rocket (Sean Baker, 2021)
5. Agassi (The Handmaiden, Park Chan-wook, 2016)

Life is a cabaret, old chum.

Kevin Cassidy

Melbourne.

Top Ten New Films of 2025

1) Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Embeth Davidtz, 2024)

2) Mamlaket al-qasab (The President’s Cake, Hasan Hadi, 2025)

3) Zuopiezi nuhai (Left Handed Girl, Shih-Ching Tsou, 2025)

4) Jeunes mères (Young Mothers, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2025)

5) Miwarashi sedai (Brand New Landscape, Danzuka Yugia, 2025)

6) Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (The Brothers Quay, 2025)

7) Nr. 24 (Number 24, John Andreas Andersen, 2024)

8) Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

9) Look Back (Kiyotaka Oshiyama, 2024)

10) Die Ironie des Lebens (The Irony of Life, Markus Goller, 2024)

Two of the top three were directed by women; first one, the directorial debut of actress Embeth Davidtz.

A fantastic year for retro/classic cinema in Melbourne.

Thanks to Cinema Reborn – which for full disclosure I am a volunteer – especially Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946), Henry King’s Stella Dallas (1925), and David Noakes’ How The West Was Lost (1987); the Melbourne Cinémathèque, especially its John Stahl and Suzuki Seijun spotlights; the Japanese film festival program of classics especially Ozu Yasujirō’s Hitori Musuko (The Only Son, 1936).

Best year in the last decade for cinema.

Guilherme Cavalcanti

Cinephile, film critic (Culture Injection). Brazil.

Watoriki – Conversa com Davi Kopenawa (Watoriki – Conversation with Davi Kopenawa, Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, 2025)

A companion film to A Queda do Céu (Rocha and Carneiro da Cunha, 2024). Who better than shamans to offer suggestions and analysis of the world we live in? A very important and unexplored vein of recent Brazilian films are indigenous documentaries, such as: A Última Floresta (Luiz Bolognesi and Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, 2021) and A Invenção do Outro (Bruno Jorge, 2022).

Kopenawa

Eojjeolsuga eobsda (No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook, 2025)

If contemporary cinema knows how to be postmodern but not modern, No Other Choice is both. The editing stands out, creating meaning, plasticity, and shocks that are worth another film. 

Fengliu yidai (Caught by the Tides, Jia Zhangke, 2024)

It shows, even if implicitly, the changes that have taken place in China over the past 25 years. For this reason, almost unwittingly, it is one of the great political fiction films of recent times.

No Other Land (Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, 2024)

It contains a sense of the ever-imminent threat from the state, conveying a suffocating existential weight. This creates a purpose for the act of filming as the only possible solution even though the hopes that were held were always vague. It remains as relevant today as it was last year.

Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine, 2024)

Two formal aspects are noteworthy. (1) a chat that remains throughout the film, which means constant and uninterrupted information, as if the reaction to content is an aspect mixed with the content (or its purpose – even if that reaction is also insignificant and disposable). (2) The constant mutation of AI-generated images, which make the film’s representation always ambiguous, malleable, and undefined. A film that shows in practice much of our communicational chaos. This issue was addressed in a recent text: The Death of the Image Has Made Us Wake up to Reality, by Ruby Justice Thelot.

We Are Fugazi from Washington, D.C. (Joe Gross, Joseph Pattisall and Jeff Krulik, 2023)

In a world where some corporations have a huge negative impact on music, it is refreshing to remember that this band encouraged fans to record their concerts because they would never charge for image rights. The result, decades later, is this documentary made with various images captured over several years, with some of the fans finding meaning in life solely in the act of filming them.

Discoveries:

Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone (Adam Curtis, 2022), TV miniseries

How a capitalist experiment created a different kind of chaos for a society that was already experiencing the dysfunctional absurdity of its communism.

Piripkura (Mariana Oliva, Renata Terra and Bruno Jorge, 2017)

The absolute Other.

 2 short films:

Apuntes sobre la tortura y otras formas de diálogo (Patricio Guzmán, 1968)

If toxic air is a monument to slavery, how do we take it down? (Forensic Architecture, 2021)

Alex Cearns OAM

Australian-based film critic and founder of The Popcorn Panel.

10 favourite new release films viewed in 2025 listed in alphabetical order:  

• Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025)
• Conclave (Edward Berger, 2024)
• Dangerous Animals (Sean Byrne, 2025)
• Good Boy (Ben Leonberg, 2025)
• Kangaroo Island (Timothy David, 2024)
• Predator Badlands (Dan Trachtenberg, 2025)
• The Life of Chuck (Mike Flanagan, 2024)
• The Long Walk (Francis Lawrence, 2025)
• Trifole (Truffles, Gabriele Fabbro, 2024)
• Warfare (Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, 2025)

Good Boy

Fernando Chaves Espinach

Film programmer/writer, co-director of Pólvora Fiesta de Cine e Ideas. Costa Rica.

