The best films of the year were all made by women.

Men put in an honourable effort this year – the few of them that excelled were really impressive. Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" will go down in history for it's excellence as both a blockbuster and a solid piece of storytelling, and Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" was a sweeping and scathing critique of America as an empire and system. A standout piece under-spoken about was Carmen Emmi's "Plainclothes", which found a way to break the form and speak to a vulnerable humanity that set it apart from most on the circuit this year.

However, the full and consistent excellence displayed at the festivals and box office in 2025 belongs solely to the filmmakers who broke past old expectations of form and "gravitas", instead taking a full tilt turn into cinema's most beloved topics — the messiness, and resilience, of human nature. The directors who did this well were all women, and some of the most skilled in their crafts across all disciplines and genres. I'm gonna dive in (no pun intended) to the patterns and themes that emerged this year, and how women fronted them all.