The best films of 2025 – all the votes

Critic, US

1. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
2. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
3. Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, Mexico, USA)
4. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
5. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
6. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
7. Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, USA)
8. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
9. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (Mailys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han, France, Belgium)
10. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)

Writer, scholar and film curator, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffith, UK)
3. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
4. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
5. Eddington (Ari Aster, USA, UK, Finland)
6. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
7. Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan)
8. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, Canada, France)
9. Santosh (Sandhya Suri, UK, Germany, India, France)
10. Gaza: Doctors Under Attack (Karim Shah, UK)

Some truths burn brighter than the silver screen.

Critic and journalist, Nigeria

1. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
2. My Father’s Shadow (Akinola Davies Jr., UK, Nigeria)
3. Nome (Sana Na N’Hada, Guinea-Bissau, France, Portugal, Angola)
4. Materialists (Celine Song, USA, UK, Finland)
5. When Nigeria Happens (Ema Edosio Deelen, Nigeria)

2025 wasn’t quite one of the better years for film – both for my national cinema, my continent’s cinema, and for the global one. Were any potential all-time great pictures made this year? Perhaps Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value has a shot. It does remarkably well in capturing one family’s relationship in somewhat universal ways. African cinema didn’t quite soar this year but it did produce My Father’s Shadow, a small well-done film that shows its director can do more.

Programmer, curator and writer, UK

1. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Spain, France, Portugal)
2. Blue Heart (Samuel Suffren, France, Haiti)
3. Daria’s Night Flowers (Maryam Tafakory, France, UK, Iran)
4. L’Mina (Randa Maroufi, Morocco, Qatar, Italy, France)
5. Monikondee (Tolin Alexander, Siebren de Haan, Lonnie van Brummelen, Netherlands, Suriname)
6. Okay, Keskidee! Let Me See Inside (Rhea Storr, UK)
7. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (Sepideh Farsi, France, Palestine, Iran)
8. A River Holds a Perfect Memory (Hope Strickland, UK)
9. To the West, in Zapata (David Bim, Cuba, Spain)
10. The Tree of Authenticity (Sammy Baloji, DR Congo, Belgium)

Critic, lecturer and programmer, UK

1. Young Mothers (Jeunes Mères) (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium, France)
2. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
3. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
4. Black Bag (Steven Soderberg, USA)
5. A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, USA, Poland)
6. When Autumn Falls (François Ozon, France)
7. Presence (Steven Soderbergh, USA)
8. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
9. Dying (Sterben) (Matthias Glasner, Germany)
10. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)

There are a few important titles I still need to catch up with, but this doesn’t seem to have been a particularly strong year for film releases. As may be seen from my list, I tend to favour ‘small’ films whose makers know what they’re doing and why, rather than ‘big’ films seemingly out to impress and make lots of money through some kind of sensationalism or novelty.

Critic, US

1. Fairytale (Skazka) (Alexander Sokurov, Russia, Belgium)
2. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia, Italy, France)
3. My Undesirable Friends, Part 1: Last Air in Moscow (Julia Loktev, USA)
4. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
5. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, Portugal, Italy, France)
6. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke, China)
7. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Stephen and Timothy Quay, UK, Poland, Germany)
8. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
9. Dracula (Radu Jude, Romania, Austria, Luxembourg, Brazil, UK, Switzerland)
10. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)

Critic, UK

1. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
2. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, UK, Zambia, Ireland, USA)
3. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
4. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
5. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia, Italy, France)
6. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, Portugal, Italy, France)
7. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
8. The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, UK, USA)
9. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, USA, Ireland, France)
10. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)

I haven’t seen as many new films as I would have liked to this year, but if I had had a chance to watch them, I suspect Sirât and No Other Choice might have made it onto this list. Honourable mentions go to Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, which is brilliant, and Alice Douard’s Love Letters.

Academic and critic, UK

1. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
2. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
3. Hedda (Nia DaCosta, USA)
4. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
5. Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, Mexico, USA)
6. The Old Woman with the Knife (Min Kyu-dong, South Korea)
7. Bring Her Back (Danny and Michael Philippou, Australia)
8. Girl (Shu Qi, Taiwan, China)
9. The Long Walk (Francis Lawrence, USA, Canada)
10. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)

2025 has been a strong year for innovative and original storytelling embracing diversity of identity, culture and experience, with films from China (Resurrection, Girl) and South Korea (No Other Choice) key contenders for the 97th Academy Awards. Horror has been the lead genre, dominating box-offices world-wide, and accounting for 17% of the Hollywood box office. The Conjuring: Last Rites is on track to be the highest-grossing horror film in history, and Sinners and Weapons continue to do well critically and commercially.

Away from the many pleasures afforded by genre, visionary storytelling by established and emerging auteurs has set the film world alight, from the philosophical scope of Resurrection, the epic Pyncheon world of One Battle After Another, the reimagining of Ibsen’s classic Hedda Gabler and the more personally inflected Girl.

There are areas that need improving, especially in terms of encouraging and enabling new voices – film is still dominated by white, male directors with the same directors being talked about in relation to the awards season, and who seem to have the final word on what accounts for cinema. There is so much cinema from across the world that is barely mentioned; the richness of Indian cinemas needs appreciation beyond the Bollywood moniker. I continue to feel frustrated at the absence of marginalised identities and voices. Film promotes empathy, it can change how we view each other: in such a divisive political environment such stories have never been more urgent.

Academic (King’s College London), UK

1. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Spain, France, Portugal)
2. Little Boy (James Benning, USA)
3. Bombay Tilts Down (CAMP, India)
4. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari, Palestine, Qatar, Germany, France)
5. Mare’s Nest (Ben Rivers, UK, France, Canada)
6. Through a Mirror, Darkly (Naeem Mohaiemen, UK)
7. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
8. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)
9. Babygirl (Halina Reijn, Netherlands, USA)
10. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)

Head of Multimedia, BFI, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. A Minecraft Movie (Jared Hess, USA, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada)
3. A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, USA, Poland)
4. Dog Man (Peter Hastings, USA)
5. KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, USA, Canada)

Film critic and documentary filmmaker, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
3. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, USA, UK, Hungary)
4. Motherboard (Victoria Mapplebeck, UK)
5. Holy Cow (Louise Courvoisier, France)
6. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia, Italy, France)
7. Palestine 36 (Annemarie Jacir, Palestine, UK, France)
8. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Embeth Davidtz, South Africa)

Film curator, UK

1. God Bless the Child (Christopher Harris, USA, Senegal)

Lecturer and film critic, UK

1. Art College 1994 (Liu Jian, China)
2. Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan)
3. Ghost Trail (Jonathan Millet, France, Belgium, Germany)
4. The Monkey (Osgood Perkins, USA, UK, Canada)
5. Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, USA)
6. One to One: John & Yoko (Kevin MacDonald, Sam Rice-Edwards, UK)
7. A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, USA, Poland)
8. Secret Mall Apartment (Jeremy Workman, USA)
9. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
10. Super Happy Forever (Igarashi Kohei, Japan, France)

Writer, film critic and photographer, Belgium

1. The Piano Accident (Quentin Dupieux, France)
2. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle (Sotozaki Haruo, Japan, USA)
3. Transcending Dimensions (Jigen o koeru) (Toyoda Toshiaki, Japan)
4. Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, USA)
5. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, USA)
6. Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France)
7. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
8. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
9. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)
10. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)

My choices are listed in alphabetical order. 2025 was full of exhilarating big-screen experiences I suspect wouldn’t work half so well on a small screen at home. It was the year filmmakers mixed and matched genres to thrilling effect, the year I sought out a rewatch of Sinners just to see the vampires singing and dancing along to The Rocky Road to Dublin in IMAX, and the year I finally learned to stop worrying and love Wes Anderson. None of these films (even a ‘remake’ like Nosferatu) was predictable; each was a wild ride where I didn’t have a clue where the story was going, or even (in the case of Toyoda Toshiaki’s Transcending Dimensions) what the story was about. I had a blast.

Critic, UK

1. Black Bag (Steven Soderberg, USA)
2. Eddington (Ari Aster, USA, UK, Finland)
3. Freaky Tales (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, USA, Canada)
4. Frosted Window (Kim Jong-kwan, South Korea)
5. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)
6. Mother of Flies (Jon Adams, Zelda Adams & Toby Poser, USA)
7. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
8. Portal to Hell (Woody Bess, USA)
9. Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France)
10. The Ugly Stepsister (Emilie Blichfeldt, Norway, Denmark, Romania, Poland, Sweden)

These ten films are listed in purely alphabetical order. Every list comprises individual selections, but once I see all ten of these laid out alongside one another, certain themes become apparent. 

On the one hand, there are the films which take on, however obliquely, the divisions and polarities of Trump’s America (Freaky Tales, Eddington, One Battle After Another). 

Then more specifically, there are the films that look at the roles, perceptions and expectations imposed on women in a rapidly changing, rapidly regressing world (The Ice Tower, Mother of Flies, The Ugly Stepsister). 

Then, contrariwise, there are the films that offer, or at least seem to offer, a refuge from such topical, contemporary concerns (Black Bag, Frosted Window, Portal to Hell, and my film of the year, the maximalist, Euro-spy-inflected remembrance of things past, Reflection in a Dead Diamond) – although in fact even these films, despite their supposed retreat into pure genre or into emotional landscapes, come with their own political dimension and staged failure to escape certain realities.

Writer, Italy

1. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
2. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
3. Splitsville (Michael Angelo Covino, USA)
4. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
5. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
6. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
7. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
8. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland, UK, Canada, South Korea, USA)
9. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
10. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)

Powered by a vintage Cannes and a very good Venice, this has been a year in which some vital political cinema has stormed back onto our screen, from the hybrid doc-drama of The Voice of Hind Rajab to Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear-powered thriller. Grand stuff.

Critic, UK

1. A Simple Soldier (Artem Ryzhykov and Juan Camilo Cruz, USA, Ukraine, UK)
2. Always (Deming Chen, USA, China, France, Taiwan)
3. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
4. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
5. The Gas Station Attendant (Karla Murthy, USA)
6. Remake (Ross McElwee, UK)
7. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (Sepideh Farsi, France, Palestine, Iran)
8. Predators (David Osit, USA)
9. Being John Smith (John Smith, UK)
10. Life After (Reid Davenport, USA)

Writer, UK

1. Life After (Reid Davenport, USA)
   Reid Davenport’s Life After is a rigorous, investigative documentary with a brilliant personal touch, which leads its audiences through moral grey areas and deep-rooted ableism. I might be biased because I married him, but his work is some of the most radical and imaginative documentary filmmaking we have right now.
2. The Holy Boy (Paolo Strippoli, Italy, Slovenia)
   The Holy Boy by Paolo Strippoli was shocking in a good way. I loved the Carrie/Wicker Man vibes and the tight web it spun of collective trauma, dark human forces using religion to manipulate, and the pain of adolescence.
3. Pavements (Alex Ross Perry, USA)
   Always a fan of Robert Greene’s projects, I loved the mimetic structure and heart of Pavements. You could see how much knowledge and love of Pavement’s music informed the themes and arc, and it was fun and surprising.
4. Seeds (Brittany Shyne, USA)
   Mimetic but tougher and more vulnerable was David Osit’s Predators – layers of voyeuristic audiences, predatory subjects and predatory TV/filmmaking.
5. Predators (David Osit, USA)
   Seeds by Brittany Shyne was perhaps the most beautiful documentary I saw this year. Shyne’s observational film is so tender in the way it builds narrative, and the intimacy she captures is rare.
6. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)
7. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, USA)
8. The Ugly Stepsister (Emilie Blichfeldt, Norway, Denmark, Romania, Poland, Sweden)
   These three films made a horror out of the female experience in a way I find thrilling. I did watch multiple screenings of Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution at the BFI London Film Festival in 2015 so I think this might be my genre.
9. Friendship (Andrew DeYoung, USA)
   Friendship made me laugh harder than any film in years. Surreal, uncomfortable and desperate, it is furious portrayal of disconnect.
10. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
    Tremendous, haunting storytelling.

Programmer and critic, Canada

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
3. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
4. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (Sepideh Farsi, France, Palestine, Iran)
5. Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams (Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway)
6. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, France)
7. Endless Cookie (Seth and Peter Scriver, Canada)
8. Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, USA)
9. La pie voleuse (Robert Guédiguian, France)
10. A Poet (Simon Mesa Soto, Colombia, Germany, Sweden)

Remembering Fatima Hassouna – photographer, artist, life force, the ‘star’ of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk – and the citizens of Gaza, living and dead; and in solidarity with all films of resistance, large and small.

Programmer, UK

1. The Memory of Butterflies (Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski, Portugal, Peru)
2. Seeds (Brittany Shyne, USA)
3. Afterlives (Kevin B Lee, Belgium, France, Germany)
4. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
5. Hair, Paper, Water… (Tóc, giấy và nước…) (Nicolas Graux, Truong Minh Quy, France, Belgium, Vietnam)
6. Becoming Human (Polen Ly, Cambodia)
7. Daria’s Night Flowers (Maryam Tafakory, France, UK, Iran)
8. Morning Circle (Basma al-Sharif, Canada, UAE, Germany)
9. Island of the Winds (Hsu Ya-ting, Taiwan, Japan, France)
10. Enzo (Robin Campillo, France, Italy, Belgium)

This list is not in any particular order of significance or preference.

Journalist and critic, US

1. Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, USA, Mexico, France, Netherlands)
2. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
3. Below the Clouds (Gianfranco Rosi, Italy)
4. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
5. Homebound (Neeraj Ghaywan, India)
6. The Perfect Neighbor (Geeta Gandbhir, USA)
7. The Tale of Silyan (Tamara Kotevska, North Macedonia, USA)
8. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
9. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
10. The Wedding Banquet (Andrew Ahn, USA)

Host of the 90 Minutes Or Less Film Festival and Picturehouse Cinemas podcasts, UK

1. The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffith, UK)
2. Black Bag (Steven Soderberg, USA)
3. Final Destination: Bloodlines (Adam B. Stein, Zach Lipovsky, Canada, Spain, USA)
4. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee, USA, Japan)
5. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, USA)
6. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
7. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
8. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
9. Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton, USA, UK)
10. KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, USA, Canada)

Lots of amazing work this year, but I think I found my favourites on general release rather than at the film festivals. A shout out to Harry Lighton’s Pillion which is an incredible film and one of my favourite experiences as an audience member this year, but I did a tiny bit of work on it and have a special thanks in the credits (next to another collaborator named Fetish Daddy). So keep an eye out for me – but I didn’t think was fair to add my list proper.

Critic, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. Measures for a Funeral (Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada)
3. The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, UK, USA)
4. Magellan (Lav Diaz, Philippines, Spain, Portugal, France, Taiwan)
5. The Love That Remains (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France)
6. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)
7. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
8. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Spain, France, Portugal)
9. Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, Germany, Hungary, France)
10. Young Mothers (Jeunes Mères) (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium, France)

I saw Measures for a Funeral and Afternoons of Solitude thanks to the ICA’s Off-Circuit strand, while the documentary Direct Action was another ICA release in contention for my list. For the past two years, the ICA has picked up festival films that fell through the distribution cracks and has given them week-long (at least) cinema releases. These screenings are frequently very well attended, showing that there is a hunger for bolder choices and more diversity in film programming, especially at a time when the schedules across the mainstream and ‘arthouse’ chains are often barely distinguishable. The ICA’s initiative is an invaluable addition to the London film scene, and one that more cinemas could learn from.

Filmmaker, UK

1. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia, Italy, France)
2. Grand Theft Hamlet (Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, UK, USA)
3. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
4. The End (Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, UK, Sweden, USA)
5. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, USA)
6. Maria (Pablo Larraín, Italy, Germany, Chile, USA)
7. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle (Sotozaki Haruo, Japan, USA)
8. Urchin (Harris Dickinson, UK, USA)
9. The Tell-Tale Rooms (Andrew Kötting, Eden Kötting, UK)
10. Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, Belgium, France)

The best new films I saw this year prove that Dziga Vertov was spot on when he wrote “the body of cinema is numbed by the terrible poison of habit”. Grand Theft Hamlet and Sinners were movie fission. They exploded with new energy. Music movies dazzled and torqued: The End, Maria, Sinners again, and the music in Nickel Boys enriched. Movie innovators, rethinkers, you transfuse, we love you and need you.

Critic, academic and curator, UK

1. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, Portugal, Italy, France)
2. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
3. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
4. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, USA)
5. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
6. Parthenope (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy, France)
7. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
8. Life After (Reid Davenport, USA)
9. Emmanuelle (Audrey Diwan, France, USA)
10. The Memory Blocks (Andrew Kötting, UK)

This really ought to be a list of short films but I could not possibly limit myself to just ten. It has been such a privilege this year to curate short film programmes for Edinburgh and the EU, and to serve on the juries for MIX Copenhagen and Leeds International Film Festival. I am yet to see so many of the year’s festival darlings, some of which I am sure will feature on next year’s list. In any case, here are ten feature films which stuck a chord with me in 2025, and which I am sure to revisit for many years to come.

