The Skinny's Films of 2025

10. It Was Just an Accident

Dir. Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner follows the spiralling day of Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) as he, along with an accumulating band of participants, attempts to work out whether the man he has impulsively kidnapped is the same man who tortured them while they were political prisoners. The focus on Panahi’s long-running legal persecution at the hands of the Iranian government, while an essential backdrop to his work, can often overshadow what a remarkable filmmaker he is, and he's at the peak of his powers here with a film that's at once devastating and farcical while never losing its constant throb of sickening tension; there aren't many filmmakers alive who can channel defiance and searing rage with such grace. [Joe Creely]
Released in cinemas 5 Dec by MUBI; read our review of It Was Just an Accident

9. The Brutalist

Dir. Brady Corbet

With the exception of One Battle After Another, no film released in UK cinemas this year has felt as big as The Brutalist (sorry, Tom Cruise). It's not just because both Paul Thomas Anderson and Corbet's movies were shot using VistaVision, making them two of the first productions to use the high-resolution film format since the 1960s (Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia joined the VistaVision bandwagon too). But Corbet's immigrant epic is also giant in structure, including its onscreen architectural structures – a thorny rumination on desperately navigating existence and fulfilment when facing foundations built on poisoned soil, and the seemingly inescapable corruption and destruction that results. [Josh Slater-Williams]
Released by Universal; streaming on Now TV; read our interview with Brady Corbet

8. Hard Truths

Dir. Mike Leigh

Marianne Jean-Baptiste gives an astonishing performance in Mike Leigh’s compelling tragicomedy, Hard Truths. The title might imply the almost cathartic release that comes with a difficult individual being presented with a mirror to highlight their poor behaviour. Here, there is no such release. Instead, we’re constantly confronted with the challenges faced by the spikey Pansy (Baptiste) – who's struggling in the grips of grief and depression – and those around her. It’s a compassionate portrait of a British-Caribbean family centred around Pansy and her charismatic sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), that peels back façades to mine the complexities and contradictions that power us all. [Ben Nicholson]
Released by StudioCanal; streaming on Netflix; read our review of Hard Truths

7. Sentimental Value

Dir. Joachim Trier

Renate Reinsve reunites with her The Worst Person in the World director, Joachim Trier, in this gentle family saga that sees cinema as a soul-baring olive branch. She plays actress Nora, who baulks at the offer from her filmmaker father (Stellan Skarsgård) to star in his next movie due to his long absence from her and her sister's lives. Sentimental Value is crushing in its slow accumulation of small exchanges, where the fractures of a family rupture like fault lines, and calcified hearts open up to the possibility of connection. Trier posits that art has the illuminating power to communicate what words alone cannot say. [Iana Murray]
Released in cinemas 26 Dec by MUBI; listen to our review of Sentimental Value on the latest episode of The Cineskinny

6. The Mastermind

Dir. Kelly Reichardt

A heist movie played at half-speed, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind is a quiet delight. It carefully reconstructs a more tactile, pre-digital world where out of sight meant out of mind, and robbing an art gallery just meant shoving stuff into pillowcases and legging it past the security guards. It doesn’t take a man as clever as JB (Josh O’Connor) thinks he is to pull off that kind of crime, which makes his failure both funnier and sadder. Deeply cynical but never outright mean, The Mastermind is a deftly painted portrait of a far too recognisable type of would-be genius. [Ross McIndoe]
Released by MUBI; streaming on MUBI from 12 Dec; listen to our CineSkinny episode featuring The Mastermind

5. Nickel Boys

Dir. RaMell Ross

RaMell Ross uses first-person perspectives and a collage, quasi-documentary approach in adapting Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel to create an exquisite picture of abandoned youths. Nickel Boys mixes the minutiae, monotonies and petty horrors of Nickel Academy with things more symbolic and strange through Elwood’s and Turner’s eyes, making sense of their experiences through a bitterly real history, the legacy of which remains unaccounted. Even when Ethan Herisse (Elwood) and Brandon Wilson (Turner) are seen almost solely through the other’s eyes, their terrific performances meld seamlessly into the camera’s gestures, putting the audience directly into their hopes, dreams, and secrets. The result is spellbinding. [Carmen Paddock]
Released by Curzon; streaming on Prime Video; read our interview with RaMell Ross

