With a huge amount of new releases in both film and television, this 2025 has been an interesting year in audiovisual content with many titles standing out, although if one has to choose one from each area, it has undoubtedly been the year of ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘Adolescence’.
Although with the permission of titles like ‘Sirat’ or ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ in cinema, and ‘The Squid Game’ or ‘The Pitt’ in series. Here we present you a countdown of cinema in 2025.
Auteur cinema marks 2025
With a Chinese film dominating the worldwide box office -‘Nhe Zha 2’, with 1.902 million dollars of which 1.860 million dollars were grossed in its country of origin-, moviegoers have bet on children’s animated films, but there have been several titles that have been on everyone’s lips:
One Battle After Another’: Paul Thomas Anderson has pulled out of his sleeve a crazy Tarantino-flavored film, with two brilliant actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro in a story that adapts a novel by the unclassifiable Thomas Pynchon and that attacks the immigration policy of the U.S. authorities in a spectacular part of the film, the great favorite for the Oscars.
The Voice of Hind Rajab’: Recordings of calls to the Red Cross by Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl who was shot dead by the Israeli army, form the backbone of a film that makes the hair stand on end and brings tears to the eyes of anyone with a conscience and has become an anti-war symbol. The film by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, is nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and is among the 15 finalists for the international Oscar.
‘Sirat’: Oliver Laxe shocked spectators at the Cannes Film Festival with a film in which he reflects on death as the impulse of life through a father’s race against the clock to find his daughter in raves held in the middle of the Moroccan desert. Jury Prize at Cannes, nominated for the Golden Globe and present in the pre-selection of five categories for the Oscars, something historic for Spanish cinema.
‘Frankenstein’: Guillermo del Toro was obsessed since he was a child with Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and, after many years of waiting, his dream came true in 2025, with a new adaptation of this horror classic, starring Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac, with the obvious baroque stamp of the Mexican, which was one of the most anticipated films of the year, but which left the Venice Film Festival empty-handed.
‘K-Pop Demon Hunters’: It arrived with little promotion on Netflix, where it premiered on June 20. And in just two months it became the most-watched movie in the platform’s history. And then it briefly hit theaters in South Korea and the United States, enough to contend for awards. And this animated film/musical inspired by Korean mythology and folklore has already accumulated three Golden Globe nominations, as well as four Grammy nominations for a soundtrack that is a worldwide hit.
And at …. series
As far as television fiction is concerned, there have been series for all tastes.
Latest seasons – from ‘Squid Game’ or‘Stranger Things‘; titles that have been rising little by little, such as ‘Pluribus’; successful adaptations, such as ‘El eternauta’ or surprises such as ‘Dept Q’. Among all of them, the ones that have generated the most conversations have been these:
‘Adolescence’: A British series knocked viewers out since the first episode aired on March 13. The story of a 13-year-old boy accused of the murder of a schoolmate is told as brilliantly as it is brutally from several points of view and Owen Cooper’s performance as the young Jamie Miller is simply overpowering.
‘Squid Game’: The popular Korean series that posits a terrifying deadly game in which the powerful prey on the weakest reached its end point and remained an audience favorite although it did not reach the viewing levels of the first installment, which was a worldwide phenomenon in 2021.
‘Dept Q’: The quality of this British series allowed it to become one of those productions that everyone talks about, despite the scarce promotion. Matthew Goode is brilliant in this adaptation of the novels by Danish Jussi Adler-Olsen, which show the lowest of human beings but with a little light at the end of the tunnel.
‘The Pitt’: In two seasons, this original medical drama has established itself as one of the most solid bets on television. With a cast headed by Noah Wyle – who returns to the role of a doctor after his unforgettable John Carter in ‘ER’ – and a real-time action approach, the series has won over critics and audiences alike.
‘Andor’: Diego Luna returned as the rebel Cassian Andor in this series of the ‘Star Wars’ universe, which has become darker in its second season and whose plot is getting closer to ‘Roge One’, the best of the films derived from the main plot of the stories of the galactic universe created by George Lucas.
Filed under: Cinema in 2025
With information from EFE
