If I Had an Oscar Ballot: Brazil’s Secret, Gaza’s Voice and the Year Sin and Grief Became Cinema

2025 offered cinematic encounters of a rare kind. Thunderous spectacles unfurled alongside hushed, inward-facing character studies. Some films swung wildly and missed — gloriously so — while others landed with such quiet authority, they seemed to rearrange the room. It was a year defined by daring, by filmmakers who trusted audiences to lean in rather […]