The 25 Best Films of 2025 We’ve Already Seen
Happy New Year! As is our favorite way to celebrate the dawning of a new year, we’re looking ahead at a very big batch of 2025 releases we’ve a) already seen and b) can heartily recommend to you, our readers.
As is tradition, this list includes a hefty number of films we’ve caught on the festival circuit and are bound for a 2025 release near year. They include consistent favorite filmmakers like David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Jia Zhang-ke, and Miguel Gomes, plus a wide variety of brand-new and rising film stars to get to know right now. Some of these films have already popped up on our annual critics survey (we especially loved that three-way tie between “Presence,” “April,” and “Misericordia”), but this list also includes a batch of films worthy of attention right now, and through the rest of the year.
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For those of you eager to load up your movie-going calendar for the coming months, let this list of the best films of 2025 we’ve already seen be your guide, with more curated previews to come from the IndieWire team.
Of note: This list only includes films we have seen that have a confirmed 2025 release date or have been picked up for distribution with 2025 release dates to be set.
“Apocalypse in the Tropics” (Netflix, TBD)
As a Brazilian, Petra Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics” — a documentary that, in all but name, is her follow-up to the Oscar-nominated “The Edge of Democracy” — is a tough watch. Much like in that previous doc, this is a record of some of the most turbulent, heart-wrenching, and anxiety-inducing years in the country’s history, specifically the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro and his horrible administration during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The viral outbreak, however, is merely a chapter of this broad account of how Bolsonaro came to be, who supported him, and how he then abandoned them. The apocalypse in the title is actually a reference to the Biblical book of Revelation (titled “Apocalipse” in Brazilian Portuguese), which points to Costa’s chosen frame of reference for her new, first-person narrated film: Christianity. Or, to be more precise, how the former president and his close circle (or, as she suggests, his silent masters) weaponized millions of the country’s citizen’s thirst for the spiritual during a time of economic and social upheaval. All to transform a once fringe-politician who got by through controversial statements and military sympathy into a manipulative messiah for those in the far-right. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“April” (Metrograph Pictures, TBD theatrical release)
There isn’t a horror director alive who wouldn’t kill to create frames as tense, ominous, and viscerally captivating as those of Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili, who applies her talents toward elemental character studies about rural women suffering under the yoke of patriarchy at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains.
Kulumbegashvili’s accomplished and terrifying sophomore outing “April” — which concerns a hospital obstetrician whose career is put at risk when a rare stillbirth threatens to expose her unsanctioned night job as an abortion provider — requires even less time to crush your entire being in its brace. It opens on the sight of a faceless (but visibly female) skin monster slouching through a void as Matthew Herbert’s asynchronous score breathes down your neck.
The limits of her power are evident from the moment our heroine is tasked with delivering the child of a young woman from Kulumbegashvili’s’ hometown of Lagodekhi. The pregnancy hadn’t been registered, nor the fetus examined at any point during its development, and so Nina doesn’t learn that its lungs aren’t viable until it’s too late. Kulumbegashvili unmistakably shot a real birth for this sequence, setting the tone for a film in which the anatomical realities of birth and abortion are on full display. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Armand” (IFC Films, in theaters February 7)
“The Worst Person in the World” breakout Renate Reinsve returned to Cannes in May with “Armand,” a claustrophobic and surreal classroom drama from writer/director Halfdan Ullmann T?ndel, who’s also the grandson of Swedish cinema giants Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. Like his grandparents’ own medium-defining work, Ullmann T?ndel’s directorial debut is an intimate character study told in close-ups and breakdowns, as single mother Elisabeth (Reinsve) is up against another set of parents, Anders (Endre Hellestveit) and Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), about a schoolyard spat involving their sons.
For a film that unfolds mostly in real time, “Armand” flushes a hell of a lot of past resentments, secrets, and traumas into the present. Here, the sinister nature of the did-it-really-happen-or-not incident in question brings to light a gauntlet-flinging parental conflict with no détente in sight. Reinsve has only about a dozen film credits to her name, but know that “Armand” is the best performance of her career so far, as Elisabeth careens from obstinate and defensive to Isabelle-Adjani-in-“Possession” levels of psychic meltdown. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” (A24, in theaters March 7)
Rungano Nyoni’s lucid and incandescently furious “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is a stiff middle finger to wishful thinking. Set in a middle-class Zambian suburb that’s located at a well-trafficked but poorly maintained intersection between global influences and Bemba mores, the “I Am Not a Witch” filmmaker’s second feature tells the story of a Westernized young woman who’s forced to hold her extended family tree together by its roots during a crisis that leaves her wanting to rip the whole thing out of the earth with her bare hands.
