00:00With one battle after another and sinners topping your ender lists, there have been a whole bunch
00:05of films forging new horizons. Cinema continues to provoke shock, delight and transport. We have
00:12watched tense political fables, complicated family sagas and eccentric horror. In Outlook's picks
00:18from 2025, here are films that have vowed leading film fests from Berlin to Cannes.
00:24The Secret Agent Brazil could very well be headed for consecutive
00:29Best International Feature Oscars with Kleber Mendonça Filho's period piece, led by Narco star
00:36Wagner Moura. Set in 1970s Recife, at the height of the military dictatorship, a research scientist
00:43remakes his identity after the government shuts down his facility. Kleber creates a vibrantly alive
00:50drama, looking deep through historical memory while shuffling in gonzo detours along the way.
00:56The film won three prizes at Cannes this year, including Best Director, Sirar.
01:03In Oliver Lax Cannes Jury Prize winner, a father looking for his missing daughter
01:09joins a caravan of ravers in the Moroccan desert. Step in blind for the wildest film of the year,
01:16whose emotional lurches land hard with Kang Ding-Rae's electrifying score.
01:21Is this the end of the world? One of the nomad's wonders. Lax answers it in ways that leave you
01:28shaken forever. A useful ghost. There are many kinds of ghosts in Rachapun
01:34Boonban Chachok's witty, playful debut. They range from avenging and embittered to pleasant,
01:41generous and helpful. Best of all, they become a resistance to the state that's bent on repressing
01:48and erasing historical wounds. This genre-blender pays homage to a rich tradition of Thai camp horror
01:55with deadpan delight. Chances are, you'll never look at a vacuum cleaner quite the same way ever again.
02:03Sentimental Value
02:04Joachim Trier reunites with the worst person in the world star, Renate Renswey,
02:10for a crushing life-affirming drama on guilt, regret and familial ties. As two sisters reckon
02:17with their mostly absent filmmaker father after their mother's death, Trier examines the interface
02:24between life and art and what it takes to keep one going amidst the lack of nurturing love.
02:31Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, Sentimental Value got eight Golden Globe nominations and is poised for
02:38several Oscar nods. It was just an accident. A mechanic kidnapping, his suspected torturer
02:46kicks off Jafar Panay's Palm Dior-winning film, which is a darkly funny and unpredictable satire.
02:53Widely tipped for Oscar success, it was just an accident abandons Panay's familiar formal tricks
03:00to situate ten stakes where morality keeps shifting. It winds up to the year's most chilling ending.
03:08My Undesirable Friends, Part 1, Last Air in Moscow
03:12Yulia Loktev's mammoth 5.5 hours documentary chronicling the struggle of independent journalists
03:20in Putin's Russia has emerged as the hottest Oscar contender. With rigorous detail,
03:27Loktev zeroes in on the daily battle against propaganda in a system of repression
03:32set against the hardened climate of Russia's war on Ukraine. The documentary, which had its
03:39international premiere at Berlinale this year, recently won the Gotham Award.
Comments