As the dust settles on 2025, the world of cinema finds itself at a crossroads—one marked by both disillusionment with mainstream Hollywood and a surge of inventive, boundary-pushing films that captured the hearts of critics and audiences alike. Two recent year-end roundups, published by The Film Stage on January 11, 2026, and Slashfilm on January 12, 2026, offer a compelling look at the year’s most celebrated movies, revealing a landscape where streaming releases, international gems, and documentaries often outshone the box office behemoths.
Soham Gadre, writing for The Film Stage, sets the tone with a candid admission: “I have never felt more disillusioned or detached from the mainstream Hollywood mode of film before.” Yet, Gadre’s personal top 10 list is anything but a funeral dirge for cinema. Instead, it’s a celebration of the overlooked, the experimental, and the quietly revolutionary—films that, as Gadre puts it, “absolutely beat anything that the powers that be have populated the theater chains with.”
Among Gadre’s selections, Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill stands out for its chilling twist on narrative and identity, reminiscent of David Lynch’s Lost Highway. The film’s exploration of vengeance and cyclical violence, particularly how it echoes through generations, left Gadre eager to see Khatami’s next move. Meanwhile, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent is praised for its nerve-wracking political realism, connecting Brazil’s dictatorial past to its present through the lens of a former professor navigating a dangerous Recife. Gadre notes, “It wonders, as it switches between unforgiving political violence and hushed conversations between those who resist, if anything has changed at all.”
Bi Gan’s Resurrection is described as “beguiling in its structure,” blending time and genre to follow one of the last humans capable of dreaming. Gadre lauds Bi’s experimental camerawork, which “turns this into an exemplary display of experimentation, a self-reflexive confrontation of how cinema’s ability to create different realities and existences for a singular character is the closest we come to dreaming while we are awake.”
On the other side of the spectrum, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident offers a blend of humor and tragedy, dissecting the long-lasting impacts of authoritarian rule. Gadre observes that Panahi’s empathy shines through, even as his characters “tread the line into becoming violent and out of control themselves.” Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story tells a hopeful tale of a Guinean immigrant seeking asylum in France, navigating the gig economy and the labyrinthine immigration system. Gadre calls it “a portrayal of a hopeful future, one that affords immigrants not just asylum and peace, but human rights on their own terms, on their own truths.”
Other highlights from Gadre’s list include Oliver Laxe’s apocalyptic Sirât, Neo Sora’s tech-infused high school drama Happyend, and Dea Kulumbegashvili’s quietly menacing April, which delves into gender politics and class divides in rural Georgia. Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Reflection in a Dead Diamond is described as a sensory feast, blending EuroSpy cinema with pop-art visuals, while the Quay Brothers’ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is lauded as a “toy” of cinema, where time and reality bend in mesmerizing ways.
While Gadre’s list leans into the esoteric and the international, Slashfilm’s rundown of the 10 best movies of 2025 according to Rotten Tomatoes offers a broader, though no less eclectic, snapshot of the year’s cinematic achievements. The article opens with a bold claim: “Anyone who says 2025 was a bad year for movies is a fool.” It then proceeds to highlight films that, despite high critical acclaim, often flew under the radar for general audiences.
Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides, which earned a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, is celebrated for its innovative blend of documentary footage and fictional storytelling. As Jia explained to The Film Stage, “By combining these two, you create the realities that these characters can somehow position themselves in.” The film chronicles the decades-long relationship between aspiring singer Qiao Qiao and her boss, culminating in a poignant reunion during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Netflix’s documentary The Perfect Neighbor, directed by Geeta Gandbhir, also scored 99%. It examines the systemic failures of the American legal system through the tragic lens of Ajike “A.J.” Shantrell Owens’ murder in Ocala, Florida. The documentary relies heavily on police body camera footage, casting a harsh light on Florida’s “stand your ground” laws. According to the critical consensus, it is “as gripping as it is deeply unsettling.”
Perhaps most notable is the overlap between the two lists: The Secret Agent and Souleymane’s Story appear in both, underscoring their universal acclaim. The Secret Agent is described by Rotten Tomatoes as a “thematically rich and visually arresting political thriller” that blends stylization with social commentary. Wagner Moura’s lead performance is singled out as “vital,” anchoring a tale of survival and resistance under a brutal Brazilian dictatorship. Souleymane’s Story, meanwhile, is lauded for its “achingly human” depiction of immigrant struggles, with newcomer Abou Sangaré earning a César Award for his performance.
Other top-rated films on Slashfilm’s list include Come See Me in the Good Light, a moving Apple TV documentary about poet Andrea Gibson’s battle with terminal illness, and Deaf President Now!, which chronicles the landmark 1988 protest at Gallaudet University. Both documentaries received perfect scores and were praised for their emotional depth and historical significance.
Rounding out the list are Carson Lund’s irreverent baseball comedy Eephus, Charlie Polinger’s unsettling summer camp thriller The Plague, and Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, which won best director at Cannes and is described as a “vibrant exploration of family and social mores.”
What emerges from these two critical perspectives is a portrait of a year where cinema thrived not in the multiplexes, but in the margins—where streaming platforms, international filmmakers, and documentarians pushed the medium forward. Whether you’re a fan of genre-bending thrillers, intimate character studies, or hard-hitting documentaries, 2025 offered a wealth of options that demanded attention and empathy. For those willing to look beyond the Hollywood marquee, it was, by all accounts, a banner year for film.
