Claude Chabrol jokingly called La Cérémonie “the last Marxist film.” This 1996 French thriller stages the boiling tensions between Sophie, an illiterate domestic worker, and her employers, the bourgeois Lelièvre family. Though not a Marxist, Chabrol described the hostility between these characters as “deep enough to become final.” Karl Marx sometimes used theatrical metaphors to explain how social roles mask underlying economic structures rife with contradictions. Here, bourgeois civility attempts to mask class warfare - but this is a play that can only end in blood.

Under capitalist society, antagonistic roles within the economic structure appear as mere theatrical scenography. In the proletariat’s day-to-day, class is reduced to the perceptible signifiers of bourgeois excess and moral shortcomings. Sports cars, exuberant watches, and edible-gold dishes are props that symbolize vanity and hedonism. The bourgeoisie has achieved such a degree of functional invisibility that it’s only through caricature that the lower classes can imagine them. But the Lelièvre patriarch, George, who owns a factory, doesn’t wear a villainous outfit conveniently identifying his class. Mustache-twirling villains with monocles, though satirically used to identify capitalists, better serve to illustrate their anonymity.

La Cérémonie demonstrates how opposite classes recognise each other through their flaws and how their diverging rituals can repel one another. Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) and her friend Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), a postal worker, connect through their shared criminal pasts. Their flaws bring them together. On the other hand, Jeanne recognises Madame Lelièvre (Jacqueline Bisset) as the child model that supposedly stole her own chance at being successful when young, and Monsieur Lelièvre (Jean-Pierre Cassel) recognises Jeanne as an alleged child murderer from the newspaper. Flaws attract characters within the same class group, but repel antagonistic agents. Rituals of etiquette are of great significance to the Lelièvres, who even dress up to watch Mozart operas on TV. But when Sophie extends the practices of upper-class civility to other workers, they respond with “Don’t bother”; the servants are happy washing their hands with detergent instead of ‘proper’ soap and drinking beer straight out of the can. For the Lelièvres, these are worthwhile customs; for the workers, they are frivolous indulgences.

Sophie’s illiteracy excludes her from the linguistic symbols needed to navigate the world around her - she doesn’t know how to drive or even operate a TV remote. Here, La Cérémonie nods to the part that political education, even if informal, plays in class consciousness. It’s no coincidence that the illiterate Sophie starts out fairly agreeable and compliant with the Lelièvres’ demands, only to turn rebellious once she befriends Jeanne, an avid reader who spitefully claims she’d be happy if she “had a tenth of what” the Lelièvres have. While Sophie never learns to read, nor seems interested to, Jeanne’s recurring remarks about the arrogance of the wealthy act as the only manifesto Sophie needs to be further radicalised. When the maid destroys the Lelièvres’ library, she renounces their erudition and decorum.

But as a bourgeois family, work ethic and efficiency are even more valuable than etiquette for the Lelièvres. While George would prefer that Sophie knew how to serve food properly, Catherine, the matriarch, finds her work satisfying enough to compensate for her lack of manners. That said, both agree that her spatial-interpersonal awareness deserves praise - Sophie knows her place, and when to disappear. “My life is easier, I don’t even have to talk to her”, says Catherine, while George is delighted that the maid doesn’t receive any visits, letters or calls from friends or family. The couple commemorates the housekeeper’s invisibility while enjoying the dinner she cooked, as Sophie eats in a secluded room. Like a theatre stagehand, Sophie’s job is at its most successful when utterly invisible.

In Parasite, Bong Joon-Ho portrays the wealthy Park family with a naive, cordial decency that traces back to La Cérémonie, an inspiration for the Oscar-winning Korean drama. The Parks fall easily for the scams of the working class Kim family, but their gullibility suggests child-like innocence, as if they’re too pure of heart to know evil. This ‘kindness’ is present from the opening scene of Chabrol’s film, in which Sophie meets her potential employer. Catherine insists, friendly but incessantly, that Sophie order tea during the job interview, yet she forgets to address the maid’s compensation. Amiable gestures come first, ugly technicalities second (or not at all).

Much like the Lelièvres, the Parks surround themselves with domestic workers to replicate the carefree family life promised by advertising. By outsourcing domestic labour, both the Lelièvres and the Parks get to become better parents - attentive and caring. The Parks go on camping trips, reveling in the love from children with no needs, only wants. For the Lelièvres too, the only parental responsibility that remains is the entertainment of their offspring. Catherine watches movies with her teenage son on the couch while eating meals prepared by the maid, while George and his daughter Melinda discuss the possibility of finally going hunting again. But the hunting guns meant to signal a rekindling father-daughter bond take on a darker role in the film’s sinister finale. Every moment between bourgeois parent and child becomes a perfect cereal box ad, until La Cérémonie covers it in blood.

The young and ‘progressive’ Melinda (Virginie Ledoyen) is proud of her self-imposed semantic sensibilities, as if they’re an act of contrition for the family’s exploitation of Sophie. She dislikes the term ‘maid’, and considers it degrading - ‘housekeeper’ or ‘domestic’ are acceptable lexicon, however. Melinda’s words are purposefully chosen to always distance her from the rest of the bourgeois family, to whom she refers as ‘they’. She doesn’t assign tasks to Sophie, and instead comments in passing how she’d be thankful if the maid could ‘find the time’ to help her. Like it isn’t labour, but a favour from a friend. For Melinda, this is a license to benefit from labour without any inconvenient guilt.

But time after time, the laconic Sophie disregards her bosses’ civility. The interactions between the maid and her employers are frequently punctuated by brief pauses in which the bourgeois couple awkwardly awaits applause for their ‘kindness’. When Madame Lelièvre introduces Sophie to her small room, she visibly expects a vocal confirmation that Sophie likes it, and can’t resist but to ask directly after being met with silence. Meanwhile, Monsieur Lelièvre acts like a standing ovation is due for not throwing Sophie out of the house immediately after dismissing her, as he’d be legally entitled to, since Sophie has no contract (something he points out with a smug smile). The curtains of civility are drawn aside to remind workers that what little empathy they receive is an optional part of the production design. The set could be so much more bare, if the bourgeoise so wished.

Ultimately, there’s a profound disparity in how the Lelièvres want to be perceived - kind -, and how they want to be treated - left alone. But there’s also a discernible schism between how the audience wishes to see the workers - as distressed victims (or ‘heroines,’ in Chabrol’s words) - and how they occasionally behave - as sadists. This duality provokes everlasting tension, and makes for interactions that are much denser than ‘poor people good, rich people bad’. Take, for instance, the scene where Melinda helps Jeanne with her malfunctioning car. A wealthy girl gets her hands dirty in oil, while a resentful wage labourer asserts herself as an aspiring poet. Roles are briefly reversed, and it’s the worker being assisted that visibly expresses contempt for the helpful rich volunteer, challenging the audience’s compassion. Given how unsympathetic these workers can be, and how vicious the consummation of their hostility is, it’s understandable why this could be playfully called “the last Marxist film”.

La Cérémonie is a thought-provoking rendition of bourgeois civility as a form of social theatrics concealing underlying class antagonisms. None of its characters are unequivocally deserving of either sympathy or disdain, which prevents the final bloodbath from being morally sanitised by easy justifications. In this play, the catharsis of class violence is tainted by doubt, as each spectator leaves the theatre with a taste of iron in their mouth and their favourite tuxedo stained with blood.

It Was Just an Accident is a film about conflicting emotions. Sentiments like rancor and kindness, conviction and uncertainty, loathing and understanding should repel one another like oil and water, but in Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or Winner they converge in the messiest ways. Rather than defining themselves by their antagonism to one another, these ideas often find themselves under the same spotlight, where partial truths can become excuses, and mere accidents might mean so much more.

The Iranian film follows a group of people with little in common, except for their shared traumatic past as political prisoners all tortured by the same intelligence officer, whose identity they must confirm, and whose fate they must decide together. Only able to identify their torturer, known as Eghbal (“Peg Leg”), by the sound of his squeaky prosthetic leg, the man they captured could be innocent, setting the stage for a political revenge tale full of doubt and contradiction.

The writer-director Panahi is no stranger to art as political resistance. The Iranian government has imprisoned him and attempted to censor his art countless times. Clearly, that hasn’t stopped him, and that punk ethos is present here, as the film was produced without official government permission. The women here don’t always wear a hijab, which is punishable with prison time in Iran. Panahi’s film is a clandestine exercise on protest in more ways than one, but his delicate political commentary is beautifully rendered.

Similar to 2024’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, directed by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who’s also been arrested several times, Panahi’s story studies the consequences of individual acts by agents of a repressive state as parables for wider conflicts. Mariam Afshari’s phenomenal character, Shiva, wonders whether retaliating against individual agents of the State is enough to substantially fracture the broader socio-political structure in which they’re merely cogs. It most likely isn’t enough - but can that partial truth disarm the victims’ immediate need for justice and resolution? It doesn’t even seem to work for Shiva, whose own stance on violence changes later on.

In the opening scene, the man that is suggested to be Eghbal drives a car, accompanied by his pregnant wife and young daughter. It’s a pitch-black night outside. They run over something - the audience hears a whimpering dog, then silence. “It was just an accident”, the mother says. “Whatever will be, will be. God didn’t place him in our path for no reason.” But the child doesn’t buy it. Her father killed a dog. God had nothing to do with it.

Who is to blame: the flawed driver or the path devoid of light? Can someone surrounded by blinding darkness be exonerated from the harm they bring to others? Who accounts for what is done in God’s name, but outside His light? Panahi’s film asks all of these questions, and in a display of maturity, answers none of them.

It Was Just an Accident is refreshingly uninterested in pedestrian statements on religion, and merely critiques the misuse of faith as a tool for political repression and dehumanisation. The film illustrates the dialectical relationship between forces like faith and suspicion, and how atrocities can happen in between. The intelligence agent believes that if the prisoners he tortured were guilty, their punishment was justified - but if innocent, they will receive justice in heaven. Almost as if, like the dog killed earlier, they couldn’t have been placed on his path “for no reason”. In this belief, he’s comforted by a sense of righteous certainty - while the victims now deciding his fate must grapple with doubt.

The narrative exposes the irony of the contradictions intrinsic to being human. Vahid, the car mechanic who serves as the closest thing to a protagonist in this near-ensemble cast, materialises the concurrent movements of opposing sentiments. The faceless torturer ruined Vahid’s life, permanently injuring his back and leading his wife to suicide. Eghbal scarred him in ways he can never heal. Vahid begins the day nearly burying alive this man he suspects to be Eghbal. Cut to nightfall, and he’s desperately driving his suspected torturer’s pregnant wife to the hospital. Vahid Mobasseri brings to the screen one of the strongest performances of the year, imbuing so much life to this fascinating character. He might kill you, but would also buy cake to celebrate the birth of your child because it’s the considerate thing to do.

That’s not the film’s only instance of accidental humour cemented by that disconnect between words and actions. Throughout the film, Shiva’s ex-lover Hamid is the most vocal about enacting the violent revenge the presumed torturer deserves. Haunted by nightmares, he’s desperate for resolution. Mohammad Ali Elyasmehr’s fantastic acting injects every scene with tension, a human stick of dynamite that ironically fizzles out the moment his feelings are hurt.

Much of the cast’s most pivotal moments expand on this fundamental dichotomy between their need for revenge and their mundane preoccupations. Goli, exquisitely played by Hadis Pakbaten, is a bride-to-be running around in a wedding dress discussing murder. A brilliant visual gag that also advances the film’s powerful moral provocations.

She makes it clear to her fiancé just how much revenge means to her, even if it costs them their wedding. She demands closure before starting a new life because, for the characters in It Was Just an Accident, revenge can mean several things. For Vahid, it’s about payment for what was lost - a ruined life begets the end of another. For others in the group, it can mean new beginnings, though the viewer can’t be certain they believe it themselves.

The killing of the dog echoes through the final sequence of the film, as the alleged torturer awaits judgement, blindfolded and tied to a tree. “I swear I’m just like you”, he claims, sobbing. “I have to make a living.” The confrontation is lit by a car’s red lights, mirroring the moment the man examined the dog’s offscreen corpse - a visual synonym that links the lives of the two and ties the film together.

The partial truths raised after the dog’s death return. It is true, after all, that the path was dark - much like Iran’s political climate. It’s also true that the man couldn’t see what was ahead - similar to the individual agents that side with a theocratic status quo for which there are no alternatives in sight. But ultimately, the little girl’s words ring equally true: God had nothing to do with it. A man killed a dog. A man tortured people. All of these partial truths intertwine, and only one question is left: Is the truth enough to illuminate the dark road ahead?

Note: Punished for Sincerity condemns all US interventionism. While the author respects the Iranian people’s right to celebrate the downfall of their despots, only national resistance is legitimate. The US-Israeli airstrike against Iran on the 28th of February killed over a hundred elementary school children. Regime change has never led to prosperity anywhere, and should never be applauded. This should be obvious.

The founders of International Working Women’s Day were Communists with das Kapital “C”.

Theresa Malkiel, a member of the Socialist Party of America, organised the first “Woman’s Day” in 1909. A year later, the Second International’s Socialist Women’s Conference took place, and figures such as the German Marxist Clara Zetkin proposed an annual celebration promoting working women’s suffrage. Finally, in 1911, the first International Women’s Day was celebrated, though the “working” adjective was absent.

With regime changes in the Global South back in fashion, it’s imperative to remember that “international” covers more than North America and Europe. Victories for women at the imperial core mean little without the liberation of women everywhere else. Sooner or later, the colonial boomerang returns.

Curated here is a non-anglocentric selection of 20 films directed by women, from Tunisia to Czechoslovakia, Indonesia to Palestine, the Soviet Union to India. More than 18 countries are featured, only a handful appear more than once, and only two inclusions are in English.

These are remarkable films by and about women.

The Last Stage

1948, Wanda Jakubowska, Poland

Known as the “mother of all Holocaust movies”, The Last Stage deserves distance from the little rascals it birthed. The ardent Communist and Auschwitz survivor Wanda Jakubowska recreated the camp’s horrors with detail that only someone personally familiar with the logistics of genocide could. The narrative revolves around Marta, a Polish Jewish woman forced to work as a translator in the infamous concentration camp of Nazi-occupied Poland. Hope rises among inmates with each Red Army victory, revealing the film’s pride in its ideological alignment. Decades of Hollywood sensationalist drivel stripped Nazi-fascism of its political specificities while drip-feeding audiences stories of an abnormal tragedy that could never occur again, perpetrated by evil boogeymen who could never regain power. With this depoliticising framework from the entertainment industry, it’s unsurprising that the public is incapable of recognising the resurgence of Nazism. Jakubowska avoided these pitfalls, denouncing the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” as a political-industrial project of extermination. It’s alarming how many films supposedly inspired by The Last Stage miss the point about what the Holocaust was, how it happened and who ended it.

Something Different

1963, Věra Chytilová, Czechoslovakia

The first feature by Czech New Wave legend Věra Chytilová tells two unconnected stories, juxtaposing different forms of choreography. One shows the routine of a stay-at-home wife and mother, and the other documents the strict regime of an Olympic gymnast preparing for a competition. Both undergo gruelling trials, but patriarchy expresses itself differently in their lives, and the parallels invite reflection. Eva, played by gold medalist Eva Bosáková, is freer in her gymnasium than Věra is in her own home. One’s body is tested in the search for perfection, while the other’s psyche is challenged daily by the apathy of an uninterested husband and the directionless stress of the mundane. There’s a brilliantly executed upside-down shot that flips with Eva, and its elegance lingers for a while. Both tales are tied together in a linear structure that would become uncommon in the director’s later experimental projects such as Daisies. Something Different doesn’t spell things out, but says a lot.

