20 great films playing at BFI London Film Festival 2025

1. The Secret Agent

One is tempted to call it a masterpiece”Giovanni Marchini Camia

2. Rose of Nevada 

This is a tale of the fantastic, but rooted in the bleak political realities of 2020s Britain”Jonathan Romney

3. Die My Love

Lynne Ramsay’s extraordinarily vivid filmmaking unlocks a whole new level of fearless, full-body commitment from Jennifer Lawrence”Jessica Kiang

4. It Was Just an Accident

Iranian master Jafar Panahi delivers a cogent, morally ambiguous revenge tale”Christina Newland

5. Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro joins the Frankencanon with a messy but gloriously visceral melodrama which understands that at its core Frankenstein is a cautionary tale about awful parenting”Catherine Bray

6. Blue Moon

Filming a sparkling script by Robert Kaplow, Richard Linklater works his wizardry with another single night’s articulate drama as he and Ethan Hawke did in Before Sunrise (1995)”Nicolas Rapold

7. Pillion 

Ray [Alexander Skarsgård], in his rubber boots and with his Clint Eastwood-like taciturnity, feels like an alien who has just landed from Planet Thirst”John Bleasdale

8. The Mastermind

Heist movies run on the mechanics of escape and the thrill of getting away with it, but Kelly Reichardt’s latest detoured story brilliantly turns the genre on its head”Nicolas Rapold

9. Sentimental Value

Joachim Trier is saying that it’s not that cinema isn’t magic, it’s that this magic will not suffice alone”Sophie Monks Kaufman

10. Life After

The film’s well-chosen stories get at the heart of the conflicting concepts of mercy embraced in decisions around assisted suicide”Nicolas Rapold

11. Left-Handed Girl

Careful the things you say; children will listen. That’s the well-trodden and evocative theme of Shih-Ching Tsou’s debut feature”Adam Nayman

12. What Marielle Knows

Conceivably the most uproarious German comedy since Toni Erdmann... puts a gentrified arthouse gloss on the kind of high-concept comic scenario Adam Sandler would have been right at home in”Samuel Wigley

13. Sirât

Sirât opens at an illegal rave in the shadow of the mountains, where throbs of deep bass reverberate off the rock and shake the audience into a trance state beyond conscious thought”Mark Asch

14. No Other Choice

Park Chan-wook’s comedic yet grisly version of the perennially familiar unemployment spiral adapts the 1997 novel The Ax by American crime writer Donald Westlake for another generation”Nicolas Rapold

15. Mirrors No 3 

Transforms a tragic accident into a new beginning for four people – some strangers, others estranged – when a family of three takes in Laura (Paula Beer) who’s survived a car crash unscathed”Savina Petkova

16. The Blue Trail

Following Divine Love (2019), his neon-styled religious parable set in 2027, Gabriel Mascaro has returned with another idiosyncratic vision of a near-future Brazil”Sam Wigley

17. Nouvelle Vague 

Coming just a couple of years after Godard’s death, the movie is partly a memorial of a specific moment of possibility, but its verve is an invitation to do it yourself, too”Nicolas Rapold

18. La Grazia

La Grazia is [Paolo] Sorrentino turned down from eleven to six and with the volume more bearable, we can actually hear what he’s saying”John Bleasdale

19. Father Mother Sister Brother

Jim Jarmusch’s new film is decidedly understated, accruing its force with a virtuoso’s ability to modulate dramatic notes and switch up perspectives on a theme of homecoming”Nicolas Rapold

20. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

It’s been a full 17 years since Mary Bronstein’s crackling debut feature, and the long wait has filtered into the simmering anxieties and ambient aggression of her full-on follow-up”Nicolas Rapold