Critic and programmer (Acropolis Cinema, Quinzaine des cinéastes), US

1. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
2. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, USA, Ireland, France)
3. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
4. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
5. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold, Germany)
6. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
7. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
8. Videoheaven (Alex Ross Perry, USA)
9. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea)
10. Yes (Nadav Lapid, France, Cyprus, Germany, Israel)

Film critic, festival regular, UK

1. The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, UK, USA)
2. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, USA)
3. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
4. Better Go Mad in the Wild (Mire Remo, Czech Republic, Slovakia)
5. The Chronology of Water (Kristen Stewart, USA, France, Latvia)
6. The Woman who Poked the Leopard (Patience Nitumwesiga, Uganda, South Africa, Germany, USA)
7. Memory of Princess Mumbi (Damian Hauser, Switzerland, Kenya, Saudi Arabia)
8. The Stranger (François Ozon, France)
9. Balentes (Giovanni Colombu, Italy, Germany)
10. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)

Some of the big-name auteurs delivered disappointing and over-praised work, but this was still a great year for unconventional biopics, leftfield documentaries and formally inventive nonfiction hybrid films. My list could easily have been two or three times as long.

Cinema curator (Barbican), UK

1. The Blue Trail (Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil, Mexico, Netherlands, Chile)
2. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
3. Night Stage (Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon, Brazil)
4. Eighty Plus (Restitucija, ili, San i java stare garde) (Želimir Žilnik, Serbia, Slovenia)
5. Twinless (James Sweeney, USA)
6. Short Summer (Nastia Korkia, Germany, France, Serbia)
7. Maspalomas (Aitor Arregi, Jose Mari Goenaga, Spain)
8. Retreat (Ted Evans, UK)
9. She’s the He (Siobhan McCarthy, USA)
10. A Useful Ghost (Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, Thailand, Singapore, Germany, France)

A wild and wondrous hurricane of queer cinema descended in 2025, embracing hot and horny political noir (Night Stage), provocative comedy (Twinless), senior citizens behaving badly (Maspalomas), gender mischief (She’s the He) and jaw-dropping, anti-authoritarian satire (A Useful Ghost, featuring the most tender sex scene I saw all year, between a man and a possessed vacuum cleaner). 

A welcome focus on older characters rebelling against ageism was evident throughout some of the very best films – Maspalomas again, Eighty Plus, and my favourite movie of 2025, the empowering crowd-pleaser The Blue Trail. In a so-so year for British cinema, Ted Evans made a bold and risk-taking debut with Retreat, a film about a deaf commune told almost entirely through sign language.

Professor and critic, US

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
3. Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, Germany, Hungary, France)
4. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
5. Roofman (Derek Cianfrance, USA)
6. Short Summer (Nastia Korkia, Germany, France, Serbia)
7. Cactus Pears (Sabar Bonda) (Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, India, UK, Canada)
8. Eddington (Ari Aster, USA, UK, Finland)
9. The Tale of Silyan (Tamara Kotevska, North Macedonia, USA)
10. The Love That Remains (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France)

I restricted this list to 2025 world premieres, which seemed the fairest standard. Had I enfolded US calendar releases, Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes) and On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni) would both rank high. 

For all the bleakness that runs through these films, an inevitable watermark of the times that produced them, I’m heartened by how many of them earn some measure of optimism or take a longer, ‘ocean waves’ view of historical cycles. The sheer audacity and formal brio of Laxe, Schilinski and Anderson got my whole body buzzing, but so did the disarmingly keen observations of day-to-day feeling and foible in movies like Cactus Pears, Roofman, and The Tale of Silyan. I don’t mean to draw any opposition here. All ten of these films, from the wide-eyed wonder of Silent Friend to the obsidian cynicism of Eddington, helped me understand myself, others, and the artform I love best amid profound disorientation. They each made me believe there can still be more – more humanity, more cinema, more discovery, just more – in a year that seemed so committed to cruelty and diminishment.

Aacademic and critic, UK

1. Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, USA, Mexico, France, Netherlands)
   Lucrecia Martel is back! Landmarks has remained with me – a brilliant interrogation of the aftermath of the murder of Indigenous Chuschagasta activist Javier Chocobar. The trial is captured with a keen eye for the absurdist processes of justice with a delicacy in the detail with which the Chocobar family and the community are filmed – a venture realised with them rather than about them. The film is in many ways a thriller where the pursuit of justice is never an easy matter. It’s a bold, brilliant and uncompromising film that takes Martel’s filmmaking in a new direction. I was delighted to see it take the Best Film award in Official Competition at this year’s London Film Festival.
2. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
   The Secret Agent, another thriller concerned with justice and corruption, thrillingly dissects the ways in which dictatorships contaminate and endanger all who refuse to go with the party line, and it features an extraordinary performance from Wagner Moura in dual roles.
3. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
   Another film about state violence, which impressed with its profound understanding of the long-term consequences of the human-rights abuses of dictatorships. The tonal shifts from comedy to tragedy, the nod to Waiting for Godot, the ability to show the pervasive nature of corruption across all strata of society make this a daring film (both aesthetically and politically) to savour.
4. Romería (Carla Simón, Spain, Germany)
   I loved Romería for its ability to capture what lies unsaid in family relationships, how the past is so often remembered differently by those involved and what it means to shape your present when so much of your history remains unknown. As much a film about Spain’s history as a coming-of-age tale, it confirms Simón’s status as a director unafraid of constructing her films through a focus on the small and seemingly insignificant details that others would sideline.
5. Sundays (Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, France, Spain)
   It was a great year for Basque filmmaking with Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s Sundays and Aitor Arregi and Jose Mari Goenaga’s Maspalomas respectively winning the Golden Shell and Silver Shell awards in San Sebastián. Sundays asked perceptive questions about tolerance and respect as a 17-year-old informs her family that she wants to become a cloistered nun. Maspalomas focused on a 70+ gay man who finds himself back going back into the closet in the aftermath of a stroke when he is transferred into a nursing home.
6. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
   Sirât confirmed Laxe as one of the great poets of our time – his latest work an ambitious genre-shifting contemplation of grief and loss, where resolution and closure are not always possible.
7. Good Valley Stories (Historias del buen valle) (José Luis Guerín, France, Spain)
   Shot in the town Vallbona (the ‘good valley’ of the title), on the outskirts of Barcelona, Guerín’s is a film of great compassion and humanity. Shot over three years, it allows the community to tell its stories, effectively a wider tale of a community in transition, just as his earlier En construcción was 24 years earlier.
8. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
   I so admired The Mastermind for its audacity – a heist movie that mutates into a startling dissection of a toxic masculinity where its protagonist’s ambition trumps his abilities and intellect. The chaos and destruction that this singularity of purpose leaves in its wake is ruthlessly chronicled; Josh O’Connor’s performance as the quietly ruthless but largely hapless art thief is a revelation.
9. The Souffleur (Gastón Solnicki, Austria, Argentina)
10. Pin de fartie (Alejo Moguillansky, Argentina)
    And finally two leftfield choices, budget films by Argentine filmmakers that were playful and inventive. The Souffleur is a glorious homage to a disappearing Vienna grounded in a witty performance by Willem Dafoe; Pin de Fartie is a jazz riff of sort on Beckett’s Endgame played out as a series of duets (father and daughter, mother and son, two actors rehearsing scenes from the play, a couple trapped in a bin). The film offers a series of reflections on issues of dependency, coexistence, desolation and manipulation raised by Beckett’s play. 
    2025 was the year where the Beckettian influence seemed to run deep through so many of the films I loved – perhaps a wider comment on our strange, unsettling times and a recognition of the multiple ways in which filmmakers constantly reimagine what cinema does and how it does it.

Film critic and author, UK

1. Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, Mexico, USA)
2. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
3. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, USA, Ireland, France)
4. The Last Showgirl (Gia Coppola, USA)
5. Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay, USA, UK)
6. Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho, USA, South Korea)
7. The Other Way Around (Volveréis) (Jonás Trueba, Spain, France)
8. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
9. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, USA)
10. Still Life with Ghosts (Enrique Buleo, Serbia, Spain)

Really enjoying the pervading 1990s nostalgia! And what a brilliant year for Spanish cinema…

Critic and writer, UK, UK

1. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Seven Veils (Atom Egoyan, Canada, Finland, USA)
4. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)
5. Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan)
6. Black Bag (Steven Soderberg, USA)
7. Remake (Ross McElwee, UK)
8. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
9. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, USA)
10. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)

Film editor, The Skinny magazine, UK

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
3. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
4. Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams (Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway)
5. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
6. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
7. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
8. After This Death (Lucio Castro, USA)
9. Super Happy Forever (Igarashi Kohei, Japan, France)
10. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)

Honourable mentions to a trio of British debuts bubbling under: Laura Carrera’s On Falling, Harris Dickinson’s Urchin and Harry Lighton’s Pillion.

A shout-out to Ryan Coogler for the extraordinary moment in Sinners where the past, present and future of black music coexist simultaneously in an uninhibited jam session – cinema’s most exhilarating scene this year. 

And well done to the audiences who made it out in their droves to movies like Sinners and Weapons and One Battle After Another in 2025. For the first time in years, it felt like original work was turning the tide on superhero movies. Long may that continue.

Critic and curator, Egypt, US

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
4. Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams (Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway)
5. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
6. Magellan (Lav Diaz, Philippines, Spain, Portugal, France, Taiwan)
7. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
8. The President’s Cake (Hasan Hadi, Iraq, Qatar, USA)
9. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
10. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, USA)

If 2024 was dominated by the specter of indifference toward Gaza, the sweeping resurrection of populism, authoritarianism, and the second age of Trump presented urgent realities that filmmakers could no longer afford to ignore. The best pictures of 2025 channelled a dysfunctional world system that, refracted through the lens of history, appears stubbornly immune to resistant progressive waves too scattered and disjointed to trigger enduring or profound change. 

Patriarchy (Sound of Falling), capitalism (No Other Choice, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Dry Leaf), colonialism (Magellan) and despotism (The Secret Agent, The President’s Cake, One Battle After Another) were front and centre in a global cinema struggling to make a difference amid rapidly shifting political, economic and cultural landscapes. Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams was a warm embrace against the crushing weight of daily news. And there was Óliver Laxe’s Sirât, the year’s biggest cinematic head trip: a wild ride that weaves its brilliantly layered themes of European privilege, post-colonial influence, and the impotence of Western rationality into an intoxicating sensory audio-visual experience – one that reveals the limitless dimensions of an artform still brimming with vitality.

BFI Documentation Team Leader, UK

1. The Count of Monte Cristo (Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, France, Belgium)
2. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood, USA)
3. Flight Risk (Mel Gibson, USA)
4. Black Bag (Steven Soderberg, USA)
5. Here (Robert Zemeckis, USA, Canada)
6. From Roger Moore with Love (Jack Cocker, UK)
7. John Cleese Packs It In (Andy Curd, UK)

Assistant Editor, S&S, UK

1. Endless Cookie (Seth and Peter Scriver, Canada)
2. Left-Handed Girl (Shih-Ching Tsou, Taiwan, France, USA, UK)
3. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
4. On Falling (Laura Carriera, UK)
5. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
6. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
7. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
8. Tornado (John Maclean, UK)
9. Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa, France, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine)
10. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea)

With apologies to those I haven’t yet seen. I voted for On Falling last year too, but it’s good enough to merit another nod.

Critic, Brazil

1. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood, USA)
2. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland)
3. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
4. She Taught Me Serendipity (Ōku Akiko, Japan)
5. Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes (Gabriel Azorín, Spain, Portugal)
6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
7. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea)
8. The Bewilderment of Chile (Lucia Seles, Argentina)
9. Broken Rage (Kitano Takeshi, Japan)
10. Fuck the Polis (Rita Azevedo Gomes, Portugal)

Film writer and essayist, US

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. Magellan (Lav Diaz, Philippines, Spain, Portugal, France, Taiwan)
3. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, UK)
4. Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, France)
5. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
6. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
7. Vermiglio (Maura Delpero, Italy, France, Belgium)
8. The Order (Justin Kurzel, USA, UK, Canada)
9. The Dells (Nellie Kluz, USA)
10. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, UK, Zambia, Ireland, USA)

Once again, the insistence on doing these lists well before the year actually ends, and before my thoughts on these films have a chance to mature, lends me to say only: “Take this all with a grain of salt.”

Writer, UK

1. Momentum (Nada El-Omari, Canada)
2. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
3. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
4. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, UK)
5. When the Sun Is Eaten (Chi’bal K’iin) (Kevin Jerome Everson, USA)
6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
7. The Love That Remains (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France)
8. A Ladder (Scott Barley, Portugal)
9. Bury Us in a Lone Desert (Nguyễn Lê Hoàng Phúc, Vietnam)
10. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)

Critic, UK

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Wasteman (Cal McMau, UK)
4. The Perfect Neighbor (Geeta Gandbhir, USA)
5. 2000 Meters to Andriivka (Mstyslav Chernov, Ukraine, USA)
6. Steve (Tim Mielants, Ireland, UK)
7. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
8. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, UK)
9. Late Shift (Petra Biondina Volpe, Switzerland, Germany)
10. Lurker (Alex Russell, USA, Italy)

Film writer, UK

1. A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, USA)
2. Ebony and Ivory (Jim Hosking, UK)
3. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
4. I Swear (Kirk Jones, UK)
5. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
6. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
7. A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, USA, Poland)
8. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
9. Sister Midnight (Karan Kandhari, UK, India, Sweden)
10. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)

In alphabetical order, these are the ten films I most enjoyed seeing (and mostly saw on release in the cinema). Each contains heart-stopping moments of filmmaking brilliance and I look forward to watching them all again, and again. I’m only sorry that this year my list has no documentaries, just one female director, and a single film not in the English language.

Programmer and writer, UK

1. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
2. Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay, USA, UK)
3. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, UK)
4. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
5. The Ban (Roisin Agnew, UK, Ireland)
6. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
7. Bad Apples (Jonatan Etzler, UK)
8. Hedda (Nia DaCosta, USA)
9. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
10. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, UK, Spain)

Critic and programmer (Berlinale and New Zealand IFF), Germany, New Zealand

1. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
2. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Spain, France, Portugal)
3. My Undesirable Friends, Part 1: Last Air in Moscow (Julia Loktev, USA, Russia)
4. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
5. Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa, France, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine)
6. Wondrous Is the Silence of My Master (Ivan Salatic, Montenegro, Italy, Serbia, Croatia, France)
7. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
8. Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia)
9. Tales of the Wounded Land (Abbas Fahdel, Lebanon)
10. Imago (Deni Oumar Pitsaev, France, Belgium)

Freelance writer, UK

1. Little Trouble Girls (Urška Djukić, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Serbia)
2. Toxic (Saulė Bliuvaitė, Lithuania)
3. On Falling (Laura Carriera, UK)
4. Sister Midnight (Karan Kandhari, UK, India, Sweden)
5. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
6. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
7. Good One (India Donaldson, USA)
8. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Spain, France, Portugal)
9. The Perfect Neighbor (Geeta Gandbhir, USA)
10. Late Shift (Petra Biondina Volpe, Switzerland, Germany)

It’s been a great year for debuts, with half of my selections marking the arrival of new voices behind the camera. Toxic and Little Trouble Girls vie for the top spot: though tonally distinct, they are in conversation with one another, both exploring the intense intimacy of female friendship and the thrilling, sometimes perilous vulnerability of girlhood. 

The remaining films follow in a rough order of preference, with the flawed but commendable Late Shift in last place. It’s a socially important work, anchored by a strong performance from Leonie Benesch, and would make a fitting – if emotionally gruelling – double bill with On Falling. I also admired The Nickel Boys and Hard Truths, but since they featured prominently in last year’s round-up, I’ve left them out this time.

Writer and critic, UK

1. My Father’s Shadow (Akinola Davies Jr., UK, Nigeria)
2. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
3. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)
4. Compensation (1999 – rerelease) (Zeinabu irene Davis, USA)
5. Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) (Questlove, USA)
6. On Falling (Laura Carriera, UK)
7. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
8. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
9. Lollipop (Daisy-May Hudson, UK)
10. Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, USA)

Here are five films I loved, and five more I liked and think are worth watching. I was caught off guard by a rare on-screen appearance by musician D’Angelo in Questlove’s documentary Sly Lives!, an interview that’s even more poignant in the wake of his passing. A special mention also to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, and in particular the 1m 9s video ‘Marhaba! Ismee Zohran Mamdani’, which is funnier and punchier than most films I’ve seen this year.