The Apple

1998, Samira Makhmalbaf, Iran

An elderly unemployed father and his blind wife made national headlines in 1990s Iran when it was discovered they had kept their two 12-year-old daughters locked up at home for their entire lives. Samira Makhmalbaf’s bold directorial debut proposes a cinematic recreation of the events starring those who lived them, victimised children and guilty parents alike. As customary in the movement, this Iranian New Wave gem merges fact and fabrication in metafictional humanism. The girls’ decade-long isolation prevented them from learning how to communicate their needs, and their innocent vocalised grunts can be challenging to listen to. Samira Makhmalbaf, who was only 17 at the time of production, portrays flawed people with a blend of empathy and defiance. Her father, acclaimed filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is a clear source of inspiration, but Samira develops a voice of her own. Many have questioned the moral integrity of this filmmaking exercise, but the parents’ actions are never justified nor excused. The Apple simply weighs their individual moral shortcomings against broader societal deficiencies.

0.5 mm

2014, Momoko Ando, Japan

Sakura Ando has, for almost two decades, held her ground as a nigh-unsurmountable mountain of charisma among Japanese actresses. 0.5 mm adapts the eponymous novel by her sister, author and filmmaker Momoko Ando. Sawa Yamagishi, played wonderfully by Sakura, is a penniless elderly care worker who embarks on a bizarre journey: clumsily blackmailing senior citizens into accepting her care. It’s a conceptual oddity, and credit for making it work is shared between the Andos. Sakura brings to the role the humorous eccentricities from comedies like Love, Exposure and the sensitive depth from pictures like Monster. The end product is a striking film illuminating alarming sociocultural afflictions, like widespread loneliness, negligence towards the elderly, archaic gender dynamics, and broken family structures. Some might argue its 198-minute running time is excessive, but raise your hand if, like this writer, you believe there’s no such thing as too much Sakura Ando.

Salt of this Sea

2008, Annemarie Jacir, Palestine

Salt of this Sea is a historic film in more ways than one. Not only did it make history as the first Palestinian feature directed by a woman, it is also a movie about unresolved injustices, as opposed to ancient history curiosities. Characters visit the stages of real-life massacres perpetrated by the IDF, like the ruins of the now-extinct town of Al-Dawayima, where hundreds of Palestinians were slaughtered. Poet and activist Suheir Hammad stars as Soraya, who mirrors the actress’ own biography as a Brooklyn-raised daughter of Palestinian refugees who fights for her Right to Return. Soraya vows to recover her family’s home and savings, all of which were taken away from her grandparents during the Nakba. The depth of moral bankruptcy of the Zionist entity cannot be overstated, and it’s through mundane imagery that the drama makes its point - like the freedom that comes with removing the colour-coded licence plates that Palestinian cars must display in the apartheid state. Annemarie Jacir, who also directed last year’s terrific Palestine 36, always excels at two things: 1) showing how vicious even the most “benign” of settlers is and 2) framing the silent fury of the colonised.

The Meetings of Anna

1978, Chantal Akerman, Belgium

There’s a quiet lethargy to Chantal Akerman’s film that is symptomatic of the protagonist’s solitary journey. Anna is a successful filmmaker traveling Europe to promote her latest project. In each stop, Anna meets someone who has plenty to tell her, but no interest in listening to what she has to say (with one exception). This is the visual culmination of Akerman’s ‘70s works - the cold shots of European cities feel similar to her frames of New York in her documentary News from Home, and actors are blocked in spaces with the same detachment as Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels. Aurore Clément’s Bressonian performance as Anna is both distant and sensitive. Her interactions are unilateral transactions, and she has no arms in which to seek solace of her own, so even the slightest smile feels enormous. Akerman’s camera oversees these displays of human narcissism with the unsentimental look typical of her filmography, counting on the viewer to become more outraged about these egocentric one-sided conversations than Anna herself.

Atlantics

2019, Mati Diop, Senegal, France

The phrase “military-age men” is religiously regurgitated by Europeans to “describe” the men who risk their lives crossing the ocean in hopes of a bare minimum of dignity. A blatant dehumanising tactic to mislabel refugees as sleeper agents of an ongoing “invasion”. Atlantics, the first picture directed by a Black woman to compete for the Palme d’Or in Cannes, is a film that examines why those men leave, and the women who are left behind when their oceanic crossing ends in tragedy. Ada is a young Senegalese woman who is betrothed to a wealthy man, but whose love is reserved for a construction worker who disappears at sea. Mati Diop treats the premise with the respect it demands while introducing bold twists. Actress Mame Bineta Sane, who stars as Ada, brings a lot of credibility to this touching romance, and her minimalist performance sells the character’s grief and confusion. Ada’s longing for Souleiman, a dispossessed worker, transgresses the financial preoccupations that others expect her to have. Whether in Africa or Europe, the weight of a black man’s soul is still measured economically. Thousands of migrant men can drown in the Atlantic, but society doesn’t mourn them - only women like Ada do.

The Long Farewell

1971, Kira Muratova, Soviet Union

Kira Muratova was one of the most adventurous Soviet directors of the ‘70s. From the racial commentary in Change of Fate to the unusual optimism of her romantic comedy Getting to Know the Big, Wide World, Muratova showed many facets of Soviet life across her filmography. In The Long Farewell, a divorced mother, Yevgenia, begins to feel a rupture in her relationship with her 18-year-old son, Sasha. A painfully familiar story for anyone who’s ever been on either side of it. Actress Zinaida Sharko imbues Yevgenia’s character with warmth and heartbreak, and doesn’t portray her solely as a dedicated mother, but as a competent translator who is full of charm. Sasha’s sudden detachment feels all the more disheartening because the audience learns how genuinely charismatic his mother is. The director’s eccentric style, still not fully formed in this picture, did not respect the tenets of Soviet realism, and her quirks consistently put her career under strain. While the découpage here is far less experimental than some of Muratova’s later works, it was unorthodox enough to be shoved aside. But it’s Muratova’s peculiarities that grant the film its rebellious flair, both on and off screen.

The Men I’ve Had

1973, Teresa Trautman, Brasil

When it appears in cinema, polyamory is frequently assessed with the same puritan moral evaluation that it receives in real life. It’s more acceptable than ever to mock non-monogamous relationships and even question the consent exchanged by the parties involved. The Men I’ve Had shows what polyamory looks like when a married woman, Pity, is the one behind the wheel, cultivating hedonistic ties with several men. Beyond sexual liberty, Pity also enjoys economic freedom, since she’s financially independent from her husband. There’s plenty of amusing scenarios free of jealousy, like when Pity and her men all get together to enjoy some ice-cold beer. Naturally, this movie was censored by the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship, since it challenged patriarchal properties that are still just as rigid five decades later. It echoes the pornochanchada genre, an unruly type of Brazilian comedies that leaned heavily into sexual themes and imagery. Beneath their vulgarity, pornochanchadas often slipped political commentary past government censors. The Men I’ve Had doesn’t even bother to conceal its defiant feminist intentions - it wears them on its sleeve.

Mossane

1996, Safi Faye, Senegal

Senegalese director Safi Faye was a pioneer whose 1975 picture Kaddu Beykat was the first commercially distributed feature by an African woman. Her most well-known film, Mossane, follows a 14-year-old girl whose physical beauty becomes the inappropriate obsession of an entire village of adults. Faye’s academic background in ethnology guides her directorial style, and this fictional drama gains a verisimilitude that makes the experience more emotionally strenuous for the viewer. From elderly men sexually objectifying the teenager to her parents seeing her as a channel for financial advantage, everyone around Mossane seems exclusively interested in her body, and her own thoughts and agency carry no weight. Despite her people’s acceptance of child marriage, the young Mossane understands that it must be wrong for adults to promise her in marriage for profit, and rebels against the prison that her culture and family built for her. Cultural peculiarities must be always acknowledged, but one can never become desensitised to the inherent horror of forced child marriage, regardless of when and where it takes place.

Lingua Franca

2019, Isabel Sandoval, Philippines, USA

A lingua franca is a common bridging language between those who don’t share the same native tongue. This Filipino-American drama raises by tenfold the significance of what can’t be communicated between people with fundamentally different places in the world. It stars writer and director Isabel Sandoval as Olivia, an undocumented Filipino trans woman who works as a caregiver for an elderly woman with dementia, Olga. Each paycheck has to not only financially support her family back in the Philippines, but also fund her desperate attempts at securing a green card. She becomes romantically involved with Olga’s grandson, Alex, and though both speak English under a shared roof, there is much that an undocumented trans woman of colour can’t communicate to a white cisgender male citizen. As bestial ICE agents throw immigrants into black vans, Alex’s empathy, although genuine, isn’t enough. Olivia can’t opt out of her daily paranoia, and political awareness isn’t optional. No verbal description can accurately translate the constant fear of imprisonment and violence following Olivia’s every step in Trump’s AmeriKKKa. Lingua franca is a film about things that can get lost in translation even when two people speak the same language.

All We Imagine as Light

2024, Payal Kapadia, India

Ill-intentioned social media algorithms developed by racist technocrats have hijacked the public imagination of what India looks like. Payal Kapadia’s film views Bhārat differently, and captures the country’s vibrant soul like a child chasing fireflies with a glass bottle - from the colourful lights in the streets of Mumbai to the quiet of a desolate village by the coast. At the centre of it all are Prabha and Anu, two nurses sharing a flat in the city. Their personalities often clash: Prabha is rather self-restrained and romantically frustrated, while Anu wishes to act upon her desires, but struggles to find a refuge for intimacy in a conservative society. Kani Kusruti’s moving performance as Prabha is even more impressive when considered alongside her role in Girls Will Be Girls, also released in 2024. Broad sociopolitical interrogation isn’t paramount to the story, but Kapadia does probe into the widespread demolition of low-income housing - which is, sadly, not exclusive to India. All We Imagine as Light is filled with yearning, and its introspective nature makes for delicate moments. It doesn’t shy away from the country’s challenges, but revels in its ordinary beauty; be it through a young couple riding crowded public transportation or a friend falling asleep on another’s shoulder.

Caramel

2007, Nadine Labaki, Lebanon

A common misconception about the cinema produced and set in West Asian countries is that its works are always mournful representations of war-ravaged nations. Not that it’d be an unreasonable artistic pillar, if it were the case. After all, the West has invested trillions of dollars into the decimation of the Middle East. But that’s not the case in Nadine Labaki’s directorial debut. Here, Beirut is a city like any other, teeming with life, where the broad sociocultural questions certainly haven’t disappeared, but there’s no tragedy to exemplify the moral of the story. Labaki stars as Layale, one of the five Lebanese women spotlighted by the story, all of which either work at or frequent a beauty salon. Each of the women battles cultural impositions of some kind, from repressed homosexuality to the anxiety of growing old in a society that equates beauty with youth. What’s most impressive about Caramel is just how lighthearted its presentation is - it’s a film that could be mistaken for a standard feel-good comedy. Its optimistic tone is in itself taunting the cynical Western gaze. Caramel resists politically by introducing Beirut not as a doomed geographic site somewhere on the map where happiness was never possible, but as a real place, with real people, seeking real happiness.

Fiction.

2008, Mouly Surya, Indonesia

As far as pathologies go, antisocial personality disorder is by and large the most commonly depicted in media. Filmmakers and audiences alike are obsessed with sociopaths. It makes statistical sense that most of these stories are focused on remorseless men committing heinous acts, but it’s always riveting to see female storytellers showcase the crimes of psychopathic women without any sour tinge of misogyny. In this unsettling thriller with light class commentary, director Mouly Surya chronicles the dangerous infatuation of a rich young woman with a working-class writer struggling with a creative block. Surya is one of Indonesia’s most renowned filmmakers, having directed inventive genre movies like the 2017 feminist Western Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts. Ladya Cheryl’s incredible performance as the detached Alisha here peels back layers of childhood trauma, social entitlement and obsession, elevating the already strong script. Fiction. is already an Indonesian classic, and highlights one of cinema’s most fascinating female psychopaths.

Working Girls

1986, Lizzie Borden, USA

Work is, more often than not, a boring and repetitive cycle of operations that require little thought once muscle memory kicks in. It makes sense that, for many sex workers, the same principle applies. Working Girls registers the day in the life of a group of sex workers at a Manhattan brothel. Contrary to expectation, there’s no ingrained sense of anguish in their working environment. No sex trafficking, no soul-crushing speeches - only a dull job and trivial chit-chat with customers. That’s not to say the film overlooks the nature of the industry uncritically. There are uncomfortable interactions, most traceable to simple chauvinism, and the women do their best to respond with professionalism to situations probably best answered with a punch. Similar to her 1983 classic Born in Flames, director Lizzie Borden acknowledges the class (and even racial) disparities between characters, and how it determines their particular material circumstances and perspectives. For the protagonist Molly, a Yale graduate, the job is a temporary nuisance to navigate the gig economy, but her condescending “university girl” tone is reprimanded by an older coworker for whom sex work is a long-term commitment. Working Girls is a splendid feminist discussion of sex work, free from the commonplace moralism that often accompanies it uninvited.

Leila and the Wolves

1984, Heiny Srour, Lebanon

In 1974, Lebanese director Heiny Srour became the first Arab woman to have a film selected for the Cannes Film Festival - the excellent documentary on the Dhofar rebellion, The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived. Her next feature, Laila and the Wolves, took seven years to film and would only be released a decade later. In this idiosyncratic picture, archival footage, reenactments and fiction are combined to tell a tale that no one but Heiny Srour could have envisioned. Leila is a Lebanese woman curating a Palestinian photography exhibition in London. While staring at the photos, her male partner claims that “in those days, women had nothing to do with politics”. His casual chauvinism goads Leila into time-travelling back to the 20th century, where she bears witness to women’s contributions across decades of political resistance in the Levant. There are countless sociological threads being pulled at once, and duality is everywhere. Women sacrifice their own children for the advances of the national struggle, while husbands assault their wives with impunity for banal reasons. Gender dynamics are dissected from every angle, making Leila and the Wolves a multifaceted investigation of patriarchy, theology and colonialism.

A Very Curious Girl

1969, Nelly Kaplan, France

Surrealism is remembered for its formal attacks against cinematic structure, yet the movement’s political ambitions often go unmentioned. Surrealists instigated cinema to devour both itself and the wider bourgeois social order and its hypocrisies. So the compact pool of female Surrealist filmmakers is a shame, and likely the side-effect of unresolved chauvinistic inklings - Germaine Dulac and Nelly Kaplan are the only celebrated Surrealist women. While the dream-like quality of Surrealism isn’t central to A Very Curious Girl, the movement’s underapreciated political critique is. The protagonist, Marie, consolidates social capital in her tiny rural community through sex work. By sleeping with the village’s gullible men, Marie acquires the funds to live a more comfortable life - until things start to get heated, and the local wives direct their anger at Marie, not their unfaithful husbands. The men themselves are not keen on the rules that Marie stipulates, and each sequence becomes more preposterous than the last - like when the men attempt to impose a price-control policy on Marie’s services. Kaplan’s vision in A Very Curious Girl feels incredibly fresh, and comparisons are insufficient, but viewers can expect an absurdist tone à la Luis Buñuel with a sharp feminist sarcasm reminiscent of Agnès Varda.

