The 50 Best International Films of 2025, Ranked

In 2025, cinema proved to be an act of defiance, with filmmakers pushing past traditional gatekeepers to capture a world in upheaval. The 50 best international films of the year gone by are all shaped by bold, often “underground” voices who value courage over polish, using film to question politics, reshape intimacy, and challenge fixed ideas of history and identity.

The release of this list was deliberately delayed in solidarity with the people of Iran, living through a humanitarian and political crisis. It is fitting, then, that the top-ranked film is Iranian, standing as both an artistic achievement and a testament to their courage.

Below are the 50 best international films of 2025, ranked in reverse order of my preference:

50. Only Good Things (Brazil)

Director Daniel Nolasco deliberately leaves crucial elements unresolved in Only Good Things, urging your imagination to fill the gaps. Whether you see that as a mark of artistry or indulgence depends entirely on how you perceive its imagery and ideas. Either way, this tastefully sensual, visually stunning film stands out a poetic ode to queer love.

49. Weapons (USA)

Zach Cregger’s film is a sprawling nightmare that feels like Magnolia dipped in acid. The maximalist genre piece uses a vanishing-children trope to dissect the rot of American suburbia. Its pacing is relentless, demanding the audience’s complete submission to its grim, clockwork logic.

48. White Snail (Germany, Austria)

The German-Austrian film thrives on its documentary-like aesthetic and deep visual symbolism. In this unusual, urgent blend of drama and romance, the relationship between the two main characters grows as calmly and slowly as snails move through their environment.

47. Nouvelle Vague (France, USA)

The lightning-in-a-bottle energy of 1959 Paris is captured in Linklater’s dizzying, romantic “making-of” meta-textual homage to the French New Wave. It is light-hearted, thought-provoking, and a near-perfect portrait of a period when films seemed to be undergoing a revolution.

46. Black Rabbit, White Rabbit (Tajikistan)

With its complex long takes and meta-narrative that pushes the limits of cinematic storytelling, this Tajik film is a technical marvel. The looping structure turns the viewing experience into a rewarding puzzle that requires your whole attention, despite the fact that it can be admirably confusing at times, offering a daring film that represents a pinnacle of contemporary Central Asian cinema.

45. Father Mother Sister Brother (USA, Ireland, France, Italy, Japan)

With a more melancholic tone, Jim Jarmusch reverts to the episodic format he perfected in Coffee and Cigarettes. He explores the connective tissue of family bonds (or the absence of it) in a chatty story that empathetically addresses various types of broken ties.

44. On Your Lap (Indonesia)

On Your Lap opens a window into a little-seen social world, guided by Reza Rahadian’s restrained direction. Its spare style pulls you into the everyday rhythms of lives shaped by poverty and grief, letting small gestures carry the emotional weight. By staying close to its characters, the film turns minimalism into a way of understanding loss without melodrama.

43. Frankenstein (USA)

Del Toro’s adaptation is a gothic romance of the highest order, centering the “monster” as a tragic philosopher rather than a brute. The production design is tactile and decaying, creating a world that feels as fragile as the creature’s soul. It is a definitive take on Shelley’s work, emphasizing the horror of being created and then abandoned.

42. The Plague (USA, Romania)

Charlie Polinger’s impressive directorial debut captures the suffocating weight of peer pressure and the drive toward social conformity. By focusing on an awkward tween at a water polo summer camp, the film spotlights how small moments can feel monumental at that volatile age. The film is anchored by an astounding lead performance from Everett Blunck (the wonder-kid from Griffin in Summer).

41. Little Trouble Girls (Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Serbia)

Urška Djukić’s coming-of-age film explores the challenges faced by a teenage girl as she navigates the intersection of religious repression and female adolescent desire. The youth problem featured in her film is not that of juvenile delinquency, but rather the radical act of a young female taking control over her body. The viewing experience of Urška Djukić’s work is challenging but serves as an introduction to this brilliant new filmmaker.

40. The Wave (Chile, USA)

In a tense musical drama, Sebastián Lelio weaves a story about a community on the edge, geographically and emotionally. It isn’t a quiet film by any measure, but its bold subject is supported by good writing, acting, and stellar execution.

39. Splitsville (USA)

In addition to its hysterical humour, Splitsville has completely changed the way the genre of contemporary comedy is done. The director’s use of long and immersive shots holds the audience captive in an exhilarating state of panic and awe. It is a remarkably well-edited film that captures the viewer’s attention immediately and compels them to go for many rewatches.

