Picture, Director, Screenplay - The Film Experience

The Films of 2025. The 26th annual FiLM BiTCH Awards

NOMINEES AND MEDALS IN EVERY CATEGORY ANNOUNCED

BEST PICTURE discuss

HAMNET Chloe Zhao (Focus, US) Nov 26	LOVE Dag Johan Haugerud (Strand, Norway) April 4	NO OTHER CHOICE Park Chan Wook (Neon, South Korea) Dec 25	ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Paul Thomas Anderson (Warner Bros, US) Sept 26	ROOFMAN Derek Cianfrance (Paramount, US) Oct 10
Zhao's gorgeoous drama about Shakespeare's wife take on big themes like grief and creativity with operatic grandeur though it's always anchored to earth.	A gorgeously talky humanist triumph as a doctor and nurse exchange ideas about love and sex and in the process begin to change.	A dazzling and genius thriller / socioeconomic satire featuring the performance of the year (Lee Byung Hun).	A sprawling thrill ride and political war. Anderson is a master juggler with theme, plot, character, and setpieces always engaged and generally lit on fire.	Always beautifully engaged with character arcs and story. The year's most underrated pleasure as a thief on the run falls for a lonely divorcee.

Finalists: Twinless (Roadside Attractions, Sept 4), Sentimental Value (Neon, Nov 7) Semi-Finalists: The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Disney, July 25), Left Handed Girl (Netflix, Nov 14), *A Nice Indian Boy* (Blue Harbor), Pillion (A24, Qualifier), *Sex* (Dag Johan Haugerud, Strand) and Sinners (Warner Bros) Top Ten Article \| Letterboxd Year Ranking

BEST DIRECTOR discuss

Paul Thomas Anderson ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER	Derek Cianfrance ROOFMAN	Park Chan Wook NO OTHER CHOICE	Joachim Trier SENTIMENTAL VALUE	Chloe Zhao HAMNET


Finalists: James Sweeney Twinless, Shih-Ching Tsou Left-Handed Girl Semi Finalists: Kleber Mendoca Filho - The Secret Agent, Harry Lighton* - Pillion,* Ryan Coogler - Sinners, Richard Linklater Nouvelle Vague, and Dag Johan Haugerud Love

BODY OF WORK - SPECIAL CITATION Though this intermittent discretionary award is usually for an actor or actress who is on an artistic fire in a single year with multiple stellar achievements, the gold medal this time is for a rising writer/director with a unique point of view. discuss

	LOVE Dag Johan Haugerud (Strand) April 4	SEX Dag Johan Haugerud (Strand) June 13	DREAMS Dag Johan Haugerud (Strand) Sept 12


Dag Johan Haugerud's Oslo Trilogy was a remarkable one-two-three humanist triumph. Though the characters don't overlap, each film features protagonists and their various social circles sharing secrets, contemplating ife, confiding in and questioning one another's beliefs, and reeling from their experiences, preconceptions, and reactions to love, sex, and dreams. You can (almost) interchange the titles hence their subheader titles each of them listing the other two i.e. Dreams (Love, Sex). While Love is the most emotionally satisfying, Sex the most intellectually fascinating, and Dreams the most provocative, together they amount to a major humanist triumph. It would be ungenerous to other special films to let his provocative and singular triple-feature hog multiple slots in multiple categories so we've done two things in a way of not bending our rules but making allowances for this particular achievement. We're counting them as one film, math-wise, throughout these charts (which are, if you've ever noticed, 'top 12' lists), but they're counted as separate films in terms of nominations (like Love in Best Picture) and rankings within the finals or fairness.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY discuss

ROOFMAN Derek Cianfrance & Kirt Gunn	THE SECRET AGENT Kleber Mendoça Filho	SENTIMENTAL VALUE Joachim Trier	SORRY BABY Eva Victor	TWINLESS James Sweeney
		Trier does it again with another masterful drama about complex relationships and fraught emotional crises	An incredibly funny but painful comedy - what a debut for Eva Victor!	Hyper-specific and wholly original. That razor sharp structural gambit sure is impressive.

Finalist: While Dag Johan Haugerud's Dreams is the most "written" of the Oslo Trilogy in that it is so specifically about writers and writing, and Love is my personal favourite (by a hair) I think Sex might be the most fascinating in the text even though it's two storythreads are not equally successful. In short, I couldn't quite choose between them for the screenplay honor and they're all stronger as reflections of each other and the shared themes. Semi-Finalists: Josh Safdie & Ronald Bronstein for Marty Supreme, Jafar Panahi's It Was Just An Accident, Ryan Coogler's Sinners, Alain Guirardie's Misericordia, David Freyne & Pat Cunnane's clever Eternity, and Robert Kaplow's Blue Moon

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY discuss

HAMNET Chloe Zhao	A NICE INDIAN BOY Eric Randall	NO OTHER CHOICE Park Chan Wook	ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Paul Thomas Anderson	PILLION Harry Lighton
For a brilliant cinematic transfer of the interiority and elegant prose of Maggie O'Hara's novel of the same name.	For a tight and sensitive transfer of the play by Madhuri Shekar. Finally a strong gay romantic dramedy	Adapted superbly from page to dynamic screen from the satiric novel "The Axe"	For a prismatic, chaotic, and masterful riff on Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland"	His bravely observational and tonally dextrous take on the novel "Box Hill" proves a major delight.

Finalists: Will Tracy adapting the screenplay of " Save the Green Planet" for Bugonia, and Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar for visualizing the Dennis Johnson novella Train Dreams Semi Finalists: Emile Kristine Blichfeldet's sick riff on "Cinderella" with The Ugly Stepsister , Bong Joon Ho for multiplying "Mickey 7" into Mickey 17, Andrew Ahn for modernizing and expanding Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet screenplay, Nia DaCosta's chaotic and queer rethink of Ibsen's classic Hedda, and finally with *The Fantastic Four: First Steps* Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Spring finally make Marvel's "First Family" work onscreen. Fourth times the charm.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE discuss

	ARCO Ugo Bienvenue (NEON) Qualifying Release	KPOP DEMON HUNTERS Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans (Sony / Netflix) June 20	LITTLE AMELIE OR THE CHARACTER OF RAIN Maïlys Vallade & Liane-Cho Han (GKids) October 31
	This eccentric adventure about a reckless young rainbow time traveller has an impressive cumulative emotional effect.	Visually inventive, musically catchy, and a boisterous good time. It's massively popular for a reason	A gorgeous and even, at times, profound film about a toddler's emotional awakening and a family living abroad.

Finalist: The impressive rotoscoped sports drama *100 Meters* (GKids) about rival sprinters and their existential conundrums. Semi-Finalist: Zootopia 2 (Disney), *Lost in Starlight* (Han Ji-Won, Netflix/Climax), Elio (Disney/Pixar) Magnificent Life (Sylvain Chomet, France), Dogman (), Fixed (Genndy Tartovsky, US)

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