Song of the Exile

1990, Ann Hui, Hong Kong, Taiwan

Not many fears can eclipse the anxiety of not knowing anything about your mother and only realising it when it’s too late. Thankfully, that’s not the case for the protagonist Hueyin, a young woman from Hong Kong who returns home after graduating in London and reunites with her mother, Aiko. After many quarrels, the daughter begins to understand how little she knows about the woman who brought her into the world. Even the wise mothers who seem to know everything are only people who had entire lives before giving birth or adopting their children. This family drama shines a light on a mother who still isn’t sure who she is, nor that she made the best choices. Slowly the duo, remarkably played by Lu Hsiao-Fen and Maggie Cheung, come to mutual understanding and appreciation, and it’s incredibly moving. Also central to the narrative are the tensions of Sino-Japanese relations, since Hueyin’s mother was a Japanese civilian living in Japan-occupied Manchuria during WWII, and her father a Chinese army officer. Aiko’s life as an immigrant in Chinese territory was marked by linguistic alienation and the social grievances stemming from the atrocities committed by the Empire of Japan. As a semi-biographical work for director Ann Hui, both emotional and cultural conflicts are explored with a masterful touch. Here’s to hoping that this magnificent film prompts viewers to cherish their mothers and learn about who they actually are while they still have the chance.

The Silences of the Palace

1994, Moufida Tlatli, Tunisia

You can count on one hand the number of films that meditate on labour and gender exploitation with this much finesse. Upon returning to the royal palace where she was born into servitude, Alia, the protagonist, relives her childhood memories. Her late mother, Khedija, was one of the many female servants sexually and economically exploited within the palace walls. For Khedija, the irrevocability of her child’s destiny was suffocating, and each day demanded another desperate attempt to postpone her young daughter’s sexual subjugation. Inescapable emotions dominate the screen, and neither the audience nor the characters find relief from their burden. Patriarchal intimidation manifests itself whenever one of the princes walks into a room and the women’s laughter fades. This astonishing feminist drama examines the ignition of anti-imperialist sentiment, making the women’s plight all the more urgent. While their country fights for sovereignty, the women attempt to regain their bodily autonomy. Where one battle is loud and its warriors warmly embraced, the other is overlooked, and its fighters silenced. But true liberation begins with the emancipation of women, and Moufida Tlatli’s magnum opus serves as a monumental reminder of it. The Silences of the Palace is one of the greatest works in the history of cinema.

Moral

1982, Marilou Diaz-Abaya, Philippines

There’s one question that every cinephile lucky enough to have seen this has surely asked themselves: “How was this made in 1980s Philippines?”. With each scene, it becomes harder to reconcile its intersectional feminist valour with the historical period. Director Diaz-Abaya tackles just about every sensitive topic imaginable: abortion, homosexuality, marital rape, slut-shaming, labour rights, state repression - and the list goes on. Moral is a kaleidoscopic study of patriarchy and womanhood, exceptionally forward-thinking even by today’s standards. Set during the ‘70s-‘80s Martial Law era in the Philippines, this coming-of-age story follows four university students: Joey, Kathy, Sylvia and Maritess. Their friendship has a burgeoning effect, and everything seems okay when they’re together, despite their many differences. But apart, they drift aimlessly in a male-dominated world indifferent to their potential to flourish. Moral features audacious sociopolitical imagery, from a divorced woman developing a healthy friendship with her gay husband’s boyfriend to a favourable depiction of the armed left-wing guerrilla activities. Joey, flawlessly performed by Lorna Tolentino, is the cast’s most complex figure, and the waxing and waning of her growth demonstrates the picture’s awe-inspiring writing. Marilou Diaz-Abaya doesn’t provide neat resolutions to issues that society itself hasn’t yet solved. Instead, she asks the audience to stay for the good, the bad and the uneventful. The simplicity of this slice-of-life drama is deceiving. But by the time the credits roll, this collage of ordinary moments reveals itself as one of the most phenomenal films of the 1980s. This is an unsung masterpiece of Southeast Asian cinema.

Full List

The Last Stage, 1948, Wanda Jakubowska, Poland

Something Different, 1963, Věra Chytilová, Czechoslovakia

The Apple, 1998, Samira Makhmalbaf, Iran

0.5 mm, 2014, Momoko Ando, Japan

Salt of this Sea, 2008, Annemarie Jacir, Palestine

The Meetings of Anna, 1978, Chantal Akerman, Belgium

Atlantics, 2019, Mati Diop, Senegal, France

The Long Farewell, 1971, Kira Muratova, Soviet Union

The Men I’ve Had, 1973, Teresa Trautman, Brasil

Mossane, 1996, Safi Faye, Senegal

Lingua Franca, 2019, Isabel Sandoval, Philippines, USA

All We Imagine as Light, 2024, Payal Kapadia, India

Caramel, 2007, Nadine Labaki, Lebanon

Fiction., 2008, Mouly Surya, Indonesia

Working Girls, 1986, Lizzie Borden, USA

Leila and the Wolves, 1984, Heiny Srour, Lebanon

A Very Curious Girl, 1969, Nelly Kaplan, France

Song of the Exile, 1990, Ann Hui, Hong Kong, Taiwan

The Silences of the Palace, 1994, Moufida Tlatli, Tunisia

Moral, 1982, Marilou Diaz-Abaya, Philippines

Letterboxd List

The sonic landscape of 2025 was overabundant with uncharted spaces worth exploring, from Palestinian Jazz to Thai Dream Pop. Not to taint this text with an overly sepulchral tone right from the start, but life is heartbreakingly short, and so much of it is wasted on waged labour that anyone passionate for music should aim to explore as much as they can while they can. And since human talent has yet to find its limits, listening exclusively to radio-friendly tunes might not be enough to see all that music has to offer.

Since self-indulgently long lists are already becoming a Punished for Sincerity staple (it’s part of the charm, or so the author tells himself), here’s another one. The goal is to curate a wide and varied selection of albums, though evidently leaning towards punk. Some of these LPs attracted large mainstream appeal, while others remain quite obscure, but they’re all worthy of a minimum of attention, even if only to confirm you dislike them.

Before getting started, a couple disclaimers:

1. A few artists are omitted from this list in spite of their excellent releases due to their advocacy and/or vocal appreciation of Zionist colonialism, such as Lady Gaga and CLIPPING. Pirating music is a hassle, so it’s sadly too inconvenient to listen to these artists without supporting them financially. Even if they only receive $0.003 per stream, that’s more money than Zionists deserve. That said, remember to also boycott Spotify!

2. Rather embarrassingly, there are no LPs from the African continent in this Top 60, as they all fell just under the threshold. However, they are to be fondly remembered in the -

Honourable Mentions:

Kiniata, Kin’gongolo Kiniata, Congo

DESVIO FULL THROTTLE, Bailefunk Kakeko, Japan

بنسى وبتذكر [I Remember I Forget], Yasmine Hamdan, Lebanon

A.O.E.I.U. (An Ordinary Exercise In Unity), Florence Adooni, Ghana

No esperan por nadie cóclea x canut de bon, Chile

Never Exhale, DITZ, United Kingdom

La Brea, Hesse Kassel, Chile

Baile à la baiana, Seu Jorge, Brasil

Die in Love, Greet Death, USA

DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, Bad Bunny, Puerto Rico

60. Hagen

Titanic, Mexico | Art Rock, Art Pop

This pair of classically trained Latin artists merges the ethereal vocals of Chamber Pop, the technical bravado of Progressive Rock and the colourfulness of Art Rock. The cello sounds colossal here, generating lively atmospheres out of thin air, like in the fantastic track La dueña. These stellar Avant-garde Pop songs have melodies which at times echo genre-defining artists like Julia Holter (specifically in the track Escarbo dimensiones). Hagen is a collection of forward-thinking and truly adventurous compositions that don’t feel attached to any ruleset of how songs should progress.

59. Perfect Evasion

Slowwves, Thailand | Shoegaze, Dream Pop

There’s something endearing about imagining these young Shoegaze musicians navigating the scene in Thailand. Slowwves synthesises the genre’s sonic identity and comes through with the ethereal lyricism to match it. Lines like “as you slowly fade away from my sight” are repeated over and over, pulling listeners into exactly the kind of dreamy spiral that they sign up for by pressing play on a Shoegaze album. While the instrumentals are good, the vocalist here is due all the credit for the LP’s charm - though it’s unfortunate that there’s no singing in Thai, a language so beautiful that it would instantly elevate the project.

58. Stardust

Danny Brown, USA | Experimental Hip Hop

The Detroit rapper’s latest LP sees him returning to the EDM-inspired production last heard in his 2013 project Old, now updated for a hyperpop-dominated ecosystem. The collaboration with Digital Hardcore sensation femtanyl is bound to be remembered as a fan-favourite. But it’s the 9-minute The End that serves as a perfect TL;DR for everything that makes Danny who he is; a man approaching 50 who can keep up with the most rebellious and idiosyncratic of music styles. If anything, Danny is only getting weirder.

57. Gem of the West

SENTRIES, Canada | Noise Rock

The second album by this Canadian solo artist has a much more pronounced and distinct Post-Punk sound, but without losing its somber noisy experimentation. It’s an impressive evolution from last year’s project given the short span of time since - the vocals are much stronger, and twice as adventurous. Take the incredible Nails, for instance, as illustration of the vocal range. Expanding their vocals could be a promising direction for SENTRIES, whose instrumentals and production works are already masterful.

56. Cowards

Squid, United Kingdom | Art Punk

Like other bands in the Windmill scene, Squid is peculiarly eclectic. Much of the album’s variety is indebted to its amazing strings, with violins and cellos elevating every song in which they’re featured. The sardonic post-punk vocals pair well with the quirky and animated instrumentals, such as on the opener Crispy Skins or the chamber pop-esque closer. Each track achieves a complete emotional marathon through instrumentals rather than relying on lyricism alone, though the writing is certainly puzzling and engaging too.

55. //亵渎朋克摇滚 [//Punk Rock Blasphemy]

Riot in School, China | Post-hardcore, Emo

This Chinese album is a hidden gem for the lovers of DIY Emo. Its middle section is its most energetic, with really engaging guitar work and great vocals. The Post-hardcore instrumentation is uplifted by some great wind instrumentation, from a competent saxophone to the lovely flute melody in //Sunny Day Freestyles. The rapping is unexpected, but fits in well, if anything to prove how the project is a result of an eclectic and international taste (there might even be a sample of Kendrick Lamar’s scream in here). The indietronica climax of //Archipelago is fantastic, and indicates an interesting direction for the band to explore in the future.

54. Caro vapor vol. II: Qual a forma de pagamento?

Don L, Brasil | Conscious Hip Hop

The latest project from this iconic Brazilian rapper sees him bringing together several genres: MPB, afrobeats, R&B, Jazz, etc. His satirical lyricism is a highlight in the splendid tudo é Simulação/Conflito, a track which also represents the best of the album’s socio-political commentary, as Don L decodes a bizarre Brazilian zeitgeist in which coaches sell marketing courses for other coaches.

53. We All End in the Same Place

Linger Escape, Philippines | Shoegaze, Alternative Rock

The DIY angst of grunge and the poetic waves of shoegaze distortion - this Filipino band coalesces both worlds together in a consistent formula, while leaving some room for surprises. With a 26-minute running time, the tracklist is just right, and the band never spreads itself thin. From the bittersweet singing of Thorns to the fiery screams in Whisper, this album packs a punch.

52. Afeto e outros esportes de contato

Bella e o Olmo da Bruxa, Brasil | Indie Rock, Emo

The cover art alone is enough to conjure memories of 2000s Emo, and the opening track immediately proves that initial impression correct. That’s not to say the LP is formally obsessed or exclusively committed to indie rock, however - the closing track is a pagode song. Afeto e outros esportes de contato is teeming with mundane dramas and a bittersweet compulsion to look back at unresolved personal issues. Songwriting is superb, and lines like “I can’t bear to hug people for the last time anymore” stick around long after the album is finished.

51. Pain to Power

Maruja, United Kingdom | Post-Punk, Rap Rock

A rap-based Jazz Rock LP where the highlight is a stellar saxophone player, which elevates the instrumentation throughout. Look Down on Us is a powerful manifesto and brings out what there is of most politically interesting here. Though some of the lyricism can read as rather average songwriting, the performances are outstanding and render the words with far more emotional weight than what’s on paper - the track Saoirse being a great example. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on what Maruja does next.

50. Conflict DLC

HEALTH, USA | Electro-Industrial, Metal

A band that proves time and time again why they have their genre cornered. ORDINARY LOSS accurately represents the group’s signature take on metallic electronics, the deceiving calm inside an abandoned factory while a storm roars outside. However, it’s in the vulnerable DON’T KILL YOURSELF that the album finds its most powerful and memorable track. Although arguably not the best LP in HEALTH’s discography, Conflict DLC easily surpasses so many projects struggling to recreate this sound.

49. Para quien trabajas Vol. I

Marilina Bertoldi, Argentina | Synthpop

This underrated Argentinian release infuses contemporary synth pop with some really fun New Wave elements. “Fun” is the keyword here, and there’s many moments that can’t be described as anything else. EL GORDO, for instance, is one of the most addicting pop songs of the year. Marilina’s hooks frequently hit the maximum sing-along-ability factor, and the synths combined with Pop Rock guitars keep the tracklist lively throughout.

48. How This All Ends

Nuvolascura, United States | Emoviolence, Screamo, Mathcore

That kind of Screamo that has listeners spitting blood by the end of the album. The momentum here is intoxicating, each track draws the listener into one-way streets filled with screaming, keeping tension alive in every corner. Each song functionally builds and releases its own secretion of violence, but their individual displays of rage fit together seamlessly like LEGO. The first half seems like one cohesive song, until the track if it all breaks that illusion and slows it all down with some post-industrial experimentation. A fierce LP.

47. Tanya

Juana Rozas, Argentina | Electro-pop

Tanya is electro-pop with a hell of an attitude. It’s an LP that plays with proverbial fire: industrial music, and tracks like ANTONIO make the risk pay off. While there’s plenty of experimentation, tracks like WANNA HOTEL don’t conceal the record’s main goal: making you dance. The high point has to be the track BESITO A LAS FLORES, which has one of the most gorgeous and hard-hitting instrumental progressions of the 2025’s Pop scene.

46. Try

Door Eater, USA | Electro-Pop, Industrial

Ada Rook and Lauren Bousfield’s newest project definitely doesn’t help undo the “trans people make the best electro pop” stereotype. These glitchy Deconstructed Club beats would cause anyone to burn a substantial amount of calories on the dance floor, though dancing to them likely comes at the risk of having one’s body distorted into some weird Cronenbergian geometrical flesh blob. In addition to the futuristic production informed by hyperpop trends, the ungovernable mania here is also conveyed through excellent screams. Textured, poppy and an absolute blast to listen to.

45. Let God Sort Em Out

Clipse, United States | Rap

Pusha T and Malice are back to flex their nasty flows and insane lyricism. The entire project is like a machine gun of amazing features - from Kendrick to Tyler the Creator, it’s a reunion of apex predators. Although Pharrell’s verses aren’t as exciting as they ought to be, his production is wonderful, and the remarkable sampling across the album shouldn’t be taken lightly. The rapping in Let God Sort Em Out isn’t simply flawless, it’s essentially as good as it gets.

44. Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory

Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, United States | Indie Rock

Sharon’s latest album flirts with many sounds that feel uncharted in her discography so far - be it the dream pop atmosphere on the opener or the New Wave quality of I can’t imagine why. It’s thrilling to see Sharon asserting herself across these episodic instrumental adventures, her gorgeous voice being the only constant in a sonic anthology. Lush, emotionally rich and a must-listen - as all of Sharon’s work.

43. Goyard Ibn Said

Ghais Guevara, USA | Conscious Hip Hop

When it comes to production alone, the Socialist rapper’s new concept album is his best yet. The Old Guard is Dead, with its astounding sampling, is as dramatic, thrilling and raw as contemporary rap gets. A few of the tracks blend together so well that the listener can’t help but go back to re-experience the transition, like when 3400 sets up the perfect “plug” tag drop for I Gazed Upon the Trap with Ambition. As always, Guevara brings his radical political commentary to the foreground, and the lyrical highlight goes to the track You Can Skip This Part, in which the artist comments on rap itself being a contraption controlled by whites, and how escaping their dominion seems unachievable. Goyard Ibn Said is yet another strong release from Guevara.