38. Palestine 36 (Palestine, United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan)

Blending archival rigor with dramatic urgency, this film serves as a vital reclamation of history. It traces the roots of contemporary struggle back to the 1936 revolt, treating the past not as a museum piece, but as a living, breathing influence. The film’s use of sound—overlapping voices from different eras—creates a powerful sense of historical continuity.

37. La Grazia (Italy)

Set in a rugged, superstitious past, La Grazia is a gothic exploration of the “female saint” archetype. It questions whether the protagonist’s “grace” is a divine gift or a social curse imposed by a fearful community. The film is visually drenched in chiaroscuro, making every frame look like a Caravaggio brought to life.

36. We Believe You (Belgium)

In this powerful film by Arnaud Dufeys and Charlotte Devillers, we witness a gripping account of institutional apathy and the strength of collective testimony. The vérité-style storytelling is what makes the film special, along with Myriem Akheddiou’s mind-blowing lead act.

35. Lucky Lu (Canada, USA)

In Lucky Lu, filmmaker Lloyd Lee Choi spins a neorealist fable with a tense, evocative score that underlines how some lives remain burdened regardless of the wealth around them. As it closes on a stoic note, we can only empathize with the millions who move into a richer civilisation, only to enter a vicious circle of struggle.

34. A Bright Future (Uruguay, Argentina, Germany)

Set in an imaginative yet chilling dystopia, A Bright Future explores a community obsessed with reaching a place they call “the North.” No one who’s gone there has ever returned, yet the desire to leave is overpowering, especially among the youth. So when young Elisa is chosen, just like her sister before her, it’s a moment of pride for her family and neighborhood. The stakes rise further when her mother also wins a lottery to go.

But as departure looms, Elisa begins to question the allure of the unknown and finds herself drawn back to the comforts of her current life. Uruguayan filmmaker Lucía Garibaldi crafts a world as absurd as it is quietly unsettling – a pointed parable about blind faith in promises we cannot see.

33. The Mastermind (USA, UK)

Reichardt trades her typical minimalist landscapes for a 1970s period piece that feels surprisingly high-stakes for her style. By focusing on an art heist as an act of political protest, she explores the intersection of aesthetic value and revolutionary zeal. Josh O’Connor’s performance is internal and magnetic, grounding the film’s intellectual loftiness.

32. Jay Kelly (USA, UK)

Andrew Haigh continues his streak of devastatingly intimate dramas with this European road movie about memory and regret. The film is a masterclass in “the cinema of the face,” relying on long, unbroken close-ups to reveal the protagonist’s internal reckoning. It is a quiet, devastating odyssey through a life lived in half-measures.

31. Kokuho (Japan)

In Kokuho, filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda offers a gripping entry into the world of kabuki, balancing vivid stage moments with absorbing backstage drama. The film’s length is substantial, yet its focus on rivalry, discipline, and survival keeps it engaging. What emerges is a portrait of an art form shaped as much by human conflict as by performance.

30. If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (USA)

A darkly comic and fiercely unsentimental look at the politics of disability. The film refuses to provide the “inspiration” typically expected of such narratives, opting instead for a gritty, often abrasive honesty. It is a provocative work that challenges the viewer’s own subconscious biases through sharp-tongued humor.

29. Marty Supreme (USA)

Josh Safdie creates a frenetic tale of the rise and fall of a character in his film through an outstanding performance by Timothée Chalamet. The actor incredibly embodies this role, with all of the energy and intensity one could expect from someone pursuing their dreams – good and bad alike – resulting in a film that ultimately relies more on the intensity of a man in search of himself than on the plot itself.

28. The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (Chile, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany)

The only canteen in a mining town in Chile’s barren Atacama desert is run by a group of flamboyant transvestites, who become the hosts of glamour, fun, and also an unknown disease. Diego Céspedes’s story is so strange that the images and the world it creates feel both real and mythical.

27. The Testament of Ann Lee (USA, UK)

The major and fascinating reason to view Mona Fastvold’s film is to watch an experimental filmmaker bring history back to life by taking away its ancient aspects in order to expose the primitive and powerful force that originally drew people to her as their psychic source of knowledge. Although the story might seem like an oddity, Amanda Seyfried’s beautiful performance is therefore powerful enough that for most of the time you will be in a state of conversion.

26. Die My Love (USA)

Lynne Ramsay, in her film adaptation of Harwicz’s novel, provides an immersive experience of rural motherhood via the dizzying, percussive use of editing techniques and it’s claustrophobic nature. In my opinion, Jennifer Lawrence delivers her finest performance as a woman on the verge of breaking down from too much motherhood. This film is less narrative and instead is one man’s inside experience as he begins to lose his mind.