Film scholar, UK

1. Io Capitano (Matteo Garrone, Italy, Belgium, France)
2. Bird (Andrea Arnold, UK, USA, France, Germany)
3. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
4. Along Came Love (Katell Quillevere, France, Belgium)
5. The Apprentice (Ali Abbasi, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, USA)
6. Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
7. The Chronology of Water (Kristen Stewart, USA, France, Latvia)
8. September 5 (Tim Fehlbaum, Germany, USA)
9. Mr Burton (Marc Evans, UK, Canada, USA, Ireland)
10. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Embeth Davidtz, South Africa)

Anora straddles last year’s and this year’s lists in terms of UK release timing and has already garnered ample recognition. While other big name directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), Mike Leigh (Hard Truths) and Kelly Reichardt (The Mastermind) have all made accomplished English-language films well worth a look, attesting to the healthy state of cinematic creativity, there have perhaps been fewer stand-out virtuoso films when it comes to originality and quirkiness produced in 2025 than in some years. However, several impressive films by women, including two debuts in my list, are a welcome feature.

Author and critic, US

1. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
2. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland)
3. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
4. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
5. Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa, France, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine)
6. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
7. The Love That Remains (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France)
8. Cover-up (Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, USA)
9. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
10. Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwarth, Austria, Germany)

Film journalist, UK

1. Ellis Park (Justin Kurzel, Australia)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. The Stranger (François Ozon, France)
4. Oslo Stories Trilogy: Sex (Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway)
5. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
7. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
8. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof, France, Germany, Iran)
9. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
10. Orphan (László Nemes, Hungary, UK, USA, Cyprus, France, Germany)

Freelance writer, UK

1. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, USA, UK)
2. 2000 Meters to Andriivka (Mstyslav Chernov, Ukraine, USA)
3. Black Bag (Steven Soderberg, USA)
4. Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
5. Eddington (Ari Aster, USA, UK, Finland)
6. Honey Don’t! (Ethan Coen, UK, USA)
7. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
8. Queer (Luca Guadagnino, Italy, USA)
9. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, Canada, France)
10. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)

“Police work dominates the pages of the book reviews: this writer has the wrong attitude and must be done away with.”
— Gary Indiana 

Can we measure how last year’s films translated into collective resistance against this year’s catastrophes and genocides, or is this all more of a thought experiment? If films are going to do it, they will have to be further outside the system. If criticism is going to do it, the words will have to be on fire and fly-posted next to police stations.

Film writer, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. September 5 (Tim Fehlbaum, Germany, USA)
3. A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, USA, Poland)
4. From Hilde, with Love (Andreas Dresden, Germany)
5. The Return (Uberto Pasolini, Italy, Greece, UK, France)
6. Orwell: 2+2=5 (Raoul Peck, France, USA)

Raoul Peck’s meditation on Orwell and the world we live in is the most necessary film, released early next year.

Critic, France

1. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, UK, Spain)
2. Ne Zha 2 (Jiaozi, aka Yang Yu, China)
3. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
4. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
5. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, USA, UK)
6. Eddington (Ari Aster, USA, UK, Finland)
7. The Last Sacrifice (Rupert Russell, UK)
8. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Spain, France, Portugal)
9. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
10. Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, France)

Critic, UK

1. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold, Germany)
2. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, France)
3. Mr Scorsese (Rebecca Miller, USA)
4. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
5. Materialists (Celine Song, USA, Finland, UK)
6. Anora (Sean Baker, USA)
7. Holy Cow (Louise Courvoisier, France)
8. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
9. Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, USA, Mexico, France, Netherlands)
10. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland)

Critic, UK

1. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, USA)
2. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
3. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
4. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, UK)
5. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
6. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, Portugal, Italy, France)
7. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, USA, UK, Hungary)
8. Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, Belgium, France)
9. The Girl with the Needle (Magnus von Horn, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, France, Belgium)
10. Grand Theft Hamlet (Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, UK, USA)

How to sum up the year without mentioning the glorious morning I spent at Il Cinema Ritrovato watching the new restoration of Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978) followed by Holiday (George Cukor, 1938), introduced by Molly Haskell?

Writer, Wales

1. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
2. 7 Walks with Mark Brown (Vincent Barré and Pierre Creton, France)
3. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea)
4. Hair, Paper, Water… (Tóc, giấy và nước…) (Nicolas Graux, Truong Minh Quy, France, Belgium, Vietnam)
5. Here We Are (Elizabeth Price, UK)
6. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
7. A Tired Dog Is a Good Dog Parts 1 + 2 (Matthew Lax, USA)
8. Good Valley Stories (Historias del buen valle) (José Luis Guerín, France, Spain)
9. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari, Palestine, Qatar, Germany, France)
10. Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia)

Film critic (The Observer, Screen International), UK

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
3. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
4. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
5. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, UK)
6. My Father’s Shadow (Akinola Davies Jr., UK, Nigeria)
7. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
8. Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams (Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway)
9. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Embeth Davidtz, South Africa)
10. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)

Writer and critic, UK

1. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)
2. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
3. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
4. Mare’s Nest (Ben Rivers, UK, France, Canada)
5. Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, Germany, Hungary, France)
6. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, France)
7. Young Mothers (Jeunes Mères) (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium, France)
8. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
9. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
10. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold, Germany)

That the only American film here is one focusing on French cinema is a subconscious but perhaps telling choice, though I’ve not seen every US title of note yet. The lopsided aggregation of quality towards the end of each year is more pronounced than ever, which is hard on modest quiet films like Young Mothers. A strong year, actually, for an activity that’s said to be struggling more than ever. There’s more of a yearning around for a cinema for grown-ups than for a while – or is that just me?

Writer and critic, US

1. The Youth trilogy (Spring, Hard Times, Homecoming) (Wang Bing, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, China)
2. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
3. Dracula (Radu Jude, Romania, Austria, Luxembourg, Brazil, UK, Switzerland)
4. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
5. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Spain, France, Portugal)
6. An Unfinished Film (Lou Ye, Singapore, Germany, USA)
7. Melody Electronics (Albert Birney, USA)
8. Back Home (Hui Jia) (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan)
9. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland)
10. The Ozu Diaries (Daniel Raim, USA)

For me, the cinematic event of the year was a ten-hour screening at IFFR, followed by an insightful Q&A, of what might be Wang Bing’s masterwork, a trilogy of films made between 2023 and 2024: Youth (Spring), Youth (Hard Times) and Youth (Homecoming). As far as I know it was the first time all three films had shown together back-to-back.

Staff writer (Cineuropa), UK

1. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari, Palestine, Qatar, Germany, France)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
4. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, Canada, France)
5. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
6. Yes (Nadav Lapid, France, Cyprus, Germany, Israel)
7. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
8. Nino (Pauline Loquès, France)
9. The Memory of Butterflies (Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski, Portugal, Peru)
10. Being John Smith (John Smith, UK)

Curator, UK

1. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
2. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
3. Universal Language (Matthew Rankin, Canada)
4. Henry Johnson (David Mamet, USA)
5. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
6. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood, USA)
7. Warfare (Alex Garland, Ray Mendoza, USA, UK)
8. The Disappearance of Miss Scott (Nicole London, USA)

Critic, UK, Sudan

1. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
2. Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, Mexico, USA)
3. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
4. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
5. Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, USA)
6. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
7. Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, France)
8. From Ground Zero (Rashid Masharawi, Palestine, France, Qatar, UAE, Switzerland, Denmark)
9. My Father and Qaddafi (Jihan K, USA, Libya)
10. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, USA)

Cinema provided some respite from a near-dystopian news cycle this year, but my list largely consists of weightier topics. They are ten films with entirely different approaches and subjects, but whether it’s the patriarchy, mental illness, the migrant crisis or abuse, they all seemed able to take the worst of the world’s pain and turn it into something beautiful.

Critic and programmer, Germany

1. Fantaisie (Isabel Pagliai, France)
2. Late Fame (Kent Jones, USA)
3. Little Boy (James Benning, USA)
4. Levers (Rhayne Vermette, Canada)
5. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
6. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
7. Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, USA, Mexico, France, Netherlands)
8. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
9. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
10. The Vanishing Point (Bani Khoshnoudi, USA, Iran, France)

Filmmaker and researcher, Switzerland

1. Ancestral Visions of the Future (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, Germany, Lesotho, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia)
2. BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions (Kahlil Joseph, USA)
3. Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay, USA, UK)
4. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
5. Hair, Paper, Water… (Tóc, giấy và nước…) (Nicolas Graux, Truong Minh Quy, France, Belgium, Vietnam)
6. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
7. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
8. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
9. Two Seasons, Two Strangers (Miyake Sho, Japan)
10. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari, Palestine, Qatar, Germany, France)

Academic, writer and podcaster, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
3. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, USA)
4. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
5. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia, Italy, France)
6. Architecton (Victor Kossakovsky, Germany, France, USA, French Polynesia)
7. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
8. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
9. Becoming Human (Polen Ly, Cambodia)
10. Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, France)

Critic, UK

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
3. Remake (Ross McElwee, UK)
4. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
5. Eddington (Ari Aster, USA, UK, Finland)
6. A Want in Her (Myrid Carten, Ireland, UK, Netherlands)
7. Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, Germany, Hungary, France)
8. The Love That Remains (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France)
9. Wind, Talk to Me (Stefan Djordjevic, Serbia, Slovakia, Croatia)
10. Yes (Nadav Lapid, France, Cyprus, Germany, Israel)

Compounding the usual difficulties of whittling down the list was the fact that a number of my selections correspond – in my mind, at least – to more or less equally wonderful films that feel like spiritual siblings to them, or at least natural double-feature mates, and could as easily have made the final ten. 

As a wicked taking of the current American temperature, Ari Aster’s strangely underappreciated Eddington is to me inseparable from Paul Thomas Anderson’s rightly lauded One Battle After Another. 

As an elastic hybrid work processing grief through shattered documentary form and free narrative licence, the Rotterdam standout Wind, Talk to Me pairs perfectly with Sophy Romvari’s exquisite Blue Heron. 

(In a particularly strong year for nonfiction, however, I couldn’t split the lacerating double-whammy of McElwee’s and Carten’s respective reflections on family, memory and addiction.) 

Oliver Laxe’s extraordinary sunstruck freakout shares more or less an exact premise with Alexandre Koberidze’s rambling, pixellated marvel Dry Leaf – both follow fathers searching for missing daughters across generously pored-over landscapes – but one is starkly wounding and the other a herbal balm. 

Enyedi’s richly inventive botanical rumination is a rare work of high whimsy that somehow avoids preciousness, a balance also struck by Lucio Castro’s delicious queer doodle Drunken Noodles, a film likewise attuned to thrumming sensuality in everyday environs. 

I won’t be so indulgent as to list all these pairings – and in any case the system kind of breaks down when it comes to a film as brazenly sui generis as Lapid’s blistering anti-Zionist firework – but it’s a good year when one list practically begets another.

Critic, UK

1. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
2. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
3. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
4. Bring Her Back (Danny and Michael Philippou, Australia)
5. Companion (Drew Hancock, USA)
6. Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) (Questlove, USA)
7. Grand Theft Hamlet (Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, UK, USA)
8. Holy Cow (Louise Courvoisier, France)
9. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
10. Riefenstahl (Andres Veiel, Germany)

I realise what connects many of these is an insidious sense of creeping dread or dissociated states; at least Perfect Days offers perhaps the perfect antidote to these sombre portents of darkness visible.

Filmmaker and curator, UK, Ireland

1. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, UK, Spain)
2. Here (Robert Zemeckis, USA, Canada)
3. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee, USA, Japan)
4. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
5. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
6. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer, USA, Canada)
7. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, USA)
8. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
9. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
10. Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, USA)

Some films that placed in last year’s poll I saw too late to vote for, that were invaluable to my year in film this year: Hit Man, The Taste of Things, The Holdovers, The Killer, Poor Things, May December.

A few other impressive and enjoyable films of 2024: Cold Wallet, The Substance, Dune Part Two, The Mother of All Lies, Lyd, Shelby Oaks, Conclave.

Critic, Italy

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland, UK, Canada, South Korea, USA)
3. A Want in Her (Myrid Carten, Ireland, UK, Netherlands)
4. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
5. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
6. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
7. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, USA, Ireland, France)
8. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
9. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland)
10. Below the Clouds (Gianfranco Rosi, Italy)

It was only when I finished compiling my favourites of the year that I realised not a single one was produced by a streaming service. Sirât – for me one of the most compelling cinematic experiences of the decade so far – is unimaginable on a small screen.

Reviews Editor, S&S, UK

1. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, USA)
2. Cover-up (Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, USA)
3. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
4. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
5. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia, Italy, France)
6. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, Canada, France)
7. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
8. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
9. Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, USA, Mexico, France, Netherlands)
10. My Father’s Shadow (Akinola Davies Jr., UK, Nigeria)

With special mention to: Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Hlynur Pálmason’s The Love that Remains, Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, Ben Rivers’ Bogancloch and India Donaldson’s Good One, all on my list in spirit.

Film critic and features editor, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, UK, USA)
3. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)
4. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
5. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
6. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
7. On Falling (Laura Carriera, UK)
8. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
9. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
10. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)

January began on a downer as I walked out of the press screening of Wolf Man (one of the worst films I saw this year) to the news that David Lynch had passed away. I walked to Oxford Circus tube station in a state of shock and sat in solemn silence on my journey home. For poetic reasons I’d love to state I paid tribute by drinking a cup of damn fine coffee, but in reality I popped to my local pub and raised a pint of lager to the peerless director. 

In Berlin I checked out the Cannes hit Sirât at the Rollberg Kinos. I knew nothing about it going in, and it took my breath away at multiple points. I gasped at the unfolding, unpredictable horrors playing out on screen. It is a thrillingly directed film about finding connection in the strangest of places as we edge closer to the brink of annihilation. 

In a less glamorous setting (Cineworld Birmingham on Broad Street) I was absolutely mesmerised by Weapons with its Rashomon-style structure, effectively directed jump scares and shrewd commentary on school shootings. 

While watching On Falling, which tracks the life of a Portuguese woman working in a warehouse, I was taken back to my days working in a dehumanising call centre where our bonuses included food vouchers and chocolate bars… This is such a hard reality check of a film that credibly reflects the alienation and desperate loneliness of modern life. Joana Santos’s performance is beautifully nuanced, as is the film. 

No Other Choice is a scathingly funny and brutal satire that ponders on the moral quandaries of life under late capitalism and the incoming, devastating force of AI on the job market. 

It Was Just an Accident is a darkly funny and captivating thriller that ends on a devastating note as it comments on the disturbing lack of mercy of the Iran regime. It’s absolutely chilling in a similar way to The Seed of the Sacred Fig. 

The Mastermind is another precious genre reworking by Kelly Reichardt. This time she takes on the heist movie with a wry sense of humour when it comes to a pivotal turning point in US history, with a perfectly tuned performance by Josh O’Connor. 

I saw Blue Heron at the London Film Festival, where I was blown away by its sensitive and formally daring handling of mental health, a subject which hits close to home for the director, Sophy Romvari. 

I was bowled over by the entrancing choreography of The Testament of Ann Lee and the elegant momentum behind the camera. An ambitious tale of religious fervour based on true events, it’s brutal, upsetting and explosively violent in places, yet underpinned by a pitch black sense of humour. Amanda Seyfried in the lead role is phenomenal. 

One Battle After Another is a real doozy with one of the most impressively mounted and creative car chase sequences I’ve ever seen. Inspired by Pynchon’s Vineland, PTA’s new flick is a labour of love that not only speaks to modern times but the dying embers of a revolutionary spirit (that sometimes comes with aging) that is only once again sparked into action when the shit hits the fan for the younger generation.

Critic and academic, UK

1. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, France)
2. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, USA)
3. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer, USA, Canada)
4. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, USA)
5. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
6. A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, USA)
7. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
8. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, USA, UK)
9. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland)
10. Play Dirty (Shane Black, Australia, USA)

This is in random order, except for last place: Play Dirty is very far from Shane Black’s best, and I can see it isn’t ‘as good’ as One Battle After Another, or indeed many other obvious candidates for the top ten, but Amazon or whoever should keep giving him money to make films with, and this vote isn’t going to hurt anyone.

Film journalist, UK

1. Alpha (Julia Ducournau, France, Belgium)
2. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
3. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
4. Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story (Sinéad O’Shea, Ireland, UK)
5. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, UK)
6. Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, Belgium, France)
7. Cover-up (Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, USA)
8. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
9. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
10. Vanilla (Mayra Hermosillo, Mexico)

Writer and programmer, US

1. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, USA, UK)
2. Eddington (Ari Aster, USA, UK, Finland)
3. The Girl with the Needle (Magnus von Horn, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, France, Belgium)
4. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, Portugal, Italy, France)
5. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, UK, Spain)
6. Harvest (Athina Rachel Tsvangari, UK, Germany, USA, France, Greece)
7. Islands (Jan Ole-Gerster, Germany)
8. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer, USA, Canada)
9. Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, France)
10. Urchin (Harris Dickinson, UK, USA)

Were this my top 10⅓ films of the year, I would also include The Death of R.M.F., the first of three short films in Yorgos Lanthimos’s anthology picture Kinds of Kindness, and for me maybe the best work yet from the best version of that director (the brutal, bone-dry comic absurdist of Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer).