42. Camgirl

Crippling Alcoholism, USA | Gothic Rock, Noise Rock

This project interweaves such a humongous array of different sounds that it’s tricky to attribute its success to any one element. It’s as gothic as it gets, though it hops between several stand-ins for what gothic should sound like - from the heavy drums of MONET to the enchanting dark synthwave title-track with its catchy chorus. The form is incredibly flexible and the group peppers in modern spins that should attract younger audiences, but the spirit is always quintessentially gothic. One of the most atmospheric LPs of the year.

41. A Lucid Dream Last Night

An Empty City, China | Metalcore, Alternative Metal

A blend of 2000s nu metal and shoegaze that nods to the past, but doesn’t feel so enamoured by it to the point of cynicism. The track feather is more than a sincere homage to Deftones - it’s one the most exciting songs of the year. There’s a healthy amount of variety here, which reiterates the band’s intention to recreate what they love - from straightforward and sinister breakdowns like in the track Cure to a drum & bass/breakcore palate cleanser in You Still Believe in the Things… A really solid listen.

40. Rock Doido

Gaby Amarantos, Brasil | Tecnobrega

It’s crazy to think of how many English-speakers will be getting into tecnobrega after this, as it’s not everyday that you get gringos listening to music that Brazilian people genuinely enjoy. The electronic components are beautifully incorporated in tracks like Te Amo Fudido, with its lovely synths, but also between track transitions. Eu Tô Solteira would be the album’s catchiest tune were it not for the painfully short and spectacular Foguinho, which reappropriates a melody previously stolen by a foreigner. Gaby’s great humour and audacity motivate songs like Dá-lhe Sal, that fuse the berg sound with Arabic motifs. This a solid tecnobrega release, and it’s wholesome to see it getting international recognition.

39. SURFACE TENSION

Dev Lemons, United States | Hyperpop, Alternative Pop

This quirky and hilarious Internet figure is slowly but surely growing to be a really solid artist. In SURFACE TENSION, Dev finally consolidates the electronic and noisy motifs she’s been playing with since she first started making music. Long time fans will remember songs like Ghosted my Dentist and know how entertaining Dev’s nu metal inclinations can be, with songs like FACE only backing up that statement. But as iconic as her humour is, Dev’s musical personality comes full circle when her colourful personality is abruptly cut by sudden mood swings, which is why the wonderful Noise Pop track NOTHING CHANGES stands as the best song she ever produced.

38. A cara do enquadro

Kayblack, Brasil | Trap

The Brazilian rapper’s new project delivers intriguing political baggage, mainly through personal accounts of police brutality. The track Eu Sei Bem, for instance, explores grieving and survivor’s guilt. Good features are essential in rap albums like this, and A cara do enquadro leaves nothing to be desired (MC Hariel is exceptional). Production is competent, with beats consisting of loops that are simple, but perfectly sufficient to accentuate Kayblack’s rhymes. The versatility is what impresses the most - Pretona with its lush piano is followed by Cartas na Mesa with an electronic-dance focus. Hopefully Kayblack’s next project has a consistently politicised tracklist, as it was delightful to hear him speaking on important issues here.

37. Reckless Things

Niechęć, Poland | Jazz-fusion

This polish group offers an Avant-garde electronic exploration of Jazz sounds (with a little dark ambient mixed in). Reckless Things is deliciously nocturnal, particularly in its first couple tracks. The flawless Bezdech is the sonic equivalent of a sensual film montage stitched with dissolves; motifs blending together under a silky veil of mystery. Instrumentation is rich with tension, from the haunting saxophone to drums that soar like in a mausoleum. This LP paints vivid landscapes of intrigue and is one of the best Jazz projects of 2025.

36. Who Let the Dogs Out

Lambrini Girls, United Kingdom | Punk

The straight-forward approach to political sloganeering in this LP is 101 punk - and this is meant as both description and compliment. Instrumentals are honest, charming and appropriately simple for the genre. Make no mistake though, the lyricism is quite good, with standout lines (or rather questions) such as “Officer, what seems to be the problem? Or can we only know post-mortem?”. This good sense of humour meets sharp social commentary in tracks such as Cuntology 101, and the album has that pissed off energy of early Idles, most notably on the song Filthy Rich Nepo Baby. A very fun listen.

35. Fragility

bulletsbetweentongues, United States | Emoviolence

The screamo band’s newest LP is enthusiastically frontal, and made addicting by its attitude and pacing, abrasive from start to finish. The instrumentals on tracks like My Dearest Faith hit that itch for the technical and inquisitive urge that only mathcore can satisfy. The soft closer is a bold, yet successful choice to finish off an otherwise brutal record. Tracks like Skin to Skin encourage the listener to decipher the vocals in order to scream along. Fragility is like primal lightning in a modern bottle. Great for pushing the PRs at the gym too.

34. Pirouette

Model/Actriz, United States | Dance-Punk, Industrial Pop, Art Rock

Who ordered the industrial queer album with the punk ethos? Pirouette is decidedly sexier than Model/Actriz’s previous LP, and danceability was clearly a primary concern for them here. Cinderella and Poppy have instantly become standouts in their short but compelling discography. The gorgeous Acid Rain features Cole Hayden’s best singing yet. Model/Actriz seems to have everything in place to become a household Dance-Punk name.

33. Soft Spot

Honningbarna, Norway | Post-hardcore

An incredibly exciting punk record. This feels like the garage project of some kids in their last year of university - with all the bottled up hunger for life, except they found out they’re not graduating, so they decide to vandalise the 100-year old university building. Despite the language barrier, the unapologetic sense of rebellion leaks through every aspect of this project - particularly through the deliciously noisy instrumentals. An amazing LP.

32. Maryam

Faraj Suleiman, Palestine | Jazz

Suleiman puts together a mosaic of distinctively Arabic warm Jazz melodies and pop/electronic undertones. The wind instrumentation adds a lot of life, and even a Cabaret-esque humour - these lighthearted flares can be heard in tracks like Bye Bye Love or A Hell of a Dream. Their playfulness contrast sharply with the darker half, where touching tracks like I Run, Scream, Mariam evoke earnest and non-rushed pleadings from a simple man with nothing but a piano and a chest full of sentiments that can’t be drowned out. Without any doubt one of the best Jazz projects of 2025. Free Palestine.

31. OUT THERE

Hiromi & Sonicwonder, Japan | Jazz Fusion

The Japanese artist’s signature piano work is at the forefront here, as phenomenal as ever. The keys run untamed, but the other instruments pace alongside it, and all get a moment to shine; the track Balloon Pop features stellar interplay between drums, trumpet and bass. The standout song has to be Yes! ramen!!, which sounds sophisticated and dynamic, but also genuinely fun, with a distinct nod to Japanese melodies. OUT THERE is the best and most colourful Jazz project of 2025.

30. precum

Ayesha Erotica, United States | Hyperpop

A thrilling release by the same brilliant mind that created the hit Yummy. Ayesha’s multilayered production skills can be heard in the song BITCH and also in the closing track, which sounds crushed beyond recognition. WHORE IDOL is one of the year’s greatest pop openers, STAR69 sounds like a cyberpunk clubbing classic, and GIDDY UP is as intoxicating as the substances listed in its lyrics. Precum is a criminally horny album that arguably deserves the name brat more than Charli XCX’s own project.

29. 日常消滅 [Daily Life Vanishes]

kinoue64, Japan | Shoegaze

An album that sounds like its cover, which is to say: magical. The vocaloid and noise rock/pop sounds merge in a satisfyingly harmonious way here, sweet vocal synthesizers singing on top of sugary shoegaze instrumentation. This interplay between the friendly digital vocals and the band’s distortion-rich performance results in striking compositions, as heard in the noise pop jam that is white brain. The track who are you opens with the strongest first 10 seconds of any disc in all of 2025, and is more than enough of a reason to be listed here.

28. God Does Like Ugly

JID, United States | Hardcore/Conscious Rap

Many who follow JID since he first arrived at the rap scene have been waiting for a Conscious Hip Hop project like this, and it’s no surprise that is has turned out to be his best work yet. God Does Like Ugly is packed with fantastic features, and it’s particularly lovely to see EARTHGANG and JID working together again. Some of the bars in this album have quickly entered contemporary rap history, like the nasty “I’ll put a bullet on Bob the fucking Builder” or the provocative “I be thinking maybe Martin was wrong, Malcolm was right”. JID has the pen game to become one of the greats, so here’s to hoping he continues writing politically charged bars.

27. Lux

Rosalia, Spain | Art Pop

The Spanish artist’s latest LP gathers her most impressive set of songs since El mal querer introduced her to casual listeners and music nerds alike. Lux presents not only a slight departure from her flamenco pop roots, but Rosalia’s most ambitious venture yet, as she seeks to merge approachable pop sounds with grandiose classical instrumentation. There aren’t many features, but Rosalia makes them count, and the track Berghain, featuring Björk and Yves Tumor is the Spanish singer’s magnum opus. Rosalia is expanding the definitions of what pop can sound like for mainstream audiences, and her enthusiasm for experimentation should be commended.

26. Eusexua Afterglow

FKA twigs, United Kingdom | Art Pop, Electronic

A sensual arrangement of electronics and R&B, from futuristic synths to pulsing drums. Much like its predecessor, Eusexua Afterglow captures the craving for spontaneity and ephemeral pleasures, but manages to bolster all the ideas previously established. It evokes images of mysterious underground European techno parties and 90s nocturnal movie ending credits - which is to say the sonic scenery is varied, but quite cohesive, mainly due to twigs’ consistently excellent vocals. The closer Stereo Boy is one of the best songs of her entire career.

25. West End Girl

Lily Allen, United Kingdom | Pop

A crystal-clear painting of infidelity, heartbreak and vulnerability. Lily Allen’s concept album is so brutally personal and exhaustive in detail that listeners might feel guilty for dancing along to Pussy Palace. Despite the delicate subject, West End Girl is surprisingly light on the ballads and outright “sad” songs. The sarcastic narrative, although not devoid of yearning and sorrow, still makes for really agreeable and easy to listen pop music. The tracks Madeline, with its imaginative use of gun shots, and the addicting Beg for Me, are two of the production highlights in what is overall a great pop record.

24. Magic, Alive!

McKinley Dixon, United States | Jazz Rap, Hip Hop

It can’t be easy to create a follow-up to his previous LP, but rapper McKinley Dixon pulls it off here. His flows and rhymes stand out in the small yet competitive micro cosmos of Jazz-infused Hip Hop. The 3-song sequence of Run, Run, Run Pt. II, We’re Outside, Rejoice! and All the Loved Ones (What Would We Do???) is an incredible achievement. While the record evokes the sunny imagery of black joy, with birds singing and hypnotising back vocals, it also features blast-out-of-the-car rap bangers like F.F.O.L. Magic, Alive! is Dixon’s most creative album yet.

23. O Mundo Dá Voltas

BaianaSystem, Brasil | Afoxé, Samba, Rock

Few groups translate Brazilian essence like BaianaSystem. Here, as Pote d’Água shows, that essence is overflowing. The aesthetic variety that is typical of the band persists, and this time the eclecticism is also felt in the features - after all, in what other project can you listen to Pitty and VANDAL in the same song? Meanwhile, A Laje features Emicida’s best verse in years, and has quickly become a standout song in the band’s discography. Though the hooks aren’t as addicting as the ones found in Duas Cidades, that’s an unfairly high bar to meet, and every BaianaSystem album is a pleasant experience.

22. HYPERYOUTH

Joey Valence & Brae, USA | Pop Rap, Nerdcore Hip Hop

Beastie Boys for the 2020s, and if the appeal of the premise isn’t already self-explanatory, a track like BILLIE JEAN says all that has to be said about the duo’s revival of nerdcore rap. HYPERYOUTH is a more contemplative follow-up to the excellent NO HANDS, and in tracks like the touching LIVE RIGHT the rappers express their fear of growing old. But if the frenetic electronic production here is a sign of anything, it’s that Joey and Brae’s tastes are still young and full of energy. Sampling work is fantastic too, and HAVE TO CRY is a standout track of the year. Although a love for the past certainly plays a part here, what’s most admirable about this project’s charisma is how it relies much more on the duo’s personality than on cheap nostalgia.

21. Getting Killed

Geese, USA | Art Rock

Frontman Cameron Winter seems to be omnipresent in conversations about generational talent, and it’s easy to see, or rather, hear why. The contemporary disquiet of late stage capitalism survival bleeds right through his anarchic vocals and the equally chaotic instrumentals that accompany him; all aligned in a march against “proper” form, and what singing or guitars “should” sound like it. Kenny Beats’ production is so intricate that the most loyal fans will be finding new details about each song for years to come. Getting Killed is guitar music made exciting once again for those who are lost and wandering, unable to afford a home or car, permanently anxious without quite understanding why.

20. I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven

The Callous Daoboys, USA | Mathcore, Metalcore

The American band consolidates the arithmetical precision of mathcore instrumentation with Emo vocals that call forth flashbacks of getting piercings at Claire’s in the 2000s. From the solid drumming in the emotional track Lemon to the foul riffs in the fabulous Full Moon Guidance, marvellous instrumentals are the norm here. There’s a good balance between abrasive metalcore screams and shockingly good clean singing. It’s not hard to imagine the addicting Two-Headed Trout becoming a hit song on TikTok, for instance, and it’s this consistent push-and-pull between extreme and unexpectedly approachable that makes I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven such a compelling record.

19. Fairyland Codex

Tropical Fuck Storm, Australia | Art Punk, Noise Rock

The long-awaited new album by a band whose sound feels impossible to replicate. Nothing else sounds quite like Tropical Fuck Storm, with their noisy cocaine-fueled Blues melancholy, and their “out-of-tune guitars screeching as a circus slowly burns to ashes” signature sound. Fairyland Codex leans a little more on the slow burners than any of their previous projects, underlining the band’s formidable songwriting. The cover art here echoes their flawless debut LP, but Fairyland Codex has its own original ideas, all of which are vivid, both sonically and lyrically.

18. Only Dust Remains

Backxwash, Canada | Experimental Hip Hop

Some of the best industrial hip hop around, bubbling with righteous black and trans revolutionary fury. The writing is superb, and some of the moments here are rather heartbreaking, like the remarkable 7-minute long Wake Up, one of the many songs evoking feelings of wrath, depression, self-hatred and hopelessness. From the buildup to the drums on Undesirable to the excellent Brazilian sample flip on 9th Heaven, the production here surpasses any of Backxwash’s previous projects. Easily her best work to date.

17. Antes que a Terra acabe

Luedji Luna, Brasil | MPB, Soul

It’s like Luna’s voice was meticulously engineered in a lab to sing MPB, her vocal character instantly inspiring confidence in the album’s stylistic direction. This LP is bristling with the dynamic and eclectic instrumentation so characteristic of MPB, as well as the first-rate choruses that are so essential to guiding such a project - the stellar Farol da Barra best exemplifies this combination. The feature-stacked tracklist is genuinely impressive too - opening an album with Seu Jorge and Arthur Verocai is no small feat in itself, but immediately following with a track in which MC Luanna and the American rapper Rapsody coexist shows enviable curatorial talent. A tremendous record.

16. Ekkolaptómenos

Haru Nemuri, Japan | Art Pop, Noise Pop, J-Rock

Nemuri’s most exciting project since her debut. Tracks like haven show her enthusiasm for expectation-defying J-pop progressions, while the poppy and adventurous panopticon brings guitars and flutes together in a catchy and surprisingly approachable tune. There’s distinct atmospheres here, from the dramatic anointment - her best album opener yet - to the chiming sound of cosmic egg. The tracklist’s sequencing and flow are brilliant too, as the symbiotic duo indulgência and symposium reveal. Nemuri’s vocals are as strong as ever, and Ekkolaptómenos is one of her most delightful LPs.

