Topline:
Fresh Air film critic Justin Chang says most of his favorite films this year were made overseas, including his No. 1 pick, Sirāt.
The bad news: Anyone will tell you that these are tumultuous, borderline-apocalyptic times for the film industry. Box office is down. The threat of AI looms. Billionaires and tech giants are laying waste to what remains of the major Hollywood studios.
The good news: Chang says he saw more terrific new movies this year than any year since before the pandemic. True, most of those movies weren't from here, but all of them played in U.S. theaters in 2025, and all of them are well worth seeking out in the weeks and months to come.
Read on ... for the list and trailers.
Anyone will tell you that these are tumultuous, borderline-apocalyptic times for the film industry. Box office is down. The threat of AI looms. Billionaires and tech giants are laying waste to what remains of the major Hollywood studios. I'm not entirely sure how to square all this bad news with my own good news, which is that I saw more terrific new movies this year than I have any year since before the pandemic. True, most of those movies weren't from here, but all of them played in U.S. theaters in 2025, and all of them are well worth seeking out in the weeks and months to come.
1. Sirāt
The best new movie I saw this year is a breakthrough work from a gifted Spanish filmmaker named Oliver Laxe. It's a nail-biting survival thriller, set in the desert of southern Morocco during what feels like the end-times. It's a little Mad Max, a little Wages of Fear, and all in all, the most exhilarating and devastating two hours I experienced in a theater this year. Sirāt also features the year's best original score, composed by the electronic musician Kangding Ray.
2. One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson's much-loved, much-debated reimagining of Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland is an exuberant mash-up of action-thriller and political satire. One Battle After Another stars Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his best and funniest performances as an aging revolutionary drawn back into the field. He leads an ensemble that includes Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall and the terrific discovery, Chase Infiniti.
3. Caught by the Tides
Caught by the Tides is an unclassifiable hybrid of fiction and nonfiction from the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. Drawn from a mix of archival footage and newly shot material, it's a one-of-a-kind portrait of the myriad transformations that China has gone through over the past two decades.
4. Resurrection
Resurrection, another structurally bold Chinese title, is a bit like an Avatar movie for film buffs. Placing us in the head of a shapeshifting protagonist, the director, Bi Gan, takes us on a gorgeous, dreamlike odyssey through various cinema genres, from historical spy drama to vampire thriller.
5. My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow
My No. 5 movie is the year's best documentary: My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, from the director Julia Loktev. It's a sprawling yet intimate portrait of several Russian independent journalists in the harrowing months leading up to President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As a portrait of anti-authoritarian resistance, it pairs nicely with my No. 6 movie.
6. The Secret Agent
The Secret Agent is an emotionally rich, sneakily funny and continually surprising drama from the director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Set in 1977, it lays bare the personal cost of dissidence during Brazil's military dictatorship.
7. Sound of Falling
Although not a horror film, exactly, this German drama qualifies as the best and spookiest haunted-house movie I've seen this year. Directed by Mascha Schilinski, Sound of Falling teases out the connections among four generations of girls and young women who have passed through the same remote farmhouse.
8. April
April, from the director Dea Kulumbegashvili, is a tough, bleak, but utterly hypnotic portrait of a skilled OB-GYN trying to provide health care for women in a conservative East Georgian village. It may be set far from the U.S., but the difficulties these women face would resonate in any setting.
9. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Directed by Rungano Nyoni, this Zambian film is a subtly mesmerizing drama about a death that takes place in a middle-class household, setting off a chain of dark revelations that threaten to tear a family apart.
10. It Was Just an Accident
It Was Just an Accident, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is a shattering moral thriller from the Iranian director Jafar Panahi. It centers on a group of former political prisoners who are given a rare chance at retribution. In the past, Panahi has been a prisoner in Iran himself, and earlier this month, the government sentenced the director in absentia to a year in prison. I hope that Panahi never sees the inside of a jail cell again, and that his movie is seen as far and wide as possible.
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