Critic, UK

1. The Stranger (François Ozon, France)
2. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, UK)
3. Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
4. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
5. Islands (Jan Ole-Gerster, Germany)
6. Young Mothers (Jeunes Mères) (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium, France)
7. Dead Man’s Wire (Gus Van Sant, USA)
8. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
9. Friendship (Andrew DeYoung, USA)
10. Left-Handed Girl (Shih-Ching Tsou, Taiwan, France, USA, UK)

Critic, UK

1. Black Bag (Steven Soderberg, USA)
2. Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan)
3. Good Boy (Ben Leonberg, USA)
4. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, UK, Spain)
5. The Long Walk (Francis Lawrence, USA, Canada)
6. The Monkey (Osgood Perkins, USA, UK, Canada)
7. Odyssey (Gerard Johnson, UK)
8. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
9. Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France)
10. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)

Critic, UK

1. Broken Voices (Ondřej Provazník, Czech Republic, Slovakia)
2. Dammen (Grégoire Graesslin, France)
3. The Girl in the Snow (Louise Hémon, France)
4. The Legend of Ochi (Isaiah Saxon, USA, Finland, UK)
5. Memory Is an Animal, It Barks with Many Mouths (Eva Giolo, Belgium)
6. Re-creation (David Merriman, Jim Sheridan, Ireland, Luxembourg)
7. A River Holds a Perfect Memory (Hope Strickland, UK)
8. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
9. Superman (James Gunn, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)
10. Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton, USA, UK)

Filmmaker, curator and writer, founder of Inclinations Film Club, UK

Having spent another year watching children being industrially and lustily massacred in Palestine, I have struggled to engage with the moving image and its pretensions, or to put hope in it. However, a few dogged artists have still managed to tell the truth. As a result, their films are banned, sidelined and maligned. Others are surrounded by an eerie silence. 

1. To Kill a War Machine (Rainbow Collective, UK)
   The remarkable story of the young people involved in Palestine Action as they engage in direct action to challenge the arms companies involved in supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the evolving genocide. Composed from publicly available GoPro footage and a few key interviews, it was awarded a BBFC rating and was set for a inter/national release before it was promptly banned, as part of the government’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group. It remains a fascinating document and testament to the passion of young people in this country who are prepared to put their futures on the line for social justice.
2. ¡Caigan las rosas blancas! (Albertina Carri, Argentina, Brazil, Spain)
   Carri revisits the characters from her road movie porno Daughters of Fire. Here we find ‘four lesbians in search of an author’ as the plot folds in on itself, jogging through genres and tropes, building a wide-ranging meditation. A love letter to young queers everywhere and a cautionary tale: so you want to get laid? You need to get rid of capitalism and colonialism first. And read some goddamn books!
3. Back to the Family (Sharunas Bartas, Lithuania, France, Poland, Latvia)
   As tight as a fist. There is nothing superfluous here, the style is as direct as can be, every speck of sentimentalism has been exterminated. What remains is a terrifyingly honest account of those dying of neglect and contempt in the rural zones of Lithuania (and all across Europe).
4. Russians at War (Anastasia Trofimova, Canada, France)
   Trofimova reports simply on the daily soldiering and dying done by the Russian working class as they advance across Ukraine’s Donbas. An overview of the motivations to enlist emerges: a plethora of virtuous, visceral and venal reasons. It is a war like any other and this film hides none of the brutality, cynicism or senselessness of it. Despite international acclaim it’s hard to imagine it being screened in the UK anytime soon.
5. An Image to Follow, Exquisite Corpse (Tatia She / Anthea Kennedy, UK)
   A series of video letters by Tatia She and Anthea Kennedy. A revelatory set of meditations on the everyday, on changing seasons and the passing of time. Its attention is healing.
6. Perfumed with Mint (Muhammed Hamdy, Egypt, Qatar, Tunisia, France)
   A reverie on political defeat. A dreamy and melancholy sojourn in the purgatory inhabited by the men who participated in the failed Egyptian revolution of 2011. It is poetic and intimate, haunted by grief and gothic visions of Cairo.
7. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
   Having spent years as a propagandist for US empire (sometimes dubbed its Leni Riefenstahl), Bigelow has busted out of her crystal cage. In A House of Dynamite, she tells the truth of the insanity of US nuclear doctrine and the fragility of global nuclear deterrence. It has already ruffled the Pentagon’s feathers as supposedly inaccurate. However, anyone who has read Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner or Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War – A Scenario will know that it’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
8. The Earth’s Greatest Enemy (Abby Martin, Mike Prysner, USA)
   Martin’s latest expose of US militarism. She and her partner, the Iraq war veteran Michael Prysner, trace the panorama of US empire’s stranglehold on the planet and its deadly effect on the climate and human and natural habitats. Its honesty and determination reminded me that, as Pilger and Chomsky fade, our generation is ready to take up the mantle.
9. Occlusions: In out of the Dark (Amanda Egbe, UK)
   Egbe’s essay film faces the racist and racialised representations of Black people in early cinema. The images occlude and reveal, indict and heal. Egbe’s voiceover is lyrical, multilayered and furious.

Writer and filmmaker, Ireland

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland, UK, Canada, South Korea, USA)
3. Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story (Sinéad O’Shea, Ireland, UK)
4. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, USA, UK)
5. Friendship (Andrew DeYoung, USA)
6. The Monkey (Osgood Perkins, USA, UK, Canada)
7. Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot, Australia)
8. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee, USA, Japan)
9. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
10. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)

A very solid year for genre cinema, as reflected in the picks, also a lot of outstanding documentaries. The big screen experience prevails. Cinema lives!

Film critic and historian, UK

1. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea)
2. On Falling (Laura Carriera, UK)
3. Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams (Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway)
4. One to One: John & Yoko (Kevin MacDonald, Sam Rice-Edwards, UK)
5. Big Boys (Corey Sherman, USA)
6. Measures for a Funeral (Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada)
7. The Regulars (Fil Freitas, UK)
8. Mongrel (Chiang Wei-liang, Taiwan, Singapore, France)
9. Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, France)
10. Sister Midnight (Karan Kandhari, UK, India, Sweden)

Happy 130th anniversary, cinema. Not one of your vintage years. But, as always, there are gems waiting to be found.

Critic and festival programmer, UK

1. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
2. Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, Germany, Hungary, France)
3. Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay, USA, UK)
4. Romería (Carla Simón, Spain, Germany)
5. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold, Germany)
6. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
7. How Deep Is Your Love (Eleanor Mortimer, UK)
8. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
9. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)
10. Little Trouble Girls (Urška Djukić, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Serbia)

Critic, screenwriter, UK

1. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
2. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
3. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
4. Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, USA)
5. Superman (James Gunn, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)
6. D Is for Distance (Chris Petit, Finland)
7. The Lost Bus (Paul Greengrass, USA)
8. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (Sepideh Farsi, France, Palestine, Iran)
9. 2000 Meters to Andriivka (Mstyslav Chernov, Ukraine, USA)
10. Gaza: Journalists Under Fire (Robert Greenwald, USA)

A mixed year, no classics I can detect though Sinners is a breakthrough of a sort in its mix of blues and horror. And if certain films do not appear here it could be because, given the deadline, many of the festival hits have not yet arrived on the Bafta portal. But I do feel it is impossible to have a contemporary ten best in 2025 without the heroic work being done by filmmakers in Gaza and Ukraine.

Writer and curator, UK, Germany

1. Castration Movie Anthology II: The Best of Both Worlds (Louise Weard, Canada)
2. Magic Farm (Amalia Ullman, USA, Argentina, UK)
3. Eddington (Ari Aster, USA, UK, Finland)
4. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
5. Harvest (Athina Rachel Tsvangari, UK, Germany, USA, France, Greece)
6. Deaf (Eva Libertad, Spain)
7. 9-Month Contract (Ketevan Vashagashvili, Georgia, Bulgaria, Germany)
8. The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, USA)
9. On Falling (Laura Carriera, UK)
10. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, USA, UK, Hungary)

Critic, UK

1. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
2. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
3. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
4. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold, Germany)
5. Remake (Ross McElwee, UK)

Critic and journalist, UK, Asia

1. Kokuho (Lee Sang-il, Japan)
2. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
3. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
4. Sholay (1975 – restored director’s cut) (Ramesh Sippy, India)
5. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, UK)
6. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
7. Cactus Pears (Sabar Bonda) (Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, India, UK, Canada)
8. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
9. Girls on Wire (Vivian Qu, China)
10. Homebound (Neeraj Ghaywan, India)

Critic, UK, Poland

1. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
   A quiet subversion of the heist film that focuses on the lonely aftermath of a fumbled Framingham art theft, this concerns itself with getting a totally convincing, lo-fi early 1970s suburban ambience on screen. Josh O’Connor again demonstrates his remarkable versatility, bringing shambling poignancy to a protagonist who just can’t stop doing unwise things.
2. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
   As digressive and expansive as The Mastermind is distilled; a rich and juicy portrait of 1970s Recife that spins off in many directions, taking in police corruption, refugees’ experience, the attempt to trace those lost to history, and… Jaws. The Hairy Leg deserves a spin-off all its own.
3. Wicked (Jon M Chu, UK, USA, Canada)
   An empowering extravaganza, at once more spectacular and more intimate than the stage show. From the Wicker Man-evoking shot of Ariana Grande-Butera’s Glinda at the burning effigy of Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba in the opening sequence, it’s clear that the property is in safe hands. Chu’s luxurious treatment does justice to Stephen Schwartz’s appealing score and Winnie Holzman’s smart book, with their subversiveness about appearance and reputation. (At the time of writing, For Good is still to come.)
4. The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box) (Ernesto Martinez Bucio, Mexico)
   Reminiscent of The Wonders (including in its perfect placement of a glorious pop song) and Nobody Knows. Ernesto Martínez Bucio’s depiction of a chaotic parent-free Mexican household combines realism with uncanny touches – and boasts amazing performances from its child actors.
5. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
   Coogler’s admirably ambitious, protean epic starts out as a latter-day John Sayles-style social panorama before taking a wild lurch into horror. Not everything works – there are at least two climaxes too many – but the heady combination of shocks, historical savvy, sensuous texture and a soul-stirring soundtrack invigorated the summer’s film-going no end.
6. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
   Echoes of Michael Haneke and Jane Campion are felt, but Schilinski’s hypnotic film emerges as a true original, shifting between time periods at the same Altmark farmhouse to reveal disjunctures and continuities in the experiences and consciousnesses of its female protagonists across decades. A haunting and remarkable work of art.
7. The History of Sound (Oliver Hermanus, USA, UK, Sweden, Italy)
   Love Gone Wrong is a central subject of folk song, and the music gives a powerful emotional undertow to Hermanus’s adaptation of a pair of Ben Shattuck stories about the truncated yet life-sustaining connection between two young men song collecting in the US Northeast between the wars. An England-set mid-section falls flat, but otherwise this is contemporary classical filmmaking at its finest – in its beautiful restraint probably not a film for now, but perhaps one for all time.
8. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
   Laxe delivered some of the most explosive shocks of the year in his unique apocalyptic party movie Sirât, which finds Sergi López searching for a missing daughter in Morocco and forming a bond with a motley crew of ravers. Loss looms, it turns out, even if you’re just dancing in the desert.
9. The Girl with the Needle (Magnus von Horn, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, France, Belgium)
   Directing his third feature, Magnus von Horn again demonstrates his ability to adapt himself to his subjects, this time delivering a gripping black-and-white maternal melodrama, based on a real-life case, that plays out with the horrifying dream logic of an adult fairy tale.
10. The Surfer (Lorcan Finnegan, Australia, Ireland)
    Ozploitation elements get a fresh spin in Finnegan’s marvellous film. Nicolas Cage is the native son returning to buy a beach house and being thwarted and threatened by localist surfers in ever more extreme ways. Cage cracking up is practically a cinematic fetish by now, but the actor also brings a deep soulfulness to his performance here, expertly navigating the film’s twists through family drama, black comedy and nightmarish surrealism to a beautiful conclusion. 

Honourable mentions: Franz Kafka, Departures, Materialists, Little Loves, September 5, Exit 8, Father Mother Sister Brother, Dreams, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Motel Destino.

Editorial assistant, S&S, UK

1. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, USA)
2. Sudan, Remember Us (Hind Meddeb, France, Tunisia, Qatar)
3. My Father’s Shadow (Akinola Davies Jr., UK, Nigeria)
4. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
5. Final Destination: Bloodlines (Adam B. Stein, Zach Lipovsky, Canada, Spain, USA)
6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
7. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia, Italy, France)
8. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
9. A Want in Her (Myrid Carten, Ireland, UK, Netherlands)
10. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)

Critic and host (The Last Thing I Saw), US

1. Direct Action (Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell, France, Germany)
2. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
3. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
4. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
5. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
6. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, France)
7. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, USA)
8. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
9. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
10. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)

25 more: The Naked Gun, Baahubali: The Epic, Blue Moon, Cloud, Diciannove, Dracula, Endless Cookie, Familiar Touch, Father Mother Sister Brother, Hamnet, Highest 2 Lowest, Life After, Mickey 17, The Perfect Neighbor, Peter Hujar’s Day, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, Remake, Resurrection, Seeds, The Shrouds, Sirat, The Testament of Ann Lee, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions, Weapons.

Director of editorial operations, Filmmaker Magazine, US

1. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
2. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
3. Felt (Blake Williams, Canada, Spain, USA)
4. Rojo Žalia Blau (Viktoria Schmid, Austria)
5. The Shipwrecked Triptych (Deniz Eroglu, Germany)
6. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
7. It Ends (Akex Ullom, USA)
8. The Visitor (Vytautas Katkus, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden)
9. After Dreaming (Christine Haroutounian, Armenia, Mexico, USA)
10. To the West, in Zapata (David Bim, Cuba, Spain)

It’s very popular to despair over the death of film, which does kind of make sense in a mainstream realm; I’m going to the multiplex about a fifth as much as I did a decade ago. The work, though, is still getting done despite all the odds; it’s just spread out over more and more festivals, and it takes time, money, privilege and institutional backing (or a lot of emailing for links) to try to catch it all. But it’s there!

Critic, UK

1. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)
2. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
3. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
4. Remake (Ross McElwee, UK)
5. Below the Clouds (Gianfranco Rosi, Italy)
6. To the Victory! (Valentin Vasyanovich, Ukraine, Lithuania)
7. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, UK)
8. The Love That Remains (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France)
9. Late Fame (Kent Jones, USA)
10. Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes (Gabriel Azorín, Spain, Portugal)

If you’ve been in the criticism game long enough, you may not get jaded as such, but films can start to feel too easy to pigeonhole. That’s why, in my list this year, I’ve regretfully left out some of 2025’s more obvious landmark films – some of major artistic and political importance, and you can guess which. Instead, I’ve skewed towards the titles that showed me aspects of cinema or the world that were unfamiliar, or perplexed me in the most stimulating way. So, alongside some that just gave me a lot of pleasure, this list includes some that provoked the more specific pleasures of head-scratching and chin-stroking.

