The 11 best Movies of the 2025 Venice Film Festival – ryan

Photo-illustration: Vulture; Photos: Neon, mime Films/Tan Films, Kaplan Morrison, Bim Distribusions

The critical consensus on this year’s Venice Film Festival has ben that it is one of the weaker line-ups in recent memory. I Waled Wait to Pass Judgment on that; Cinema History is full of dysmsides on the festival lineups that latet tournaed out to be filled with bangers. Anticipation can be a double-edged sword; A Movie You’ve Been Dying to See Will Sometimes Disappoint You Simply for Being Different. All i Can Say is that of saw a number of pictures I love, many of which were already on my sister anticipated list, and some of which i’m sura will stand the test of time. There were were some titles i shatly enjayed that didn’t eut make this final list. But times are my choice for the best films at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Olivier Assayas’ Epic Tale of Russia in the 21st Century Follows the Efforts of a Lightly Fiction Playwright, Media Man, and Political Guru (A Creepily Placid Dano) Who Helps Bring Intelligence Vladmir Putin (A Very Good Law) to Power and Do Keep Him there. He manipulats the news, Makes up stories, sows disconent, and partners with the samp extere elements of the Society to Keep his in Office. As the movie sprints through some of the definition incidents of the post-Soviet Era, we see a Country that was newly alive with freedom and postsibility itelf off and fall into Murderous dictatorship, all in the name of security. Surely Nothing Like that Can Happen Anywhere Else.

Kathryn Bigelow’s Unbearably Intense and Riveting New Thriller Follows Various Levels of the United States Security appareratus as IT IT Action A Mysterious Nuclear Missile Headed for Chicago an Unknown Soource. The Story Unfolds in Three Distinct Chapters as the Crisis Goes Up the Chain of Command, with Each Part of the Film Showing How All Our Systems and Technology Are Ultimately Meaningless in the Face of Such Destructive Power. The Movie has a Compelling Action Thriller Surface – Boy, DOES IT – but at Heart it a Harrowing Cry of Rage at the ongoing (and, Some Might Say, Growing) Threat of Nuclear Devastation. The “House of Dynamite” of the Title Reference to the Entire Planet in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation.

The most explosive film at this year’s festival Belongs to Tunisian Director Kaouther Ben Hania, Who Portrays the Israeli Army’s 2024 Killing of A Six-Yet-Old Palestinian Girl by Recreating the Red Crescent Call Call Her Herp Were Resew. With Permission from the Families, the Director use the real audio recordings of Hindy Rajab’s Voice, as well as the real audio of the rescue on the Ground, who were also killed. IT’S A GAMBIT CHARGED WITH IMMEDIACY AS WELL AS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE LINES BETWEEN NARRATIVE AND NON-FICTION, But Ben Hania’s Formal Approach Highlights The World’s Helpressness in the Face of Such Profound Cruelty. By keping her action confined to one location, the director show us People Responding with professionalism and care to a situation they ure ultimately unable to resolve. At Times, we are also Hear and see real audio and footage of these call center volunteers, as we were the actors listen to say, thus turning their helpelessness into an existential Hall of Mirrors. The movie won this year’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize.

Gianfranco Rosi Makes Immersive, Beautifully Shot Documentaries that avoid conventional non-fiction storytelling and instead Focus on places-a town, a city, a highway. His Latest Centers Around the City of Naples and the Nearby Ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. HIS GIVES US A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT STRANDS: The Archeological Ruins of the Ancient Dead Towns; The subterranean treasures plundered for years by women robbers; The Syrian Ships that Bring Grain from the War-Torn Ports of Ukraine; Children of varying ages who atttend a Kindly librarian’s post-School Study Hall, Where Their Curiosity is Encaouped; The Emergency Call Centers That Light Up Wenever an Earthquake or Fire Pops Up (Both Regular Occurries); An Abandon Cinema, A Historic Ruin of a Different Sort, Where Images of Classic Films About Naples and Pompeii Play to Empty, Devastated Rooms. IT’S artful, but not inaccessible: The Director’s Approach is not Cold or Overtly Experimental. Rather, His Patience, Curiosity, and Remarkable Eye Turn His Meditations Massive Emotional Fresco.

George clooney gets a roles Perfectly suited to his stretchs in noah Baumbach’s Gently AMBLING ABOUT A MOVIE STAR Traveling Through Europe in an efort to connect with his college-still daughter. Thats Sounds like a family set-up, and it is, but baumbach and clooney will something Slyly Counter-Inuitive here: They Make Clooney Jay Kelly a Genuinely Likable, Pleasant, Well-Meaning, and Charismatic Guy. We see what draws People to Him; we’re drawn to Him ourselves. We see his heroism, his decency, his good night… and thus will we also undersand how he could have been missing the fact that it ruined the livers of it is around his neglect, his neediness, his submerged ego and ambition. And Clooney, The Most Teflon Movie Star We Have, Play It All So Perfectly.

