As I barrel towards 40 with all the grace of a runaway tram (whose tracks I still won’t stand on) 2025 has been an all too typical year of upheaval, riding the roller-coaster they call life but also, frankly, reckless optimism. I’m writing this from Athens, where next year I will be planting new roots—swapping Brighton’s pebbled shores for the chaos of the anarchist neighbourhood of Exarcheia and discovering that learning Greek is humbling in ways I wasn’t entirely prepared for. But if cinema has taught me anything, it’s that the most compelling stories begin when someone decides to seek out new adventures and challenge themselves to see what emerges. I could talk a boorish amount about the wonderful film-related things I have been doing this past year, but the finest points saw me finally make the pilgrimage to Clermont-Ferrand, the short film mecca where queues of eager viewers snake through the Maison de la Culture, which blew me away. Working on the second edition of the WeAreDN Awards—some very exciting 20-year Directors Notes celebration plans in the making for 2026. Walking away from a film job I loved, but for reasons I know in my heart are right, and having been being thrilled to stride through some new doors and find my voice in new corners of the industry, thanks to this decision. Being invited to MC a beloved and innovative festival which I have been privileged to attend since conception—Conero Film + ADV. Nurturing and focusing on the DN relationship with BIFA and spearheading our Douglas Hickox Award and Best British Short nominee interview series once again. Now onto the fabulous cinema which has fed my mind, body and soul. If I had to find a common thread in the films that lodged themselves in my heart this year, they’re about transformation, about characters who refuse to stay put, who ache and love and fall apart magnificently. Here are my ten favourites.
Honourable mentions: One Battle After Another, Frankenstein, The Ice Tower, and Holy Cow,
10. CACTUS PEARS (SABAR BONDA) | Rohan Kanawade
The most sensuous yet heartfelt romantic depiction I’ve seen on screen this year. Kanawade’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner is a stunner of aching, exquisite tenderness—its most seismic moments arising from modest gestures: a caress, a shy glance, a bag of de-thorned fruit offered as profound gift. The romance simmers in silences, each pause holding entire worlds. Gorgeous, intimate, and prone to meaningful silences, this is unlike a lot of other perhaps louder queer films—a quietly radical act of love born from loss. [Watch/Read our Cactus Pears interview with Rohan Kanawade]
9. ON FALLING | Laura Carreira
The loneliest film I have ever watched. I interviewed Carreira for DN as part of our BIFA partnership for the Douglas Hickox Award, and was able to dig into her craft and deft ability to have made a narrative that left me so quietly devastated. Rather than merely depicting isolation, Carreira makes you feel its weight in every frame, transforming the vastness of a Scottish fulfilment warehouse into a palpable, oppressive force. This is not a film about people being cruel, but about profound alienation within a capitalist system functioning exactly as designed. A tremendously moving debut. [Watch our On Falling interview with Laura Carreira]
8. BUGONIA | Yorgos Lanthimos
The masterful pairing of Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone strikes again. This wickedly funny psychological thriller kept me guessing and theorising right until the credits — a constantly shifting power play between two characters you can’t take your eyes off. Plemons and Stone deliver ferocious performances in their philosophical, brutal duel, backed by one of my favourite scores of the year. Storyline, direction, everything phenomenal. Unforgettable, rewatchable, and a stark reflection of our unhinged times.
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7. SINNERS | Ryan Coogler
A true cinematic joy. I’m not the biggest fan of vampire lore (don’t judge me) but this was absurdly brilliant from start to finish—a rip-roaring fusion of masterful visual storytelling and shake your body down music that revels in the full scope of Coogler’s singular imagination. Beyond the blood-soaked spectacle, what Coogler has done for filmmakers matters: securing first-dollar gross participation, final cut, and ownership rights after 25 years on a film about Black autonomy. He’s not just making movies; he’s reclaiming power and setting precedents for creators everywhere.
6. DIE MY LOVE | Lynne Ramsay
Lynne Ramsay continues to prove herself to be one of our foremost observers of humanity, her incredible ability to use form to place us inside a character’s mental state is unmatched. I’ve always loved Jennifer Lawrence—even her wild press days—and here she delivers the performance of a lifetime. This is an incendiary, honest look at postpartum psychosis we don’t see enough in film: raw, moving, and unafraid to sit in the impossible-to-contain mess of motherhood. The conversation keeps expanding and growing.
5. SOUND OF FALLING (IN DIE SONNE SCHAUEN)| Mascha Schilinski
Catching this at LFF reminded me of the power, capacity and sheer joy of cinema. Schilinski’s Cannes Jury Prize winner intricately braids the lives of four women, separated by decades, on the same forbidding German farmstead—a female-centred tapestry so rich it unfolds like a hundred years of home video footage shot by family ghosts. It trades in feelings and experiences at once everyday and ineffable, mining tremendous sorrow from the secret poetics of girlhood. I cannot wait to watch it again.
4. TRAIN DREAMS | Clint Bentley
So sumptuous I wish I could have seen it on the big screen. I’m a beach girl through and through but Bentley made me want to get lost in the forest. Heartbreak so palpable and a portrait of pure love that left me aching. Somewhere between an elegy and an anthem, the film threads the needle between brutal reality and wistful poetry, a meditation on the beauty of everyone and everything, how we carry our pain and joy in equal measure. This world can be both magnificent and soul-crushing, even at the same time.
3. SORRY, BABY | Eva Victor
Eva Victor depicts trauma with such devastating realism I was left gasping for air. Her feature debut Sorry, Baby is less a film about sexual assault than it is about that feeling of utter absurdity of rebuilding when the world isn’t equipped to help. Tracing every thrashing up and down, every disorienting high and low with unforgiving honesty. Victor doesn’t focus on the assault itself; instead, her camera waits patiently outside in a wide shot, rendering us as powerless observers. One minute hilarious, the next heartbreaking, the next terrifying—this is filmmaking that feels like a gentle embrace wrapped in a cinematic gut-punch and very deservedly on many of the top lists of this year.
2. NO OTHER CHOICE (EOJJEOLSUGA EOBSDA) | Park Chan-wook
This Vantablack comedy blew me away with its downright filmmaking audacity. Adapting Donald E. Westlake’s novel The Ax and relocating it from America to Korea, Park finds new textures of dread and hilarity in the codified hierarchies of Korean society—a reminder that Hollywood needn’t hold the monopoly on American stories. Delectable, mordantly hilarious, and astonishingly well-stylised, Park transforms the typically dour subject of unemployment into a savage dark comedy that speaks volumes to our present moment with unnerving clarity.
1. PILLION | Harry Lighton
I knew Pillion was something special almost immediately, and was thrilled to speak to Lighton for Directors Notes, whose earlier short film Wren Boys already assured me of his commanding voice. Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård are phenomenal together—their chemistry crackling between tender vulnerability and commanding intensity. Built on contrasting personalities, contradictory desires, and opposing social expectations, Lighton masterfully orchestrates a tone that pivots seamlessly between comedic awkwardness and raw, unvarnished intimacy. He’s given us the queer romance we always wanted but didn’t know how to ask for: uncompromising, intensely sexy, and deeply moving. [Watch our Pillion interview with Harry Lighton]
You can check out the rest of team DN’s Top Ten picks here.