Critic, US

1. The Fishing Place (Rob Tregenza, Norway)
2. Babygirl (Halina Reijn, Netherlands, USA)
3. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland)
4. Bulle Ogier, portrait d’une étoile cachée (Eugénie Grandval, France)
5. Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan)
6. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
7. Little, Big, and Far (Jem Cohen, USA, Austria)
8. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
9. Perfect Days (Wim Wenders, Japan, Germany)
10. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)

Film critic and programmer, Brazil, UK

1. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, UK)
2. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
3. My Father’s Shadow (Akinola Davies Jr., UK, Nigeria)
4. The Chronology of Water (Kristen Stewart, USA, France, Latvia)
5. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
6. Plainclothes (Carmen Emmi, USA, UK)
7. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
8. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
9. A Want in Her (Myrid Carten, Ireland, UK, Netherlands)
10. Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France)

Film critic, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. Landmarks (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, USA, Mexico, France, Netherlands)
3. The Other Way Around (Volveréis) (Jonás Trueba, Spain, France)
4. Archipelago of Earthen Bones – To Bunya (Malena Szlam, Canada, Australia, Chile)
5. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
6. Plainclothes (Carmen Emmi, USA, UK)
7. Kouté vwa (Listen to the Voices) (Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Belgium, French Guiana, France)
8. When the Sun Is Eaten (Chi’bal K’iin) (Kevin Jerome Everson, USA)
9. The Love That Remains (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France)
10. Shifty (Adam Curtis, UK)

Freelance film writer; editor (Windows on Worlds), UK

1. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
2. Kokuho (Lee Sang-il, Japan)
3. Peg O’ My Heart (Nick Cheung Ka-Fai, Hong Kong)
4. My Sunshine (Okuyama Hiroshi, Japan, France)
5. Dead to Rights (Shen Ao, China)
6. Sato and Sato (Amano Chihiro, Japan)
7. Bel Ami (Geng Jun, France)
8. The Young Strangers (Uchiyama Takuya, Japan, France, South Korea, Hong Kong)
9. The World of Love (Yoon Ga-eun, South Korea)
10. The Invisible Half (Nishiyama Masaki, Japan)

Producer (Hakawati), curator, poet and translator, UK

1. Palestine 36 (Annemarie Jacir, Palestine, UK, France)
   A film of incredible depth and power. Jacir deftly directs a gorgeous cast of actors from all parts of Palestine whose lives entwine in this seamless and searing period drama… This is not merely fiction: Annemarie’s dignified and potent depiction of the Palestinian pushback against British colonial rule in 1936 Mandatory Palestine is a sharp history lesson that should underpin everyone’s understanding of today’s disastrous present. Seldom has the British empire’s violent architecture been depicted with such astute precision and clarity, giving this film the potential to change how the world is understood for generations to come. Palestine 36 is the most important film of 2025, a genuine tour de force.
2. A Bunch of Questions with No Answers (Robert M Ochshorn and Alex Reynolds, USA)
   Spanning 23 hours, this is a record of the questions posed by international journalists to the US State Department about Palestine during press briefings from 3 October 2023 to the end of the Biden administration. Vacuous responses by the State Department representatives are edited out, so that the questions themselves are in focus. They are, in fact, the news – information that never reached the mainstream. An utterly haunting and longitudinal lens into journalism and accountability.
3. Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia)
   Bezinović invites the inhabitants of his city, Rijeka (Croatia), to re-enact a lesser known moment of their collective history: Italian poet, playwright, journalist, aristocrat and army officer Gabriele D’Annunzio’s attempt to annex the city of Fiume (Rijeka) to Italy in the aftermath of WWI. Bonkers and brilliant in its imaginary, made with humour and creative flair, this is also a powerful anti-fascist manifesto, a bold reminder of the ways that history (or ultranationalist ideologies) plays into the present. I was fortunate enough to see the film in Pula – a few days after a fascist gathering in Rijeka attracted hundreds of thousands of people – and the prescience and relevance of the film couldn’t have reverberated more loudly. Back in Rijeka, I felt I was seeing the city with new eyes — winks of a complicated past peering out from every street corner in the shape of tiles, year inscriptions, faded signs.
4. Familiar Touch (Sarah Friedland, USA)
   I have huge admiration for this jewel of a film and was deeply moved by it, particularly as a carer myself. When I speak of my father’s dementia, people often cock their heads with concern and sadness – but there is so much more than sorrow in his illness, and I’ve seldom seen a film reflect on this with such care, love and depth. Brimming with warmth, Familiar Touch paints a nuanced and life-affirming reflection of later life, and life with dementia. I loved the coming-of-age framework built around Ruth (the luminous Kathleen Chalfant) and was overwhelmed with emotion to learn, after seeing the film, the ways in which it had been conceived collaboratively.
5. There Was, There Was Not (Emily Mkrtichian, Armenia, USA)
   “There Was, There Was Not” is the first line of every Armenian fairy tale, meaning something akin to ‘once upon a time’, but it is devastating, bewildering even, to witness the way these words come to represent the ethnic cleansing and disappearance of a place. Mkrtichian’s heartbreaking documentary began as a portrait of four women in Artsakh rebuilding their lives after one war – little did they known their delicate conversation would become an elegy for their lost homeland. Haunting, aching documentary filmmaking.
6. Hamlet (Aneil Karia, USA, UK)
   Karia’s first-person Hamlet, tightly wound around Riz Ahmed’s angst-filled Hamlet, pulses with rage and brilliance. Karia weaves present-day London with Shakespeare’s infamous words to give them new life, reflecting on a capitalist empire that is rotten and ruthless to its core. Ophelia and Gertrude’s expanded roles are a gift – as are Morfydd Clark and Sheba Chaddha’s visceral performances. The centrepiece dance scene, choreographed by Akram Khan, is jaw-dropping. Most satisfying is Michael Lesslie’s script, boldly reclaiming “to be or not to be” as a statement of resistance rather than an affirmation of existence or a suicide lamentation.
7. Upshot (Maha Haj, Italy, France)
   I was speechless the first time I saw this film. Devastating in its dignity, simplicity and restraint, Upshot is a 34-minute film that will inhabit my body forever.
8. The Shadow Scholars (Eloise King, UK)
   King’s debut documentary explores the hidden world of Kenya’s ‘shadow scholars’ – ghostwriters powering a global academic industry. Ethics, AI, technology, responsibility and colonial legacies are in fascinating conversation throughout, while the dreamlike quality of the image – dotted with doppelgängers, doublespeak and historical snapshots – underline the thwarted possibility of another world. The question of co-creation is reflected through a British-Kenyan academic, Dr Patricia Kingori (the youngest woman and youngest Black professor in Oxford’s 925-year history): stepping into frame as a central character, she invites us to consider documentary ethics as a colonial legacy as strong as the labour extractivism at the heart of the film.
9. The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (Theo Panagopoulos, UK)
   The quiet and tenderness of Theo Panagopoulos’s short documentary is its great power. These ‘reclaimed’ and seldom-seen Scottish film archives of Palestinian wildflowers are in themselves fascinating, but Panagopoulos’s interventions through sporadic and elegant text, through a re-editing that attempts to re-centre fleeting moments of indigenous Palestinian life, underline how these records, filmed by Scottish missionaries in Mandatory Palestine, are also images of pernicious violence. An altogether different understanding to what the flowers witness, of history repeating itself.
10. A Departure (Niki Kohandel, UK)
    I love the warmth and wonder in Niki Kohandel’s work and this micro film, commissioned by Open City Documentary Festival as this year’s festival trailer, was another delightful example. Kohandel’s gentle poetry, collaborative filmmaking ethos and dreamlike visual language are more than simply alluring, they are deeply entwined with the potent political messages her films also hold, here reflecting on lives thwarted at sea and the colonial architectures that underpin the promise and pain of a forced migration.

Critic, US

1. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, Spain, France, Portugal)
2. Queerpanorama (Jun Li, Hong Kong, USA)
3. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
4. Dracula (Radu Jude, Romania, Austria, Luxembourg, Brazil, UK, Switzerland)
5. M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone, USA, New Zealand)
6. Holy Night: Demon Hunters (Lim Dae-Hee, South Korea)
7. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal)
8. Ghost Trail (Jonathan Millet, France, Belgium, Germany)
9. Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho, USA, South Korea)
10. Red Path (Lofti Achour, Tunisia, France, Belgium, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Qatar)

Film journalist and programmer, UK

1. The Chronology of Water (Kristen Stewart, USA, France, Latvia)
2. Rewrite (Matsui Daigo, Japan)
3. Brand New Landscape (Danzuka Yuiga, Japan)
4. Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, Germany, Hungary, France)
5. 5 Centimeters per Second (Okuyama Yoshiyuki, Japan)
6. Seven Veils (Atom Egoyan, Canada, Finland, USA)
7. After the Hunt (Luca Guadagnino, USA, Italy)
8. Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc (Yoshihara Tatsuya, Japan)
9. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, USA, Ireland, France)
10. 100 Nights of Hero (Julia Jackman, UK)

I spent the year on the festival circuit, visiting Rotterdam, Udine, Cannes, and Venice, and covering Busan and Tokyo remotely. The films that populate this list are those that have taken up residence in my heart in the months since I first laid eyes on them. These ten films acutely, sensitively and arrestingly capture the interpersonal pushes and pulls of romance, identity, and trauma. Most of all, they are exemplary of cinema’s capacity to reach where words cannot – not to distract or merely soothe, but to confront, and in doing so heal us.

Film journalist, programmer and video essayist, UK

1. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
2. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
3. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
4. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
5. The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffith, UK)
6. Twinless (James Sweeney, USA)
7. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
8. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
9. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
10. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)

A real resurgence of terrific genre films this year – Sinners, Weapons, Black Bag, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Splitsville – many of which put some of the bloated, wildly overpraised awards contenders to shame. I also fell hard for some phenomenal performances, notably Dylan O’Brien in Twinless, Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon, Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent and the fearless Pillion guys. And Tom Basden’s original songs in The Ballad of Wallis Island (and the beautiful film as a whole) were heartbreakingly good.

Critic, UK

1. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)
4. Brand New Landscape (Danzuka Yuiga, Japan)
5. The World of Love (Yoon Ga-eun, South Korea)
6. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
7. Two Seasons, Two Strangers (Miyake Sho, Japan)
8. Lucky Lu (Lloyd Lee Choi, Canada, USA)
9. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
10. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer, USA, Canada)

Since another publication asks me for a list based on UK release dates, this ballot sticks to films that premiered in 2025. 

A strong year for familial trauma. The ‘doomsday’ segment in Bi Gan’s Resurrection might be my favourite film of this decade.

Critic, Canada

1. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke, China)
2. The Code (Eugene Kotlyarenko, USA)
3. Looney Tunes: The Day the Earth Blew Up (Peter Browngardt, USA, Canada)
4. Eephus (Carson Lund, USA, France)
5. Evil Puddle (Charlie Roxburgh, USA)
6. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
7. Retro (Karthik Subbaraj, India)
8. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, Canada, France)
9. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari, Palestine, Qatar, Germany, France)

Film critic, broadcaster and co-founder and host (Girls on Film), UK

1. Left-Handed Girl (Shih-Ching Tsou, Taiwan, France, USA, UK)
2. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
3. Brides (Nadia Fall, UK)
4. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
5. Harvest (Athina Rachel Tsvangari, UK, Germany, USA, France, Greece)
6. Savages (Claude Barras, Switzerland, France, Belgium, UK)
7. The Courageous (Jasmin Gordon, Switzerland)
8. Lollipop (Daisy-May Hudson, UK)
9. Belén (Dolores Fonzi, Argentina)
10. The Life of Chuck (Mike Flanagan, USA)

Critic and programmer, India

1. Happiness (Firat Yücel, Turkey, Netherlands)
2. Living the Land (Huo Meng, China)
3. Manal Issa, 2024 (Elisabeth Subrin, Lebanon, USA)
4. Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs, USA, Germany)
5. Beyond the Mast (Mohammad Nuruzzaman, Bangladesh)
6. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
7. Obscure night – “Ain’t I a Child?” (Sylvain George, France, Switzerland, Portugal)
8. Roohrangi (Tusharr Madhavv, India, Netherlands)
9. What If We Run Out of Stones? (Nora Štrbová, Czech Republic)
10. Past Is Present (Shaheen Dill-Riaz, Germany)

Writer and editor, UK

1. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
2. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
3. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)
4. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, Canada, France)
5. 7 Walks with Mark Brown (Vincent Barré and Pierre Creton, France)
6. Lover, Lovers, Loving, Love (Jodie Mack, USA)
7. The Fence (Claire Denis, France)
8. Escape (Tôsô) (Adachi Masao, Japan)
9. Levers (Rhayne Vermette, Canada)
10. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)

Critic, UK

1. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
4. Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, UK)
5. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
6. Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay, USA, UK)
7. The Tale of Silyan (Tamara Kotevska, North Macedonia, USA)
8. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
9. Urchin (Harris Dickinson, UK, USA)
10. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)

Managing Editor, S&S, UK

1. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany)
2. The Love That Remains (Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France)
3. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
4. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
5. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
6. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
7. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
8. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
9. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, Germany)
10. Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa, France, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine)

My discovery of the year was Sumitra Pieres’s The Girls (Gehenu Lamai, 1978).

Critic, UK

1. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (Kevin Costner, USA)
2. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, USA)
3. Turn in the Wound (Abel Ferrara, USA, Germany, UK, Italy)
4. In Our Day (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea)
5. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood, USA)
6. The Alto Knights (Barry Levinson, USA)
7. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, France, Canada)
8. About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, France, Germany, Sweden, Qatar)
9. Oh, Canada (Paul Schrader, Canada, USA, Israel)
10. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, UK, Spain)

I feel increasingly estranged from contemporary culture, most of my recent viewing pleasure being provided by classical Hollywood. My top ten choices primarily consist of films that are nostalgic for past forms of cinema, with either genres or bodies of work approaching an end point.

Critic, US

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
4. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland)
5. The Currents (Milagros Mumenthaler, Argentina, Switzerland)
6. What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea)
7. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
8. Kontinental ’25 (Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg)
9. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
10. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, USA, Ireland, France)

A set of fantastic films that seem to hearken back to past styles (of their respective directors and otherwise) while also creating something entirely new, which also applies to near-misses Below the Clouds, The Mastermind and The Phoenician Scheme. Some of the amazing 2024 premieres I was only able to see this year: Misericordia, Henry Fonda for President, Afternoons of Solitude, 7 Walks With Mark Brown, and My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, along with Grand Tour, It’s Not Me, By the Stream and The Other Way Around from the end of last year.

Critic, US

1. My Undesirable Friends, Part 1: Last Air in Moscow (Julia Loktev, USA, Russia)
2. BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions (Kahlil Joseph, USA)
3. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
4. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, France)
5. Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan)
6. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke, China)
7. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
8. Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, Finland, USA)
9. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
10. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch, USA, Ireland, France)

Writer and editor, UK

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)
4. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
5. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
6. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
7. Magellan (Lav Diaz, Philippines, Spain, Portugal, France, Taiwan)
8. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
9. Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, Germany, Hungary, France)
10. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)

BFI Digital Production Editor and film critic, UK

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Little Trouble Girls (Urška Djukić, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Serbia)
4. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
5. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
6. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
7. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)
8. Splitsville (Michael Angelo Covino, USA)
9. Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay, USA, UK)
10. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)

Sirât’s singular impact means that some six months after viewing I’m still of the opinion it’s the most distinctive, watchable film since Monos (2019). There really is nothing like it – a savage, unforgiving psychedelic techno desert freak-out that’s Ice Cold in Alex by way of Mad Max and The Wages of Fear but not really much like any of ’em.

Almost as surprising, I’ve included three American films made by the same major studio. Normally I’d expect this behaviour to get me ostracised from our febrile film community or booed at screenings for being an obsequious corporate plant but hear me out before you send me an excrement-filled envelope. These three films – One Battle, Sinners and Weapons – are made by the best American filmmaker of his generation (PTA), one who may end up being the best of his (Coogler) and another whose potential seems almost as great as the latter pair (Cregger). All three are full of fierce action, fresh ideas, striking images, powerful storytelling and ace performances from talented Hollywood actors. All three are original, one-off ideas (even if One Battle loosely derives from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland) that have nothing to do with a franchise, video game, comic book nor superhero. It would be wondrous if other studios took such big-budget chances with their slate. Sinners, in particular, did well at the box office so maybe there’s a tiny sliver of hope that other majors will have the minerals to back some interesting new ideas.

Documentary filmmaker, film writer, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, France)
3. A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, USA)
4. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Embeth Davidtz, South Africa)
5. The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, UK, USA)
6. La Cocina (Alonso Ruizpalacios, Mexico, USA)
7. Holy Cow (Louise Courvoisier, France)
8. Dying (Sterben) (Matthias Glasner, Germany)
9. Motherboard (Victoria Mapplebeck, UK)
10. The Girl with the Needle (Magnus von Horn, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, France, Belgium)

Most of my chosen films have made the list because they achieved precisely what they set out to do, while a few showed extraordinary ambition, with Anderson proving he’s one of the major directors of our time. Hope lies in a number of strong first features as well as remarkable performances by very young non-actors. Oh, and a shout out for London’s Prince Charles Cinema which has resolutely maintained the unique experience of watching a film with a large attentive audience – even in the afternoon!