15. Eh noiz ki tá

MC Hariel, Brasil | Funk Paulista, Trap

A titan of São Paulo’s funk scene. The beat selection is quite strong, and some instrumentals are genuinely surprising, such as the exceptional Limite do Extremo, which flirts with Experimental Hip Hop and lavishes in thematic substance. MC Hariel always demonstrates good taste with his pick of features, like AJULIACOSTA. Cuts like Cifrão and Sem Sentir Saudade, with its warm saxophone, bring a mix of attitude and sensuality. The politically conscious lyricism could have been more predominant, since Hariel excels at it, but as a whole, this is a great album from one of Brasil’s best MCs.

14. private music

Deftones, United States | Alternative Metal

The notorious band’s tenth album gifts audiences with some of the best Alternative Metal out there. This LP is heavily drenched in Shoegaze reverb and nostalgia alike, perhaps even for listeners with little to no nostalgic affection for Deftones, given their popularity on TikTok. The late 90s/early 2000s nu metal sound is palpable in tracks like cut hands, but the project holds its own as a cohesive experience, no Y2K obsession required. Private music knows how to balance moments of quiet with metallic splendour.

13. 45 Pounds

YHWH Nailgun, United States | Experimental Rock, Art Punk

This American band was unanimously celebrated as one of most creative forces of 2025. 45 Pounds is an extremely exciting and odd album which operates like a twisted version of Talking Heads, blending groovy rhythms and great percussion with a bizarre and unpredictable industrial sound. Deranged instrumentals rich with raw experimentation and are somewhat reminiscent of Death Grips’s remix of Björk’s Thunderbolt. Zack Borzone’s nonsensical punk vocals sound suffocated by his own instability, as if he’s channeling some entity he shouldn’t be messing with. The tracklist is very cohesive, with almost no room for redundancy. A record that sounds like speedrunning several states of madness.

12. Helíade

Javiera Electra, Chile | Art Pop

The queer Chilean artist stitches together the personal and cozy experience of the folk singer-songwriter world with the frontal warmth of Latin pop. Lagrima del sol should be mentioned in every discussion about pop jams of the year. As the tracklist advances, Javiera audibly warms up to the audience, and the song El tiempo y la distancia entregan mucho más de lo que yo podría is the turning point for intimacy between listener and artist. During its second half, the art rock component becomes much more pronounced, and that’s when Javiera’s vocals get to shine - to put it simply, her voice was made to lie on top of layers of guitars. If this debut LP is anything to go by, Javiera has a promising career ahead of her.

11. Forever Howlong

Black Country, New Road, United Kingdom | Art Rock

The band’s first album since its frontman’s departure may well be their best. Forever Howlong is magic and sunny days captured in sonic waveforms, like the soundtrack to a Jacques Demy musical. Lush tunes, all of them weaved together by vibrant creativity, remarkable technical prowess and great vocals. Tracks like Two Horses slowly climb towards bright climaxes of wonder and freedom. Nancy Tries to Take the Night is simply astonishing, and one of the best art rock songs of decade yet. Forever Howlong paves an exciting path ahead for the band.

10. 头7 [Head 7]

DJ小女孩, China | Post-Industrial

This Chinese release weaves together an eclectic palette of noisy electronic subgenres: Deconstructed Club, Glitch Pop, Electro-pop and so much more. The track 鸡婆, for example, sounds like funk carioca crafted by a Chinese musician who never directly listened to the genre - like Talking Heads recreating Joy Division exclusively through third party descriptions of their music. There’s so much texture and experimentation (some of which borders on power electronics), but above all - so many hard-hitting bangers.

9. Violet

L.S. Dunes, USA | Post-hardcore

For post-hardcore fans, Violet is the equivalent of finding a 50% off discount code for pizza at the end of a tough week at work. For newcomers to the genre and the band, the opener Like Magick summarises everything this record has to offer. The androgynous, angel-like quality of Anthony’s Greens vocals is the main attraction in what is an otherwise perfectly conventional Post-hardcore album. Songwriting is strong throughout, bringing some of the catchiest hooks of the year - from Fatal Deluxe to MACHINES, there’s plenty of songs to scream along to while riding a bike in the rain.

8. Never Enough

Turnstile, United States | Post-hardcore, Hardcore Punk

Turnstile’s latest album is a maximalist burst of colours. It’s both a sequel and an expansion to the stylistic approach of Glow On. The band has become its own microgenre, a kind of “Dream Post-hardcore”, with saturated instrumentals that can replicate the joy of sunshine, and spectacular vocals that can make entire crowds smile. While the production has a polished sheen, it is always open to exploring new ideas, like the flute outro on SUNSHOWER. Never Enough is a series of incredible optimistic stagediving hymn, and yet another vigorous project by Turnstile.

7. Deseo, carne y voluntad

Candelabro, Chile | Art Rock

In 2023, Candelabro’s debut record Ahora o nunca made a deep mark in the already rich Chilean indie scene. Now, with their second studio album, the band returns to show they’re not a one-trick pony, and Deseo, carne y voluntad overstates it. It’s no surprise that the Chilean group’s instrumentation is impressively sophisticated - it’s a prog rock tinted sound, after all. But the song progressions are well above average, reaching towering emotional heights, like in the spectacular Fracaso, which is a serious contender for best Art Rock song of the year, with a saxophone-led climax that will leave many in awe. Deseo, carne y voluntad is incredible.

6. viagr aboys

Viagra Boys, Sweden | Art Punk

The Swedish punks’ latest album is about as sarcastic and colourful as firing a confetti shotgun into your own mouth. As in any Viagra Boys project, the vocals and songwriting are terrific. The record opens with discussions on the cost of living and Al, and while it isn’t as politically sour throughout, its dark sense of humour never goes away. Plenty of highlights: the wind instrumentation on Uno Il, the longing of Medicine for Horses, the Frank Zappa-esque cult insanity of Best in Show pt. IV. One of their most addicting releases yet.

5. Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party

Hayley Williams, United States | Indie Rock, Pop

How does one write about Hayley Williams without sounding like a cult member? This record only gets better as the tracklist advances - from the angsty opener Ice in my OJ to the vulnerability of Negative Self-Talk. Passages like “the South won’t rise again til it’s paid for every sin” mark the album’s candid political nature. True Believer is a poignant critique of religion written by a Christian woman challenging the contradictions in white America. Although Paramore has defined her career, in Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party Williams’ proves she can successfully lead an extensive project on her own, and having the freedom to do seems to allow her to touch on topics in which her voice is more than welcome. A great LP.

4. Lonely People With Power

Deafheaven, United States | Blackgaze, Black Metal, Post-Metal

The latest LP from a band whose name has become synonymous with blackgaze as a genre. The matrimony between Black Metal and Shoegaze in Lonely People With Power is more successful than most people’s parents’. Tracks like The Garden Route or The Marvelous Orange Tree reach beautifully touching and often vulnerable heights, and there’s a distinctively bittersweet aftertaste to the guitar distortion here. Revelator and Doberman remind listeners of the group’s Metal credentials, while the spoken word in Amethyst adds a delicate and refreshing touch. This is a gorgeous album, and Deafheaven at their absolute best.

3. The Future Is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed

The Armed, United States | Noise, Post-hardcore

An all-encompassing punk album that sounds absolutely gigantic with its dense electro-mathy instrumentals. This is digital cacophony of such an intense degree that it reaches a form of apotheosis, like God Himself is struggling to appear through whatever tiny gaps He can find between the notes; however, the chaotic production is so mathematically precise not even He can enter this fortress of noise. Tracks like Grace Obscure and Purity Drag reveal a bold stylistic approach that dares to bury conventionally catchy hooks under incalculable mayhem. Lyrical passages such as “barred of sleep yet trapped in bed” make the project relatable when least expected. From the fantastic Prostitute feature to the beautiful Heathen, there are so many remarkable songs here that attempting to name them inadvertently leads to listing out the full tracklist. Extreme, noisy and simply exceptional.

2. No One Was Driving The Car

La Dispute, United States | Post-hardcore

It’s difficult to translate the sheer enormity of this record’s emotional scope. This is a decade-defining achievement in songwriting. La Dispute shares long contemplations on how to balance the conflicting joy of being alive with the anguish of having been born unrequested in a harrowing world. The lyrics deploy compelling narrative devices, like describing scenarios and their exact framing through cinematographic language to make the imagery that much more vivid. Good humour plays a large role too, and the band asks the listener to imagine a God that asks His children to invest smartly in the stock market. There’s a myriad of stunning analogies here for feelings that most of La Dispute’s demographic audience are likely grappling with at the moment, such as ageing. In the behemoth of a track Environmental Catastrophe Film, being carried by a stream is evoked as a symbol for growing older, unable to relive what has been. No One Was Driving The Car is a monumental album with lyrical passages that will you speechless.

1. Iconoclasts

Anna von Hausswolff, Sweden | Neoclassical Darkwave

The Swedish organist’s latest album is a complete sentimental odyssey, one which is thorough in its portraiture of feelings one would rather not face. The title-track is among the best Hauswolff has ever composed. Features weren’t expected, but work quite well - Ethel Cain’s contribution in the powerful Aging Young Women is particularly beautiful. A slight element of Dark Jazz probes into the disc thanks to the prominent saxophone, whose powerful use is best illustrated in the ambitious Struggle with the Beast. Hausswolff’s music is the perfect companion to grief - something this writer can attest to personally, having lost an aunt on the year Dead Magic was released, and an uncle shortly after Iconoclasts became available. Listening to these songs performed live is submitting oneself to the therapeutic effects of music that is concomitantly healing and destructive, the kind of art that leaves you emotionally sore for weeks, with burning tears that never quite fall, and instead just dangle invisibly in your eyes. To the surprise of no one that was paying attention, Hausswolff’s music displays once again an unsurmountable sense of both scale and finitude. Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.

See also: The Best Films of 2025

Full List

1. Iconoclasts, Anna von Hausswolff, Sweden

2. No One Was Driving The Car, La Dispute, USA

3. The Future Is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed, The Armed, USA

4. Lonely People With Power, Deafheaven, USA

5. Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party, Hayley Williams, USA

6. viagr aboys, Viagra Boys, Sweden

7. Deseo, carne y voluntad, Candelabro, Chile

8. Never Enough, Turnstile, USA

9. Violet, L.S. Dunes, USA

10. 头7 [Head 7], DJ小女孩, China

11. Forever Howlong, Black Country, New Road, United Kingdom

12. Helíade, Javiera Electra, Chile

13. 45 Pounds, YHWH Nailgun, USA

14. private music, Deftones, USA

15. Eh noiz ki tá, MC Hariel, Brasil

16. Ekkolaptómenos, Haru Nemuri, Japan

17. Antes que a Terra acabe, Luedji Luna, Brasil

18. Only Dust Remains, Backxwash, Canada

19. Fairyland Codex, Tropical Fuck Storm, Australia

20. I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven, The Callous Daoboys, USA

21. Getting Killed, Geese, USA

22. HYPERYOUTH, Joey Valence & Brae, USA

23. O Mundo Dá Voltas, BaianaSystem, Brasil

24. Magic, Alive!, McKinley Dixon, USA

25. West End Girl, Lily Allen, United Kingdom

26. Eusexua Afterglow, FKA twigs, United Kingdom

27. Lux, Rosalia, Spain

28. God Does Like Ugly, JID, USA

29. 日常消滅 [Daily Life Vanishes], kinoue64, Japan

30. precum, Ayesha Erotica, USA

31. OUT THERE, Hiromi & Sonicwonder, Japan

32. Maryam, Faraj Suleiman, Palestine

33. Soft Spot, Honningbarna, Norway

34. Pirouette, Model/Actriz, USA

35. Fragility, bulletsbetweentongues, USA

36. Who Let the Dogs Out, Lambrini Girls, United Kingdom

37. Reckless Things, Niechęć, Poland

38. A cara do enquadro, Kayblack, Brasil

39. SURFACE TENSION, Dev Lemons, USA

40. Rock Doido, Gaby Amarantos, Brasil

41. A Lucid Dream Last Night, An Empty City, China

42. Camgirl, Crippling Alcoholism, USA

43. Goyard Ibn Said, Ghais Guevara, USA

44. Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, Sharon Van Etten, USA

45. Let God Sort Em Out, Clipse, USA

46. Try, Door Eater, USA

47. Tanya, Juana Rozas, Argentina

48. How This All Ends, Nuvolascura, USA

49. We All End in the Same Place, Linger Escape, Philippines

50. //亵渎朋克摇滚 [//Punk Rock Blasphemy], Riot in School, China

51. Conflict DLC, HEALTH, USA

52. Pain to Power, Maruja, United Kingdom

53. Afeto e outros esportes de contato, Bella e o Olmo da Bruxa, Brasil

54. Para quien trabajas Vol. I, Marilina Bertoldi, Argentina

55. Caro vapor vol. II: Qual a forma de pagamento?, Don L, Brasil

56. Cowards, Squid, United Kingdom

57. Gem of the West, SENTRIES, Canada

58. Stardust, Danny Brown, USA

59. Perfect Evasion, Slowwves, Thailand

60. Hagen, Titanic, Mexico

New year, same obsessions.

2026 is laden with upcoming releases that have cinephiles impatiently waiting like a dog that knows the meaning of “outside”. But January can be painfully slow, and it takes a while to dissociate from the year preceding it. In other words, it’s the ideal time to look back at 2025 and reflect on older films that hit historical milestones last year. After all, having a birthday pass by unacknowledged is a punishment that none of the films on this list deserve.

For the sake of discipline, this list excludes Barry Lyndon (1975) and Diabolique (1955), both of which the author has praised elsewhere, and The Ceremony (1995), which will have its own dedicated essay on Punished for Sincerity soon.

Without any further ado, here are 20 great films that celebrated big anniversaries last year.

Xala

1975, Ousmane Sembène, Senegal, 50th Anniversary

Few filmmakers can balance anti-colonialism and self-criticism with the same rigour as Sembène, known by many as the “father of African cinema”. And even fewer can accomplish such topical symmetry while making films that are this hilarious. Here, mockery and accusation meet, and from their firm handshake a ludicrous concept is born, in which an entrepreneur’s erectile dysfunction acts as a metaphor for the unscrupulous incompetence of Senegal’s national bourgeoisie. Sembène has plenty to say about a vast array of matters, from patriarchal polygamy to internalised oppression, and conveys it through dialogue exchanges that are as insightful as they are amusing. Lead actor Thierno Leye is stellar at playing an icon of capitalistic avarice and cultural self-rejection. If Frantz Fanon had the chance to watch the hysterical conclusion of Xala, he’d likely agree it has therapeutic value.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

1975, Chantal Akerman, Belgium, France, 50th Anniversary

Akerman’s now duly recognised 3-hour masterpiece exposes the disquieting and unspoken nature of female labour, portrayed with the industrial consistency of a Fordist factory. Though the role of Jeanne can be misinterpreted as minimalistic, Delphine Seyrig’s performance is career-defining - which in itself is rather impressive, given the quality of her filmography. Time and space turn into political tools to study the relationship between gender roles and labour exploitation, as the Belgian filmmaker demonstrates how men appropriate the fruits of Jeanne’s labour power. No gargantuan call to adventure awaits her - only the next day, and the day after that. Small divergences in the mundane, like a coffee that tastes bitter no matter what or a light that the protagonist forgets to switch off, are enough to recalibrate the audience’s emotional response and beget concern for the character’s unravelling mental state. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles remains one of the most sophisticated explorations of gender dynamics in all of cinema.