By this point, I think it’s clear that the current problem of cinema is not its vitality, but the quality of its distribution. Good, forward-looking, and interesting films, in one way or another, are emerging everywhere. Countries without a long cinematic history are entering through the front door, as is happening in Central America, from where I write: there are more and more local filmmakers, but theatres and sustained critical appreciation remain elusive, both within and outside the region. Restoration revives gems and rewrites histories: in Costa Rica, this year it was possible to see again, in proper quality, Wáca, la tierra de los bribríes (Wáca, the Land of the Bribri, Édgar Trigueros, 1979), which reconsiders certain readings of “the indigenous” in our cinema. Thus, making lists always poses the challenge of context: for whom are we making them, who will actually get to see these works, who will be able to value them at a time conducive to dialogue with these proposals. In any case, here is a list for 2025, in no specific order. It will probably look different tomorrow: 

• O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025)
• La tour de glace (The Ice Tower, Lucile Hadžihalilović, 2025)
• O Último Azul (The Blue Trail, Gabriel Mascaro, 2025)
• Querido trópico (Beloved Tropic, Ana Endara, 2024)
• Anoche conquisté Tebas (Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes, Gabriel Azorín, 2025)
• Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier, 2025)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, 2025)
• Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)
• Yek tasādof-e sāde (It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, 2025)
• Llueve sobre Babel (Rains over Babel, Gala del Sol, 2025)

Daryl Chin

Artist and writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

2025 proved to be an impressive year in cinema, though the commercial prospects proved difficult. Nevertheless, it proved to be a bountiful year of exceptional cinema, and many alternate lists could have been given. But here are my Top Ten that were released in the United States in 2025.

1) Fengliu yidai (Caught By The Tides, Jia Zhangke, 2024)

2) Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot (Meeting With Pol Poy, Rithy Panh, 2024)

3) One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

4) Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, 2025)

5) Fogo do Vento (Fire of Wind) (Marta Mateus, 2024)

6) The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, 2025)

7) Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

8) Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs, 2025)

9) Kuangye shidai (Resurrection, Bi Gan, 2025)

10) Blue Moon/Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, 2025)

Pelin Çılgın

Film critic, curator, and PhD student at Stanford University. USA/Turkey.

In no particular order, favourite first-time watches of the year:

• Umamusume Pretty Derby: Shinjidai no tobira (Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Beginning of a New Era, Ken Yamamoto, 2024) 
• Weapons (Zach Cregger, 2025)
• The Wilhelm Scream (Anna Quinlan, 2025)
• Just Around the Corner (Frances Marion, 1921)
• Hüznün Derisi (Skin of Sadness, Hasan Ege Çalışkan, 2025)
• Onsen shāku (Hotspring Shark Attack, Morito Inoue, 2024)
• I Fell in Love with a Z-Grade Director in Brooklyn (Kenichi Ugana, 2025)

Z Grade

Henri de Corinth

Film writer, author of Andrzej Żuławski: Abject Cinema (Amsterdam University Press, 2024)d

1. La tour de glace (The Ice Tower, Lucile Hadžihalilović, 2025)
2. Bloom (Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado, 2023) 
3. Sirāt (Óliver Laxe, 2025)
4. 4, Den stygge stesøsteren (The Ugly Stepsister, Emilie Blichfeldt, 2025)
5. Invention (Callie Hernandez and Courtney Stephens, 2024)
6. Archipelago of Earthen Bones – To Bunya (Malena Szlam, 2024)
7. Eraserhead v pletena torba za pazar (Eraserhead in a Knitted Shopping Bag, Lili Koss, 2025)
8. Like A Heavenly Edge (Mikio Yamazaki, 2024)
9. Diamant brut (Wild Diamond, Agathe Reidinger, 2024)
10. 10. Terre rouge terre noire (Red Earth Black Earth, Agnès Perrais, 2024)

Joseph Crown

Cinephile based in Dallas, Texas.c

Favorite New Releases of 2025

1. Suyucheon (By the Stream, Hong Sang-soo, 2024)
2. O Riso e a Faca (I Only Rest in the Storm, Pedro Pinho, 2025)
3. Sirāt (Óliver Laxe, 2025)
4. Tardes de soledad (Afternoons of Solitude, Albert Serra, 2024)
5. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, 2025)

Favorite First Watches of 2025

1. Francisca (Manoel de Oliveira, 1981)
2. La mujer sin cabeza (The Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
3. Tiexi Qu: West of the Tracks (Wang Bing, 2002)
4. The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
5. Monsieur Verdoux (Charlie Chaplin, 1947)

Dustin Dasig

Writer/Editor/Communication, Media Studies and Film Professor. Philippines.

Out of 238 movies that I have seen last year, these 10 lingered in my aesthetic and cineaste life as I realized how impactful and urgent cinema, filmmaking, and film viewing is, most especially as a digression from the cataclysmic real-world events that, as the days go by, hit too close to home. Whatever thematic and narrative parallels movies have with the “outside world” isn’t incidental or surprising at all: film is a collaborative medium and a product of creative minds borne out of shared love for aesthetics and artistic expression. Long live cinema and the theatrical moviegoing experience! 

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) 
2. Yek tasādof-e sāde (It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, 2025) 
3. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, 2025) 
4. Straume (Flow, Gints Zilbalodis, 2024) 
5. Sirāt (Óliver Laxe, 2025) 
6. Amélie et la métaphysique des tubes (Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han, 2025) 
7. Misericordia (Alain Guirardie, 2024) 
8. L’histoire de Souleymane (Souleymane’s Story, Boris Lojkine, 2024) 
9. Mamlaket al-qasab (The President’s Cake, Hasan Hadi, 2025)
10. No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and  Rachel Szor, 2024)