Outlook's Picks 2025 | World Cinema Masterpieces | Best International Films

#OutlooksPicks2025 | While ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘Sinners’ dominated year-ender lists, many other films pushed cinema into new horizons. Provocative, daring and transporting, these works have lit up major festivals. In Outlook’s Picks from 2025, we bring you films that impressed juries and audiences alike—from Berlin to Cannes.

Script: Debanjan Dhar
Editor: Sudhanshu
VO: Rani Jana

#WorldCinema #FilmFestivals #BerlinToCannes #Cinema2025 #InternationalFilms

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Transcript

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.

Outlook's Picks 2025 | World Cinema Masterpieces | Best International Films

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