A cinema that looks to the present by analyzing its instances and idiosyncrasies, continuing to deal with the rubble of the American Dream at various levels, but also with the resonance of the Middle East and geopolitical issues, is what characterized 2025. A year that saw the confirmation of great authors (PT Anderson, Aster, to name a few), but also of an increasingly growing attention towards animation, oriental animation in particular.
Among the best films of the year, it is necessary to highlight “One battle after another” Of Paul Thomas Anderson. Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a retired revolutionary, is looking for his teenage daughter, Willa, who is in turn hunted by Colonel Lockjaw, who must settle accounts with the past before becoming part of a separatist movement devoted to Saint Nicholas. Anderson reshuffles history, between the revolutionary French 75 (of which Bob is a part) and the supremacist Pioneers of Christmas: a meeting/clash of collective ideals and private issues from which the revolutionary practicality of the sensei played by Benicio del Toro emerges, as well as a tense confrontation on parenting.
A comparison on the hysterias of the present, protagonists also in “Eddington” Of Ari Aster. The American director continues to deal with the grotesque, in a film starring Joaquin Phoenix, sheriff of a microcosm in New Mexico where a collective hysteria takes shape that is reflected in the whole of America, between the Covid epidemic, fake news, widespread frustration, the desire for rebellion (Black Lives Matter, but not only), in a contemporary western in which the epic leaves room for a deeply divided and disillusioned America.
A social satire, which looks at the contemporary, is also that of “Bugonia” Of Yorgos Lanthimos. A reworking of the myth, Virgil’s Bugonia on the spontaneous generation of life, which sees a confrontation between an employee of a pharmaceutical company and a CEO who manages it. Kidnapped after the employee’s mother fell into a coma, due to a failed treatment (proposed by the company itself), Emma Stone’s character is believed to be an Andromedan, after the man’s discovery of counterinformation sources. Lanthimos draws from current events to test the viewer, going beyond the right/wrong dichotomy.
Bugonia
An American Dream in rubble, with its hypocrisy exposed, is that of “The Brutalist”, directed by Brady Corbet. A monumental film, starring the architect László Tóth, who escaped the Holocaust, who finds himself building a mammoth structure for his patron Van Buren in the United States. An ambiguous relationship, just as ambiguous is the sense of freedom in America, where the full independence and trust of man clashes with an architecture, the brutalist one, which refers to and reflects on the terrible errors of the history of humanity.
An interesting mix of genres and formats, which looks to Tarantino and Spike Lee, combines black and blues culture in “The sinners” Of Ryan Coogler. Two African-American brothers (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return to Mississippi in the 1930s, during racial segregation, to open a nocturnal juke joint, a blues music venue, besieged by demon-vampires, attracted by the music. A horror film about family and community, which looks at the utopia of a world without differences, against the domestication and vampirisation of culture.
Three films, over the course of the year, showed a reflection on current geopolitics between Iran and Palestine. In “A simple accident”, Jafar Panahi puts the Iranian regime of the ayatollahs under the magnifying glass, staging “a simple accident” which gives rise to a road movie in which a group of victims are the protagonists of a vengeful trial against one of their (alleged) former jailers, where the memory of the individual, despite the dilemma, becomes collective memory. In “The voice of Hind Rajab”, Kaouther Ben Hania stages a devastating phone call with which to tell the true story of Hind, a six-year-old girl trapped in a car riddled with bullets from Israeli forces in Gaza. A film in which stage fiction and the reality of the sources intersect which, between bewilderment and pain, traces a cross-section of the tragedy that is affecting the Palestinians. The contradictions of Iranian power are also shown in “The seed of the sacred fig” Of Mohammad Rasoulof: family story within domestic walls that develop contradictions and social conflicts, architectural amplifier of the protests of young Iranians. A system of oppression shown in images, with a family portrait mirroring the Iranian regime. Current geopolitics is also present in “A House of Dynamite” Of Kathryn Bigelowa thriller in which the world approaches nuclear catastrophe after an unclaimed missile is launched against the United States: looks at a present that no one is prepared for, with frenetic time-stretched editing. War that also returns in “Warfare – Time of war” Of Alex Garland: images of war that become perception, memory and, consequently, therapy, in dealing with an American (but not only) evil.
A world in decline is the one shown in “Afternoons of solitude” Of Albert Serraa documentary starring Andrés Roca Rey, a bullfighting star who, in raw and contemplative images, shows bullfighting as an aesthetic challenge and community ritual. Evolving images are instead those of “Romantic generation” Of Jia Zhangkewhich show the changes of a twenty-year love story and, with it, the changes in China, in the stages of technological progress that led it to modernity. On the image and on the gaze he then reflects the “Frankenstein” Of Guillermo del Toroyet another gaze towards the outcasts of society: a gaze that judges, that observes scientifically, but incapable of sustaining the sight of images that are something other than itself, the sight of the Creature, which expands and reflects on the meaning of monster.
The horror genre then moves between social traumas, relationships and beauty standards, for which, among the releases of the year, we should mention “Weapons” by Zach Cregger, “Together” in Michael Shanks e”The Ugly Stepsister” by Emilie Blichfeldt.
Towards the end of the year, then, of note is the long-awaited return of James Cameron with “Avatar: Fire and ash”: a spectacular aesthetic, which narrates a fragility of the material mirror of a psychological delicacy that affects the protagonist family.
Italian 2025 was not characterized by bombastic titles from a media point of view, but was still enlivened by high-level films such as “The cities of the plain” Of Francesco Sossai (an alcoholic and melancholic road movie in which the province becomes a collective story, a sincere story about the time of life, about opportunities taken and missed, about the experience of reality), “The forbidden city” Of Gabriele Mainetti (between kung fu, Italian comedy, love and drama, in a multi-ethnic Esquiline), “Out” Of Mario Martone (Biopic of Goliarda Sapienza, played by Valeria Golino, with a comparison between inside and outside, between authentic life and presumed freedom, in the dimension of prison) and “Queer” Of Luca Guadagnino (a layered and sentimental Borroughs reading of bodies tormented and full of desire).
An excellent year, 2025, also when it comes to animation. Of note is the animation inspired by Chinese mythology (and ink painting) of “Ne Zha 2 – Rise of the Fire Warrior” e i film anime “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no yaiba – Infinity Castle” (All-duted Human Council) in the “Chainsw Man – The film: Rezon’s.” (by Tatsuya Yoshihara), in addition to the contemplative “The colors of the soul” by Naoko Yamada. Among the animated films of the year, also “Too Bad 2” (DreamWorks) e “Zootropolis 2” (Disney), with their intelligent and funny reflections on redemption and collective responsibility.
An excellent year which, once again, saw cinema relate to an increasingly turbulent present, trying to give it an exhaustive definition.
