From desert raves and Norwegian family sagas to a Palme d'Or-winning prison farce — European cinema had a year for the ages.
European cinema in 2025 was not content to sit quietly in the corner. It kicked the door open. Across the continent, filmmakers responded to a turbulent world with work that was formally daring, politically charged, and deeply, sometimes painfully, human. Festival audiences were confronted with pounding techno in the Moroccan desert, the absurd comedy of totalitarian cruelty, and century-spanning meditations on what it means to be a woman in Europe.
The 38th European Film Awards, held in Berlin in January 2026, confirmed what critics had been saying all year: this was a vintage crop. Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value swept the main categories, Oliver Laxe's Sirāt earned five technical prizes, and a wave of astonishing debut features suggested the next generation is already arriving with something urgent to say.
Here are the ten European films from 2025 that we believe will endure — the ones worth seeking out, arguing about, and watching again.
1. Sentimental Value
Dir. Joachim Trier · Norway · Drama · EFA Best Film
Joachim Trier's Norwegian melodrama took the European Film Awards by storm, winning six prizes including Best Film, Best Director, and acting honours for both Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve. Written with longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt, the film is a layered exploration of family bonds, regret, and the weight of inherited emotional debt.
It's a quietly devastating film — the kind that settles into your chest and stays there. Skarsgård delivers what many are calling the performance of his career, and Hania Rani's score wraps the whole thing in an aching tenderness. A strong Oscar contender, and deservedly so.
2. Sirāt
Dir. Oliver Laxe · Spain / Morocco · Drama / Thriller · 5 EFA Wins
Oliver Laxe's desert-rave road movie hit Cannes like a freight train and never let up. Sergi López plays a father who, along with his son, travels deep into the Moroccan mountains to find his missing daughter — last seen at an all-night rave. What begins as a search-and-rescue story becomes something far more harrowing and profound.
The film earned five European Film Awards for its staggering craft: cinematography, editing, production design, sound, and casting. Mauro Herce's images of dust-choked desert landscapes and strobe-lit dance floors are among the year's most unforgettable, and the sound design is visceral enough to rattle teeth. A film that demands to be experienced on the biggest screen you can find.
3. It Was Just an Accident
Dir. Jafar Panahi · Iran / France · Comedy / Thriller · Palme d'Or
Jafar Panahi won the Palme d'Or with this extraordinary revenge thriller that somehow finds room for farcical comedy amid the darkness of political imprisonment. Drawing from his own experience of incarceration by the Iranian regime, Panahi crafted a film that is at once deeply personal and fiercely universal.
At the European Film Awards ceremony, Panahi received a standing ovation before reading a statement about the situation in Iran — a reminder that for some filmmakers, the act of making a film is itself an act of resistance. The film was shortlisted for the EFA Best Film and nominated for European Director. Unmissable.
4. Sound of Falling
Dir. Mascha Schilinski · Germany · Drama · Germany's Oscar Entry
A century of German history told through the eyes of four young women living on the same property across different eras — that's the ambitious premise of Mascha Schilinski's labyrinthine second feature. The film weaves between time periods with the delicacy of faded memories, exploring sexuality, shattered innocence, and feminism's fitful progress through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Nominated for European Director and Screenwriter at the EFAs, and selected as Germany's official Oscar submission, the film unfolds like a puzzle box that rewards patience and repeat viewings. Fabian Gamper's cinematography gives each era its own distinct texture, while the score by Michael Fiedler and Eike Hosenfeld is hauntingly precise.
5. Bugonia
Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos · UK / US / South Korea · Comedy / Sci-Fi · EFA Nominated
Yorgos Lanthimos continues his run as one of European cinema's most unpredictable auteurs. After the critical success of Poor Things, he pivots to a sharp, absurdist comedy that plays like a conspiracy thriller with the deadpan timing of a Kafka short story. Nominated for European Director at the EFAs, the film confirmed Lanthimos's ability to reinvent himself with every outing.
Whether or not Lanthimos's particular brand of off-kilter dark humour is for you, there's no denying his technical mastery. Torsten Witte won the inaugural EFA for hair and make-up for his work here — a small but telling detail about the level of craft on display.