25. Song Sung Blue (USA)

A soulful, blue-collar drama that finds dignity in the world of professional impersonators. It avoids mocking its subjects, instead exploring why ordinary people find salvation in stepping into the personas of icons. It is a quintessential “American Dream” story, told through the smoky lens of dive bars and Neil Diamond lyrics.

24. Rental Family (Japan, USA)

A tragicomedy that brilliantly deconstructs the commodification of human connection in the digital age. By following an American expat who “rents” a family in Tokyo, the film explores the terrifying ease with which we can substitute performance for reality. It is a witty, deeply sad observation of modern loneliness.

23. Dead To Rights (China)

The film maps the moral and environmental destruction of a coal-mining province through a murder investigation. Its chilly, soggy colour scheme depicts a society in which human life is as expendable as the resources being taken.

22. Train Dreams (USA)

This lyrical, “miniature epic” adaptation of Johnson’s novella encapsulates the vanishing spirit of the American frontier. It tells the story of a single labourer who watches the modern world come into being with a poetic brevity that is uncommon in modern film. It feels more like a half-remembered dream than a movie.

21. The Love That Remains (Iceland, Denmark, France, Finland, Sweden)

The Icelandic film opts for restraint over the familiar excesses of Nordic noir, replacing melodrama with an intensely tactile and quietly shattering study of emotional endurance. Its power resides in what it withholds: between the frozen horizons and the stillness of the frame exists a dense field of unspoken history, rendered with near-forensic precision. The film’s structure feels uncannily true to life, suggesting that the real architecture of existence is shaped less by what we build than by what we cling to long after it has ceased to serve us.

20. The Secret Agent (Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands)

A maze of shadows, coded messages, and a fetish-like eye for detail, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film turns Buenos Aires into a dreamlike environment for espionage. This is a film for the senses; style is equally as important as substance, and Wagner Moura, who plays the lead, is beyond belief.

19. Bugonia (UK, Ireland, South Korea, USA)

Yorgos Lanthimos has turned the traditional “conspiracy thriller” into a surreal and wholly original piece of filmmaking. The characters played by Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are brilliantly cast as the deranged and destructive pair at the centre of this howlingly funny sci-fi kidnapping extravaganza—one that questions our shared paranoia and examines the fragile boundaries that exist between insanity and reality.

18. One Battle After Another (USA)

A multi-generational odyssey that explores the battle scars of war through the prism of the psyche—the long-term emotional aftermath of conflict that continues well past the exploitation of the weapons. The film employs breathtaking imagery of the changing face of Vietnam to metaphorically represent the various stages of evolution of all its protagonists. It is an eloquent exploration of human beings’ ability to bounce back in spite of enormous trauma.

17. Arco (France, USA)

Arco is an audacious experiment in point-of-view; it attempts to depict the world through the jumbled and chaotic reasonings of a child. The end result is an experience of sight and sound, with no discernible chronology whatsoever, but filled with awe and dread as someone witnesses things for the first time. It is an obstinate piece of cinema that forces its audience member(s) to “unlearn” rhetorical forms and methods of using narrative.

16. Amrum (Germany)

Fatih Akin’s film, which is shot beautifully and with much thoughtfulness, takes place on a modest island during World War II’s isolationist period of about 1939 to 1945. Through the character of Jasper Billerbeck, the film powerfully reflects on what this isolation has caused regarding war’s effect on people’s families and their communities.

15. Sinners (USA)

The Southern Gothic genre has been recreated by Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan. This time, they’ve injected it with elements of horror, as well as multiple layers of tension and suspense. They cite the vampire myth as a metaphor for how predatory Jim Crow racism exists in the culture of America today and has existed for generations. Finally, this bold film embraces both elements of a commercially viable, entertaining experience and substantial historical reference.

14. My Father’s Shadow (UK, Nigeria)

As an exploration of how the weight of a father influences a son when that father is alive and when that father is dead, this wonderful film is both compelling as a theatrical experience and intensely cerebral. It utilizes a cold, grey colour palette to reinforce a sense of solemnity within the context of how our ongoing inheritance of trauma affects who we are as individuals.

13. Sentimental Value (Norway, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom)

Joachim Trier’s gorgeous and rich-looking film (I dare say, a magnum opus) is about siblings and their father who navigate grief, legacy and unexpected companionship. It balances warmth with introspection and delivers a story that is intricate in a filmmaking method that is seldom simplistic.

12. Sirāt (Spain, France)

Sirāt is a slow-burning political allegory that uses a physical journey across a bridge to represent a nation’s transition between two worlds. The film’s minimalist dialogue and expansive desert vistas create a sense of mythic importance. It is a demanding work of cinema that stays with the viewer long after the credits roll.

