Adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Vineland, no recent film speaks to our chaotic moment like One Battle After Another. Hilarious and unrelenting – with bravura turns from Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, newcomer Chase Infiniti, and Regina Hall – this screwball odyssey affirms director Paul Thomas Anderson as America’s millennial auteur.

An Iranian dissident confronts his tormentor in It Was Just an Accident – but as doubts set in, this taut revenge thriller (filmed in secret) becomes a comedy of errors and finally, a moral parable. After winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, director Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in Tehran.

Produced by Ken Loach’s Sixteen Films, On Falling is a debut feature from Portuguese-born, Scottish-based Laura Carreira, following a migrant ‘picker’ working in a vast distribution warehouse to pay rent on her room in an equally anonymous HMO. A soulful performance from Joana Santos illuminates this contemporary tale of lives dogged by poverty and isolation.

As an old master of British social realism, Mike Leigh reunites with Secrets & Lies star Marianne Jean-Baptiste after 30 years for Hard Truths, as a malcontent’s rage is undone by small acts of compassion.

Another debut feature from a woman director, Sandhya Suri’s Santosh, a widow inherits her detective husband’s job, and while investigating a young girl’s murder in a rural village, is swiftly led astray. With Shahana Goswami in the titular role, this gritty police drama was banned in India shortly after gaining an Oscar nomination.

A besieged gangland boss (Saveriu Santucci) bonds with his rebellious daughter (Ghjuvanna Benedetti) in Julien Colonna’s The Kingdom. Amid director Julien Colonna’s non-professional cast, the two leads give this Corsican crime drama an emotive core akin to The Godfather – but without the gloss.

I saw The Mastermind on the same day as jewel thieves robbed the Louvre in Paris. Set in a drab, ’70s New England – and with a breakout performance from Josh O’Connor – Kelly Reichardt’s wry caper tracks a less audacious art heist; for if the best laid plans do go awry, then what hope for the rest?

While watching Andreas Dresen’s From Hilde, With Love, I wondered if the ghosts of the last century are catching up with us, or if they ever really went away. As Hilde Coppi, an activist in the anti-Nazi Red Orchestra, Liv Lisa Fries conjures a spirit of gentle, yet insistent valour within an age of annihilation.

One of two films that passed me by last year, Close Your Eyes is a spellbinding late work from Spanish auteur Victor Erice, weaving fact, memory and imagination as a retired director (Manolo Solo) seeks out his leading man (José Coronado) who vanished years ago, leaving their lives – and art – unresolved.

Set in a Georgian village, Elene Naveriani’s sensuous and comic Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry stars a wonderfully charismatic Eka Chavleishvili as Etero a middle-aged spinster who transforms her narrow life – much to the dismay of her close-knit community.

In 2025, Picturehouse’s Noir in Nine Chapters season revived my love for vintage gems like The Big Sleep and The Killers; and I revisited old favourites from the New Hollywood 67-73 showcase (Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, McCabe and Mrs Miller …)

In books, fresh takes on very different women … Mayukh Sen’s Love, Queenie reveals the complex life of Merle Oberon, the Anglo-Indian beauty discovered by producer Alexander Korda in 1930s London. She went on to Hollywood stardom opposite as Cathy to Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, but was trapped in a double bind – performing exotic glamour while concealing her true identity … Often sweary, always woke, in A Mind of My Own the ‘other Kaff’ retraces her journey from a troubled, yet loving Irish family in North London, to teenage skinhead, fringe theatre doyenne, small-screen comedy and big-screen drama. Kathy Burke brought authenticity to British culture, and this rollicking memoir reminds us why she’s still so beloved.

Some recent entries in the BFI Film Classics series … Steven Cohan takes another look at Some Like It Hot, and considers why Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy remains both a nostalgic treat, and yet forever modern. Meanwhile,  Elena Gorfinkel investigates how Wanda (1970) and its creator, Barbara Loden, mined new possibilities for independent cinema.

Sadly, we lost many artists in 2025, not least my all-time favourite director, David Lynch. As with the death of David Bowie ten years ago, his passing feels like a cosmic rupture – and yet their light shines ever brighter in what might seem an age of darkness. Lynch left us with a final album (Cellophane Memories), a completed screenplay (Unrecorded Night), and a beautiful epitaph – (Night Blooming Jasmine.)

In the early 1960s, as Hollywood foundered, Europe led the way with a maverick new wave. Born in Stepney, Terence Stamp broke Julie Christie’s heart in Far From the Madding Crowd – their offscreen romance was said to have inspired Ray Davies’ lyric for Waterloo Sunset – and then lost the love of ‘Battersea Bardot’ Carol White in Poor Cow, the debut feature from director Ken Loach. After a long absence, Stamp returned to the screen in crime flicks The Hit and The Limey, and the groundbreaking Priscilla, Queen of the Desert …

And Claudia Cardinale, one of the great postwar Italian stars, emerged in the twilight of the neorealist era. Her vivacious presence captivated me early on, and from The Leopard and 8½ to Once Upon a Time in the West, her spirited performances in successive masterpieces made her a goddess of world cinema, eclipsing most of her peers.

After a lengthy apprenticeship, Gene Hackman played a scene-stealing turn in Bonnie and Clyde, and then became a Hollywood heavyweight in a career spanning decades, from The Conversation to Unforgiven. And Robert Redford proved himself more than a charming rogue – from iconic roles in Sundance Kid and The Sting to political thrillers like Three Days of the Condor – and with his lifelong support for the arts and ecology.

On the small screen, we lost Brian Murphy, whose talent was nurtured in Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop before he was cast as ageing layabout George Roper in ITV’s George and Mildred; and Norman Eshley, who starred in Orson Welles’ The Immortal Story prior to his role as George’s snobbish neighbour.

Prunella Scales may forever be known as Sybil, the gossipy manageress of Fawlty Towers, but her career began much earlier on the stage – and she never really left. British TV viewers will also remember other roles in Marriage Lines, After Henry, Mapp and Lucia; and Great Canal Journeys, her docuseries with husband Timothy West.

And finally, who could forget Norm, the amiable Boston barfly played by George Wendt in Cheers?