The Cave of the Yellow Dog

2005, Byambasuren Davaa, Mongolia, 20th Anniversary

Mongolian cinema often distances itself from the urban novelties of its capital, Ulaanbaatar, and turns its gaze to those preserving their pastoral customs in the steppes. Davaa, who also directed the fabulous Veins of the World, is one of the country’s most prolific filmmakers, and devoted much of her career to celebrating the nomadic cultures threatened by mining companies, climate change and modernity as a whole. Her magnum opus, The Cave of the Yellow Dog, follows Nansal, an adorable little girl who lives with her family and their livestock, and one day brings home a stray puppy. It’s a film about change, and how to welcome it, if at all. Though encased in the shell of an unassuming slice of life story, Davaa’s film, with its verdant hills and dangerous wolves, encapsulates the spiritual dichotomies between humans and nature, as well as death and rebirth. The ending alone makes this one of the most heartwarming films of the 2000s.

Angel’s Egg

1985, Mamoru Oshii, Japan, 40th Anniversary

A direct-to-video sci-fi anime about a nameless little girl and her mysterious egg. This cult classic is a fascinating investigation of faith and doubt. To unbelievers, the concepts of knowing and believing are strictly linked, but to God and His devoted children, the value of faith lies precisely in the hardship that it entails. Oshii’s story perfectly examines the dynamics between a little girl who believes in what she can’t see and an older skeptical boy hardened by a somber world that desperately needs God’s love. It’s a film about the journey of those who love God even if they are unable to feel His touch, and the loneliness of those who must prove that God isn’t there at all. Mandatory for animation lovers, and a great pick for agnostic cinephiles.

BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes and Sadomasochism

1995, Michelle Handelman, USA, 30th Anniversary

This documentary ventures into the BDSM lesbian leather scene in San Francisco. From DIY toy masterclasses to intergenerational beauty pageants, BloodSisters frames it all in detail - the needle play, the taped pliers, the mummification kinks. There’s a great speech towards the end that typifies the death drive - the speaker narrates the day in which a sub offered her own life as a gift, and talks about her temptation to take it. That’s only one of the many passages that explore sapphic pleasure at its rawest, demonstrating how sex that is often perceived as “dangerous” brings communities together in places where they feel the safest. Handelman platforms voices worth listening to in a film that makes great use of its limited budget. BloodSisters still shocks prudes who are bad at sex, which is more than enough reason to spread the word about it.

Hour of the Star

1985, Suzana Amaral, Brasil, 40th Anniversary

Based in Clarice Lispector’s classic novel, Hour of the Star paints a sadly familiar picture of internal Brazilian migration. The protagonist, 19-year-old orphan Macabéa, leaves the Northeast of Brasil for the big city, only to find that loneliness and unfulfillment follow her on the trip. Within the borders of Brasil, with its continental proportions, xenophobia is a historical reality, and Northeasterners customarily suffer prejudice, their cultural identity being tied to preconceived images of economic underdevelopment and often racially charged “slow-wittedness”. But any of Macabéa’s perceived shortcomings aren’t of her own making, and instead disclose structural injustices. She’s poor, but not for a lack of effort or work ethic; she’s insufficiently literate, but not for a lack of curiosity and willingness to learn, as she often asks questions so big in nature that others with formal education aren’t even capable of answering in good faith. Four decades later, it remains agonisingly relevant, despite how intimately personal the film appears at first.

Rome, Open City

1945, Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 80th Anniversary

Contemporary reinterpretations of Italian neorealist films often critique the movement’s portrayal of Italian citizens as innocent victims of fascism, claiming it exempts this imagined, naive populace of their ideological alignment. Some argue this historical indiscretion applies even to Rome, Open City. On the other hand, it’s hard to contest the film’s exceptional characterisation of Nazi-fascism’s atrocities. The pregnant Pina’s desperate chase for her imprisoned husband, which culminates in her death in the streets of Nazi-occupied Rome, is a strong contender for the most tragic scene in Italian cinema. Anti-fascism takes many forms, and Rossellini’s classic film exemplifies this through its ensemble cast, in which rebels of all kinds are represented, from Catholic priests to Communist atheists. Rome, Open City is a salutation for the many courageous souls who sacrificed themselves to resist Nazi occupation, and in the author’s eyes, that will always be more than enough to justify watching it.

Heat

1995, Michael Mann, USA, 30th Anniversary

Three decades have passed, and heist movies are still playing catch-up to Michael Mann’s masterpiece. Heat is the elephant in the room for any aspiring crime epic: it must be addressed, whether as an inevitable source of inspiration, or an artefact to reject and deviate from. The film is brimming with kinetic energy that can’t simply be stored away, it must be released - once the events are set in motion, not even the script itself could contain the eruptive power of Heat. De Niro and Al Pacino’s long-awaited on-screen encounter surpasses all expectations, and their game of cat and mouse is intoxicating. The genre-defining bank robbery sequence inspires more than just awe - it inspired real crimes, proving just how deep Michael Mann’s film has pierced the collective imagination.

Seven Beauties

1975, Lina Wertmüller, Italy, 50th Anniversary

A black comedy Fascist Italy-Holocaust picture, starring a violent chauvinist, and directed by a Socialist female director of aristocratic descent. Within those entangled, thorny vines of contradictions, one of the finest Italian films of the 70s awaits. Wertmüller shares an X-ray vision of how the vermin of fascism grew within the belly of her homeland, and her political tact is only outmatched by the audacity of her absurdist approach. Make no mistake: Seven Beauties is an offensive film, with imagery that can be outright morally abhorrent for some - from nauseating sexual assault to piles of corpses in Nazi extermination camps. This odd story locks the audience in a cage with the loathsome misogynist Pasqualino, throws away the key, and forces the viewer to witness his narcissism corrode even the steel walls surrounding him. No act is too despicable, and a new low is always awaiting, for physical survival is all that matters to Pasqualino, and any shred of principle can be negotiated away, despite his archetypical obsession with “honour”. One of the most bewildering pieces of political satire ever produced.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

1995, Beeban Kidron, USA, 30th Anniversary

A queer cult classic, and arguably the first mainstream Hollywood film to recognise drag queens as performance artists. This road trip movie sends across America a trio of protagonists who act as fairy Godmothers in drag, their magic touch unlocking the repressed desires of a small town populace. Some terminology is certainly outdated, particularly the film’s description of gender identities, but its palpable sincerity hasn’t aged a day. Every beat evokes the intended response: every joke lands a laugh, every wholesome moment incites an “ownnn”. To Wong Foo covers masculine icons of the 90s in make-up and dresses, but laughs at the expense of no one except for racists, homophobes and misogynists. Though the film isn’t the most comprehensive depiction of drag as an art form (and it would have been nice to see the drag characters have their own romantic fulfilment), it brings to light the sense of empowerment and the strong community bonds that drag culture nurtures. Despite its clichés and shortcomings, To Wong Foo remains an underrated feel-good 90s fairy tale.

Forever a Woman

1955, Kinuyo Tanaka, Japan, 70th Anniversary

Tanaka’s feature is a touching portrait of Japanese poet Fumiko Nakajō’s unfairly short life - an unhappy mother of two who married the wrong man, and loves someone that she can’t be with. The film is a harrowing tale of remarkable talent recognised too late, and how the heartbreaking effects of breast cancer slowly injure Fumiko’s self-image as a woman. There’s no rush here, and the central events are built up so patiently that viewers might double-check if they’re watching the movie sold by the synopsis. The pacing is appropriate, since Fumiko herself never develops any desperate form of morbid urgency, and lives her final days with the same quiet appreciation for life as ever. Though not an easy watch by any means, the melancholy is intertwined with the sparse, yet precious joys that Fumiko finds in her last days - from dipping her feet in a puddle of water to feeling the warm touch of another. A lovely work that matches the tenderness of the poet it depicts.

Welcome II the Terrordome

1995, Ngozi Onwurah, United Kingdom, 30th Anniversary

The first independent feature film directed by a black British woman, and one which still feels unmatched in its fury. A nihilistic vision of a future disfigured by apartheid, in which black bodies hold no distinguishable value to those in power, and which sounds less like science fiction the longer you speak about it. To borrow a term from another bleak sci-fi property, the Terrordome is a grimdark world, and Onwurah doesn’t hesitate before proposing violent insurgency as the only way to disrupt it. The film’s unapologetic answer to racial subjugation might still harm the sensibilities of white liberals who “don’t see colour” today, so it’s impressive that Onwurah put forward something this rebellious in the 90s. In Welcome II the Terrordome, the most venerated heroes aren’t the enslaved peoples who broke free in cathartic moments of victory, but the ones that chose death over servitude in the first place, those who walked into the ocean, chains and all.

Ran

1985, Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 40th Anniversary

This Shakespearian epic lives up to the playwright’s notions of family drama and betrayal. The colours in Kurosawa’s film feel like a revolutionary iteration of something so regularly taken for granted, as if the filmmaker reinvented colour cinema in the 80s. Kurosawa’s signature sense of movement within stillness is present here, in a mise-en-scène bursting with smoke, wind, blowing leaves and rain. Between the clashing hues of massive opposing armies massacring each other, the film still finds the occasion for silence that feels deafening. The narrative’s moral spectrum is just as rich in saturation, and never stops interrogating the viewer. Is betrayal really always unjustifiable, or are there exceptions? Ran is a Japanese classic, and somehow more visually breathtaking than ever.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

1965, Russ Meyer, USA, 60th Anniversary

An accidentally feminist classic about women whose hierarchy of needs consists of little besides good fights and fast cars. This exploitation film has been rightfully reappraised after its initial commercial and critical failure, and its visionary portrayal of gender roles has now been amply recognised. Three female nightclub dancers drive across the barren Californian desert, unleashing rage and unfiltered violence wherever they can, little pretence required. Barbarism for barbarism’s sake, the good ol’ Americana special. Totems of heteronormativity are periodically attacked: the trio brutalises an unimaginative heterosexual couple for seemingly no reason other than amusement. Tura Satana’s Varla is one of cinema’s greatest villains, whose utter disregard for life is stupefying, each of her feats of sadism turned into a hypnotic focal point you simply can’t look away from. In Faster, Pussycat, men are subjected to these cruel women’s whims, their bodies and very lives belonging to their illegible intentions - which are mostly murderous, of course. Leather, sports cars, and an unprovoked killing spree. Great film.

One Way or Another

1974-1975-1977, Sara Gómez, Cuba, 50th Anniversary

The first feature directed by a Cuban woman is a down-to-earth report of what follows Revolution, shot among those who have to live in its aftermath. This romance follows a female teacher attempting to educate marginalised children, as well as her macho boyfriend, who doesn’t understand her need for independence. The spectacular scenes set in factory union assemblies display how factory workers democratically discuss communal justice, and imagine entertaining conflicts such as “how would a Socialist society punish a man who skipped work to have sex with his lover?”. Gómez’s perspective is exceptionally nuanced, and her post-revolutionary tale doesn’t promise the disappearance of all injustices, instead making the case that progress can only be achieved through continuous fighting for intersectional solidarity. An amazing debut, and sadly her only feature.

Mad Max: Fury Road

2015, George Miller, Australia, USA, 10th Anniversary

George Miller’s magnum opus is a delightful embrace of cinema’s visual spirit, as the Australian filmmaker proves that a gorgeous canvas is not only a medium, but an end unto itself. The film’s compelling narrative, although jam-packed with quotable lines of dialogue, relies strictly on visual developments to advance through the storyboard. The bonds between characters grow through easily missed details, like Max gifting a boot to Nux once the two enemies become allies, or the silent operational sync up that signals Max and Furiosa’s newly found friendship. When the characters learn that “The Green Place” doesn’t exist, they understand they must fix a broken world with their own hands - there is no planet B. As the years go by, it becomes more and more sensible to affirm that Mad Max: Fury Road is, undoubtedly, the greatest action film ever produced.

Rio, 100 Degrees F°

1955, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Brasil, 70th Anniversary

This 70-year-old classic still feels fresh, which is great news from a cinematic perspective, and disconcerting news for Brazilian society, which has changed so little since the film’s release. What gives Rio, 100 Degrees F° such a sharp bite is the juxtaposition of major touristic destinations like Pão de Açúcar and the poverty that is invisible in the postcards. From structural racism to precarious urban development, the social frailties remain largely the same, as do the people’s choices of coping mechanism: samba, football, and the thrill of scamming naive gringo tourists. This visionary film preceded the Cinema Novo movement, Brasil’s response to Italian Neorealism, and similarly featured non-professional actors, themselves members of the unrepresented working class. Giving voices to the poor was hardly in the interest of a reactionary state, and the film was censored by the Brazilian government due to its excessively “negative” depiction of Rio de Janeiro. Nelson Pereira dos Santos, a known Communist, gave central attention to life in the favelas, and Rio, 100 Degrees F° is Brasil as experienced, or rather, survived, by the most vulnerable. In other words, it’s exactly the film that needed to be made in 1955, and still a must-watch.

Antonia’s Line

1995, Marleen Gorris, Netherlands, 30th Anniversary

This Dutch lesbian feminist fairy tale holds an uncontainable love for life. There’s something so invigorating about watching Antonia’s magnetic presence undo the patriarchal knots within her rural village, reshaping them into bonds nourished by mutual empathy and solidarity. From single motherhood by choice to Nietzschean nihilism, the range and number of subjects that Gorris addresses in under 2 hours is noteworthy. In Antonia’s matriarchal community, so many forms of affection and self-expression become possible, from elderly friends with benefits to lesbian couples raising STEM child prodigies. It’s endearing to see it all grow, and just as sad to see Antonia’s colourful flock diminish, as beloved characters grow old, and new generations arrive just as hungry for life. That’s not to say the film shies away from ghastly episodes, as themes like suicide and sexual assault are also discussed, but it’s precisely because it doesn’t conceal the awful aspects of living that Antonia’s Line feels like such a candid ode to life.

Right Now, Wrong Then

2015, Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 10th Anniversary

A film about chance encounters, in which every word spoken is a step taken before arriving at a fork in the road. Ten years later, the 2-part structure of Right Now, Wrong Then still feels special. Hong Sang-soo’s style divulges a blend of sadism and self-flagellation - conquering the audience’s disbelief with such masterful handiwork, then puncturing it rather arbitrarily with jarring zooms. It’s like destroying an intricate sandcastle hours before even leaving the beach. The Korean director’s dinner table scenes are emblematic and always rich in possibilities, capable of switching from poetic exchanges to awkward disasters in the span of a minute, and Jung Jae-young is the perfect medium for this unpredictable tone. But no one can quite do it like Kim Min-hee, with her stares that can read as reserved, enamoured or barely tolerant, as if one wrong word or cup of makgeolli away from exploding. It’s difficult to estimate how many equally wonderful performances by Kim Min-hee haven’t been robbed from audiences, as the actress has been blacklisted from mainstream South Korean cinema since the reveal of her affair with Sang-soo. The extramarital incident is, of course, mirrored here (as in many of his films), and characters are positioned as surrogates for the filmmaker and the lead actress. Right Now, Wrong Then is a lesson in auteur cinema.

Vagabond

1985, Agnès Varda, France, 40th Anniversary

A story that begins with the protagonist’s frozen corpse occupying the frame, dirty and forgotten. Mona Bergeron’s life is remembered only through the documentary-esque testimonies others have to share, though none of them encompass the entirety of who she was, as they all knew her only for brief moments, and their words are often unkind. Varda’s film asks sympathy for a character driven by a restless need to move forward, devoid of a place that can make her feel at home, and shunned by a society for which she isn’t “productive” enough. Though it doesn’t shy from showing horrific events, it also commemorates the physicality of pleasant human connections - sharing food with a sympathetic stranger on the road or getting drunk with an old lady who finally feels seen as a person. Sandrine Bonnaire lives in the skin of one of cinema’s most complex characters, whose suffering is always difficult to witness, and whose flaws are just as hard to understand. Spectacular film.