There are moments of beauty and resilience to be found amid the buried pain she uncovers along the way, but don’t be fooled by the heroine’s Zoom meetings with her British co-workers or her sad penchant for American life hack podcasts: The future might not have all the answers, but it’s the past that she won’t be able to forgive. Which leads us to another fascinating way that Nyoni manages to subvert one of recent cinema’s most calcified sub-genres: The protagonist’s family may be her greatest connection to her cultural memory, but their eagerness to forgive the past ultimately requires them to forget it.
While sharply critical of how even the most cathartic aspects of Bemba’s matrilineal society have been hijacked by patriarchal Christian values, “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” resists the temptation to pit one against the other in order to score easy points. On the contrary, this dreamlike but deeply unnerving film aspires to a much thornier dilemma, and to a dramatic question so difficult to answer that Nyoni can’t even ask it without cheating: How do you find the words to speak up against a tradition of silence? Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Bob Trevino Likes It” (Roadside Attractions, in limited theaters March 21, expansion on March 28)
The year of “Barbie” is continuing right on into 2024. But we’re not talking about that Barbie: Now, it’s Barbie Ferreira‘s time to be talked about. The “Euphoria” breakout star, who parted ways with the HBO series ahead of Season 3, leads “Bob Trevino Likes It,” her first film since the show exit announcement. While Ferreira has had roles in “Unpregnant” and “Nope,” it’s “Bob” that puts Ferreira on the map as one to watch — and she even executive produces it along with her co-star John Leguizamo.
In the film, Ferreira stars as Lily Trevino, a 25-year-old at-home caretaker who struggles with self-abandonment. The source of most of her woes? Her narcissistic abuser father Bob (French Stewart). Lily can’t see the damage that Bob has caused, and after an explosive fight in which Bob blames Lily for cramping his bachelor lifestyle, he cuts her off for good.
Thus, Lily is now left actually abandoned, and she opts to stay emotionally distant from her bubbly client, played by “The Sex Lives of College Girls” star Lauren “Lolo” Spencer, and wallow in her room scrolling the internet. It’s only when Lily tries to cyber-stalk her own father that she feels like she’s hit a new low … and Facebook friends a faceless other Bob Trevino (Leguizamo) whose approval she craves. Every time this Bob “likes” one of her posts, especially ones that are flashbacks to Lily’s neglected childhood (baby Lily blowing out candles on a birthday cake, tween Lily playing basketball, etc.), it’s as if Lily is finally getting the validation and love from her father. Too bad this Bob isn’t actually biologically related to her. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Caught by the Tides” (Sideshow and Janus Films, TBD theatrical release)
A searching and scattershot portrait of displacement that’s as likely to resonate with Jia Zhang-ke devotees as it is to mystify those who are new to his work, “Caught by the Tides” finds the Chinese auteur returning the most pivotal characters and locations that have defined his movies over the last two decades. Then again, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never left them.
Tracing the faintest contours of a scripted love story around the scaffolding of some documentary footage that Jia has collected over the course of 22 years, this elusive chimera of a film strains to literalize the delicate relationship between time and memory — a theme that has become increasingly central to the director’s work since the Three Gorges Dam was constructed in 2006 (see: “Still Life”), submerging 13 entire cities and forever displacing the millions of people who once lived in them.
Here, even more so than in his sweeping epics “Mountains May Depart” and “Ash Is Purest White,” Jia’s focus is squarely on resilience instead of erosion. How do we maintain a coherent sense of self, let alone love somebody else, in a world so volatile and impermanent that people will sink centuries of history to the bottom of the sea just to make way for tomorrow? Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Eephus” (Music Box Films, in theaters March 7)
In front of empty wooden bleachers on a late summer day in Massachusetts, two squads of out-of-shape, middle-aged men show up to play a game of baseball on what they all expect to be one of their saddest afternoons in recent memory. For decades, this recreational league has been the social glue that binds the men in this community together. But it’s all about to disappear when the local field is destroyed after the season, which ends today. So the men load their coolers up with cheap beer, spend copious amounts of time stretching, and prepare to give their summer haven a glorious send-off before they have to find something else to do with their weekends.
Carson Lund’s directorial debut shares its name with a slow-moving pitch that has largely been forgotten by modern baseball players — and it’s a fitting title for a film that embraces the leisurely pacing of America’s national pastime. Television executives have spent countless hours in recent years obsessing over how to make baseball games move faster, but many a true devotee will tell you that part of the game’s charm lies in its ability to facilitate socialization. A few seconds between pitches gives the first baseman time to exchange pleasantries with the runner trying to steal second, and spectators can usually find time to buy a hot dog without worrying about missing anything important.
