Screen Slate has once again teamed up with Nicolas Rapold of The Last Thing I Saw to edit its fifth annual Best Movies of the Year poll, as voted on by our own contributors along with filmmakers, critics, performers, programmers, cinema workers, and other friends and mutual admirers.
The common gripe is that most end-of-year lists are an arbitrary reshuffling of the same titles. It is common because it is based in truth. However, due to the nature of our poll comprising a great deal of people who see films during their theatrical releases at public screenings, our results skew away from late-December releases only available to press, industry, and perceived influencers. (That said, I look forward to seeing Ella McCay with an opening weekend crowd of impassioned James L. Brooks heads rather than a stuffy auditorium full of professional haters.) All the same: there are surprises!
This year we're also thrilled to team up with David Cardoza and Dan Welch from Cashiers Du Cinéma for an illustrated guide to the films that moved us this year, regardless of whether they made the cut.
Behold: 2025, the year in cinema
Can you spot everyone? Turn your computer upside-down and see the bottom of the page for answers.
One hundred numbered risograph prints will be available at the Cashiers Du Cinéma Issue #4 launch tonight at Desert Island Comics, and the remainder will be sold at our member and contributor party this Saturday. Sign up and support Screen Slate for info.
And last but not least—in fact, much, much greater—stay tuned for the mammoth list of responses to our “First Viewings and Discoveries” poll tomorrow, including highlights from many of the filmmakers below.
—Jon Dieringer, Founder & Editor-in-Chief
20. Marty Supreme
"Watching Marty Supreme in a sold-out Alice Tully Hall, I thought of the 1973 NYFF screening of Mean Streets and the way it rocked that same venue like nothing the festival audience had seen before. A kinetic, eye-popping New York City movie that was art, pulp, and ethnographically on the money ... Mean Streets was as revelatory as any of the European films that defined the festival in its first decade. I also thought of Ken Jacobs, a giant of American avant-garde film who died at age 92 the night before Marty Supreme’s debut. He shot his first film, 'Orchard Street' (1955), in the very period and place that is recreated in Safdie’s movie. The highest praise I can give Marty Supreme is that Jacobs would have much appreciated its furious energy, Timothée Chalamet’s selflessly creepy and wildly physical performance, and indeed every aspect of the filmmaking ...." -Amy Taubin's NYFF Festival Report
19. Weapons
18. Resurrection
"Bi Gan’s dazzling Resurrection offers a beautiful dream ride through the 20th century and the history of cinema. The film is a visual funhouse filled with references to everything from the Lumière Brothers to German expressionism, and crime films to sci-fi movies, that culminates in a trademark half-hour-long tracking shot." -David Schwartz's Cannes Festival Report
17. Henry Fonda for President
"Horwath’s film is at least three things: a study of Fonda’s career, a social history of his films as they relate to developments in American history from the 18th century to the present, and a clear-eyed, coast-to-coast travelogue by a European, in the tradition of Alexis de Tocqueville and Jean Baudrillard. It succeeds in all three, its three-hour running time breezing by in rich detail that combines scenes from real landscapes and towns in which Fonda’s films took place, with excursions into Omaha, where he grew up." -A.S. Hamrah interviews Alexander Horwath
16. Blue Moon
"[Blue Moon] is evidence of a filmmaker that has forged his own path for three decades." -Write-up by Justin LaLiberty
"Hawke delicately crafts a wistful portrayal of a man who clearly still has the intelligence and charm that once made him hold court at a place like Sardi’s years ago, but whose alcoholism and self-pity is turning him into a ghost before our eyes." -Stephanie Monohan's NYFF report
15. Eddington
14. Eephus
Filmmaker Carson Lund's favorite first viewings of 2024
Actor Frederick Wiseman's favorite first viewings of 2023
13. Sinners
12. Peter Hujar's Day
Filmmaker Ira Sachs's favorite first viewings of and 2023
Listen to our 2023 podcast with Sachs
11. Misericordia
Alain Guiraudie's favorite's of 2024
10. The Secret Agent
Much will be heard, from now through the award season, about Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, a boldly assured, vividly detailed, multilayered political thriller set in Recife, the movie-mad city that Mendonça depicted in his documentary City of Ghosts (2023), during Brazil’s military dictatorship. ... With rich detail, Mendonça brings to life a vibrant city that lives under the constant threat of danger, mirrored by the movies playing at the time in the local theaters—Jaws (1975), The Omen (1976), and King Kong (1976)." -David Schwartz's Cannes Festival Report
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s favorite first viewings of 2024
9. Cloud
"Ryosuke is a mere serf working his small patch of digital land, dreaming—and scheming—to own a bigger piece. He might one day, but the question becomes what will be left of him (and those he exploits) once he does? This world of big fish, remoras, users and used is what we see on our mindless march to hell." -Chris Shields's write-up
8. It Was Just an Accident
"Within the lacunae between chance and destiny lies the humanity that guides Panahi’s art. Infusing a nearly theatrical element into his neorealist morality play, It Was Just an Accident is one of Panahi’s most clear-eyed meditations on his unresolved dilemma about the ethical responsibility people bear toward one another within systemic oppression." -Nick Kouhi interviews Jafar Panahi
7. Sirāt
"Olivier Laxe’s Sirāt (2025), filmed in North Africa, and largely populated by unforgettable non-actors, is an immersive cinematic experience that evokes the Mad Max movies and Wages of Fear." -David Schwartz's Cannes Festival Report
6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Listen to our 2023 podcast with Mary Bronstein
5. Afternoons of Solitude
4. Caught by the Tides
"Jia Zhangke has been collecting footage for his films as he’s travelled across China for over 22 years. When the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted his routine, he thought to wrap the process up. An addendum was filmed for what became Caught by the Tides (2024), stringing together all of his fragmentary observations into a film that resembles what the cultural critic Raymond Williams calls a 'structure of feeling': something that captures the fleeting experiences that have visited a place into a totality, one that escapes ordinary language but proves meaningful for those who paid attention to the silent changes over time." -Y-Z Li interviews Jia Zhangke
3. The Shrouds
"The work of a master utterly confident in his methods—the well-grooved dialogue, the icy cinematography by Douglas Koch, the eerie music by Howard Shore—and curious about new frontiers of experience, The Shrouds is also utterly at home in its own beguiling eccentricities." -Mark Asch interviews David Cronenberg
2. The Mastermind
Listen to our podcasts with Kelly Reichardt (2023) and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt (2022)
1. One Battle After Another
"I mean, the actual lesson, if there is one, and there's probably not, but its do your fucking thing, whatever it happens to be, and do it hard." —One Battle After Another's Paul "Billy Goat / Gringo Coyote" Grimstad speaks to Luke Rathborne
Screen Slate's Top 20 Movies of 2025
- One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
- The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
- The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
- Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
- Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
- If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
- Sirat (Oliver Laxe)
- It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
- Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
- The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
- Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
- Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs)
- Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
- Eephus (Carson Lund)
- Eddington (Ari Aster)
- Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)
- Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath)
- Resurrection (Bi Gan)
- Weapons (Zach Cregger)
- Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)
Collage answers (turn upside down)
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See Also