4. Sorry, Baby

Dir. Eva Victor

An unwavering portrayal of the aftermath of sexual assault, Eva Victor’s debut follows a college professor (played by Victor) who renegotiates the 'bad thing' that happened to her. Even at its most funny and affecting, Victor’s film retains a generous dose of candour. Where Luca Guadagnino’s verbose approach to the same topic in After the Hunt falls short, Sorry, Baby finds justice and levity in the everyday, and love in those who stay around after everyone else has left. It’s a frank, often funny and fundamentally hopeful first feature, putting Victor on the map of filmmakers with a fresh perspective on the highs and lows of existence. [Stefania Sarrubba]
Released by Picturehouse; streaming on MUBI; listen to our CineSkinny podcast interview with Eva Victor

3. Die My Love

Dir. Lynne Ramsay

Both child and discord are birthed in Die My Love’s glorious defacement of motherhood. Jennifer Lawrence plays Grace, a young mother in thrashing and erratic psychosis, charging a domestic mutiny and a disturbing shakedown of the self. Think Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World or George Galloway on Big Brother as Grace crawls through high grass with the predatory poise of a big cat. Thrillingly, this is J-Law getting to be properly weird for the first time; past stoic and charming heroines be damned. Lawrence retools and sets fire to her signature winning moxie, with a careening wheel turn towards the stormy, the stimming, and a Rowlands-Cassavetes-like bathos. [Lucy Fitzgerald]
Released by MUBI; currently in cinemas; read our interview with Lynne Ramsay

2. Sinners

Dir. Ryan Coogler

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every films of the year list should – ideally! – include a scene where someone spits in someone else’s mouth. Lucky for us, then, that Ryan Coogler gave us Sinners this year, his insanely sexy and exhilarating take on the Southern Gothic vampire tradition, in which twin brothers (Michael B Jordan and… Michael B Jordan) attempt to set up a speakeasy on the outskirts of a Jim Crow-segregated town. There’s blood and guts galore, but also unspeakably moving mediations on the historic power of Black music and the intoxicating pull of freedom, whatever the cost. Twilight could never. [Anahit Behrooz]
Released by Warner Bros; available on VOD; listen to our CineSkinny episode featuring Sinners

1.  One Battle After Another

Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is his most mainstream-friendly film, but he doesn’t sacrifice any of the eccentricity, audacity, complexity or capacity for surprise that has distinguished his prior work. Anderson immediately hooks us into the film’s unusual, undulating rhythms, and there are long stretches of filmmaking here that are simply astounding in both their ambition and execution. From a revitalised Sean Penn to the captivating newcomer Chase Infiniti, every performance is impeccable. One Battle After Another feels exhilaratingly alive, and like most of Anderson’s films, it only gets richer and more rewarding with each subsequent viewing. An instant classic. [Philip Concannon]
Released by Warner Bros; currently in cinemas; listen to our CineSkinny episode featuring One Battle After Another

The Skinny's Films of 2025, 1-20

1. One Battle After Another (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
2. Sinners (Dir. Ryan Coogler)
3. Die My Love (Dir. Lynne Ramsay)
4. Sorry, Baby (Dir. Eva Victor)
5. Nickel Boys (Dir. RaMell Ross)
6. The Mastermind (Dir. Kelly Reichardt)
7. Sentimental Value (Dir. Joachim Trier)
8. Hard Truths (Dir. Mike Leigh)
9. The Brutalist (Dir. Brady Corbet)
10. It Was Just an Accident (Dir. Jafar Panahi)
11. On Falling (Dir. Laura Carreira)
12. Flow (Dir. Gints Zilbalodis)
13. Friendship (Dir. Andrew DeYoung)
14. Cloud (Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
15. Oslo Stories: Dreams (Dir. Dag Johan Haugerud)
16. The Naked Gun (Dir. Akiva Schaffer)
17. Pillion (Dir. Harry Lighton)
18. Black Bag (Dir. Steven Soderbergh)
19. 28 Years Later (Dir. Danny Boyle)
20. Little Trouble Girls (Dir. Urška Djukić)