11. All That’s Left of You (Germany, Cyprus, Palestine, Jordan, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia)

A fragmented, non-linear masterpiece that perfectly mirrors the displacement of the Palestinian people. Cherien Dabis’s film uses multiple timelines to show how the trauma of the past is perpetually occurring in the present. It is a vital, heart-wrenching achievement in narrative structure and political storytelling.

10. Belén (Argentina)

Belén is Argentina’s official submission to The Academy Awards 2026, a courtroom drama built around the wrongful imprisonment of a woman after a miscarriage and its exposure of institutional cruelty. The film channels outrage through a portrait of an unyielding legal system, with director Dolores Fonzi delivering a commanding performance in the central role she also directs.

9. The Blue Trail (Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Netherlands)

In The Blue Trail, what might have been a gentle “sunset years” story becomes a defiant journey through a near-future Brazil where ageing is managed, regulated, and quietly erased. Tereza does not travel toward peace but into the abrasive realities of a continent reshaped by policy and neglect, her body moving through landscapes that echo political exclusion. The film grounds its fable in texture and motion, from river currents to strange encounters and physical strain, refusing any soft-focus romance of old age. What emerges is a portrait of survival without consolation, where endurance itself becomes a form of resistance.

8. A Useful Ghost (Thailand, France, Singapore, Germany)

A whimsical, yet deeply touching supernatural drama that treats the afterlife as a mundane extension of domestic duty. The film’s “ghost” is a quiet protector of the household, turning a horror trope into a beautiful metaphor for enduring love. It is an utterly original work that exemplifies the unique charm of contemporary Thai cinema.

7. Tiger (Japan)

In a narrative that flips between Tokyo and his hometown, Anshul Chauhan examines what the idea of family means to a young gay man in the Japanese-language film Tiger. Takashi Kawaguchi’s central performance is one of the bravest I’ve come across from an actor in any industry in 2025. And yes, it’s an Indian man directing a (fabulous) Japanese film. I didn’t type that wrong.

6. Hamnet (UK, USA)

Chloé Zhao’s gift for realism gives us a film focusing on the domestic grief that birthed a literary masterpiece. By centering the story on the mother, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), the film reclaims a lost voice from history. It is a lyrical, heart-wrenching film about the alchemy of turning sorrow into art.

5. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisia, France)

A harrowing, essential piece of documentary-fiction that uses a single tragic event to represent an entire conflict. It is an unflinching look at the human cost of war, narrated with a sense of urgency that borders on a prayer. The film is a monumental act of witness that refuses to let the world look away.

4. A Poet (Colombia, Germany, Sweden)

Its leading man is a poet in his 40s. He earns nothing and lives with his mother. He also has a teenage daughter he wants to provide for, but can’t. There are very few combinations in people as colossal as Oscar in A Poet. Rendered magical by Ubeimar Rios’s lead performance, this harrowing yet witty portrait of a man who is hapless in so many ways is the best film I watched at IFFI Goa this year. Director Simón Mesa Soto’s film sparks conversations that must be had in this era of easy polarization, bias, and cancel culture.

3. No Other Choice (South Korea)

Park Chan-wook returns to making a corporate-existential thriller with a darkly destructive but stylish comedy that explores what men will do to experience some perceived safety in an unsafe world. The film has a uniquely visual feel based on both phenomenal editing and the delivery of dark and ironic twists in its extraordinary screenplay.

2. Happy Birthday (Egypt)

A kinetic, one-day-in-Cairo ensemble piece that feels like a vibrant snapshot of a society on the brink of change. Happy Birthday reminds us that there are real fences, of class, opportunity, and social hierarchy, and they are far harder for little Toha to scale. The film’s devastating conclusion is certain to move you to tears and prompt you to reconsider the very idea of celebration. Because behind a child’s innocent wish lies a vast landscape of unspoken despair, where dreams die quietly, unnoticed by a privileged world.

1. It Was Just An Accident (Iran, France, Luxembourg)

In an age of technology, liberation and equality, it’s alarming that people in some parts of the world are treated worse than animals on the road, and are expected to accept it through archaic ideas.

For that reason alone, It Was Just An Accident is a highly necessary discourse to exist in a polarised era of war, religion-based and state-sanctioned cruelty. The film’s universal and timely story is one that can be transposed to many geographies, with Jafar Panahi’s storytelling ensuring it engages and entertains all along.

This extraordinary tale of resistance, therefore, is a sure-fire classic that ought to be celebrated for both its clarity and craft.