This past December marked the end of one of the more tumultuous years in recent times. If 2024 promised a year full of horrifying prospects, 2025 delivered. Perhaps that is why our top 15 best movies list this year reflects a reckoning with the difficult present. But this reckoning isn’t hopeless. Rather, it betrays a hidden strength. The best films of 2025 demand us to look directly at the terrors of our time.

The history of the Congo, unfiltered, conjures a sense of determinist history. Power always wins. The trajectory of the universe does not be