Film critic, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
3. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee, USA, Japan)
4. Magellan (Lav Diaz, Philippines, Spain, Portugal, France, Taiwan)
5. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
6. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
7. Dracula (Radu Jude, Romania, Austria, Luxembourg, Brazil, UK, Switzerland)
8. The Woman in the Yard (Jaume Collet-Serra, USA)
9. In the Lost Lands (Paul W S Anderson, Germany, USA, Switzerland)
10. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)

Writer and editor, UK

1. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
2. Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo, USA)
3. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
4. Remake (Ross McElwee, UK)
5. Levers (Rhayne Vermette, Canada)
6. Through a Mirror Darkly (Naeem Mohammed, UK)
7. Green Grey Black Brown (Wang Yuyan, China, France, South Korea)
8. In the Manner of Smoke (Armand Yervant Tufenkian, USA, UK)
9. Shifty (Adam Curtis, UK)
10. The Blue Line (Marie Dumora, France)

“Companies now have ideas of how cinema should look or be today, and if you’re not doing it like that, it makes you feel like you can’t do it. Some people may feel like, because of these reasons, that they can’t make films in a specific way, but of course that’s not something I think about a lot.” 
— Alexandre Koberidze

Critic, UK

1. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)
2. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia, Italy, France)
3. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark)
4. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
5. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, USA, UK)
6. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, UK)
7. Cover-up (Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, USA)
8. Pillion (Harry Lighton, UK)
9. Remake (Ross McElwee, UK)
10. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)

Critic and film academic, UK

1. The Richest Woman in the World (La Femme la plus riche du monde) (Thierry Klifa, France, Belgium)
2. The Witness (Nader Saeivar, Germany, Austria)
3. A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, USA)
4. A Normal Family (Hur Jin-ho, South Korea)
5. Souleymane’s Story (Boris Lojkine, France)
6. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, France)
7. God Save the Tuche (Jean-Paul Rouve, France)
8. La Cache (Lionel Baier, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France)
9. Holy Cow (Louise Courvoisier, France)
10. Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams (Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway)

Critic, UK

1. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
2. The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffith, UK)
3. Deaf (Eva Libertad, Spain)
4. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
5. Superman (James Gunn, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)
6. Roofman (Derek Cianfrance, USA)
7. A Sad and Beautiful World (Cyril Aris, Lebanon, Germany, USA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar)
8. Calle Málaga (Maryam Touzani, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Morocco)
9. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
10. Weapons (Zach Cregger, USA)

My 2025 list is an unusually even split between mainstream cinema (given a much-needed shot in the arm by thrilling movies like Sinners, One Battle After Another, Weapons and Superman), and a reliably strong showing of festival features. Two very different films, Roofman and Calle Málaga, gave their respective stars the best roles of their careers to date. 

In a year where blockbuster romances sputtered, A Sad and Beautiful World glowed. Deaf was thoughtful and radical in its empathy. In charmingly low-key fashion, The Ballad of Wallis Island announced itself an instant classic. It Was Just an Accident was a blazingly defiant new addition to the filmography of one of cinema’s bravest and most talented voices. All in all, it was a pretty great year for movies (if little else…!).

Film critic, UK

1. Girl (Shu Qi, Taiwan, China)
2. Happyend (Neo Sora, Japan, USA, Singapore, UK)
3. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
4. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg)
5. Cover-up (Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, USA)
6. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)
7. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)
8. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, USA, UK)
9. Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan)
10. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)

Critic, UK

1. Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary)
2. On Falling (Laura Carriera, UK)
3. Variations on the Theme of (The Ocean View Resort) (Miyagi Futoshi, Japan)
4. The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (Theo Panagopoulos, UK)
5. The Stimming Pool (Steven Eastwood, Robin Elliot-Knowles, Georgia Kumari Bradburn, Sam Ahern, Benjamin Brown, Lucy Walker, UK)
6. Daria’s Night Flowers (Maryam Tafakory, France, UK, Iran)
7. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France)
8. Tuktuit: Caribou (Lindsay McIntyre, Canada)
9. Seeking Mavis Beacon (Jazmin Jones, USA)
10. Siticulosa (Maeve Brennan, Denmark, UK)

Filmmaker, UK

1. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, USA)
2. Roofman (Derek Cianfrance, USA)
3. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
4. Fucktoys (Annapurna Sriram, USA)
5. Universal Language (Matthew Rankin, Canada)

In an artworld supposedly cowed by algorithms, it was refreshing to see playful and provocative interrogations of film form in all these picks – with the exception of Roofman, which is really just very very good.

Critic, UK

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
2. Sinners (Ryan Coogler, USA)
3. Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France)
4. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, USA)
5. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari, Palestine, Qatar, Germany, France)
6. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee, USA, Japan)
7. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, UK)
8. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
9. My Father’s Shadow (Akinola Davies Jr., UK, Nigeria)
10. Cover-up (Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, USA)

Digital Features Editor, BFI, UK

1. After Dreaming (Christine Haroutounian, Armenia, Mexico, USA)
2. When the Sun Is Eaten (Chi’bal K’iin) (Kevin Jerome Everson, USA)
3. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia)
4. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold, Germany)
5. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
6. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland)
7. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
8. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
9. Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee, USA, Japan)
10. Dreams (Michel Franco, Mexico, USA)

Editor in Chief, S&S, UK

1. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus (Eva Aridjis Fuentes, Mexico, USA)
4. Resurrection (Bi Gan, China, France)
5. Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin, UK)
6. Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, Belgium, France)
7. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, Canada, France)
8. Steve (Tim Mielants, Ireland, UK)
9. Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho, USA, South Korea)
10. Riefenstahl (Andres Veiel, Germany)

Critic, Programmer, consultant, filmmaker, actor, Austria

1. Sirât (Oliver Laxe, Spain, France)
2. Scénarios (Jean-Luc Godard, France, Japan)
3. Better Man (Michael Gracey, UK, France, China, Australia, USA)
4. Slet 1988 (Marta Popivoda, Serbia, France, Germany)
5. Bird (Andrea Arnold, UK, USA, France, Germany)
6. Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa, France, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine)
7. Workers’ Wings (Ilir Hasanaj, Kosovo)
8. The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, USA, France)
9. Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia)
10. WedLOCK tradWIFE (Gabriele Neudecker, Austria)

I filed my 2024 ballot on deadline day and hours later saw Godard’s Scénarios, which I did not expect to be bested during the ensuing 364 days. But… BANG!, Sirât!!!

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, France, Germany, Sweden, Qatar

Voted for by: Brad Stevens

Christine Haroutounian, Armenia, Mexico, USA

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov, Sam Wigley

Luca Guadagnino, USA, Italy

Voted for by: Blake Simons

Lucio Castro, USA

Voted for by: Jamie Dunn

Kevin B Lee, Belgium, France, Germany

Voted for by: Hyun Jin Cho

Albert Serra, Spain, France, Portugal

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Philip Concannon, Phil Hoad, Georgina Guthrie, Carmen Gray, Travis Jeppesen, Chris Shields, Jonathan Ali

Katell Quillevere, France, Belgium

Voted for by: Mary Harrod

Julia Ducournau, France, Belgium

Voted for by: Sophie Monks Kaufman

Barry Levinson, USA

Voted for by: Brad Stevens

Deming Chen, USA, China, France, Taiwan

Voted for by: Nick Bradshaw

Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, Germany, Lesotho, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia

Voted for by: Kevin B Lee

Sean Baker, USA

Voted for by: Philip Horne

Ali Abbasi, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, USA

Voted for by: Mary Harrod

Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia, Italy, France

Voted for by: Mark Cousins, Miriam Balanescu, Hope Rangaswami, Dario Lllinares, Michael Atkinson, Saskia Baron, Katie McCabe, Laura Venning

Malena Szlam, Canada, Australia, Chile

Voted for by: Sophia Satchell-Baeza

Victor Kossakovsky, Germany, France, USA, French Polynesia

Voted for by: Dario Lllinares

Liu Jian, China

Voted for by: John Berra

Halina Reijn, Netherlands, USA

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Jonathan Rosenbaum

Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan

Voted for by: Travis Jeppesen

Sharunas Bartas, Lithuania, France, Poland, Latvia

Voted for by: Rastko Novaković

Jonatan Etzler, UK

Voted for by: Rógan Graham

Giovanni Colombu, Italy, Germany

Voted for by: Stephen Dalton

Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, USA

Voted for by: Rachel Pronger

James Griffith, UK

Voted for by: Sam Clements, Chloe Walker, Leigh Singer, Omar Ahmed

Roisin Agnew, UK, Ireland

Voted for by: Rógan Graham

Bertrand Bonello, France, Canada

Voted for by: Brad Stevens

Polen Ly, Cambodia

Voted for by: Hyun Jin Cho, Dario Lllinares

John Smith, UK

Voted for by: David Katz, Nick Bradshaw

Geng Jun, France

Voted for by: Hayley Scanlon

Dolores Fonzi, Argentina

Voted for by: Anna Smith

Gianfranco Rosi, Italy

Voted for by: Jonathan Romney

Gianfranco Rosi, Italy

Voted for by: Lee Marshall, Bedatri Datta Choudhury

Mire Remo, Czech Republic, Slovakia

Voted for by: Stephen Dalton

Michael Gracey, UK, France, China, Australia, USA

Voted for by: Neil Young

Lucia Seles, Argentina

Voted for by: Filipe Furtado

Mohammad Nuruzzaman, Bangladesh

Voted for by: Srikanth Srinivasan

Corey Sherman, USA

Voted for by: David Parkinson

Andrea Arnold, UK, USA, France, Germany

Voted for by: Mary Harrod, Neil Young

Steven Soderberg, USA

Voted for by: Sam Clements, Anton Bitel, Tim Hayes, Geoff Andrew, Rory Doherty, Kim Newman, Patrick Fahy

Kahlil Joseph, USA

Voted for by: Amy Taubin, Kevin B Lee

Samuel Suffren, France, Haiti

Voted for by: Jonathan Ali

Sophy Romvari, Canada, Hungary

Voted for by: Billie Walker, Philip Concannon, Miriam Balanescu, Ian Wang, Josh Slater-Williams, Rory Doherty, Katherine McLaughlin, Simran Hans, Laura Venning, Matthew Taylor

Marie Dumora, France

Voted for by: Matt Turner

Richard Linklater, USA, Ireland

Voted for by: Philip Horne, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Ryan Swen, Filipe Furtado, Henry K. Miller, Molly Haskell, Travis Jeppesen, Lee Marshall, Sam Wigley

Sinéad O’Shea, Ireland, UK

Voted for by: Sophie Monks Kaufman, Derek O’Connor

Gabriel Mascaro, Brazil, Mexico, Netherlands, Chile

Voted for by: Alex Davidson

CAMP, India

Voted for by: Erika Balsom

Danzuka Yuiga, Japan

Voted for by: Blake Simons, Josh Slater-Williams

Nadia Fall, UK

Voted for by: Anna Smith

Danny and Michael Philippou, Australia

Voted for by: Colette Balmain, Roger Luckhurst

Kitano Takeshi, Japan

Voted for by: Filipe Furtado

Ondřej Provazník, Czech Republic, Slovakia

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Brady Corbet, USA, UK, Hungary

Voted for by: Rachel Pronger, Pamela Hutchinson, Saskia Baron

Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland, UK, Canada, South Korea, USA

Voted for by: John Bleasdale, Derek O’Connor, Lee Marshall

Eugénie Grandval, France

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Robert M Ochshorn and Alex Reynolds, USA

Voted for by: Elhum Shakerifar

Nguyễn Lê Hoàng Phúc, Vietnam

Voted for by: Patrick Gamble

Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, India, UK, Canada

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran, Nick Davis

Albertina Carri, Argentina, Brazil, Spain

Voted for by: Rastko Novaković

Maryam Touzani, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Morocco

Voted for by: Chloe Walker

Louise Weard, Canada

Voted for by: Rachel Pronger

Jia Zhang-ke, China

Voted for by: Amy Taubin, Will Sloan, Michael Atkinson

Darren Aronofsky, USA

Voted for by: James Mottram, Tim Hayes, Mary Harrod

Yoshihara Tatsuya, Japan

Voted for by: Blake Simons

Kristen Stewart, USA, France, Latvia

Voted for by: Blake Simons, Mary Harrod, Rafa Sales Ross, Stephen Dalton

Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Japan

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum, Billie Walker, Omar Ahmed, Amy Taubin, John Berra, Rory Doherty, Kim Newman

Eugene Kotlyarenko, USA

Voted for by: Will Sloan

Drew Hancock, USA

Voted for by: Roger Luckhurst

Zeinabu irene Davis, USA

Voted for by: Simran Hans

James Mangold, USA

Voted for by: Jane Giles, David Thompson, Henry K. Miller, Ginette Vincendeau

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, France, Belgium

Voted for by: Patrick Fahy

Jasmin Gordon, Switzerland

Voted for by: Anna Smith

Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, USA

Voted for by: Billie Walker, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Molly Haskell, Katie McCabe, Laura Venning, Charles Whitehouse

Milagros Mumenthaler, Argentina, Switzerland

Voted for by: Ryan Swen

Chris Petit, Finland

Voted for by: David Pirie

Grégoire Graesslin, France

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Maryam Tafakory, France, UK, Iran

Voted for by: Hyun Jin Cho, Ian Wang, Jonathan Ali

Gus Van Sant, USA

Voted for by: James Mottram

Shen Ao, China

Voted for by: Hayley Scanlon

Eva Libertad, Spain

Voted for by: Chloe Walker, Rachel Pronger

Julian Castronovo, USA

Voted for by: Matt Turner

Nellie Kluz, USA

Voted for by: Soham Gadre

Sotozaki Haruo, Japan, USA

Voted for by: Mark Cousins, Anne Billson

Niki Kohandel, UK

Voted for by: Elhum Shakerifar

Ernesto Martinez Bucio, Mexico

Voted for by: Alex Ramon

Lynne Ramsay, USA, UK

Voted for by: Kevin B Lee, Rógan Graham, Savina Petkova, Kate Stables, Lou Thomas, Mar Diestro-Dópido

Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell, France, Germany

Voted for by: Nicolas Rapold

Nicole London, USA

Voted for by: Ehsan Khoshbakht

Peter Hastings, USA

Voted for by: Henry Barnes

Embeth Davidtz, South Africa

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, David Thompson, Mary Harrod, Saskia Baron

Radu Jude, Romania, Austria, Luxembourg, Brazil, UK, Switzerland

Voted for by: Michael Atkinson, Travis Jeppesen, Chris Shields, Matthew Thrift

Michel Franco, Mexico, USA

Voted for by: Sam Wigley

Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, David Katz, Hyun Jin Cho, Kevin B Lee, Jordan Cronk, Patrick Gamble, Caitlin Quinlan, Filipe Furtado, Hope Rangaswami, Dylan Huw, Carmen Gray, Laura Staab, Joseph Fahim, Matt Turner, Matthew Thrift, Sam Wigley

Matthias Glasner, Germany

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew, David Thompson

Abby Martin, Mike Prysner, USA

Voted for by: Rastko Novaković

Jim Hosking, UK

Voted for by: Jane Giles

Ari Aster, USA, UK, Finland

Voted for by: Anton Bitel, Rachel Pronger, Tim Hayes, Omar Ahmed, Phil Hoad, Nick Davis, Guy Lodge, Brogan Morris

Carson Lund, USA, France

Voted for by: Will Sloan

Želimir Žilnik, Serbia, Slovenia

Voted for by: Alex Davidson

Justin Kurzel, Australia

Voted for by: Nick Hasted

Audrey Diwan, France, USA

Voted for by: Lillian Crawford

Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, UK, Sweden, USA

Voted for by: Mark Cousins

Seth and Peter Scriver, Canada

Voted for by: Tom Charity, Thomas Flew

Robin Campillo, France, Italy, Belgium

Voted for by: Hyun Jin Cho

Adachi Masao, Japan

Voted for by: Laura Staab

Charlie Roxburgh, USA

Voted for by: Will Sloan

Alexander Sokurov, Russia, Belgium

Voted for by: Michael Atkinson

Sarah Friedland, USA

Voted for by: Elhum Shakerifar

Isabel Pagliai, France

Voted for by: James Lattimer

Jim Jarmusch, USA, Ireland, France

Voted for by: Ryan Swen, Amy Taubin, Jordan Cronk, Miriam Balanescu, Blake Simons, Lee Marshall, Mar Diestro-Dópido

Blake Williams, Canada, Spain, USA

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov

Claire Denis, France

Voted for by: Laura Staab

Adam B. Stein, Zach Lipovsky, Canada, Spain, USA

Voted for by: Sam Clements, Hope Rangaswami

Rob Tregenza, Norway

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Igor Bezinović, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia

Voted for by: Neil Young, Elhum Shakerifar, Dylan Huw, Carmen Gray

Okuyama Yoshiyuki, Japan

Voted for by: Blake Simons

Mel Gibson, USA

Voted for by: Patrick Fahy

Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, Belgium, France

Voted for by: Mark Cousins, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Pamela Hutchinson, Mike Williams

Theo Panagopoulos, UK

Voted for by: Ian Wang, Elhum Shakerifar

Guillermo del Toro, Mexico, USA

Voted for by: Colette Balmain, Carlos Aguilar, Leila Latif, Mar Diestro-Dópido

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, USA, Canada

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

Andrew DeYoung, USA

Voted for by: James Mottram, Sophie Brown, Derek O’Connor

Rashid Masharawi, Palestine, France, Qatar, UAE, Switzerland, Denmark

Voted for by: Leila Latif

Andreas Dresden, Germany

Voted for by: Noel Hess

Jack Cocker, UK

Voted for by: Patrick Fahy

Kim Jong-kwan, South Korea

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

Rita Azevedo Gomes, Portugal

Voted for by: Filipe Furtado

Annapurna Sriram, USA

Voted for by: William Webb

Karla Murthy, USA

Voted for by: Nick Bradshaw

Karim Shah, UK

Voted for by: Omar Ahmed

Robert Greenwald, USA

Voted for by: David Pirie

Jonathan Millet, France, Belgium, Germany

Voted for by: John Berra, Chris Shields

Shu Qi, Taiwan, China

Voted for by: Billie Walker, Colette Balmain

Louise Hémon, France

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Magnus von Horn, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, France, Belgium

