What do a chaotic neo-Western, a sci-fi corporate satire, and a documentary about sign language activism have in common? They are all visions that cut through the noise of 2025. Consider this your essential watch list of the year: These films are less about looking back and more about preparing ourselves for what is next.
Eddington
The American dream dies, again.
Director Ari Aster traded folk horror for neo-Western and found something even more unsettling. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal, the film dumps its protagonists into COVID-era New Mexico. Aster explores American Political division and pandemic paranoia. It watches like a study in collective panic, and provides the viewer with an autopsy of national mythmaking. The film’s intentional ambiguity and bleak social commentary made it one of the year’s most debated and perhaps most uncomfortable viewing experiences.
Bugonia
The only thing scarier than a CEO is an Alien CEO
Yorgos Lanthimos imagines corporate culture through a cracked sci-fi lens. Emma Stone plays a high-powered CEO whose hubris leads her into the path of two paranoid men. These men are convinced she is an extraterrestrial being set to destroy Earth. This film threads satire through a story about surveillance, ambition, and the comfort found in conspiracy. The result is a visually beautiful, gory, and deeply uncomfortable film that somehow manages to be hysterically funny.
Nouvelle Vague
Cinema history that feels like a hangout
Richard Linklater delivers a charming cinematic palate cleanser to remind us that art can still be fun and rebellious. This comedy-drama is a retelling of the chaotic birth of Jean-Luc Godard’s revolutionary Breathless (1960). It’s a stylish hangout film, as characters drift through cramped apartments and smoky cafes, unaware that they are changing cinema. This film is perfect for those yearning for the golden age of cinema, or simply needing a break from existential dread. Required viewing for anyone who has ever considered dropping out to become a filmmaker.
Orwell 2+2=5
1984 in 2025
Documentarian Raoul Peck returns with a vital report on why we should stop dismissing George Orwell as a mere high-school reading assignment. Throughout the documentary, Peck argues that the current cultural threat is not theatrical authoritarianism, but the steady erosion of shared reality. Filled with insightful narration and archival material, the film urges viewers to recognise the politics of distraction and the ease with which language becomes a tool of control. While not uplifting, it delivers essential insights as we enter the new year and are bombarded with political content.
Dead President Now!
Campus revolt and civil rights
This documentary revisits the 1988 student uprising at Gallaudet University, where students successfully fought for the right to a deaf president. Directors Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim use interviews, archival footage, and storytelling in American Sign Language to reveal a movement that most people have never learnt about. Who gets to shape institutions? Which voices are seen as optional? The story remains poignant in 2025.