“Eephus” is a film that understands this, and the script (which Lund co-wrote with Michael Basta and Nate Fischer), shuffles along with the rhythm of a baseball game. Exposition comes out in brief two-sentence exchanges between pitches and longer asides between innings, allowing audiences to experience the game with the same cadence that the players do. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Every Little Thing” (Kino Lorber Films, in theaters January 10 and January 17)
Terry calls them “the finders.” They call her at all hours. They text. They come by, and sometimes they come by again. They arrive bearing tiny boxes filled with precious, delicate cargo. They ask advice. They don’t always take it. And they so, so badly want their discoveries to live.
In Sally Aitken’s delicate, immensely touching documentary “Every Little Thing,” those finders are regular, everyday people who a) somehow find injured hummingbirds in the Los Angeles area, and b) have the luck of discovering Terry Masear’s nearby hummingbird rescue, where she attends to hundreds of birds each year, hopefully nursing them back to health and releasing them into the world. “Finders” is Terry’s word. Terry is, though she’d likely never say such a thing, something a bit different, a bit harder to admit: a hero.
Aitken doesn’t skimp on incredible, immersive hummingbird footage, all bright colors and fast-flapping wings, quick little tails, shining pinprick eyes. Hummingbirds are so delicate, so feather-light, so special, it’s easy to see why Terry has dedicated her later life to saving them. Terry’s sprawling hillside home is awash in hand-made cages and enclosures, her own army of self-made tools, and years of training, all of which seem hewn out of experience and tough lessons. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“Familiar Touch” (Music Box Films, TBD theatrical release)
Ruth (Tony nominee Kathleen Chalfant) is preparing for a visitor. But she can’t find the outfit she wants to wear, no matter how many times she flips through her closet. And the meal is coming together oddly, with extra ingredients tossed to the side (or, in one evocative case, lined up neatly in the dish dryer). And Ruth, while she knows enough to get dressed and to make one of her signature meals for the event, can’t quite remember who she is hosting. What is his name? Why is he here? Are they on a date?
The man who appears in her cozy home is reserved and nervous (he’s played by H. Jon Benjamin, offering the rare and welcome dramatic turn for the comedian and voice actor). And when Ruth slowly turns their stilted conversation into more flirty directions, he looks as if he’s about to jump out of his skin. And then he gently packs her up, gets her in the car, and drives her to what will later be termed a “geriatric country club.” Ruth may be shocked to her core when kind nurse Vanessa (a luminous Carolyn Michelle) thanks Benjamin’s Steve for bringing his mother — “I don’t have a son?!” — to her new home, but things have snapped into place for us long ago.
In “Familiar Touch,” filmmaker Sarah Friedland’s achingly intimate drama, we follow Ruth as she attempts to acclimate to her new life (and where it will eventually take her) over the course of her early days in the home and, specifically, in its memory care unit. Friedland, who also wrote the film‘s script, is not given over to histrionics or blaring displays of emotion, instead asking us to follow Ruth and experience the world through her eyes. The impact is profound. Read IndieWire’s full review.
“The Friend” (Bleecker Street, in theaters March 28)
There’s no way to play this part cool: for the entire second half of David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s “The Friend,” this critic was reduced to a blubbering, sobbing, heaving mess, clutching damp paper towels and alternating between choking and laughing. While the filmmaking pair’s latest might sound squarely aimed at Naomi Watts super-fans and intense animal people, what they actually present in “The Friend” isn’t so very niche at all: instead, it’s the sort of witty, wise, and warm character study we seem to be running out of these days. And that’s just when it comes to its standout dog star, the Great Dane (emphasis on great) Bing.
The film opens both before and after the arrival of Apollo, the Great Dane at its center. Through shared voiceover narration, Iris (Naomi Watts) and her mentor Walter (Bill Murray) set the scene, recounting the time that Walter, while on a seemingly everyday run around Brooklyn’s river walk, first encountered an abandoned Apollo. Awestruck by the great beast, the impulsive Walter had no choice. He took him in. Or Apollo took him in. It’s hard to say, really. But bringing someone — anyone — into your life comes with its own questions, and when Walter muses, “What will happen to the dog?,” he’s not just talking about the dog. Read IndieWire’s full review.
Continue reading our picks for the best movies of 2025 we’ve already seen on the next page by clicking the “2.”
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