Voted for by: Alex Ramon, David Thompson, Pamela Hutchinson, Brogan Morris

Vivian Qu, China

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran

Christopher Harris, USA, Senegal

Voted for by: Matthew Barrington

Jean-Paul Rouve, France

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau

Ben Leonberg, USA

Voted for by: Kim Newman

India Donaldson, USA

Voted for by: Georgina Guthrie

José Luis Guerin, France, Spain

Voted for by: Dylan Huw, Maria Delgado

Eva Aridjis Fuentes, Mexico, USA

Voted for by: Mike Williams

Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls, UK, USA

Voted for by: Mark Cousins, Pamela Hutchinson, Roger Luckhurst

Miguel Gomes, Portugal, Italy, France

Voted for by: Lillian Crawford, Miriam Balanescu, Michael Atkinson, Pamela Hutchinson, Brogan Morris

Wang Yuyan, China, France, South Korea

Voted for by: Matt Turner

Nicolas Graux, Truong Minh Quy, France, Belgium, Vietnam

Voted for by: Hyun Jin Cho, Kevin B Lee, Dylan Huw

Aneil Karia, USA, UK

Voted for by: Elhum Shakerifar

Chloe Zhao, UK

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, James Mottram, Naman Ramachandran, Pamela Hutchinson, Charles Gant, Kate Stables

Firat Yücel, Turkey, Netherlands

Voted for by: Srikanth Srinivasan

Neo Sora, Japan, USA, Singapore, UK

Voted for by: Billie Walker

Mike Leigh, UK, Spain

Voted for by: Brad Stevens, Phil Hoad, Rógan Graham, Ian Mantgani, Brogan Morris, Kim Newman

Athina Rachel Tsvangari, UK, Germany, USA, France, Greece

Voted for by: Rachel Pronger, Brogan Morris, Anna Smith

Nia DaCosta, USA

Voted for by: Colette Balmain, Rógan Graham

Alexander Horwarth, Austria, Germany

Voted for by: Molly Haskell

David Mamet, USA

Voted for by: Ehsan Khoshbakht

Robert Zemeckis, USA, Canada

Voted for by: Ian Mantgani, Patrick Fahy

Elizabeth Price, UK

Voted for by: Dylan Huw

Spike Lee, USA, Japan

Voted for by: Sam Clements, Ian Mantgani, Derek O’Connor, Matthew Thrift, Sam Wigley, Charles Whitehouse

Oliver Hermanus, USA, UK, Sweden, Italy

Voted for by: Alex Ramon

Paolo Strippoli, Italy, Slovenia

Voted for by: Sophie Brown

Louise Courvoisier, France

Voted for by: Philip Horne, David Thompson, Roger Luckhurst, Ginette Vincendeau, Saskia Baron

Lim Dae-Hee, South Korea

Voted for by: Chris Shields

Neeraj Ghaywan, India

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran, Bedatri Datta Choudhury

Ethan Coen, UK, USA

Voted for by: Tim Hayes

Kevin Costner, USA

Voted for by: Brad Stevens

Kathryn Bigelow, USA

Voted for by: Jane Giles, Tim Hayes, David Pirie, Henry K. Miller, Ian Mantgani, Rastko Novaković, Nicolas Rapold, John Bleasdale, Charles Whitehouse

Eleanor Mortimer, UK

Voted for by: Savina Petkova

Kirk Jones, UK

Voted for by: Jane Giles

Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France, Germany

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Anne Billson, Anton Bitel, Leigh Singer, Jonathan Romney, Sophie Brown, Laura Staab, Savina Petkova, Nick James, Isabel Stevens

Mary Bronstein, USA

Voted for by: Sam Clements, Hope Rangaswami, Henry K. Miller, Sophie Brown, Joseph Fahim, Stephen Dalton, Mar Diestro-Dópido, Katie McCabe

Tatia She / Anthea Kennedy, UK

Voted for by: Rastko Novaković

Deni Oumar Pitsaev, France, Belgium

Voted for by: Carmen Gray

Hong Sangsoo, South Korea

Voted for by: Brad Stevens

Paul W S Anderson, Germany, USA, Switzerland

Voted for by: Matthew Thrift

Armand Yervant Tufenkian, USA, UK

Voted for by: Matt Turner

Nishiyama Masaki, Japan

Voted for by: Hayley Scanlon

Matteo Garrone, Italy, Belgium, France

Voted for by: Mary Harrod

Bradley Cooper, USA

Voted for by: Simran Hans

Hsu Ya-ting, Taiwan, Japan, France

Voted for by: Hyun Jin Cho

Jan Ole-Gerster, Germany

Voted for by: James Mottram, Brogan Morris

Akex Ullom, USA

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov

Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg

Voted for by: Chloe Walker, Billie Walker, Leigh Singer, Ryan Swen, Amy Taubin, Kevin B Lee, Alex Davidson, Dario Lllinares, Katherine McLaughlin, Michael Atkinson, Sophie Brown, Molly Haskell, Nicolas Rapold, Jamie Dunn, Maria Delgado, Lee Marshall, Vadim Rizov, Kate Stables, Carlos Aguilar, Soham Gadre, Matthew Taylor

Andy Curd, UK

Voted for by: Patrick Fahy

Clint Eastwood, USA

Voted for by: Ehsan Khoshbakht, Brad Stevens, Filipe Furtado, Patrick Fahy

Lee Sang-il, Japan

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran, Hayley Scanlon

Radu Jude, Romania, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, Luxembourg

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum, Ryan Swen, Jordan Cronk, Geoff Andrew, Hope Rangaswami, Dario Lllinares, Dylan Huw, Nick Hasted, Travis Jeppesen, Vadim Rizov, Bedatri Datta Choudhury

Maxime Jean-Baptiste, Belgium, French Guiana, France

Voted for by: Sophia Satchell-Baeza

Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, USA, Canada

Voted for by: Henry Barnes, Sam Clements

Randa Maroufi, Morocco, Qatar, Italy, France

Voted for by: Jonathan Ali

Lionel Baier, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau

Alonso Ruizpalacios, Mexico, USA

Voted for by: David Thompson

Robert Guédiguian, France

Voted for by: Tom Charity

Scott Barley, Portugal

Voted for by: Patrick Gamble

Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, USA, Mexico, France, Netherlands

Voted for by: Philip Horne, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Maria Delgado, Bedatri Datta Choudhury, Katie McCabe, James Lattimer

Gabriel Azorín, Spain, Portugal

Voted for by: Filipe Furtado, Jonathan Romney

Rupert Russell, UK

Voted for by: Phil Hoad

Gia Coppola, USA

Voted for by: Mar Diestro-Dópido

Kent Jones, USA

Voted for by: Jonathan Romney, James Lattimer

Petra Biondina Volpe, Switzerland, Germany

Voted for by: Georgina Guthrie, Charles Gant

Shih-Ching Tsou, Taiwan, France, USA, UK

Voted for by: James Mottram, Thomas Flew, Anna Smith

Isaiah Saxon, USA, Finland, UK

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Rhayne Vermette, Canada

Voted for by: Laura Staab, Matt Turner, James Lattimer

Reid Davenport, USA

Voted for by: Lillian Crawford, Sophie Brown, Nick Bradshaw

Mike Flanagan, USA

Voted for by: Anna Smith

Mailys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han, France, Belgium

Voted for by: Carlos Aguilar

James Benning, USA

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, James Lattimer

Urška Djukić, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Serbia

Voted for by: Georgina Guthrie, Savina Petkova, Lou Thomas

Jem Cohen, USA, Austria

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Huo Meng, China

Voted for by: Srikanth Srinivasan

Daisy-May Hudson, UK

Voted for by: Simran Hans, Anna Smith

Francis Lawrence, USA, Canada

Voted for by: Colette Balmain, Kim Newman

Peter Browngardt, USA, Canada

Voted for by: Will Sloan

Paul Greengrass, USA

Voted for by: David Pirie

Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France

Voted for by: Philip Concannon, Patrick Gamble, Nick Davis, Jonathan Romney, Molly Haskell, Guy Lodge, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Isabel Stevens

Jodie Mack, USA

Voted for by: Laura Staab

Lloyd Lee Choi, Canada, USA

Voted for by: Josh Slater-Williams

Alex Russell, USA, Italy

Voted for by: Charles Gant

Gerard Johnstone, USA, New Zealand

Voted for by: Chris Shields

Lav Diaz, Philippines, Spain, Portugal, France, Taiwan

Voted for by: Philip Concannon, Joseph Fahim, Soham Gadre, Matthew Thrift, Matthew Taylor

Amalia Ullman, USA, Argentina, UK

Voted for by: Rachel Pronger

Elisabeth Subrin, Lebanon, USA

Voted for by: Srikanth Srinivasan

Ben Rivers, UK, France, Canada

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Nick James

Pablo Larraín, Italy, Germany, Chile, USA

Voted for by: Mark Cousins

Josh Safdie, Finland, USA

Voted for by: Amy Taubin

Aitor Arregi, Jose Mari Goenaga, Spain

Voted for by: Alex Davidson

Kelly Reichardt, USA, UK

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Lillian Crawford, Alex Ramon, Jordan Cronk, Geoff Andrew, Patrick Gamble, Miriam Balanescu, Caitlin Quinlan, Filipe Furtado, Georgina Guthrie, Hope Rangaswami, Rory Doherty, Jonathan Romney, Katherine McLaughlin, Nick Hasted, Molly Haskell, Guy Lodge, Ian Mantgani, Nicolas Rapold, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Laura Staab, Jamie Dunn, Pamela Hutchinson, Maria Delgado, Thomas Flew, Kate Stables, Leila Latif, Roger Luckhurst, Lou Thomas, Matthew Thrift, Sam Wigley, Katie McCabe, Isabel Stevens, James Lattimer, Laura Venning, Matthew Taylor, Mike Williams

Celine Song, USA, Finland, UK

Voted for by: Philip Horne

Celine Song, USA, UK, Finland

Voted for by: Oris Aigbokhaevbolo

Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada

Voted for by: Philip Concannon, David Parkinson

Francis Ford Coppola, USA

Voted for by: Brad Stevens

Albert Birney, USA

Voted for by: Travis Jeppesen

Adam Elliot, Australia

Voted for by: Derek O’Connor

Andrew Kötting, UK

Voted for by: Lillian Crawford

Eva Giolo, Belgium

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski, Portugal, Peru

Voted for by: David Katz, Hyun Jin Cho

Damian Hauser, Switzerland, Kenya, Saudi Arabia

Voted for by: Stephen Dalton

Bong Joon Ho, USA, South Korea

Voted for by: Chris Shields, Mar Diestro-Dópido, Mike Williams

Jared Hess, USA, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada

Voted for by: Henry Barnes

Christian Petzold, Germany

Voted for by: Philip Horne, Jordan Cronk, Caitlin Quinlan, Savina Petkova, Nick James, Sam Wigley

Alain Guiraudie, France, Spain, Portugal

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew, Miriam Balanescu, Phil Hoad, Mary Harrod, Travis Jeppesen, Jamie Dunn, Chris Shields, Carlos Aguilar, Roger Luckhurst, Katie McCabe, Nick James

Nada El-Omari, Canada

Voted for by: Patrick Gamble

Chiang Wei-liang, Taiwan, Singapore, France

Voted for by: David Parkinson

Tolin Alexander, Siebren de Haan, Lonnie van Brummelen, Netherlands, Suriname

Voted for by: Jonathan Ali

Osgood Perkins, USA, UK, Canada

Voted for by: John Berra, Derek O’Connor, Kim Newman

Basma al-Sharif, Canada, UAE, Germany

Voted for by: Hyun Jin Cho

Jon Adams, Zelda Adams & Toby Poser, USA

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

Victoria Mapplebeck, UK

Voted for by: David Thompson, Saskia Baron

Marc Evans, UK, Canada, USA, Ireland

Voted for by: Mary Harrod

Rebecca Miller, USA

Voted for by: Philip Horne

Jihan K, USA, Libya

Voted for by: Leila Latif

Akinola Davies Jr., UK, Nigeria

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, Hope Rangaswami, Rafa Sales Ross, Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, Simran Hans, Katie McCabe, Charles Whitehouse

Okuyama Hiroshi, Japan, France

Voted for by: Hayley Scanlon

Julia Loktev, USA, Russia

Voted for by: Amy Taubin, Michael Atkinson, Carmen Gray

Akiva Schaffer, USA, Canada

Voted for by: Josh Slater-Williams, Henry K. Miller, Ian Mantgani, Brogan Morris

Jiaozi (aka Yang Yu), China

Voted for by: Phil Hoad

RaMell Ross, USA

Voted for by: Mark Cousins, Dario Lllinares, Rory Doherty, Ian Mantgani, William Webb, Pamela Hutchinson

Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon, Brazil

Voted for by: Alex Davidson

Ketevan Vashagashvili, Georgia, Bulgaria, Germany

Voted for by: Rachel Pronger

Pauline Loquès, France

Voted for by: David Katz

Park Chan-wook, South Korea

Voted for by: Colette Balmain, Naman Ramachandran, Josh Slater-Williams, Katherine McLaughlin, Ian Mantgani, Joseph Fahim, John Bleasdale, Thomas Flew, Lee Marshall, Katie McCabe, Matthew Taylor

Sana Na N’Hada, Guinea-Bissau, France, Portugal, Angola

Voted for by: Oris Aigbokhaevbolo

Hur Jin-ho, South Korea

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau

Robert Eggers, USA

Voted for by: Anne Billson, David Pirie, John Berra

Richard Linklater, France

Voted for by: Philip Horne, Amy Taubin, David Thompson, Tom Charity, Henry K. Miller, Nicolas Rapold, Nick James, Ginette Vincendeau

Sylvain George, France, Switzerland, Portugal

Voted for by: Srikanth Srinivasan

Amanda Egbe, UK

Voted for by: Rastko Novaković

Gerard Johnson, UK

Voted for by: Kim Newman

Paul Schrader, Canada, USA, Israel

Voted for by: Brad Stevens

Rhea Storr, UK

Voted for by: Jonathan Ali

Min Kyu-dong, South Korea

Voted for by: Colette Balmain

Rungano Nyoni, UK, Zambia, Ireland, USA

Voted for by: Miriam Balanescu, Soham Gadre

Laura Carriera, UK

Voted for by: Rachel Pronger, David Parkinson, Ian Wang, Georgina Guthrie, Katherine McLaughlin, Thomas Flew, Simran Hans

Paul Thomas Anderson, USA

Voted for by: Noel Hess, David Katz, Philip Horne, Wendy Ide, Anton Bitel, Nick Bradshaw, Srikanth Srinivasan, Chloe Walker, James Mottram, Billie Walker, Lillian Crawford, Philip Concannon, Jane Giles, Omar Ahmed, Ryan Swen, Colette Balmain, Kevin B Lee, Jordan Cronk, Geoff Andrew, Phil Hoad, David Thompson, Naman Ramachandran, Georgina Guthrie, Josh Slater-Williams, Will Sloan, Nick Davis, Tom Charity, Dario Lllinares, Rory Doherty, Katherine McLaughlin, Nick Hasted, Molly Haskell, Nicolas Rapold, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Jamie Dunn, Pamela Hutchinson, Joseph Fahim, John Bleasdale, Charles Gant, Derek O’Connor, Kate Stables, Kim Newman, Lou Thomas, Simran Hans, Matthew Thrift, Sam Wigley, Saskia Baron, Isabel Stevens, James Lattimer, Matthew Taylor, Mike Williams, Henry Barnes, Charles Whitehouse

Julia Jackman, UK

Voted for by: Blake Simons

Kevin MacDonald, Sam Rice-Edwards, UK

Voted for by: David Parkinson, John Berra

Justin Kurzel, USA, UK, Canada

Voted for by: Soham Gadre

László Nemes, Hungary, UK, USA, Cyprus, France, Germany

Voted for by: Nick Hasted

Raoul Peck, France, USA

Voted for by: Noel Hess

Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, David Parkinson, Tom Charity, Jamie Dunn, Joseph Fahim, Ginette Vincendeau

Dag Johan Haugerud, Norway

Voted for by: Nick Hasted

Jonás Trueba, Spain, France

Voted for by: Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Mar Diestro-Dópido

Daniel Raim, USA

Voted for by: Travis Jeppesen

Annemarie Jacir, Palestine, UK, France

Voted for by: Elhum Shakerifar, Saskia Baron

Paolo Sorrentino, Italy, France

Voted for by: Lillian Crawford

Shaheen Dill-Riaz, Germany

Voted for by: Srikanth Srinivasan

Alex Ross Perry, USA

Voted for by: Sophie Brown

Nick Cheung Ka-Fai, Hong Kong

Voted for by: Hayley Scanlon

Wim Wenders, Japan, Germany

Voted for by: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Geeta Gandbhir, USA

