Part 7 the editors January 2026 World Poll Issue 116 ENTRIES IN PART 7: Warut Pornchaiprasartkul Ayush Pramanik Milan Pribisic Daniel Ribas Peter H. Rist Stuart Romeo-Richards Eduardo A. Russo Christopher Sanda Jack Sargeant Maria San FilippoAngus Saunders James Slaymaker Rachel Small Valerie Soe Karina Solórzano Fanni Somlyai Mark Spratt Misa Stenman David Sterritt Warut Pornchaiprasartkul Movie Person Recent films (all on DCP) Mondongo: Retrato de Mondongo (Mondongo II: Portrait of Mondongo, Mariano Llinás, 2024) Doc Fortnight 2025: MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media, The Museum of Modern Art Jīdì zhī cè (The Periphery of the Base, Zhou Tao, 2024) First Look 2025, Museum of the Moving Image El jockey (Kill the Jockey, Luis Ortega, 2024) Film Forum Mogi gsangbi zhabskhra (I, The Song, Dechen Roder, 2024) NYAFF 2025, Film at Lincoln Center Chan hang rawang rao (Flat Girls, Jirassaya Wongsutin, 2025) NYAFF 2025, Film at Lincoln Center Der Spatz im Kamin (The Sparrow in the Chimney, Ramon Zürcher, 2024) Brooklyn Academy of Music Celluloid Experiences Side/Walk/Shuttle (Ernie Gehr, 1992) 16mm, Anthology Film Archives Birah Bhariyo Ghar Aangan Kone (Bamboo Flute, Kumar Shahani, 2000) 35mm, Prismatic Ground 2025, Anthology Film Archives Ya tebya pomnyu (I Remember You, Ali Khamraev, 1985) 35mm, Eastern Notions: Five Films by Ali Khamraev, Asia Society J’ai pas sommeil (I Can’t Sleep, Claire Denis, 1994) 35mm, Alt Divas: Argento / Dalle / Golubeva, Metrograph Best short O Pão (Bread, Manoel de Oliveira, 1959) 23 min, 35mm, Marta Mateus Selects, Anthology Film Archives Remarkable events/film programs To Save and Project: The 21st MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, The Museum of Modern Art, Jan 9–30 Wondering Women, Anthology Film Archives, Jan 24–Feb 9 Queer and Uncensored, The Museum of Modern Art, May 28–Jun 27 Where Do We Go Now?: Lebanese Women in Film, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Oct 17–23 Memories Of A Vietnamese Cinema, Metrograph, October I also attended a number of beautiful retrospectives in this past year, including Frederick Wiseman, René Clair, Mikio Naruse, Larry Gottheim, Kira Muratova, Pierre Creton/Vincent Barré, Monica Vitti, Jean-Claude Rousseau, María Félix, Luc Moullet (I also discovered Vittorio Cottafavi because of this retrospective), Frank Ripploh, Chantal Akerman, Tomonari Nishikawa, João César Monteiro, Youssef Chahine, Juraj Herz, Yurii Illienko, G.W. Pabst, Kozaburo Yoshimura, Carlo Rambaldi, etc. However, I hated 2025. We lost so many great filmmakers and film lovers, so many souls of cinema gone in one year, but more importantly, countless civilians have lost their lives—little people who were unseen and damaged, and almost nobody cares. Our civilization has been very crazy this year. Wars and abuse are increasing around the world. History repeats itself all over. Humanity becomes worse and worse. Even cinema is being centralized. I sometimes feel bad about being able to live a comfortable film and that I’m still able to watch films. There is no dream anymore. Just a hope that we come to our senses soon before it’s too late. Ayush Pramanik Academician, Researcher & Cinephile As the writeup ‘Why Do We Poll?’ from the last year hovers around the range between the worst and best possible implications – of creating a list going back and forth between a curated list of cinematic/cultural ‘taste’ abandoning the need to be critiqued, and something that draws in on the reflection of a world where there might just be hope, I too have come up with this list. This contains films that I managed to catch at film festivals, along with ones that I could manage to watch in between work hours. This list mostly reflects an urgent cry (not for help, but for solidarity) for putting an end to – i) war, ii) atrocities against minorities, iii) chasing machine-driven technofascist development at the cost of the world’s destruction; which then culminates into a sort of breaking free from societal identity, civilisation and its imposed morality, and a sort of slowness reactionary to the rushed pace of the world. Nadharer Bhela (The Slow Man and His Raft, Pradipta Bhattacharyya, 2025) Irkalla: Dreams of Gilgamesh (Mohamed Al Daradji, 2025) One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) Stolen (Karan Tejpal, 2023) Humans in the Loop (Aranya Sahay, 2024) Homebound (Neeraj Ghaywan, 2025) Monica, O My Darling (Vasan Bala, 2022) There Will Be No More Night (Éléonore Weber, 2020) Mogi