As per tradition, I will give out imaginary awards to the films that I love most or hold in high regard from the preceding year.
Golden Snoopy – Kaouther Ben Hania for THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB
Truly, truly, truly heartbreaking. A work so devastating that it is impossible not to wail in abject frustration at the hopelessness of it all. Simple and efficient in form, yet acutely articulate about the revolting absurdity of the Palestinian genocide, this film is as urgent as it gets, but the world continues to move indifferently in slow-motion circles.
Silver Snoopy – Paul Thomas Anderson for ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
PTA’s tour de force, operatic long-arc film not only sets a new tone for studio filmmaking but ‘bobbles’ with such incredible airtight momentum that it oscillates between absurdist comedy and high-stakes action-thriller with effortless ease, as a man is haunted by the consequences of his past political actions.
Bronze Snoopy – Dag Johan Haugerud for DREAMS
This Berlinale Golden Bear winner is one of the best films of 2025 and goes beyond the typical coming-of-age picture, exploring how a teenage girl’s crush on her teacher sparks questions about literary catharsis and ownership of private feelings, as she mulls over publishing her sacred experiences of “love”.
Bronze Snoopy (Special Mention) – Mstyslav Chernov for 2,000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA
Realism without filters, Chernov’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning ’20 Days in Mariupol’ is a devastating war vérité that strips conflict of rhetoric, leaving only attrition, absurdity, and the unbearable weight of patriotic labour carried by ordinary Ukrainian men.
- Best Director: Richard Linklater for BLUE MOON & NOUVELLE VAGUE – any filmmaker in the world would be ecstatic if his or her feature film is selected for Cannes or the Berlinale, but ask Linklater, who had two (great) period films last year that world premiered in those festivals, competing, no less, in the main competition. We are taking one of America’s finest directors for granted, really.
- Best Lead Actor: Ethan Hawke for BLUE MOON – within minutes of seeing Hawke’s exquisite performance as the legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart, I knew nobody else would top it for me. He slipped into the role so effortlessly, and although the film wasn’t shot in a single long take, it felt like he was functioning in real time.
- Best Lead Actress: Ella Øverbye for DREAMS – her performance as a teenage girl who is infatuated with her female teacher is one of the most earnest and sincere of the year. She conveys that quiet, buzzing feeling, that occasional skip in the step, that basking in someone else’s gaze, with understated grace. Doesn’t she also look like a Norwegian Brie Larson?
- Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn for ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER – a lethal “supporting” performance that makes you root against him for the entire film, yet also stirs in us the desire to see him concoct chaos for the protagonists in the process.
- Best Supporting Actress: Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for SENTIMENTAL VALUE – my favourite supporting performance of the year; so nuanced, and, for me, the “invisible” affecting center of the film
- Best Ensemble Cast: NOUVELLE VAGUE – well, basically, the French New Wave folks come alive uncannily in front of our eyes, in the guise of a hangout movie that Richard Linklater is a master of. A cinephile’s wet dream.
- Best Original Screenplay: SINNERS – probably Ryan Coogler’s finest achievement to date – it’s thrilling, pulsating, and brings a modern sensibility to a period film. It’s quite hard to believe it all started with a blank page.
- Best Adapted Screenplay: BLUE MOON – adapted by Robert Kaplow (author of “Me and Orson Welles”, which was made into a film by Richard Linklater in 2008), this was his first screenwriting credit. What a fantastic script, with lots of monologues for Ethan Hawke’s character – it sucks you in and makes you feel like a time-travelling eavesdropper.
- Best Cinematography: SIRAT – it’s not easy to shoot in the kind of environment the story takes place in, plus the camerawork brilliantly captures both movement and stasis with heightened psychological effect.
- Special Mention: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER – every shot size, angle, depth of field, camera movement, lighting type, etc. serves a narrative or characterisation purpose; and if nothing else, just for that climactic car chase sequence alone on IMAX.
- Best Film Editing: THE SECRET AGENT – a structurally complex, deeply immersive, and tonally eclectic work that builds its shots, scenes, and sequences into an enigmatic whole. That’s impressive editing for you.