Voted for by: Georgina Guthrie, Charles Gant, Bedatri Datta Choudhury

Muhammed Hamdy, Egypt, Qatar, Tunisia, France

Voted for by: Rastko Novaković

Ira Sachs, USA, Germany

Voted for by: Srikanth Srinivasan

Wes Anderson, USA

Voted for by: Anne Billson, Lillian Crawford, Henry K. Miller, Nicolas Rapold, Leila Latif, Charles Whitehouse

Quentin Dupieux, France

Voted for by: Anne Billson

Harry Lighton, UK

Voted for by: Leigh Singer, Jane Giles, Rógan Graham, Savina Petkova, Thomas Flew, Kate Stables, Lou Thomas, Simran Hans, Anna Smith, Isabel Stevens, Laura Venning

Alejo Moguillansky, Argentina

Voted for by: Maria Delgado

Carmen Emmi, USA, UK

Voted for by: Rafa Sales Ross, Sophia Satchell-Baeza

Shane Black, Australia, USA

Voted for by: Henry K. Miller

Simon Mesa Soto, Colombia, Germany, Sweden

Voted for by: Tom Charity

Woody Bess, USA

Voted for by: Anton Bitel

David Osit, USA

Voted for by: Sophie Brown, Nick Bradshaw

Steven Soderbergh, USA

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew

Hasan Hadi, Iraq, Qatar, USA

Voted for by: Joseph Fahim

Sepideh Farsi, France, Palestine, Iran

Voted for by: David Pirie, Nick Bradshaw, Tom Charity, Jonathan Ali

Luca Guadagnino, Italy, USA

Voted for by: Tim Hayes

Jun Li, Hong Kong, USA

Voted for by: Chris Shields

David Merriman, Jim Sheridan, Ireland, Luxembourg

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson

Jesse Eisenberg, USA, Poland

Voted for by: Noel Hess, Jane Giles, Geoff Andrew, John Berra, Henry Barnes

Lofti Achour, Tunisia, France, Belgium, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Qatar

Voted for by: Chris Shields

Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France

Voted for by: Anne Billson, Anton Bitel, Rafa Sales Ross, Kim Newman

Fil Freitas, UK

Voted for by: David Parkinson

Ross McElwee, UK

Voted for by: Caitlin Quinlan, Rory Doherty, Jonathan Romney, Guy Lodge, Matt Turner, Laura Venning, Nick Bradshaw

Bi Gan, China, France

Voted for by: David Katz, Ryan Swen, Colette Balmain, Caitlin Quinlan, Hayley Scanlon, Josh Slater-Williams, Jonathan Romney, William Webb, Jamie Dunn, Savina Petkova, John Bleasdale, Matt Turner, Lee Marshall, Matthew Taylor, Mike Williams

Ted Evans, UK

Voted for by: Alex Davidson

Karthik Subbaraj, India

Voted for by: Will Sloan

Uberto Pasolini, Italy, Greece, UK, France

Voted for by: Noel Hess

Matsui Daigo, Japan

Voted for by: Blake Simons

Thierry Klifa, France, Belgium

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau

Andres Veiel, Germany

Voted for by: Roger Luckhurst, Mike Williams

Hope Strickland, UK

Voted for by: Ben Nicholson, Jonathan Ali

Viktoria Schmid, Austria

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov

Carla Simón, Spain, Germany

Voted for by: Savina Petkova, Maria Delgado

Derek Cianfrance, USA

Voted for by: Chloe Walker, Nick Davis, William Webb

Tusharr Madhavv, India, Netherlands

Voted for by: Srikanth Srinivasan

Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, USA, France

Voted for by: Neil Young

Mark Jenkin, UK

Voted for by: Sophie Monks Kaufman, Patrick Gamble, Rógan Graham, Rafa Sales Ross, Jonathan Romney, Soham Gadre, Laura Venning, Mike Williams, Charles Whitehouse

Anastasia Trofimova, Canada, France

Voted for by: Rastko Novaković

Cyril Aris, Lebanon, Germany, USA, Saudi Arabia, Qatar

Voted for by: Chloe Walker

Stephen and Timothy Quay, UK, Poland, Germany

Voted for by: Michael Atkinson

Sandhya Suri, UK, Germany, India, France

Voted for by: Omar Ahmed

Amano Chihiro, Japan

Voted for by: Hayley Scanlon

Claude Barras, Switzerland, France, Belgium, UK

Voted for by: Anna Smith

Jean-Luc Godard, France, Japan

Voted for by: Neil Young

Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands

Voted for by: Ehsan Khoshbakht, Wendy Ide, Nick Bradshaw, Billie Walker, Leigh Singer, Alex Ramon, Ryan Swen, Amy Taubin, Rógan Graham, Tom Charity, Rafa Sales Ross, Rory Doherty, Molly Haskell, Nicolas Rapold, Joseph Fahim, Maria Delgado, Nick James, Lee Marshall, Carlos Aguilar, Leila Latif, Soham Gadre, Katie McCabe, Isabel Stevens, James Lattimer, Matthew Taylor

Jeremy Workman, USA

Voted for by: John Berra

Mohammad Rasoulof, France, Germany, Iran

Voted for by: Nick Hasted

Brittany Shyne, USA

Voted for by: Hyun Jin Cho, Sophie Brown

Jazmin Jones, USA

Voted for by: Ian Wang

Joachim Trier, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark

Voted for by: Lillian Crawford, Philip Concannon, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Miriam Balanescu, Naman Ramachandran, Rógan Graham, Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, Molly Haskell, Kate Stables, Carlos Aguilar, Bedatri Datta Choudhury, Isabel Stevens, Laura Venning

Tim Fehlbaum, Germany, USA

Voted for by: Noel Hess, Mary Harrod

Atom Egoyan, Canada, Finland, USA

Voted for by: Blake Simons, Rory Doherty

Vincent Barré and Pierre Creton, France

Voted for by: Dylan Huw, Laura Staab

Eloise King, UK

Voted for by: Elhum Shakerifar

Ōku Akiko, Japan

Voted for by: Filipe Furtado

Siobhan McCarthy, USA

Voted for by: Alex Davidson

Adam Curtis, UK

Voted for by: Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Matt Turner

Deniz Eroglu, Germany

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov

Ramesh Sippy, India

Voted for by: Naman Ramachandran

Nastia Korkia, Germany, France, Serbia

Voted for by: Alex Davidson, Nick Davis

David Cronenberg, Canada, France

Voted for by: David Katz, Tim Hayes, Omar Ahmed, Will Sloan, Laura Staab, Katie McCabe, Mike Williams

Ildikó Enyedi, Germany, Hungary, France

Voted for by: Philip Concannon, Blake Simons, Nick Davis, Guy Lodge, Savina Petkova, Nick James, Matthew Taylor

Artem Ryzhykov and Juan Camilo Cruz, USA, Ukraine, UK

Voted for by: Nick Bradshaw

Ryan Coogler, USA

Voted for by: Sam Clements, Anne Billson, Mark Cousins, Chloe Walker, Billie Walker, Leigh Singer, Jane Giles, Alex Ramon, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Tim Hayes, Omar Ahmed, Colette Balmain, Patrick Gamble, David Pirie, Phil Hoad, Naman Ramachandran, Josh Slater-Williams, John Berra, Tom Charity, Dario Lllinares, Rafa Sales Ross, Katherine McLaughlin, Nick Hasted, Ian Mantgani, Ben Nicholson, Nicolas Rapold, Pamela Hutchinson, Savina Petkova, John Bleasdale, Derek O’Connor, Chris Shields, Kate Stables, Leila Latif, Roger Luckhurst, Lou Thomas, Matthew Thrift, Stephen Dalton, Saskia Baron, Mar Diestro-Dópido, James Lattimer, Charles Whitehouse

Oliver Laxe, Spain, France

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, Sam Clements, Ehsan Khoshbakht, Anne Billson, David Katz, Wendy Ide, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Leigh Singer, Alex Ramon, Ryan Swen, Jordan Cronk, Patrick Gamble, Nick Davis, Neil Young, Rafa Sales Ross, Katherine McLaughlin, Carmen Gray, Guy Lodge, Jamie Dunn, Joseph Fahim, Maria Delgado, John Bleasdale, Thomas Flew, Charles Gant, Nick James, Lee Marshall, Vadim Rizov, Carlos Aguilar, Lou Thomas, Soham Gadre, Matthew Thrift, Bedatri Datta Choudhury, Sam Wigley, Mar Diestro-Dópido, Isabel Stevens, Matthew Taylor

Karan Kandhari, UK, India, Sweden

Voted for by: Jane Giles, David Parkinson, Georgina Guthrie

Maeve Brennan, Denmark, UK

Voted for by: Ian Wang

Marta Popivoda, Serbia, France, Germany

Voted for by: Neil Young

Questlove, USA

Voted for by: Roger Luckhurst, Simran Hans

Eva Victor, USA, Spain, France

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, Lillian Crawford, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Omar Ahmed, Amy Taubin, Miriam Balanescu, Rógan Graham, Hope Rangaswami, Dario Lllinares, Rory Doherty, Michael Atkinson, Nicolas Rapold, Laura Staab, Carlos Aguilar, Simran Hans, Bedatri Datta Choudhury, Anna Smith, Laura Venning, Charles Whitehouse

Gastón Solnicki, Austria, Argentina

Voted for by: Maria Delgado

Boris Lojkine, France

Voted for by: David Parkinson, Phil Hoad, Dario Lllinares, Brogan Morris, Leila Latif, Soham Gadre, Ginette Vincendeau

Mascha Schilinski, Germany

Voted for by: Wendy Ide, Alex Ramon, Kevin B Lee, Nick Davis, Rafa Sales Ross, Carmen Gray, Guy Lodge, Joseph Fahim, John Bleasdale, Nick James, Carlos Aguilar, Isabel Stevens

Michael Angelo Covino, USA

Voted for by: John Bleasdale, Lou Thomas

Tim Mielants, Ireland, UK

Voted for by: Charles Gant, Mike Williams

Enrique Buleo, Serbia, Spain

Voted for by: Mar Diestro-Dópido

Steven Eastwood, Robin Elliot-Knowles, Georgia Kumari Bradburn, Sam Ahern, Benjamin Brown, Lucy Walker, UK

Voted for by: Ian Wang

François Ozon, France

Voted for by: James Mottram, Nick Hasted, Stephen Dalton

Hind Meddeb, France, Tunisia, Qatar

Voted for by: Hope Rangaswami

Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, France, Spain

Voted for by: Maria Delgado

Igarashi Kohei, Japan, France

Voted for by: John Berra, Jamie Dunn

James Gunn, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand

Voted for by: Chloe Walker, David Pirie, Ben Nicholson

Lorcan Finnegan, Australia, Ireland

Voted for by: Alex Ramon

Tamara Kotevska, North Macedonia, USA

Voted for by: Nick Davis, Kate Stables, Bedatri Datta Choudhury

Abbas Fahdel, Lebanon

Voted for by: Carmen Gray

Andrew Kötting, Eden Kötting, UK

Voted for by: Mark Cousins

Mona Fastvold, UK, USA

Voted for by: Philip Concannon, Miriam Balanescu, David Thompson, Katherine McLaughlin, Stephen Dalton

Emily Mkrtichian, Armenia, USA

Voted for by: Elhum Shakerifar

Naeem Mohammed, UK

Voted for by: Matt Turner

Naeem Mohaiemen, UK

Voted for by: Erika Balsom

Matthew Lax, USA

Voted for by: Dylan Huw

Rainbow Collective, UK

Voted for by: Rastko Novaković

Valentin Vasyanovich, Ukraine, Lithuania

Voted for by: Jonathan Romney

David Bim, Cuba, Spain

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov, Jonathan Ali

John Maclean, UK

Voted for by: Thomas Flew

Saulė Bliuvaitė, Lithuania

Voted for by: Georgina Guthrie

Clint Bentley, USA

Voted for by: Tom Charity, Ian Mantgani, Carlos Aguilar, Leila Latif

Toyoda Toshiaki, Japan

Voted for by: Anne Billson

Sammy Baloji, DR Congo, Belgium

Voted for by: Jonathan Ali

Lindsay McIntyre, Canada

Voted for by: Ian Wang

Abel Ferrara, USA, Germany, UK, Italy

Voted for by: Brad Stevens

Danny Boyle, USA, UK

Voted for by: Billie Walker, Tim Hayes, Phil Hoad, Henry K. Miller, Brogan Morris, Derek O’Connor, Laura Venning

James Sweeney, USA

Voted for by: Leigh Singer, Alex Davidson

Sergei Loznitsa, France, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine

Voted for by: Neil Young, Carmen Gray, Molly Haskell, Thomas Flew, Isabel Stevens

Miyake Sho, Japan

Voted for by: Kevin B Lee, Josh Slater-Williams

Mstyslav Chernov, Ukraine, USA

Voted for by: Tim Hayes, David Pirie, Charles Gant

Emilie Blichfeldt, Norway, Denmark, Romania, Poland, Sweden

Voted for by: Anton Bitel, Sophie Brown

Lou Ye, Singapore, Germany, USA

Voted for by: Travis Jeppesen

Matthew Rankin, Canada

Voted for by: Ehsan Khoshbakht, William Webb

Maha Haj, Italy, France

Voted for by: Elhum Shakerifar

Harris Dickinson, UK, USA

Voted for by: Mark Cousins, Brogan Morris, Kate Stables

Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, Thailand, Singapore, Germany, France

Voted for by: Alex Davidson

Mayra Hermosillo, Mexico

Voted for by: Sophie Monks Kaufman

Bani Khoshnoudi, USA, Iran, France

Voted for by: James Lattimer

Miyagi Futoshi, Japan

Voted for by: Ian Wang

Maura Delpero, Italy, France, Belgium

Voted for by: Soham Gadre

Alex Ross Perry, USA

Voted for by: Jordan Cronk

Vytautas Katkus, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden

Voted for by: Vadim Rizov

Kaouther Ben Hania, Tunisia, France

Voted for by: Ehsan Khoshbakht, James Mottram, Leigh Singer, Rachel Pronger, Sophie Monks Kaufman, Ian Wang, John Bleasdale, Leila Latif, Lou Thomas, Stephen Dalton

Myrid Carten, Ireland, UK, Netherlands

Voted for by: Hope Rangaswami, Rafa Sales Ross, Guy Lodge, Lee Marshall

Alex Garland, Ray Mendoza, USA, UK

Voted for by: Ehsan Khoshbakht

Cal McMau, UK

Voted for by: Charles Gant

Zach Cregger, USA

Voted for by: Sam Clements, Anne Billson, Philip Horne, Chloe Walker, Leigh Singer, Jane Giles, Omar Ahmed, David Pirie, Henry K. Miller, Katherine McLaughlin, Michael Atkinson, Nick Hasted, Jamie Dunn, Charles Gant, Derek O’Connor, Roger Luckhurst, Kim Newman, Lou Thomas

Andrew Ahn, USA

Voted for by: Bedatri Datta Choudhury

Gabriele Neudecker, Austria

Voted for by: Neil Young

Hong Sangsoo, South Korea

Voted for by: Ryan Swen, David Parkinson, Jordan Cronk, Filipe Furtado, Dylan Huw, Thomas Flew

Nora Štrbová, Czech Republic

Voted for by: Srikanth Srinivasan

François Ozon, France

Voted for by: Geoff Andrew

Ema Edosio Deelen, Nigeria

Voted for by: Oris Aigbokhaevbolo

Kevin Jerome Everson, USA

Voted for by: Patrick Gamble, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Sam Wigley

Jon M Chu, UK, USA, Canada

Voted for by: Alex Ramon

Stefan Djordjevic, Serbia, Slovakia, Croatia

Voted for by: Guy Lodge

Kamal Aljafari, Palestine, Qatar, Germany, France

Voted for by: Erika Balsom, David Katz, Kevin B Lee, Will Sloan, Dylan Huw, Charles Whitehouse

Nader Saeivar, Germany, Austria

Voted for by: Ginette Vincendeau

Jaume Collet-Serra, USA

Voted for by: Matthew Thrift

Patience Nitumwesiga, Uganda, South Africa, Germany, USA

Voted for by: Stephen Dalton

Ivan Salatic, Montenegro, Italy, Serbia, Croatia, France

Voted for by: Carmen Gray

Ilir Hasanaj, Kosovo

Voted for by: Neil Young

Yoon Ga-eun, South Korea

Voted for by: Hayley Scanlon, Josh Slater-Williams

Nadav Lapid, France, Cyprus, Germany, Israel

Voted for by: David Katz, Jordan Cronk, Guy Lodge

Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium, France

Voted for by: James Mottram, Philip Concannon, Geoff Andrew, Nick James

Uchiyama Takuya, Japan, France, South Korea, Hong Kong

Voted for by: Hayley Scanlon

Wang Bing, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, China

Voted for by: Travis Jeppesen

Charlie Shackleton, USA, UK

Voted for by: Sam Clements, Ben Nicholson