gsangbi zhabskhra (I, The Song, Dechen Roder, 2024) Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025) One Battle After Another Milan Pribisic Teacher, Loyola University Chicago Oslo-Trilogien (The Oslo Trilogy, Dag Johan Haugerud, 2024) O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025) The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, 2025) Eojjeolsuga eobsda (No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook, 2025) Miséricorde (Misericordia, Alain Guiraudie, 2024) Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980) Trong lòng đất (Viet and Nam, Minh Quy Truong, 2024) April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, 2024) Suyoocheon (By the Stream, Hong Sang-soo, 2024) Pfau-Bin ich echt? (Peacock, Bernhard Wenger, 2024) Daniel Ribas Film professor, programmer and writer (Alphabetical order) Daria’s Night Flowers (Maryam Tafakory, 2025). Personal and political: the moving images produced in a country speak volumes about its structures of power and violence. Khmeli potoli (Dry Leaf, Alexandre Koberidze, 2025). As inventive as a sad film about a country, its landscapes, and football fields. Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2025). There is a specific durée to Kechiche’s films and their wonderful performative atmosphere, full of characters that belong to our life, with our miseries and small joys. Nuestra tierra (Landmarks, Lucrecia Martel, 2025). Finally, someone uses drones for a political effect, showing how power and violence persist in the battle for the land and the dispossession of the Indigenous people. O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025). Flirting with genres, this film explores the modes of violence associated with a dictatorship, while also paying homage to the history of cinema and its connection to popular culture. O Riso e a Faca (I Only Rest in Storm, Pedro Pinho, 2025). A film about our world, its contradictions, and positioning itself in the liminal space where life is discussed. An ecologic, decolonial, queer and political tour de force. Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs, 2025). Simple films, by simple people, about life and its most precious moments. Primeira Pessoa do Plural (First Person Plural, Sandro Aguilar, 2025). A melodrama of ghosts, this film deepens the singular work of Aguilar, its shadows and lights. Short Summer (Nastia Korkia, 2025). The world as seen by children and their family affairs, amongst the background of politics and war. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari, 2025). One of the most urgent and delicate films of this year, even if its images are from more than two decades ago. Free Palestine. Peter H. Rist Professor of Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada So many U.S.-based film critics are declaring that 2025 was an excellent year for U.S. productions. I disagree, although it was a good time for World Cinema (looking back to films that premiered in 2024). Also, there were many revelations of older films at the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna and the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy. I include just one film from each of these in my “Top 10.” Listings in the order in which I saw them in 2025, all on DCP in a Montreal cinema unless noted otherwise. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, 2024), January 25th: authentic representation of British-Caribbean life, showing how collaborative the director’s work continues to be. No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor, 2024), January 27 Intercepted (Oksana Karpovych, 2024), February 4: amazing incorporation of phone calls by Russian soldiers with their families back “home”; a devastating account of their hatred towards Ukrainians. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Johan Grimonprez, 2024), April 19: Jazz and Politics, with surprising footage of protests against the killing of Patrice Lumumba at the UN Security Council. Becky Sharp (Rouben Mamoulian, 1935), May 29, 35mm at the Nitrate Picture Show, Rochester, NY: wonderful opportunity to see an original, good quality, 3-strip Technicolor nitrate print, perhaps for the first time since it was released; and to understand how underrated the film was – a brilliant satire on costume spectacular films, and where the choice of a color palette was meaningful; also a terrific comic performance by Miriam Hopkins. Gehenu Lamai (Girls, Sumitra Peries, 1978), June 23, at Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, Italy – remarkably cinematic proto-feminist work. Was she a better director than her more-famous husband, Lester James? On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, 2024), July 7 April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, 2024), August 4, streamed on MUBI: the 5th film on my list directed or co-directed by a woman, and a fine example of the many terrific films coming from the country of Georgia Krylya kholopa (The Wings of a Serf, Yuri Tarich, 1926), October 10, at the Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Italy. THE revelation of the year, and a film which was apparently Sergei Eisenstein’s favourite Soviet film, and which clearly influenced his Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars’ Plot (1946), and which also must have influenced Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966), and Aleksei German’s Hard to Be a God (2013). An incomplete version can now be watched on YouTube, with English subtitles. O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025), December 5: the best of the new films that I have seen so far, in 2025. Stuart Romeo-Richards Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies, Adelaide University, and co-curator of the Adelaide Queer Film Festival Each year, critics for 3RRR’s film show and podcast Primal Screen submit their top ten films that are theatrically released in Melbourne for that year. Below is my submitted list. There are several great queer films that appeared in film festivals, including Adelaide Queer Film Festival (AQFF), that will hopefully appear in next year’s list, such as La Petite Derniere (Little Sister, Hafsia Herzi, 2025) and Outerlands (Elena Oxman, 2025) Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025) Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024) One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) Weapons (Zach Cregger, 2025) Twinless (James Sweeney, 2025) Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, 2024) Conclave (Edward Berger, 2024) Kpop Demon Hunters (Chris Appelhans and Maggie Kang, 2025) 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, 2025) If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, 2025) 28 Years Later Eduardo A. Russo Film Critic, Researcher – Argentina In alphabetical order: Bring Her Back (Danny & Michael Philippou, 2025) El príncipe de Nanawa (The Prince of Nanawa, Clarisa Navas, 2025) The Mastermind, (Kelly Reichardt, 2025) Miroirs No.3 (Christian Petzold, 2025) Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, 2025) One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) Sept promenades avec Mark Brown (7 walks with Mark Brown, Pierre Créton & Vincent Barré, 2024) Tardes de soledad (Afternoons of Solitude, Albert Serra, 2024) The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2025) Yek tasadof-e sadeh (It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, 2025) Christopher Sanda Film Marketing Professional and Avid Movie Watcher One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) PTA’s latest is an exhilarating and virtuosic film peppered with colorful characters and multiple storylines. One Battle also showcases the filmmaker’s ability to execute impressive action set pieces, including a thrilling bank heist montage sequence. The script combines screwball comedy with social commentary and is brought to life by a stellar cast at the top of their game. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, 2025) This reunion of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland manages to deliver on both the promise of its genre-defining zombie-horror lineage, and its exploration of emotional and socio-political issues. Boyle finds impressive new means of shooting and staging his action sequences, while Garland’s script is both thrilling and moving. 28 Years Later is a masterful addition to the franchise. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, 2025) A subtle and intimate independent film, elevated by the strength of its script and the high caliber of its performances. Sorry, Baby, Eva Victor’s semi-autobiographical first feature balances serious and personal subject matter with grace and sensitivity, as well as a heartfelt sense of humour and optimism. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025) Sinners showcases what Coogler does best and reveals new tricks we didn’t know he had. At once a Carpenter-esque creature feature and an examination of the Jim Crow era South, it delivers the blood, guts and gore while also exploring themes of black discrimination, religion, and ancestral heritage. At the film’s center is a career-best performance by Michael B. Jordan. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025) It’s about generational trauma, art and artistic process, and the weight we ascribe to our past and the inevitable impact of such a burden. Trier has crafted an impeccably layered and complex film with raw emotion and deeply nuanced performances that tangles the subjects of life and art in beautiful and heartbreaking ways. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, 2025) Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet at times feels restrained and minimalistic, but true to its Shakespearean form, the film finds life in tragedy. The final act particularly, is an astonishing example of staging, script, and performance coming together in truly effective fashion. Jesse Buckley is incredible throughout, and Paul Mescal’s screen presence is formidable once Shakespeare takes the stage. Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, 2025) Train Dreams meandering storyline serves as a poetic ode to the nature of human life. It follows Joel Edgerton’s Grainier, whose journey runs the gamut of complex emotions from horror to beauty and anxiety to intimacy. In tone and visual style, this feels very much inspired by Terrance Malick’s languid pace and reflective style of filmmaking. The Long Walk (Francis Lawrence, 2025) Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk tackles Stephen King’s dystopian parable head on and intentionally steers away from world-building or unnecessary context. It doesn’t overcomplicate the messaging of authoritarian regimes and violence as spectacle, instead focusing on themes of brotherhood and camaraderie, whilst staging some truly graphic yet moving death sequences. Jack Sargeant Programmer Revelation Perth International Film Festival, curator, producer and writer This list will no doubt change, but today, these films have stuck with me… The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024) Fucktoys (Annaourna Sriram, 2025) A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, 2025) Bring Her Back (Danny & Michael Philippou, 2025) Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024) Queer (Luca Guadagnino, 2024) Pater Noster and the Mission of Light (Christopher Bickel, 2024) 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, 2025) A Grand Mockery (Adam C. Briggs & Sam Dixon, 2024) Chain Reactions (Alexandre O’Philippe, 2024) A Grand Mockery Maria San Filippo Associate Professor of Media Studies, Emerson College My 10 favourite films of the past year in order of preference and with an ever-so-contrarian eye to recognising some underappreciated-by-awards-season gems: On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, 2024) Staggeringly self-assured sophomore feature with a drily devastating lead performance by Susan Chardy. Engrossing from start to finish, its critique of systemic cultural perpetuation of sexual assault cuts deep. A standout of not just this year but the century so far. A triumvirate of meticulous mise-en-scène (sans special effects) employed towards recreating the world of the 1970s with sobering reflection on our present: Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs, 2025) Pitch-perfect two-hander wistfully hanging on Ben Whishaw’s every word as he languidly recounts a day in the life of a working artist in a vanished New York. O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025) Epic and intimate, even-handed and absurdist look back at an(other) authoritarian era, featuring a mesmerisingly mournful lead performance from Wagner Moura and an unforgettable cameo by Udo Kier (RIP). The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, 2025) Another apt tale for our times, as seen from the precipice of America’s descent into the Me Decade and embodied by Josh O’Connor’s blindered, entitled, ironically eponymous would-be art thief, satisfyingly undone first by an always-searing Gaby Hoffmann, then by bad karma he had coming. Sirāt (Oliver Laxe, 2025) Nothing since Sorcerer had me so on the edge of my seat and uneasily along for the ride with taciturn characters propelled forward by dystopian drives of compulsion, desperation, and the inertia of exhaustion. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, 2025) Optimistic (for Romanian New Wave) pairing to Jude’s pessimistic Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023), it follows another young woman circling her Romanian city in dogged effort at personal and civic betterment, beleaguered along the way by bureaucratic recalcitrance and her own all-too-human failings. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold, 2025) Petzold muse-of-late Paula Beer is again beguiling as the mystery woman on whom others project their fantasies and prolong their traumas, with the ensuing extrication leaving her world-wearier yet no less radiant. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, 2025) Despite After the Hunt-level obliviousness to the workings of academe, debut writer-director/ charismatic lead Victor endears with her deadpan charm and defiance of performing victimhood in the aftermath of sexual assault. Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, John Carroll Lynch, and Kelly McCormack all shine as the kindred spirits who spar with and show up for her. Quand vient l’automne (When Fall Is Coming, François Ozon, 2024) Quietly tender where once bitingly bawdy, Ozon has aged into a middle-late period of making morality-questioning chamber pieces like this Phantom Thread-meets-Stranger on a Train concoction of familial amour fou. Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier, 2025) Having yet to find anything of Trier’s as thoroughgoingly accomplished and emotionally devastating as his 2011 sophomore feature Oslo, August 31, I suppose this comes closest (cringingly blatant Bergman homage aside). Elle Fanning and Anders Danielsen Lie are outstanding in supporting roles. Angus Saunders Gunggari Aboriginal filmmaker and critic Much has already been well ascribed to the futility of year-end compilations (yet, we still lovingly indulge!), although perhaps as well we can also consider the emerging futility of the futures of cinephilia. From such fanatics, I am certainly not exempt – as a brutal Letterboxd statistic reminds me, I spent much more time watching movies this year than I would like to admit, although ironically I should have seen some rapidly declining eyesight as a warning. Within the pervasive hyperrealities of the internet, which we recognise begins to (disgustingly!) bleed all over and toxify what we would normally discern as ‘the real world’, the escapism that cinema provides shrouds cinema in an aura that now seems more mystical than ever. This adulation is not only of cinema itself, but of the exclusivity into the sub/cultures which surround it. For example, an amateur ethnographic foray into the digi-worlds of popular cinephilia (Instagram reels, film twitter, the worst of Letterboxd) illuminates film through the powerfully reductive quick-fix entertainment lens of social media. Addressed with mathematical, absolute analysis, film becomes a decodable ‘language’ we can yearn to become fluent. Thus, at its most socially hermetic, cinephilia risks its own inconspicuous detachment to the ideological realities which film embodies and operates within, instead, projecting a nostalgic imaginatory sublime. In an age which begs the constant questions of our relationships to technologies, how does cinema, as a technology of history and cultural memory, sustain? This is the awesome crossroad that cinema confronts us with, concomitantly both a medium that empowers audiences to appreciate new perspectives about the world, yet also one which is co-optable, and can project and uphold conservative hegemonies. So where, in cinema, might we search for a grounded truth, a certainty? The following films (ten favourite first-time watches of the year) entertain these anxious throughlines; of the future relationships between cinema and realities (those often being; harsh). These are films which I think bespeak new approaches to reconstituting anthropocentric relationships to the (eco)systems we create and inhabit, those; manmade, societal, ecological, non-human, and cosmic. These nomadic tales, of precarious relationships and unrelenting environments, simulate the necessary discomfort of our zealous cinephilic naval-gazing, iterating a reevaluation of how we might see ourselves, and our present epoch, in film’s histories and cultures. To search for new and emerging perspectives, we might have to follow such a suit of these films; to venture, vulnerable, into the uncertain, to traverse new and complex ecosystems, and to conquest maniacally rearways into the jungle of the assumed! Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006) Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond, Agnès Varda, 1985) Im Lauf der Zeit (Kings of the Road, Wim Wenders, 1976) Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982) Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977) California Split (Robert Altman, 1974) Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005) Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970) Trois couleurs: Rouge (Three Colours: Red, Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994) James Slaymaker Critic, author of Essay Cinema in the Digital Era (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and Lecturer in Film at the University of Cumbria 10 favourite new films of 2025, ranked roughly in order of preference: Ṣawt Hind Rajab (The Voice of Hind Rajab, Kaouther Ben Hania, 2025) The Wild Palms (Jean-Luc Godard, 2025) Tardes de soledad (Afternoons of Solitude, Albert Serra, 2024) One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024) Miroirs No.3 (Christian Petzold, 2025) Geu jayeoni nege mworago hani (What Does That Nature Say to You, Hong Sang-soo, 2025) The Rehearsal, Season 2 (Nathan Fielder, 2025) The Volcano Manifesto (Cauleen Smith, 2024) Yek tasadof-e sadeh (It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, 2025) Rachel Small I am an “anyone and everyone” who loves film, film festivals and retrospectives, but who doesn’t rate films seen on a small screen at home My list is in no particular order. The Apu Trilogy (Satyajit Ray, 1955 – 1959) Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025) Huo zhe (To Live, Zhang Yimou, 1994) Vermiglio (Mountain Bride, Maura Delpero, 2024) Quislings siste dager (Quisling: The Final Days, Erik Poppe, 2024) Universal Language (Matthew Rankin, 2024) Hysteria (Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay, 2025) L’Histoire de Souleymane (The Story of Souleymane, Boris Lojkine, 2024) Small Hours of the Night (Daniel Hui, 2024) Anora (Sean Baker, 2024) Sentimental Value Valerie Soe Writer and filmmaker, author of the blog My favorite moviegoing experiences in 2025, in no particular order. Yek tasadof-e sadeh (It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, 2025) Panahi demonstrates why he’s a master of storytelling with an edge. In this case he covers the grim history of Iran’s current regime while etching indelible characters who attempt to maintain a sense of humanity and empathy amidst a horrifyingly absurd and cruel situation. Mikio Naruse: The Auteur As Salaryman (BAMPFA, 2025). I was lucky enough to attend much of this epic series of films by the legendary midcentury Japanese director, which included more than two dozen of Naruse’s eighty-nine feature films. It was an amazing treat to be able to do a deep dive into his oeuvre at BAMPFA, with all the films projected on 35mm from mostly pristine archival prints. From July through December I was there twice a week and there is no other way that I’d want to spend my time. Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-Ho, 2025) More of Bong’s sideways filmmaking, and a movie that never went in the direction that I thought it would. Robert Pattison’s sad sack character embodied the weariness of ordinary people ground down by corporate capitalism. The movie is funny, cute, absurd, grim, and sexy in rapid succession. Queerpanorama (Jun Li, 2025) Li’s look at the competing desires to connect and to stay apart, via a young man’s series of sexual encounters. Jayden Cheung as the lead character simultaneously conveys fragility and strength as he fucks his way across Hong Kong. Li is one of the interesting young directors working in the SAR right now. Shang Hai zhi yen (Shanghai Blues, Tsui Hark,1994) Sien lui yau wan (A Chinese Ghost Story, Ching Sui-Tung, 1987) Two gorgeous 4K restorations of golden age Hong Kong movies that reminded me of why I started following Asian cinema. The energy, imagination, and dynamism leaps off the screen in these two classics. 80s and 90s Hong Kong filmmaking remains unmatched for the sheer volume of iconic movies released in one territory in a short span of time. Eojjeolsuga eobsda (No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook, 2025) Another South Korean maestro at the top of his game, Park delivers a strange and unpredictable black comedy that captures the zeitgeist of 21st century late capitalism. Lee Byung-hun proves his mettle as an ordinary man driven by bad luck and ill circumstances to desperate acts. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025) An enormously entertaining genre film that gives Ryan Coogler a chance to stretch his directorial wings. Fantastic art direction and world building, fun performances, a killer soundtrack, and genuinely scary vibes. Feng liu yi dai (Caught By The Tides, Jia Zhangke, 2024) A tour de force look at the history of 21st century China via the peripatetic wanderings of Qiao Qiao, Jia’s main character throughout his career. China’s rapid development over two decades is fascinating to see, as is the way that Jia stitches together the detritus of his various films throughout the years. Honorable mentions: Vive L’Amour (Tsai Ming-lai, 1994) Orwell: 2+2=5 (Raoul Peck, 2025); Little Jaffna (Lawrence Valin, 2024); In The Maritime Frequencies (Greta Snider, 2025) Karina Solórzano Researcher and Film Programmer in Ficunam, México Films encountered for the first time in 2025: Johnny Chicano (Enrique Gómez Vadillo, 1981) I’ve Always Loved You (Frank Borzage, 1946) The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983) in FICUNAM Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1949) Romance sentimentale (Sentimental Romance, Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov, 1930) in Il Cinema Ritrovato La ragazza di Bube (Bebo’s Girl, Luigi Comencini, 1964) in Il Cinema Ritrovato Vanina Vanini (Roberto Rossellini, 1961) Nouvelle Vague (Jean-Luc Godard, 1990) Su última aventura (The Last Adventure, Gilberto Martínez Solares, 1946) El hombre de negro (Raúl de Anda, 1969) Paraíso (Luis Alcoriza, 1970) Fanni Somlyai Film programmer and critic, Budapest The year 2025 in films The greatest joy for me this year in film and cinema: The return of the screening programmes on the wonderful Another Screen with a Brazilian film selection; The Flaherty Film Seminar in Lisbon; and the second edition of BIFF, the Budapest International Film Festival. My list below comprises films that I saw for the first time in 2025, regardless of the production year. The list is not in any particular order; it is a collection of films that had a profound effect on me, or that were especially dear to me this year. The Hottest August (Brett Story, 2019) Moune Ô (Maxime Jean-Baptiste, 2022) You Hide Me (Nii Kwate Owoo, 1970) Mi aporte (My Contribution, Sara Gómez, 1971) kuángyě shídài (Resurrection, Bi Gan, 2025) Minden csillag (Stars of Little Importance, Olasz Renátó, 2025) Melted into the Sun (Saodat Ismailova, 2024) One Image, Two Acts (Sanaz Sohrabi, 2020) Collapse (Leah Clements, 2019) Ouroboros (Basma al-Sharif, 2017) Mark Spratt Independent film distributor, Australia/New Zealand A year in which many of the feted major festival titles did not impress me, these however stood out. 10 alphabetically listed. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, 2024) Das Verschwinden des Josef Mengele (Disappearance of Josef Mengele, Kiril Serebrennikov, 2025) Dossier 137 (Case 137, Dominick Moll, 2025) Familiar Touch (Sarah Friedland, 2024) Zuopiezi nuhai (Left-Handed Girl, Shih-Ching Tsou, 2025) Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, 2025) One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) Orwell 2+2=5 (Raoul Peck, 2025) Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025) Sirât (Sirat, Oliver Laxe, 2025) Misa Stenman Cinephile, Kokkola Film Fest (Kinojuhlat), Finland (Some of the) Greatest films I saw in theatres during 2025. In chronological order: Street Angel (Frank Borzage, 1928) Piccadilly (E.A. Dupont, 1929) Why Be Good? (William A. Seiter, 1929) Une femme douce (A Gentle Woman, Robert Bresson, 1969) Withnail & I (Bruce Robinson, 1987) Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch, 1989) Ce vieux rêve qui bouge (That Old Dream That Moves, Alain Guiraudie, 2001) Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness (Laurin Federlein, 2007) Sebastian (Mikko Mäkelä, 2024) Being John Smith (John Smith, 2024) David Sterritt Contributing Writer, Cineaste; Adjunct Professor, Maryland Institute College of Art; Professor Emeritus, Long Island University In die Sonne schauen (Sound of Falling, Mascha Schilinski, 2025) Bring Her Back (Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, 2025) Köln 75 (Ido Fluk, 2025) Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, 2025) Sirât (Oliver Laxe, 2025) Yek tasadof-e sadeh (It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, 2025) Nuremberg (James Vanderbilt, 2025) Sovereign (Christian Swegal, 2025) Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, 2025) Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Embeth Davidtz, 2025) Bring Her Back
