Top 2025: the 10 best films of the year according to the Première editorial staff

The Little One, The Secret Agent, 28 Years Later, One Battle After Another… And you, what were your favorite films of the year?

Is cinema dead? While waiting for this disastrous prophecy to come to fruition, the year 2025 has once again been rich in great moments for the 7th art. After our top series, here are the 10 best films selected by the Première editorial staff, in all subjectivity of course.

10. The Brutalist by Brady Corbet

A man emerges from the depths of a ship, the Statue of Liberty enters the frame upside down, and Brady Corbet reinvents the “great American novel”. A deliberately monumental film about the construction of a monument, and the price to pay by artists when they have no other choice but to become the toys of oligarchs in full delirium of omnipotence. Incidentally, after two films that went under the radar (The Childhood of a Leader And Vox Lux), Corbet spectacularly rectifies his own trajectory as a filmmaker in search of greatness.

9. The Little One by Hafsia Herzi

We liked Hafsia Herzi’s first two films, You deserve a love And Good mother. We loved his third, remarkable adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Fatima Daas. Her story of emancipation of a young lesbian of Muslim faith hits the mark with her talent to propel us into the head of her heroine and make us feel everything she is going through: her shames, her doubts, her racing heart, her fears… In this role, the intensity and charisma of Nadia Melliti light up the screen. More than a revelation, a breakthrough crowned with the Cannes acting prize.

8. Alpha by Julia Ducournau

Presented in competition at Cannes 2025, Alpha is the film that got people talking as much as it divided. In a tragic uchrony, the director of Titanium explores vividly a metaphorical epidemic which petrifies bodies and tears family ties, carried by powerful actors (Mélissa Boros and Tahar Rahim). Some saw it as a moving parable about mourning and marginality, others a confused and overloaded story, sometimes too abstract to really touch. We are the new masterpiece of a uniquely talented director who decided to bare herself. A work that polarizes as much as it fascinates.

7. 28 years later by Danny Boyle

The Danny Boyle-Alex Garland reunion, for a sequel to the seminal 28 days laterwhich also marks the start of a new trilogy. Crossed with crass images which dynamite the clichés of zombie imagery, the film is an electrifying reflection on mourning and nationalist pride, where the two eternal dirty kids of British cinema spend their old obsession for Apocalypse Now through the sieve of contemporary ills: pandemic threats, withdrawal into oneself, virilism going to war… With Ralph Fiennes as post-apocalyptic Colonel Kurtz, and a poem by Kipling that grips the guts.

6. A complete stranger by James Mangold

Four years in the life of Bob Dylan, the time of the metamorphosis of the young acoustic folker into an electric rock prophet. It is the portrait of a recalcitrant idol by a gifted young actor (Timothée Chalamet) who does not hide his ambition to be the most adored of his generation. It is also the portrait of a genius by a humble craftsman (James Mangold), who superbly uses all the resources of the Hollywood machinery (photography, casting, reconstruction… everything is canon), and reflects on the very complex nature of the bond which unites the stars to their audience. Are musical biopics condemned to always rehashing the same clichés? Proof that no.

5. Life of Chuck by Mike Flanagan

Three fragments of a life and a death told backwards, Life of Chuck transcends literary adaptation to become a meditation on ordinary existence. Mike Flanagan, who has rarely been so delicate and sensitive, draws from Stephen King’s short story a meta tale about memory, love and dance as an act of living, carried by fluid staging and sequences of astonishing grace. If its fragmented narration sometimes loses us, it is to better embrace the chaos of a life and it serves a humanist and luminous message which resonates long after the credits.

4. The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça Filho

The jury of the last Cannes Film Festival rewarded Wagner Moura’s fabulous performance in The Secret Agent. And he was right. He could also have awarded him the prize for directing, or for screenplay, or even for best soundtrack (if it existed), as Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film is touched by a rare grace. The director ofAquarius And Bacurau signs a great political thriller, and an intoxicating reconstruction of Brazil in the 1970s under military dictatorship, but also a reflection on memory and a declaration of love for the 7th art, from which we do not emerge unscathed. 2h40 ofabsolute cinema.

3. Sinners by Ryan Coogler

Ryan Coogler and two Michael B. Jordans managed to thwart the equation of a moribund US summer box office. Above all, they proved that narrative and formal audacity were still possible in Hollywood. Better, desired. Prohibition is experienced here from a den in the depths of Mississippi, the only pocket of resistance in a lost world. This Sinners neo-Rio Bravo awaits the arrival of the Redskins except that they have nothing to do with Indians. And the Blues, music of the devil if ever there was one, tears apart space-time and lacerates bodies. Oooooh yeaaah!

2. Sirāt by Oliver Laxe

Who would have bet before the Cannes adventures that a film by Oliver Laxe (Mimosas, The fire will come…) would not only be seen by the entire editorial team but unanimously adored to the point of appearing (almost) at the top? Speakers, a free party, cliffs, sand, jerked bodies and a father looking for his daughter… Everything goes wrong Mad Max in harem pants with a dramatic earthquake halfway through that would make Haneke look like a Teletubbies. Very far from the (re-)beaten paths, therefore. A divine surprise.

1. One battle after another by Paul Thomas Anderson

We didn’t think PTA was capable of that. The virtuoso of complexity, the master meta frescoes sign a dizzying (explosive) cocktail of politics, action and social satire, making the wandering of an ex-revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) a fable as much as a real thriller. The film embraces the chaos of contemporary ideologies with wild energy, alternating chases, humor and moments of raw emotion, supported by a spectacular soundtrack and direction. A fresco that is both political and deeply cinematic, always captivating. Best scene of the year (the road ribbon), best performances of the year (Leo and Benicio del Toro), best villains of the year… in short, naturally the best film of the year.