6. The Voice of Hind Rajab
Dir. Kaouther Ben Hania · France / Tunisia · Documentary / Drama · Venice Silver Lion
Kaouther Ben Hania's film arrived at the Venice Film Festival and immediately became one of the most talked-about works of 2025. Awarded the Silver Lion, it was also shortlisted for the European Film Award — a testament to its power and the urgency of the story it tells.
Ben Hania is one of the most vital voices in contemporary North African and European cinema, and this film shows why. It sits at the intersection of documentary rigour and dramatic intensity, refusing to let the viewer look away. A film that will provoke, disturb, and linger.
7. Arco
Dir. Ugo Bienvenu · France · Animation · EFA Best Animation
European animation had a remarkable 2025, and at the centre of it was Ugo Bienvenu's Arco — a hopeful, visually inventive fantasy that won the European Film Award for Best Animated Feature. It's the kind of film that reminds you animation is not a genre but a medium, one capable of telling stories with an emotional reach and visual imagination that live-action sometimes can't touch.
France continues to be one of the world's great powerhouses for animated cinema, and Arco is a worthy addition to that tradition. Also an Oscar contender, the film appeals equally to children and adults — a rare and valuable thing.
8. La Grazia
Dir. Paolo Sorrentino · Italy · Drama · EFA Screenplay Nominee
Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian master of operatic cinema, returned with a film that earned him a nomination for European Screenwriter at the EFAs. After the personal rawness of The Hand of God, Sorrentino ventures into new emotional territory with La Grazia — a meditation on grace, both divine and human, rendered with his signature visual extravagance.
Sorrentino's camera remains one of the most distinctive in world cinema: restless, swooping, always finding the angle that transforms the mundane into the mythic. Whether you worship at the altar of his maximalism or find it excessive, there's no ignoring the ambition.
9. On Falling
Dir. Laura Carreira · Portugal / UK · Drama · EFA Discovery Nominee
One of the most exciting debut features of the year, Laura Carreira's On Falling was nominated for the EFA's European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI alongside a strong crop of first-time filmmakers. The Portuguese-British director brings a quiet, observational intensity to her subject matter, creating something that feels both intimate and structurally bold.
Carreira is part of a wave of emerging European directors — alongside Urška Djukić, Akinola Davies Jr., and Mathias Broe — who are bringing fresh perspectives and formal inventiveness to the continent's cinema. Keep her name close at hand; you'll be hearing it for years to come.
10. Fiume o Morte!
Dir. Igor Bezinović · Croatia · Documentary · EFA Shortlisted
Igor Bezinović's documentary examines how history is constructed, remembered, and sometimes mythologised — using his local community network in Croatia to assemble a portrait of collective memory that is as playful as it is probing. Selected for the EFA Best Film shortlist, Fiume o Morte! earned a win at the ceremony and represents the kind of formally adventurous documentary work that European cinema does better than anyone.
In a year dominated by political urgency, Bezinović's film reminds us that understanding the past is never a neutral act. It's an argument made with wit, warmth, and a deeply European sensibility about the slipperiness of national narratives.
A Year of Rebellion and Reinvention
What connects these ten films? A refusal to play it safe. Whether through formal experimentation, political boldness, or raw emotional honesty, the best European cinema of 2025 insisted on taking risks. Rebellion pulsed through many of these works — fugitives on the run, artists defying regimes, women reclaiming their own histories.
Yet for all the darkness, there was light too. Animation that inspired wonder. Comedies that found laughter in the most unlikely places. Debut filmmakers who arrived fully formed, with distinct visions and the skill to execute them. The European Film Awards ceremony in Berlin reflected this energy, with standing ovations, impassioned political speeches, and a sense that cinema on this continent is not merely surviving — it's thriving.
If you watch only one of these films, make it whichever title you've never heard of. The best discoveries are the ones you don't see coming.
Several of the German titles on this list — including Sound of Falling — are explored in greater depth in our dedicated guide to the 10 Must-Watch German Films of 2025.
