Best of the Year 2025: Award Winners

This year’s slate of award winners has been remarkable not only for their craft but for the way they make us feel. Biopics, musicals, historical dramas, and sprawling epics alike have combined technical brilliance with performances that demand attention, making 2025 one of the most memorable years for awards contenders in recent memory. Here is our round-up of the films that wowed critics, audiences, and the Academy alike.



A Complete Unknown

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The best biopics have a way of making you forget you are watching one person you know play another, and Timothée Chalamet disappears entirely into Bob Dylan in this extraordinary film. James Mangold tracks Dylan’s rise in the folk world before focusing on his controversial shift to electric, capturing the complexity of a musician and cultural icon at the height of his power. Supported by an outstanding ensemble including Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro, it is Chalamet’s electric performance that truly steals the show, a turn recognised with an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, while Norton and Barbaro also received Oscar nominations for their supporting roles. Mangold and Jay Cocks’ adapted screenplay was similarly recognised by the Academy, and the film earned further nods for Best Picture, Costume Design, and Sound, underscoring its technical and artistic excellence.

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A Real Pain

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Jesse Eisenberg’s sophomore directorial effort takes viewers on an emotional journey through Poland as two wildly different cousins honour their grandmother’s memory. It is touching, heartbreaking, and genuinely funny, anchored by a career-best performance from Kieran Culkin as Benji, a role that earned him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Eisenberg deftly balances the weight of history with lightness and humour, never undermining the story’s emotional core, a balance recognised with an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

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The Brutalist

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Brady Corbet does not just make a film; he erects a cinematic monument. The Brutalist is massive, mesmerising, and defiantly human, blending grandeur and grit in ways that are impossible to ignore. Adrien Brody constructs a towering, subtle, and soulful central performance that was rewarded with the Academy Award for Best Actor, while Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones bring equally compelling supporting turns. At three and a half hours, time vanishes in a haze of art, architecture, and awe. Bold, bruising, and utterly brilliant, the film’s achievements in cinematography, production design, editing, and its Academy Award-winning original score confirm that ambition pays off spectacularly. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, cementing its status as a true awards-season powerhouse.

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Flow

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A quietly thrilling odyssey, Flow follows a solitary cat navigating a flooded, post-human world, forming unlikely alliances with a capybara, dog, lemur, and secretary bird to survive. Told almost entirely without dialogue, the film draws you in with its subtle storytelling, precise animation, and emotionally resonant world-building. Each sequence balances tension, wonder, and quiet humour, creating a journey that is both intimate and epic. Its Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is a fitting recognition for a film that speaks volumes without a single word.

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I’m Still Here

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Set in 1970s Rio de Janeiro during Brazil’s military dictatorship, I’m Still Here tells the inspirational true story of Eunice Paiva’s fight for her family and, later, for the truth. Adapted from her children’s autobiographies, it’s a powerful portrait of courage and resilience, filled with moments that both move and inspire. Fernanda Torres delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as Paiva, capturing the strength and determination of a woman who refuses to be silenced. The film’s Academy Award win for Best International Feature and Torres’ Oscar nomination for Best Actress underline the emotional impact and cinematic achievement of this extraordinary story.

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Wicked

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Picking up well-deserved Academy Award nominations for both of its leading ladies, as well as nods in a whole host of other categories including Best Motion Picture, and securing wins in Production Design and Costume Design, Wicked wasn’t just a whirlwind with audiences but absolutely dominated awards season too. Everything a good adaptation aspires to be, it successfully transports the beloved Broadway hit to the silver screen without losing any of its charm, beaming with colour, a genuine sense of wonder, and all the wizardry of the Land of Oz.

Stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande deliver astoundingly good musical performances, with Grande nailing Galinda’s ‘Popular’ in a tornado of glitzy pink, and Erivo soaring through ‘Defying Gravity’ in every sense as the outcast Witch Elphaba. Their Oscar nominations underline just how exceptional these performances are. Now where’s my invite to Shiz University?

What would your pick be for this years award winner? Shop the full range below!