Six films of 2025 that actually deliver on story

Looking for something worth watching in that quiet stretch between Christmas and New Year’s? We’ve done the digging and put together our shortlist of the films from 2025 that genuinely stand out for their storytelling.

We went through the year’s most talked-about releases and selected six films that feel thoughtful, distinctive, and memorable — the kind you watch without scrolling your phone every five minutes.

Pick one, get comfortable, and step away from the end-of-year noise for a couple of hours.

A Real Pain

A family reckoning where past trauma refuses to stay in the past.

• Director: Jesse Eisenberg
• Cast: Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg, Will Sharpe
• IMDb: 7.0

Two cousins join an organised Holocaust tour in Poland, tracing the roots of their grandmother’s past. What begins as a symbolic trip quickly turns into an uncomfortable conversation about inherited trauma. Pain they never experienced directly, yet continue to carry.

Eisenberg’s film walks a fine line between dry humour and quiet melancholy. It doesn’t offer easy conclusions, but lands on a simple truth: pain doesn’t need justification to be real. Intimate, restrained, and deeply human, A Real Pain was shot in 2024 but reached audiences this year.

Sinners

A homecoming that turns into a long night where not everyone makes it to morning.

• Director: Ryan Coogler
• Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton
• IMDb: 7.5

Two brothers return to their hometown to open a nightclub, hoping to turn the page on their past. One night changes everything. The arrival of a mysterious Irish stranger rewrites the rules, and survival becomes uncertain.

With Sinners, Ryan Coogler steps outside franchise filmmaking and delivers something more personal and visually confident. While it nods to genre classics like From Dusk Till Dawn, the film is ultimately about fractured identity and vulnerable communities, and it works just as well as pure, tightly controlled cinema.

The Life of Chuck

A quiet reminder that one life can matter more than the end of the world.

• Director: Mike Flanagan
• Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, Benjamin Pajak
• IMDb: 7.3

The world appears to be ending. People abandon their routines, say their goodbyes, and everywhere, billboards thank someone named Chuck. Who is he, and why does his name appear at the centre of a global collapse?

Based on a Stephen King novella, this is a film best experienced without spoilers. It isn’t built around a twist, but around a simple idea: every life carries weight, even if the world barely notices. Gentle, sincere, and almost unfashionably earnest, The Life of Chuck lingers long after it ends.

Bugonia

A conspiracy thriller where the real threat isn’t extraterrestrial.

• Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
• Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis
• IMDb: 7.5

A beekeeper and committed conspiracy theorist kidnaps the head of a pharmaceutical corporation, convinced she’s an alien plotting Earth’s destruction. From that absurd premise, Lanthimos builds another sharp satire. This time aimed at paranoia, algorithms, and the comfort of conspiracy.

Less abrasive than some of his earlier work, Bugonia feels more precise for it. Jesse Plemons delivers one of the year’s strongest performances, anchoring a film that quietly suggests it’s easier to believe in secret enemies than accept personal responsibility.

The Ballad of Wallis Island

A story about loneliness disguised as an odd musical experiment.

• Director: James Griffiths
• Cast: Tim Key, Tom Basden, Steve Marsh
• IMDb: 7.4

On a remote island, an eccentric widower named Charles attempts to reunite a long-broken folk duo. What seems like an eccentric project gradually reveals itself as something simpler and more painful. A longing for warmth and connection.

The film starts as an offbeat comedy, then slowly opens into a tender reflection on loss and quiet hope. It never raises its voice, choosing instead to comfort. Rarely, a film leaves you feeling calmer than when you started. This one does.

Friendship

When one person’s lifeline is another person’s passing phase.

• Director: Andrew DeYoung
• Cast: Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara
• IMDb: 6.7

A dull, socially awkward marketer becomes fixated on his charismatic neighbour, Austin. What looks like the start of a meaningful friendship is, for one of them, just a fleeting distraction.

Beneath its cringe-comedy surface lies a painfully accurate portrait of social anxiety and the fear of rejection. Shot in 2024 and released in 2025, Friendship balances discomfort and empathy with surprising precision. Tim Robinson is outstanding, making his character both ridiculous and deeply fragile.