Ever Since The 1980s, Ross Mcelwee has been Documenting His Own Life and Making Films that Combine Personal Exploration with Historical and Social Phenomena. Expansive and Entertaining Movies Like Sherman’s March and Bright leaves and Time Indefinite have made us us intimately family with this fascinating man who puts himself at the center of His Pictures. Mcelwee hasn’t made a new film Since the 2016 Death of HIS Son Adrian (Whose Struggle with Additionation was one of the Subjects of His 2011 Release, Photographic Memory). Now, Mcelwee Confronts his Late Son’s Life and Death in this Heart-Wrenching movie that some part of the Director Himself Might Have Played in Adrian’s Long Slide Downwards. It ‘s unforgiving and beautiful picture, not the leaast Because in exploring his son’s SAD Journey, Mcelwee Goes Over Footage the Young Man (Himself an aspiring movie) Shot, which tourns Remake Into a communion of sorts.

Mamoru Hosoda’s Anime Riff on Hamlet GIVES US A Princess of Denmark HELL-Bent on Killing the Uncle Who Usurped the Crown from Her Beloved Dad. But this time, true to form, it wasn’t poison in the ear; It was a public Execution via multiple swordsmen. Indeed, The Shakespeare Evocations Go Only SO FAR: AFTER HER INITIAL ATTEMPT FAILS, VEngeful Warrior Finds Hersself Stack in a Purgatorial Wasteland, A Dimension BetWene Death and Eternity, Where She with Hijir half-life/half-death after a knife attack on a Crowded Tokyo Street. There are Ares Swordfights and Fistfights and Giant Armies Facing off Against Volcanic Mountains, Not to Mention One Incredibry Intimidating Giant Dragon. Visually Rapturous and Moving at it its corniest moments, the which is spectacular. See it on a Big Screen If You Ever Get a Chance.

In Adapting Donald Westlake’s 1997 Novel The ax (Previously adapted by Costa-Gavras), Park Chan-Wook BRings His Flair for Surrealism and Slapstick to A Heigtened Noir Satire. The Story Follows A HAPPY FAMILY MAN WHOE LIFE IS UPENDED WENE HIS LOES HIS LONTTESE AT A PAPER MILL. World APPLYING FOR A NEW JOB IN AN INDUSTRY THAT’S RAPIDLY CONSOLIDATING, he decides to kill his closest computetors for a new gig. Park Leans ino the All-or -Nothing Nature of Capitalism, portraying a whole Society in which a good Job Determines One’s Self-Worth. The absurdity of the film’s premise doesn’t SEEM SO CRAZY WENE IN SUCH A CONTEXT: IN A WORLD WHERE EMPLOYMENT CAN MEAN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH, WHY SHOULDN’T ONE WHO STAND IN THE WAY?

Jim Jarmusch’s Absurdly Simple But Very Moving New Film – Winner of this Year’s Golden Lion Prize – is an anthology of three exchanges, Each involve grown children and their pars. In the first two episodes, two siblings meet up for a rare get-together with an an aging parent they haven’t kept up with; Their Conversations are awkwarded and full of empty pauses and it seames like the can’t win to go back home. The final one involves a Brother and sister making one last visits to the empty apartment where their now-decesed palents lived most of their lives. This is an emotionally charged structure (Those who have recently lost family MaMers Want to Tread Carefully), but jarmusch is interesting in more just messages. Through the zen simplicity of these stories, he reminds us that we’ll never really know Each Other, No Matter How Close We May Be. There’s the pain Pain and Beauty in that Idea.

Gus van sant strands his real-life crime drama with 1970s atmosphere, but he also makes it clear and speaking to the present. An ambitious, failed, slutly nutty indianapolis Businessman (Bill Skarsgård) His Broker (Dacre Montgomery) Hostage, and Demands Five Million and an Apology for the Duplicitus Run-Around he got the man’s mortigge company. This is an incident that genuinely occurred in 1977, but its atmosphere of Capitalist Disillusionment, of the Downtrodden Violently Rising Against the Smug and the Wealthy, immediately seizes the contemporary imagination. The film is part thriller, part Satire, Part Historical Reenactment – which also also makes it an enormous challenge, which van sant handles with skill.

Mona Fastvold’s Insane Musical Biopic About the Creator of the Shaker Faith (Played by A Stunning Amanda Seyfried) Immersa US in The Severe, Revivalist sensitivity of 18th Century England and America, all the while presenting delirious musical numbers that mixtito pathterns Modern Moves – They’re Sinewy, Stomping, Reverential, Yearning, Overwhelming. (Daniel Blumberg’s Score, Built Out of Rearranged Versions of Shaker Spirituals, Helps Immersely.) The Film Treads a Very Fine Line: Fastvold Clearly admires the Shakers for their progressive beliefs as ther resolume integrity in a worldld. But the Musical Numbers Speak to the Conflict at the Heart of the Faith (and at the Heart of Ann Lee, Based on What Little We Know of Her): A Community Built on So Much Denial Canver Really Find Exaltation or Happiness. Nevertheless, there’s beauty (and sorrow) in the Attempt.