The Mancunion’s best films of 2025

As with every year, no matter what you might think of the year overall, there have been some spectacular films released in 2025. We look back over the year with our writers and editors, to let you know what The Mancunion’s best films of 2025 are.

Palestine 36 (Elli Duke – Culture Managing Editor)

Guaranteed to leave you shocked and sobbing, this film is one of the most important films you can watch this year, becoming more relevant as each day passes. Through interweaving tales of love, family, and community, Palestine 36 sheds light on the atrocities committed in Palestine at the hands of the British, so I think it’s particularly important to watch if you’re unsure about the role that Britain has played in the genocide.

The Mastermind (Jessie Betts – Head Books Editor)

I’ve never seen any Kelly Reichardt films before this one and I was totally charmed by this. Anything with Josh O’Connor in it is going to win me over, I’ve been rooting for him since day one (The Durrells nation rise up). I love his performance in this one especially, as a grizzled, depressed art thief in the 70s.

Reichardt creates such an amazing mood in this, with the score and the slightly grainy look of the cinematography fitting it right into the period without it ever feeling cookie-cutter. The colours in this film are just astonishing, such great autumn colours that make it feel cosy even though everything on screen is objectively quite sad (but also funny). There’s been nothing quite like this film out this year, and I hope more people watch it because I already feel it’s severely underrated.

One Battle After Another (James Hills – Writer)

I believe that it’s safe to say there’s an obvious favourite amongst the 2025 roster. While Richard Linklater’s ‘Blue Moon’ deserves a decent shout, there really can’t be any other film destined for the top spot other than Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterpiece. From the bone-rattlingly, seat-edge drama of the Hitchcockian car chase (which watched like a primal predator-prey scene typical of the African savannah), to the wild, strange and stellar performance of Sean Penn as Colonel Lockjaw (pending Best Supporting Oscar winner), the film produced an unforgettable, tense and humorous cinematic Odyssey that will go down in the history books. One of (if not THE) best of the films made in the 21st century so far.

Sentimental Value (Tom Swift – Film and TV Editor)

I never doubted that Sentimental Value would be in my upper echelons this year. I adore The Worst Person in the World and Joachim Trier has never failed me, but I couldn’t have predicted how much the film would blow me away. The performances are amongst the strongest of the year, I think maybe Stellan Skarsgard has my favourite across the board, and they bring to life such complex, layered and deeply felt characters.

It is a marvel of a screenplay, conveying so much with such a tight and small drama, reflecting what it is that cinema does for us in a delicate and unpretentious way. Trier and Vogt are able to write the kind of emotional weight that leaves you crying, not because the film is sad (it can be), but because you simply feel it all so intensely. In a year where the big, bombastic films have dominated, Sentimental Value is a precious reminder that big budgets and spectacle are not everything. 

Train Dreams (Jacob Howard – Film Writer)

Train Dreams is a pocket-sized replica of grief. This crushing film, based on the 2011 novella of the same name by Denis Johnson, follows a rail worker and his family in the pacific northwest of America during the turn of the century. The unbiased cinematography and sound design (evocative of the great work of Terrence Malick) accompany a set of stellar performances to form the film’s impenetrable emotional core.

Joel Edgerton shines as our protagonist, Robert Grainier, and is accompanied by Felicity Jones (Rogue One, The Brutalist), William H. Macy (Shameless), and the infallible Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inesherin, F1). Here is a beautiful movie that so desperately yearns to be enjoyed on a big cinema screen by a packed audience. But instead, like so many other recent releases, it has been under-marketed and funnelled into the abyss of Netflix’s ever-expanding catalogue. Bring back long theatrical releases!

Mickey 17 (Adella – News Managing Editor)

There’s a lot to say about the absurdity of the film itself – a whacky amalgamation of sci-fi and political satire and an incredibly talented cast. My favourite part of the film was the way they chose to show us the nature of Mickey (Robert Patterson) and Nasha’s (Naomi Ackie) relationship (the main love interests). They have possibly one of my favourite dynamics to ever be explored on screen.

It’s very refreshing when a romantic couple’s plot in a film isn’t a “will they, won’t they stay together” situation, but instead one where you can trust they’re able to solve these problems together and show each other compassion, as well as it being refreshing that Nasha is able to escape the grasp of the “disposable black girlfriend” trope.

Eddington (Daniel Grady – Film Writer)

A good proportion of the year’s most potent cinematic images are found in half-reflected screens in Ari Aster’s Eddington; phone screens, laptop screens, windscreens, the cracked vizor of a riot police officer. Aster might be the only person in the Western hemisphere (s/o Park Chan-Wook) who understands how to construct in film effective and truly novel icons of modernity, and, as a result, is definitely the only person in the Western hemisphere with anything interesting to say about 2020. Also, it’s really funny! And scary! And deeply and viscerally uncomfortable! And really funny! Antifa has a fighter jet!

Happyend (Ruby Hamilton – Deputy Film and TV Editor)

I sat down in the cinema not knowing quite what to expect from Happyend. A foreign language film described as both ‘coming-of-age’ and ‘dystopian’ with a juxtaposing fairytale title, it promised to at least offer something different. After two minutes, I knew it would be great. The film is refreshingly not formulaic – I really had no sense of how it would end. But, it is the sign of a good writer that by the time it did, I felt a deep fondness for each of the characters. Happyend is deeply touching, and unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc (Alfie Wilcox – Games Editor)

In a jam-packed year of blockbuster greats like Sinners or OBAA, I never expected to close out 2025 thinking Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc film was our year’s best. It’s a gory, hypersexualized kaleidoscopic bloodbath with blink-and-you’ll miss it gratuitous violence, yet they somehow managed to pack it with more heart than most else that’s played this year.

Kensuke Ushio’s musical score is hypnotic and heartbreaking where it counts, veiling over the film’s rollercoaster narrative about a boy mistakenly thinking he’s found true love in a world that’s only out to steal his heart. There’s whimsy, naivety, and cool moments to make the child in you jolt with excitement, immediately sidekicked by a devastating, brazenly horrifying visual commentary of the world to make the child in us quake. Chainsaw Man isn’t for everyone, but the sheer kinetic energy behind every moment in that IMAX cinema narrowly made it my favourite watch of 2025.