Why The Secret Agent should win the best picture Oscar

Kicking off this year’s series in which our writers advocate for one Academy Award nominee, our chief critic on why the Brazilian drama-thriller is the most audacious and fully realised film in the race

‘A love letter to all the good men I know’: Shahrbanoo Sadat on making Afghanistan’s first romcom

Opening the Berlin film festival, No Good Men blends romance and rebellion, capturing love, humour and female agency in Kabul on the eve of the Taliban’s return

Silence and Cry review – deeply strange 1960s erotic ballet meditating on Hungary’s history and politics

Director Miklós Jancsó creates a bizarre psychodrama set after the fall of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet republic, encompassing postwar trauma and erotic overtones

Brigitte Bardot, French screen legend, dies aged 91

Emmanuel Macron leads tributes to​ actor who became an international sex symbol ​and later embraced animal rights​ and far-right politics

It’s turkey time! The 12 worst films of 2025

This year has brought us some great movies – and also at least a dozen dire one-star disasters. Here are the Guardian’s critics on the pick of the year’s cinematic calamities

And the 2025 Braddies go to … Peter Bradshaw’s film picks of the year

Now the Guardian’s Top 50 countdowns, as voted for by the whole film team, have announced their No 1s, here are our chief critic’s personal choices – in no particular order

Palestine 36 director Annemarie Jacir: ‘We don’t want a state, we just want to live’

Fresh from a 20-minute ovation at Toronto, the film-maker’s historical drama reveals how Britain’s 1936 crackdown created the blueprint for the ongoing genocide in Gaza

Pépé le Moko review – mysterious and passionately despairing French noir with a luminous Jean Gabin

Powerful French film that inspired Casablanca stars Gabin as a holed-up gangster in Algiers lured to his doom by infatuation

‘This is big blissful entertainment’: global film critics on the one movie that defines their country

What single film best represents a nation? Here, 12 writers choose the one movie they believe most captures their home’s culture and cinema – from a bold cricket musical to a nine-hour documentary, gritty crime dramas to frothy tales of revenge

Viet and Nam review – hallucinatory love story feels the pain of a nation

Elusive film about a gay Vietnamese man looking for his dead father’s remains recalls the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

The shocking hit film about overworked nurses that’s causing alarm across Europe

A Swiss film about a nurse pushed to her limits one night is being praised for the picture it paints of treacherously underfunded healthcare. The director talks about the ‘heart-pounding’ story that inspired her

What Does That Nature Say to You review – funny and complex Korean dad-boyfriend standoff

Hong Sang-soo makes a genuinely intriguing addition to his booze- and conversation-fuelled oeuvre

‘You’re stealing my identity!’: the movie voiceover artists going to war with AI

As new tech imperils the £3bn dubbing artists industry, professionals including India’s Ryan Reynolds and India’s Jon Snow explain why audiences should listen to their fears

Three Friends review – charm aplenty in super-tasteful comedy that couldn’t be more French

All the typecast antics, such as having extramarital affairs, discussing feelings in depth and the occasional theatrical shrug are here in this typically bourgeois ensemble piece

Al Djanat: The Original Paradise review – striking account of Burkina Faso homecoming

Chloé Aïcha Boro’s watchful documentary charts the disharmony and legal wrangling caused by a dispute in her family over sacred burial land