C.J. Prince’s Best 10 Movies of 2025

      In conjunction with The Film Stage's collective list of the top 50 films of 2025, our contributors are presenting their individual top 10 selections as part of our year-end reflections.

      My sentiments expressed in the introduction of my top ten for 2024 remain largely unchanged. I observed that 2025 produced several commendable films, but only a handful elicited a significant emotional response from me. I don't intend to come off as overly critical. I acknowledge that I might be too exacting or obstinate, yet I find myself increasingly unfulfilled by the overaudible praise often heaped on many new films. As I noted in 2024, there seems to be a lack of risk and originality, and in an industry that feels more unstable than ever, I believe those issues are interconnected.

      To clarify, this concern lies more within the industry than with the films themselves. Each year, it becomes clearer to me that the festival circuit’s role in showcasing the best of global cinema has become largely ineffective, partly due to the dominance of business interests in those arenas. This outlook brings a sense of pessimism, yet I cannot attribute that to the artists who are merely trying to navigate and sustain their careers in such conditions.

      Here are my ten films and five honorable mentions from 2025, all deserving of attention.

      Honorable Mentions: One Battle After Another, The Christophers, Two Pianos, Predators, Magellan

      10. Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani)

      The films of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani may easily be brushed off as vibe-heavy genre explorations, given their significant focus on style over narrative logic in works like Amer and Let the Corpses Tan. However, their techniques shouldn't merely be labeled mood pieces. They take recognizable elements of European genre cinema and distort, twist, and extend them to their limits. In Reflection in a Dead Diamond, their experimentation reaches a deeper significance as framed through the viewpoint of an elderly retired spy whose recollections intertwine reality with Eurospy fantasy. As is typical with Cattet and Forzani, their limitless creative flair and homages create an enthralling spectacle, a kind of cinematic excess so delightful that one can overlook the scale of their ambitions.

      9. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

      The title of Alexandre Koberidze's latest film warrants an asterisk, as any discussion of Dry Leaf must acknowledge that it was filmed on a 2000s mobile phone in low resolution. It’s also noteworthy that the film exceeds three hours, and after an opening thirty minutes that establishes a father’s road trip to locate his missing daughter, much of Dry Leaf unfolds through montages of Georgian villages and soccer fields. Though it may not initially seem like one of the year's most captivating films, Koberidze's use of his antiquated, pixelated camera invites viewers to actively engage with the film's blocky, textured imagery to discern what we witness from shot to shot. Alongside the protagonist's contemplative observation of his country's changing landscapes—seen through outdated technology—Koberidze’s low-budget, "low-quality" film stands out as one of the year's most inspiring examples of what can be achieved with minimal resources.

      8. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

      In broad terms, Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind tells the story of an individual who, in attempting to escape one form of confinement, inadvertently seals a worse fate for themselves. Set in 1970 amidst rising tensions over the Vietnam War, it follows an unemployed husband and father evading police after a failed art heist. While Josh O’Connor's scruffy character assists in some tricky situations, Reichardt maintains a focus beyond his personal motivations, highlighting how the repercussions of his actions affect those around him. While O'Connor may view The Mastermind as a polished crime film, Reichardt lets it evolve into a slow-motion chase between its immature protagonist and everything he tries (and fails) to keep at bay. As is common with Reichardt's films, not everyone embraced her unique interpretation of the heist genre, yet I found much to appreciate in her dry, humorous critique of someone who learns the hard truth that personal and political matters are not parallel.

      7. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)

      The creation of With Hasan in Gaza was an unexpected event. While sifting through his archives for original footage from his first feature, Kamal Aljafari stumbled upon three MiniDV tapes from 2001, documenting his trip to Gaza in hopes of reconnecting with a former cellmate from his teenage years in prison. Aljafari presents the tapes in their entirety and chronological order, capturing his harrowing experience in Gaza over two decades prior to the current devastation and genocide in the region. Initially, Aljafari showcases the footage as a raw record of a Gaza that no longer exists, increasingly marred