See also: The 30 Best Films of 2025

Letterboxd List

Full List

Xala, 1975, 50th Anniversary

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, 1975, 50th Anniversary

The Cave of the Yellow Dog, 2005, 20th Anniversary

Angel’s Egg, 1985, 40th Anniversary

BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes and Sadomasochism, 1995, 30th Anniversary

Hour of the Star, 1985, 40th Anniversary

Rome, Open City, 1945, 80th Anniversary

Heat, 1995, 30th Anniversary

Seven Beauties, 1975, 50th Anniversary

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, 1995, 30th Anniversary

Forever a Woman, 1955, 70th Anniversary

Welcome II the Terrordome, 1995, 30th Anniversary

Ran, 1985, 40th Anniversary

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, 1965, 60th Anniversary

One Way or Another, 1974–1977, 50th Anniversary

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015, 10th Anniversary

Rio, 100 Degrees F°, 1955, 70th Anniversary

Antonia’s Line, 1995, 30th Anniversary

Right Now, Wrong Then, 2015, 10th Anniversary

Vagabond, 1985, 40th Anniversary

In 1955, a queer-coded thriller pierced the French cinema landscape, appearing in the horizon as a tower of layered anxieties and deceit. Tensions of different kinds vertically stack up like bricks: conspiratorial, romantic, psychosexual. Some anxieties boil over a dead body that can’t be found, and others burn between living bodies that never leave each other or the screen. Through many of its layers of paranoia, the film misleads the audience, and the truth can be either shocking, or shockingly disappointing. Discussion surrounding this French classic can be equally tense, as 70 years later, audiences still disagree on whether the film is merely a result of historical sexual repression or a legitimate portrayal of it.

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s horror masterpiece follows Christina and Nicole, two women who teach at a boys boarding school. Both are romantically involved with the same barbaric man, Michel. Christina is his feeble wife, the primary victim of his violence, and Nicole is his mistress, who has decided that the time has come to end his abuse for good. Despite their odd relationship, the duo is introduced as inseparable, and the story appears fixated on stress-testing the resilience of their bond, which is strongly suggested to be mutual queer affection. Together, they decide to murder Michel by drowning him in a bathtub. The aforementioned stress-test begins when the corpse disappears.

Three forms of anxiety are thrust into the audience’s lap. The first, and most obvious, is the conspiratorial-criminal tension, as both women are at risk of being arrested depending on how the dead body is found. The second is psychosexual in nature, since throughout the story, Michel’s living body acts as an obstacle between the two could-be-lovers and their repressed desire. The third is the audience’s anxiety for romantic fulfilment, and is the most difficult to decode, as in spite of incredibly strong clues, there is no explicit acknowledgement that the two women are gay and/or romantically interested in each other. Addressing the conspiratorial-criminal anxieties is a requirement to alleviate the psychosexual and romantic ones.

Fiction has all too often…

Read the Complete Essay on Culture

Culture Film Publication is the UK’s new home for cult and genre film.

This year was a movie, but the tear-jerker kind that makes you slowly put your popcorn away. From music apps investing in AI military technology to posthumous Messianic rebrands of fascistic media personalities, 2025 did not pull any punches. To add salt to an already infected wound, political cynicism has found its yearly ambassador in One Battle After Another, a work that stands for so little, yet fooled so many liberal humanists, all so suspiciously moved by a white American’s mockery of direct action.

It’s understandably difficult not to be seduced by anguish and despair. While the need for distraction often feels like a narcissistic luxury, joy is in itself an exercise in rebellion that requires much more courage than pessimism. In an apparatus meticulously engineered to keep workers alive in a strictly biological sense, it’s important to remember to live.

Thankfully, this year had no shortage of works of art that act as a reminder of the many beautiful things that humans have to offer one another. Although the author hasn’t had the chance to watch some of the year’s most beloved titles, such as Resurrection or The Secret Agent (yes, Brazilian card revoked), thus making this list imperfect, it is one shared with sincerity.

So, to lift up the mood, here are 30 of 2025’s most wonderful films.*

*A few titles might be catalogued as 2024 releases, but since their UK theatrical premiere took place in 2025, they qualify for this list.

Honourable Mentions:

Mirrors No. 3, Christian Petzold, Germany

The Old Woman with the Knife, Min Kyu-dong, South Korea

Same Old West, Erico Rassi, Brasil

We Shall Not Be Moved, Pierre Saint-Martin, Mexico

Final Destination Bloodlines, Adam B. Stein & Zach Lipovsky, USA

April, Dea Kulumbegashvili, Georgia

30. The Mastermind

Kelly Reichardt, United Kingdom, USA

A film that scrutinises the suburban male mind with embarrassing precision: the thrill-seeking, the paternal imprudence, and even the rejection of popular (or “lower”) art. Reichardt casts a blank mould into which she pours very few ingredients, but just enough to concoct a protagonist that succinctly condenses the white privilege and vapid indiscretions of apolitical individualists. The director’s fondness for Bresson seeps through each anticlimactic and frustrating frame of The Mastermind.

29. Die My Love

Lynne Ramsay, USA

Ramsay continues to extend empathy towards the ‘inadequate’, those whose very existence becomes ‘inconvenient’ and challenges the confines of the socially comfortable. Here, a young mother struggling with postpartum psychosis. Jennifer Lawrence’s performance is her best since Mother!, and her character lies on the outskirts of society not only psychologically, but physically, cast away in a desolate rural home that feels as suffocating as the expectations of her getting better. Die My Love exposes the unseen and terrifying potential aftermath of giving birth, a biological event so monumental and reality-warping, yet so shockingly disregarded by cisgender men… who, rather predictably, seem to be having a hard time “relating” to this protagonist.

28. The Shadow’s Edge

Larry Yang, Hong Kong, China

Proof that even at 71, Jackie Chan somehow still got it. This action police thriller follows the framework of copaganda that Chan has always thrived at, but much bloodier than usual, and Tony Leung Ka-Fai feels like a menacing and deadly match for Chan here. Yang’s film is a hearty meal for those that enjoy good choreography and quick-witted characters. Though nowhere near as good as last year’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, The Shadow’s Edge shows signs of a Hong Kong martial arts movie scene that is waking up again. Over 2 hours of senior citizens brutalising each other with punches and knives, which is to say: quite fun to watch.

27. What Does That Nature Say to You

Hong Sang-soo, South Korea

Sang-soo’s latest widens his array of self-insert characters - an undistinguished poet with a candid appreciation for nature, which often comes across as overly romantic. The trademark dinner table eruptive conversations are at their best here, and this time accentuate class dynamics. The habitual verisimilitude of Sang-soo’s dialogues momentarily obscures the fence between reality and fiction, only for sporadic digital zooms to purposefully break the audience’s immersion - like a tap in the shoulder that says “hey, it’s just a movie”. Shot in low resolution, the film is adorned with overexposed skies and objects that aren’t perfectly sharp, mirroring the protagonist’s embrace of organic imperfections.

26. Cloud

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan

A unique crime thriller that no one but the director of Cure and Pulse could have envisioned. Cloud makes accusatory remarks about financial self-interest through the story of an online scalper being hunted by resentful buyers. The bloodbath feels absurd, but carries the Japanese filmmaker’s morbid sentimental detachment. A great film that inspects, under a microscope, the deteriorating tissue of social relations under capitalism.

25. Black Bag

Steven Soderbergh, USA

A spy romance that best exemplifies the director’s brand of slick thrillers, with scheming and double-crossing abound. Black Bag features a captivating group of amoral British intelligence officers for whom the only body count worth discussing is the sexual kind. The film’s propaganda potential is undermined by its comically self-obsessed characters. Despite a plot involving nuclear meltdowns and international drone strikes, it keeps things intimate and always returns to snarky exchanges about monogamy, trust and secrecy. Zero sex, but surprisingly sexy.

24. Ne Zha 2

Jiao Zi, China

This Chinese mythology-inspired sequel delivers some of the most breathtaking animated imagery of the decade. The film depicts events analogous to the American Empire’s blood-soaked foreign policy, with a critical tone that is never concerned with making itself subtle. Ne Zha 2 is a maximalist visual spectacle with a scale that can at times feel outrageous, and an already sky-high sense of momentum that never stops elevating itself.

23. Wake Up Dead Man

Rian Johnson, USA

The latest addition to the Knives Out franchise might well be its highest point so far. This murder mystery traverses familiar ground, but the religious commentary keeps the journey refreshingly captivating, addressing the exploitation of faith by contemporary right-wing grifters. Josh O’Connor’s priest is one of his most endearing characters yet, and ensures the film’s approach to theology is more of a conversation than a pubescent monologue on Reddit. Whodunit movies hardly get more enjoyable than this.

22. The Shrouds

David Cronenberg, Canada, France

The Canadian director describes his own grieving process through a fictional character who similarly lost his wife, but ethical boundaries are stretched to the point of almost ripping. The Shrouds uniquely grapples with grief by directing its focus to the loss of sexual and physical intimacy that comes with the death of a partner. In good Cronenberg fashion, the film has sparked some moral outrage, and is perhaps his most masochistic and bleak project to date.

21. The Blue Trail

Gabriel Mascaro, Brasil

In the not-so-distant future, young bodies are commended for their productivity, while the elderly are sent to retirement colonies as a “reward” for their contributions. Mascaro’s film underlines the societal scorn that already exists for the old, and is reminiscent of Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75, as it too needs to inflate very little about reality to produce a dystopian setting. A manifesto for elderly people’s right to dream until the very end.

20. Superman

James Gunn, USA

It’s shockingly refreshing to see this character smile again. After years of enduring Zack Snyder’s obsession with Greco-Roman aesthetics that reek of microwave-reheated fascism (or at best moral anaemia), a Superman that saves squirrels feels very punk. The self-inflicted and tortured cynicism that infected post-9/11 American blockbusters is nowhere to be found here. Superman is hilariously wacky, proud of its trunks-over-pants colourfulness and, even if accidentally, hits Netanyahu in the mouth with a stream of piss.

19. Left-Handed Girl

Shih-Ching Tsou, Taiwan, USA

For those who have seen Tsou’s solo directorial debut, the phrase “Look, mom!” instantly envelopes the heart with warmth. The cast is fantastic, and a cinematography that relies entirely on iPhones only helps mimic an even more natural sense of intimacy. Though Sean Baker co-wrote the script, perhaps a little less of the discussion should be dedicated to his self-evident influence, and more to Tsou’s incredible direction. In under 2 hours, filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou conjures as many emotional fluctuations as a child I-Jing’s age probably feels in the span of a day. Delightful film.

18. Late Shift

Petra Volpe, Switzerland, Germany

Volpe’s contribution to the crippling-anxiety-inducing social realist genre feels far greater than the sum of its parts - none of which are particularly original, but assembled with the best of underlying principles. The talented Leonie Benesch plays a nurse in an understaffed hospital, working with complete devotion to her patients, and instilling in the viewer a sense of adamant empathy within mere minutes. Late Shift trusts its unembellished long takes to tell a story enticing enough to inspire the much warranted admiration that nursing professionals deserve.

17. Palestine 36

Annemarie Jacir, Palestine, United Kingdom

This historical epic dramatises the 1936 Palestinian uprising against British colonial rule, and keeps the viewer’s fist tightly closed throughout, as it’s nearly impossible to contain the anger it instills. By using an ensemble cast, Jacir is able to explore Palestinian resistance on multiple fronts - from peasants working the fields to upper-class members of the press. British colonisers and Zionist terrorists are as sadistic as their historic counterparts, and the film even points fingers to the Palestinian bourgeoisie’s complicity in the early advances of Zionism. The restored, colorised archival footage asserts the film as a comprehensive historical object that is much appreciated.

16. Sentimental Value

Joachim Trier, Norway

The Danish-Norwegian director’s collaborations with screenwriter Eskil Vogt always demonstrate great thematic versatility. Sentimental Value is the duo’s most emotionally dense project to date, and the complex subjects it tackles can’t exactly fit in a tidy logline. It’s a film about the distances between people - physical, generational, emotional - and the difficulties of establishing bridges through vulnerability and understanding. Beautiful work.

15. The Last Blossom

Baku Kinoshita, Japan

The most heartwarming film to ever feature a talking plant. Kinoshita is remarkably qualified at narrative shifts, blending the initial slice-of-life family story into a thrilling Yakuza crime drama that never loses tenderness. This is partially thanks to the subtle but marvellous character design, which hints there’s more to its characters from the very start. A touching animation that confirms it’s never too late to turn things around and make others feel loved.

14. Misericordia

Alain Guiraudie, France

This French black comedy is highly peculiar, shaping a commonplace small town murder plot into a snowball of tone-deaf sexual tension. That snowball rolls down the mountain quickly and only becomes more ridiculous by the minute. The laughter earned is proof of the directing quality, since the film never relies on particularly exorbitant deliveries. Instead, the absurdity comes from watching an average group of people get stuck in a web of lies, grief and guilt, when all they can think about are sexual fantasies that never take place.

13. Marty Supreme

Josh Safdie, USA

Exactly the ping-pong movie that you’d imagine a Safdie making - the drama replicates the back-and-forth tension of the ball, and a morally reprehensible protagonist drives momentum forward out of sheer stubbornness. Timothée Chalamet’s performance is mesmerising, but Odessa A’zion is equally electrifying, and it’s hard to look away from their fascinating toxic relationship. Marty Supreme feels circular - a small world in which characters run into one another frequently, and conflicts linger rather than being resolved, making the titular character’s schemes all the more dangerous, as consequences are due to bounce back.

12. Arco

Ugo Bienvenu, France, USA

This sci-fi animation introduces a world that is gorgeous to look at, but not without alarming similarities to reality. Arco is full of big ideas, like the ubiquitous use of AI babysitters and the terrifying advance of climate change, but its true appeal lies in watching a girl from the year 2075 and a boy from 2932 with a rainbow time-travelling cape share a sandwich. The atmosphere becomes bittersweet and melancholic as soon as they meet, as the audience knows their lovely friendship is bound to be ephemeral. Charming film.

11. Sorry, Baby

Eva Victor, USA

There’s a quirky awkwardness in each dialogue that makes this initially easy to watch - until pure dread invades the screen, and the experience becomes disconcerting. Victor’s images exist in the intersection between distressing and funny, and the number of emotions they can juggle at once without fumbling is quite impressive, as a single tonal slip could damage the entire story. A fantastic directorial debut that paves the way for a promising career.

10. A Useful Ghost

Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, Thailand

This Thai debut pulls in audiences with the promise of a deadpan comedy about a ghost in a vacuum cleaner, only to tear down the curtains and disclose witty commentary about urban pollution, industrial working conditions and literal queer erasure. It brilliantly centres its early narrative on the intimate nucleus of a bourgeois family drama, in which the individual desires of the self matter the most (“I want to see my dead wife again”). However, that self-centred (albeit genuine) exploration of grief and longing is overtaken by a working-class demand for collective memory, as the ghosts of the poor wish to be remembered too, but their moment of spectral catharsis brings them together over the desire they all share: violent revenge. Hilarious, thoughtful and beautifully radical.

9. It Was Just an Accident

Jafar Panahi, Iran

The author said: “a film about conflicting emotions. Sentiments like rancor and kindness, conviction and uncertainty, loathing and understanding should repel one another like oil and water, but in Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or Winner they converge in the messiest ways. Rather than defining themselves by their antagonism to one another, these ideas often find themselves under the same spotlight, where partial truths can become excuses, and mere accidents might mean so much more.”

Read the full review here.

