The best films of 2025: Gold Derby editors’ picks

From singing Shakers to a sobbing Shakespeare, 2025 was a surprisingly strong year for moviegoing — as the crowded Best Picture field shows. Gold Derby’s editors sat through dozens of screenings over the past 12 months, from popcorn-crunchers to heart-wrenching foreign films to intense documentaries to the artiest art-house fare. These are the movies that stuck with us (in alphabetical order) … and just happen to be some of the films that will be showered with accolades in the coming weeks as awards season kicks into high gear.

Hamnet

This film has sat atop Gold Derby’s Best Picture predictions since its debut — and for good reason. Paul Mescal delivers a profoundly moving performance as William Shakespearecapturing an artist grappling with love, family, and devastating loss. Jessie Buckley is equally remarkable as his wife, giving a haunting portrayal of a grieving mother that might be the most captivating of the year. The supporting cast is just as strong, with Emily Watson bringing quiet power and emotional depth to her role as Shakespeare’s mother. Directed by Chloe Zhao, Hamnet is a film steeped in heartbreak and resilience that unfolds like a living painting, so immersive that stepping out of the theater feels jarring. In a year full of exceptional films, Hamnet feels destined to endure. — Mia McNiece

KPop Demon Hunters

Cartoons matter, too! KPop Demon Hunters made history for Netflix by becoming the streamer’s most-watched original movie ever and setting the box-office ablaze during two separate sing-along weekends. Oh, and it’s the Oscar frontrunner for Best Animated Feature and Best Song (“Golden”). The film centers around Huntr/x, a girl group by day and a demon-hunting trio by night. In a brilliant example of art imitates life, the singing voices behind the characters — इजाए, Audrey Nunaand Rei Ami — have even started performing for real. The only downside to KPop mania? We have to wait until 2029 for the sequel. — Marcus James Dixon

One Battle After Another

Only one film this year had the courage to shine a light on the crimes of the Christmas Adventurers Club! Nearly three decades into his career, Paul Thomas Anderson delivered a movie that plays like the culmination of it. One Battle After Another is as massive, twisted, hilarious, thrilling, and suspenseful as anything he’s ever done, and yet somehow demonstrates more constraint than he’s shown before. It might not be his best film ever, but there’s certainly room to make the argument. — Kevin Sullivan

Sentimental Value

Walking out of my first screening of Sentimental Valuea publicist for a rival studio turned to me and said, “It’s a masterpiece.” I couldn’t agree more. “I think we all go to the movies to feel the experience of people,” Joachim Trier told me when I interviewed him. And that’s something that the film captures so beautifully, whether it’s about the relationship between fathers and daughters, between sisters, between directors and actors, between generations past and present. Weaving a story about a fractured family trying to find their way back together, Trier deftly blends hope, heartbreak, and humor — whether it’s a joke at Netflix’s expense or a hilariously inappropriate gift for a 10-year-old. Not to mention a little bit of real estate envy (that house!). But in the end, the title speaks for itself. As Trier told me, it could almost be a Cole Porter tune — and that’s a classic that will stand the test of time. — Debra Birnbaum

Sinners

Sinners altered my brain chemistry. Ryan Coogler’s latest masterpiece had me from the second Musk’s perfume’s voiceover began explaining the different names for vampires across cultures, and by the time Miles Caton was singing in that car with Michael B. Jordan I was hooked. Every single cast member fires on all cylinders (can someone please give Delroy Lindo and Jack O’Connell some awards love?) and the cinematography is so immersive that I kept gasping. Caton’s soulful performance of Best Original Song contender “I Lied To You” is a standout, as is the scene that follows where spirits from the past and the future convene to dance as he plays. I’ve seen it 12 times (yes, you read that right) in theaters and when it returns to Imax, I’ll be back for more. — Jaclyn Ben-Porat

The Tale of Silyan

One of the year’s most overlooked films was also my favorite: The Tale of Silyan, a documentary about a North Macedonian farmer who forms an unlikely bond with a wounded white stork. It’ll make you laugh, cry, and — unlike most movies I saw this year — actually leave you with some hope. And yes, spoiler worth knowing: the stork survives and even attended the premiere. Despite winning Best Documentary Feature at the IDA Documentary Awards and serving as North Macedonia’s Oscar submission for International Feature, Tamara Kotevska’s film was egregiously left off both shortlists. In a just world, it also would’ve been recognized for Jean Dakar’s stunning cinematography, which so vividly captures the landscape and the rhythms of the farmers’ lives. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be — so the best we can do now is add it to our must-see list of 2025. — Denton Davidson

The Testament of Ann Lee

My top movie of 2025 hasn’t budged from its No. 1 spot since my first viewing in Toronto way back in September. What’s remarkable about writer-director Here Fastvold‘s telling of the life and times of 18th century Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee is its clarity of vision, even as it draws from an eclectic swath of influences, including movie musicals, historical epics and cinematic explorations of faith. As portrayed by Fastvold and her star, Amanda SeyfriedAnn Lee wielded belief as a force to impose order on a turbulent world and chart a path beyond the bondage placed on the women of her era and station. The movie’s stirring song-and-dance sequences encapsulate those twin themes, allowing control and chaos to exist in the same expertly-composed frame. — Ethan Alter

Train Dreams

As the credits rolled at the premiere, a journalist friend exhaled and said the quiet part out loud: “Beautiful as hell, but sad as f–k.” Like some creature in the movie’s vast wilderness, Clint Bentley‘s elegiac meditation on family, mortality, and those brief but consuming connections we make in life — told through the story of an itinerant lumberjack at the dawn of the 20th century — sneaks up on you and doesn’t let go. “Resilience and rebuilding and reparation … helped by the kindness of other human beings,” is how star Joel Edgerton puts it. The sadness lets up, but the film lingers. Soon enough you’ll want to spend some more time around the campfire with William H. Macy. — Marcus Errico