- Special Mention: MY FATHER’S SHADOW for its concerted use of poetic montage to give the film a lyrical, dreamy, yet unsettling feeling
- Best Production Design: THE SECRET AGENT – it transports you back to those pulpy, carnivalesque days of late ’70s Brazil under political oppression
- Best Costume Design: NOUVELLE VAGUE – even cooler than the clothes Belmondo, Seberg, Godard, and co. had worn during those nostalgic days.
- Best Makeup & Hairstyling: BLUE MOON – Ethan Hawke had the most memorable hair and face for me.
- Best Original Score: ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER – the Oscar continues to elude Jonny Greenwood, one of those under-the-radar and idiosyncratic composers who has found a creative outlet in the unconventional films of Paul Thomas Anderson. His improvisational-esque score has moments of operatic grandeur, yet it is the dissonant rhythms that inject the film with pace and foreboding.
- Best Original Song: SINNERS (“I Lied to You”) – this is musically so much more thrillingly creative than KPOP DEMON HUNTERS‘ “Golden”, and the centerpiece of a brilliant film.
- Special Mention: DREAMS (“Willingly”) – one of the emotional highs of the film; when the song played, I felt the film so deeply that I wanted to wrap myself in it.
- Best Use of Source Music: URCHIN (“Whole Again” by Atomic Kitten) – when this song was used diegetically in Harris Dickinson’s debut feature in one of its strongest scenes – a karaoke scene, no less – I fell in love with what the film was trying to do.
- Best Sound: SIRAT – All about the sound waves that tremble and reverberate, that both shock and heal us in a world careening into oblivion. This film needs to be played loudly.
- Special Mention: SINNERS – this also needs to be played loud, a trance-formative work about the vibrations of space and time through music’s connection with “cultures and spirits”.
- Best Sound Design: THE PLAGUE – Youth bullying is a social disease, and here the filmmakers amplify it through their striking use of sound, with a haunting and dissonant design that draws us into a nightmarish world.
- Special Mention: 28 YEARS LATER – Danny Boyle, who’s in peak form here, reminds us why he’s always trying to push filmmaking as not just visual storytelling but a sonic experience to behold.
- Best Visual Effects: DRACULA – Enough of the AVATAR movies always winning; instead, let’s appreciate Romania’s Radu Jude showing us how startlingly fascinating yet debasing the use of A.I. in film is, by producing a whole range of ghastly “visual effects” scenes as intellectual satire.
- Discovery Award (Filmmaking): Sophy Romvari (BLUE HERON) for her sublime and affecting film that plays with structural, spatial, and temporal elements in an unobtrusive if extraordinarily intimate way, revealing the potential of filmmaking to express the intangible.
- Special Mention: Tan Siyou (AMOEBA) for her fantastic debut feature, an emotionally resonating work about the codification of teenage identity and destiny in conformist Singapore.
- Discovery Award (Acting): Chase Infiniti (ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER), a breakout Hollywood star-in-the-making
Top 10 Films of 2025:
- THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB – Kaouther Ben Hania (Tunisia)
- ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER – Paul Thomas Anderson (USA)
- DREAMS – Dag Johan Haugerud (Norway)
- 2,000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA – Mstyslav Chernov (Ukraine)
- BLUE MOON – Richard Linklater (USA)
- THE SECRET AGENT – Kleber Mendonça Filho (Brazil)
- SINNERS – Ryan Coogler (USA)
- SIRAT – Oliver Laxe (Spain)
- NOUVELLE VAGUE – Richard Linklater (France, USA)
- LIVING THE LAND – Huo Meng (China)
Special Mention (in alphabetical order):
- 28 YEARS LATER – Danny Boyle (UK, USA)
- AMOEBA – Tan Siyou (Singapore)
- BLUE HERON – Sophy Romvari (Canada, Hungary)
- DRACULA – Radu Jude (Romania)
- EDDINGTON – Ari Aster (USA)
- HOMEBOUND – Neeraj Ghaywan (India)
- IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT – Jafar Panahi (Iran)
- MY FATHER’S SHADOW – Akinola Davies Jr. (Nigeria)
- PALESTINE 36 – Annemarie Jacir (Palestine)
- SORRY, BABY – Eva Victor (USA)
- WARFARE – Alex Garland & Ray Mendoza (UK, USA)
Eternality Tan 