8. No Other Choice

Park Chan-wook, South Korea

A ludicrous comedy thriller that captures the feeling of scrolling through LinkedIn. No Other Choice presents itself as satire, but accurately documents class cannibalism - it just so happens to also be one of the funniest films of the year. The cinematography feels cutting-edge and more partial to experimenting with visual analogies, transitions and gags than in simply creating a formally pleasing package. Park Chan-wook’s latest film is arguably one of the best in his entire filmography.

7. Homebound

Neeraj Ghaywan, India

Unquestionably one of the year’s most ambitious films. Homebound raises its hand with confidence and volunteers to discuss a legion of social infirmities: the injustices of India’s caste system, class inequality, religious intolerance, rural poverty, hunger, COVID - all with enviable candour. Expect the inseparable and sweet friendship from last year’s Meiyazhagan with a conclusion as gut-wrenching as Kishkindha Kaandam. Astounding film.

6. Souleymane’s Story

Boris Lojkine, France

Lojkine’s film denounces all of European society for its contempt towards African asylum seekers - including black nationals, who hold no solidarity towards the immigrants, and see in their desperation only a pit from which to extract money and labour. The sweat, blood and tears poured to build a better life aren’t enough to legitimise the titular character’s right to exist inside the borders of the imperial core. No, to appease European formalities, he must memorise a fictitious background filled with political suffering, a tragedy intricate enough to trigger institutional empathy. Souleymane’s perseverance is recurrently met with violence and derision, making this one of the year’s most difficult watches, but also one of its most illuminating.

5. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Mary Bronstein, USA

A body horror tale in which the body afflicted is offscreen, and the blame for the limitations of their flesh is unfairly transferred to someone else. Bronstein’s incredibly stressful film studies the weight of a body that a mother creates, but isn’t her own, and the frightening loss of autonomy and space that comes with having children. Every scene gives Linda more reasons to scream, but there’s no place she can go to let it all out, and the viewer’s mind and throat slowly begin to look a lot like Linda’s. Spectacular film.

4. Dead to Rights

Shen Ao, China

This harrowing recreation of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre echoes Spielberg’s Schindler’s List - except it’s good. The Chinese film’s degree of brutality could feel exploitative, if not outright sadistic, were it not for its self-imposed restraint; for as cruel as it gets, murdered babies and all, Dead to Rights is still well mannered compared to the historical events. Some have expressed concern over the film’s nationalistic propaganda and anti-Japanese sentiment, which is baffling since the extreme ethnocentrism that inspired Japan’s atrocities is still very much alive. It’s of the utmost importance to never forget (nor forgive) the crimes against humanity committed by the Empire of Japan, and to remember the nation wasn’t always the tranquil birthplace of Pokémon and all things kawaii. Dead to Rights acts as a gentle warning that the Century of Humiliation will never be repeated, and while some read it as a threat, it’s a more polite one than deserved.

3. Sinners

Ryan Coogler, USA

After Black Panther, a movie that clumsily suppresses the possibility of revolution by the African diaspora, it’s invigorating to see Coogler finally offer interesting political insights. Here, the filmmaker affirms that even well-intentioned assimilation can lead to cultural erasure, and the discussion is embodied by an Irish vampire who himself has suffered subjugation for his identity, but becomes the predator (echoing historic events, as the Irish often worked as plantation overseers, and later as cops). Coogler’s directing is imbued with a blackness that takes effect in practical decisions: casting Wunmi Mosaku as a strong romantic lead instead of motherly figure, for instance. The magnificent cast of characters is built up slowly, and earns the exuberant images that Sinners presents later on. That one scene, which summarises the raw spiritual power of music as it reshapes time-space itself, has stolen much of the attention, of course. But this author is a much simpler man, and seeing Hailee Steinfeld spit in Michael B. Jordan’s mouth was enough to guarantee a high spot in this list. And as if that wasn’t already hot enough, there’s plenty of racists getting gunned down, making Sinners the sexiest film of the year by a good margin.

2. On Falling

Laura Carreira, Portugal, United Kingdom

The film’s most powerful statement on wage labour comes at a moment in which Aurora, an immigrant warehouse worker, has to answer the question “what do you do outside of work?” - because for her, as for the majority of workers keeping the global economy alive, the honest answer would be “nothing”. On Falling is a sworn-in testimony to the abominable state of mere survival to which capitalism condemns those who only have their labour power to sell. The dehumanising effect of Aurora’s work turns her into someone overly reserved, who politely denies food offers despite being hungry and having nothing else to eat, performing conversations with the same kind of ‘professionalism’ with which she approaches daily labour. Joana Santos plays Aurora with phenomenal and heart-breaking sensibility, each moment of silence speaking as much as an extensive monologue could. A sadly relatable collage of proletarian déjà vus - empty lunch break chit-chat about the show of the month and gusts of blinding loneliness. Extraordinary.

1. Happyend

Neo Sora, Japan, USA

A coming-of-age story set in a rapidly changing world in which its teenage characters are as likely to grow hopeless as they are to grow old. From xenophobic political scapegoating to the rise of mass surveillance, this near future Tokyo is plagued by maladies that sound very little like science fiction. Happyend is a comprehensive inquiry into the very same duality that initiated this list: the taxing courage of believing in a better future versus the seducing comfort of fatalism. When friendship between a group of high schoolers becomes torn by political awakening from some and hedonistic apathy from others, the narrative begins its incessant interrogation. Is it possible to remain friends with the joyfully apolitical, and should one join them as they party amid the flames? Or is there honour in doing what little you can to resist a future that, like a bulldozer, approaches slowly but surely, and crushes relentlessly? The animosity between childhood friends materialises the persisting internal conflict that comes with class consciousness, and there’s a bit of both of them in all of us. The film elucidates the most critical concerns of contemporary politics, framing high school classrooms as the epicentre for either rebellion or inaction - the future is still up for grabs, and it’s up for the young to choose. Happyend is nothing short of extraordinary, and not only the best film of 2025, but one of the most politically insightful and relatable films of the decade yet.

Letterboxd List

Full List

1. Happyend, Neo Sora, Japan

2. On Falling, Laura Carreira, Portugal, United Kingdom

3. Sinners, Ryan Coogler, USA

4. Dead to Rights, Shen Ao, China

5. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Mary Bronstein, USA

6. Souleymane’s Story, Boris Lojkine, France

7. Homebound, Neeraj Ghaywan, India

8. No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook, South Korea

9. It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi, Iran

10. A Useful Ghost, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, Thailand

11. Misericordia, Alain Guiraudie, France

12. Sorry, Baby, Eva Victor, USA

13. Arco, Ugo Bienvenu, France, USA

14. The Blue Trail, Gabriel Mascaro, Brasil

15. Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier, Norway

16. The Last Blossom, Baku Kinoshita, Japan

17. Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie, USA

18. Palestine 36, Annemarie Jacir, Palestine, United Kingdom

19. Late Shift, Petra Volpe, Switzerland, Germany

20. Left-Handed Girl, Shih-Ching Tsou, Taiwan, USA

21. Superman, James Gunn, USA

22. The Shrouds, David Cronenberg, Canada, France

23. Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson, USA

24. Ne Zha 2, Jiao Zi, China

25. Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh, USA

26. Cloud, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan

27. What Does That Nature Say to You, Hong Sang-soo, South Korea

28. The Shadow’s Edge, Larry Yang, Hong Kong, China

29. Die My Love, Lynne Ramsay, USA

30. The Mastermind, Kelly Reichardt, United Kingdom, USA

Barry Lyndon is a thorough examination of meritocracy as a myth. The titular protagonist socially climbs to impressive heights, from gentry to aristocracy, but not many of his achievements can be completely attributed to him, if at all. Rather, Barry seems gifted with the ability to repeatedly fail upwards, his shortcomings comically band-aided by a narrative that cares for him like a parent for a wounded child. Much of the joy of Kubrick’s film comes from seeing Barry stumble onto opportunities, and his merits rarely play a part.

In a meritocratic system, political power and economical standing would be strictly proportional to one’s own talents, skills and contributions to wider society. The nigh-mythological picture of the “self-made billionaire” who started a massive enterprise in his parents’ garage is already engraved in the popular collective imagination. However, sociologists have long argued that wealth and class, in addition to innate traits such as race, gender and sexuality, are factors that still greatly determine the opportunities to achieve power in contemporary society. Barry Lyndon shows that sheer luck can be one of these factors, and what requires extraordinary effort isn’t to prosper once you’re set up for success, but to fail.

Stanley Kubrick’s 10th feature chronicles the social ascension of the treacherous Redmond Barry, an Irish man born in an unremarkable family of small landowners in 18th century Europe. While certainly not a peasant, Barry is a stranger to luxury and power, and unintentionally embarks on a quest towards financial success that can’t quite be considered a rags-to-riches story. It’s not so much that Redmond improvises a path towards glory and wealth, but that he never has any clue where he’s going at all.

Much is said about the film’s aesthetic substance: the ground-breaking cinematography, its cutting-edge use of natural lighting, the breathtaking compositions inspired by William Hogarth’s paintings, and candlelit scenes that have redefined what is possible to achieve with a camera. But not enough is said about the equally captivating beauty of Barry Lyndon’s social commentary. Perhaps the almost exclusively visual-centric discussions around the film are themselves the symptom of a politically neutered cinephile community, so adept at admiring historical images, and less at translating their subtext to today.

Barry’s lack of talent and general capability are comically explicit from the onset. While not an entirely passive character, his journey is greatly propelled forward by the efforts, decisions and even identity of others. He deserts his regiment in the British Army during the Seven Years’s War by stealing someone else’s identity and horse, only to end up conscripted into the Prussian army by a Captain Potzdorf. When his new circumstances lead him to the chance to accomplish his own triumphs, such as saving Potzdorf’s life, the payoff is eventually tainted by nepotism, as Potzdorf’s uncle recruits Barry into the Prussian Police. If only saving a life was a requirement for today’s nepo babies, whose presence is ubiquitous from Hollywood to Parliament.

The narrative then restarts its cycle of miraculously rewarding Barry’s failures. The Prussians task him with spying on an Austrian diplomat, Chevalier de Balibari, and Barry instead ends up confessing to his target that he is a spy. Fortunately, the Chevalier turns out to be an Irish compatriot, and Barry is yet again saved by the fictional powers-that-be. Here too, Barry Lyndon echoes the ludicrously twisted realities of the 21st century. During the 2008 financial crisis, the UK government deployed £137 billion of public money to bail out banks, saving private companies from an existential threat. Barry Lyndon acts as a testament that, with convenient alliances in places of power, such terminal failures can be waved away.

Reappropriating identities is a recurring aesthetic tool in Barry’s arsenal, and one which is still favoured by the economical predators today. When Barry does succeed at escaping the Prussians, it’s by enacting a scheme that isn’t his own, and by pretending to be the Chevalier, yet again escaping consequences through the identity of another. For an impoverished nobody in the 1750s, the attire of a high-ranking officer meant travelling unnoticed. Today, the opposite allows Big Tech plutocrats to blend in: wearing cynical cosplays of the dispossessed. Mark Zuckerberg’s understated outfits and hoodies once signalled “I’m too focused on success to dress fancy”, but in light of Donald Trump’s return to office, a semiotics rebrand was due, and Zuckerberg’s new gold chains and boxy t-shirts manifest a newly-regained masculinity of the dullest kind. Credit where credit is due, Barry’s simulated identities are of significantly better taste at least.

Many, the film’s narrator included, argue that Barry’s social ascension and fall are the fruits of fate. However, Kubrick’s satirical depiction of the events often suggest a more intentional critique of the systems that safeguard Barry from failure. Much like the paintings commissioned by the wealthy and distinguished then, Kubrick’s mise-en-scene, with its royal courts and opulent costumes, is picturesque and glamorous, but the brushstrokes hide a certain level of acidity.

The film seems to hold a certain contempt for the people and spaces it portrays, as well as the practices that are deemed elegant within the halls of aristocratic palaces. Take duels between men, for example. Although they are frequent, the film never seems to validate their value as a social ritual. The film instead aims to pinpoint their inefficacy, as they never lead to better outcomes for the titular character, who jumps into duels so wholeheartedly. Kubrick unveils the utterly absurd essence behind the curtain of aristocratic civility.

That is not to say that Barry is a concise placeholder for any one class, standing in as an obvious punchbag in an easily-digestible piece of political commentary. After all, Kubrick’s own political views are, to this day, not conclusively clear. The filmmaker disagreed with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s assertion that humans are born naturally good and later corrupted by society, and was suspicious of any social institution based upon that cherishable belief. This informed some of his right-libertarian perspectives, which indicated a primary distrust of the State and of man’s overall ability to rationally configure societies due to a natural inclination towards self-interest and stupidity.

Therefore, it’d be naive to suggest that Barry Lyndon can be uncritically reclaimed by the left today, since Kubrick himself was allegedly against any tax-the-rich policies that could harm him, for instance. A helpful comparison can be drawn with the Italian 1963 classic The Leopard, which similarly depicts the lives of those of high birth and status, but is directed by Luchino Visconti, a known Marxist. The Italian director’s open political stance invites left-leaning interpretations, even though The Leopard portrays high society with considerably more empathy than Barry Lyndon. In Visconti’s film, the aberrating agent within the upper class is a prince insightful enough to realise his influence is about to dissipate, and that the future lies in the hands of the nouveau riche. Barry, on other hand, is an outlier among the gentlefolk not due to wisdom or political awareness, but his own exceptional ineptitude.

This prevents Redmond Barry from becoming the picture-perfect caricature that some would prefer him to be. Despite becoming an aristocrat by marriage, Barry doesn’t quite fit in, as he lacks their properly-trained manners and simple joie de vivre. If anything, Barry’s brutality shocks them, showing the moral sensibilities of aristocratic societies in ways that a straight-forward caricature wouldn’t. Barry most likely wouldn’t even belong in social groups that gained hegemony later, such as the bourgeoisie, as he lacks their instinct to hoard money, and squanders it rather unthoughtfully. Barry is so uniquely inadequate that he nearly leads an aristocratic family into bankruptcy, but lacks the likeability that narratives often grant to their impoverished underdogs. 50 years later, a political investigation of this period drama remains as nuanced as ever.

At the time of release, many criticised the film’s emotionally lethargic nature. Thankfully, that reading has been revised, and Kubrick’s subdued, albeit candid approach to sentimentality has become more celebrated. While Ryan O’Neal’s performance isn’t as saturated in emotion as some would like, Barry Lyndon contains some of the most sincere moments of humanity in Kubrick’s filmography, such as the death of the young Bryan. Although Barry serves as a vessel to ridicule a class, he is capable of caring for others. Say what you will about Redmond Barry, but he truly loved his son. Meanwhile, the financial opportunists of today (like a certain South African entrepreneur), often reduce their children to props for exhibiting some semblance of humanity.

Had it not been for his unfaithfulness to Lady Lyndon and his physical abuse of Lord Bullington, Barry could have thrived indefinitely, even after the loss of his son. He could have mourned having all his needs met, and all his pleasures made possible. Barry’s downfall isn’t the promised return of some kind of karmic boomerang, but the result of his extraordinary excesses. The protagonist’s few moments of active participation in his own destiny lead him to ruin, in spite of a narrative that shelters him in thick layers of bubblewrap. By the time Barry does a good deed, and unexpectedly spares lord Bullington’s life in their duel, it’s too late. Ultimately, neither the narrative or society deprive Barry of a life of exemplary comfort after realisation of his lack of merit. Barry deprives himself of it.

In the age of mindset coaches and the gig economy, Barry Lyndon is a refreshing accusation against the promise of social mobility through merit alone. Redmond Barry has few, if any, practical skills or moral principles, but is consistently rewarded by social structures that require neither of those qualities. Although set in the 18th century, Barry Lyndon feels more relevant than ever, and the concept of meritocracy remains a piece of fiction as comical as Stanley Kubrick’s 50 year-old film.

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