London Film Festival 2025: The best of the rest of the fest
Here’s our roundup of the best movies from this year’s London Film Festival that we didn’t have time to cover in full.
A Sad And Beautiful World
When Lebanese childhood friends Yasmina (Mounia Akl) and Nino (Hasan Akil) rediscover each other as adults, romantic sparks are quick to fly. While their connection remains as strong as ever, the combination of their opposite personalities and a Lebanon at war proves desperately challenging to their lives together.
Though deeply romantic throughout, A Sad And Beautiful World is grounded in a whole lot of complex emotional truths that makes Yasmina and Nino’s many ups and downs as a couple all the more gripping. No pair in any of the festival’s films this year (at least the ones we managed to see!) had such intense, believable chemistry, and the movie’s magical realist swerves are beautifully judged.
Callé Malaga
After her financially-strapped grown daughter Clara (Marta Etura) decides to the sell the flat where her mother has lived in Morocco for the past forty years, septuagenarian Spaniard Maria Angeles (Carmen Maura) decides to fight back.
One of Pedro Almodóvar’s most frequent collaborators, Carmen Maura dominates Callé Malaga in luminous style, teasing out her character’s rich inner life with an abundance of texture and charisma. With this following hot on the heels from her equally sublime The Blue Caftan, writer-director Maryam Touzani has truly proven herself a force to be reckoned with.
Endless Cookie
In this animated documentary, Canadian half-brothers Seth (who is white) and Pete (who’s indigenous) Scriver discuss their childhood, their cultures, their vast extended family, and the process of making the movie we’re watching.
Both angry and laidback, deeply weird and totally charming, Endless Cookie moves from silliness to heartfelt political rage with surprising speed for such a rambling, unassuming documentary. Seth’s absurdist animation style is endlessly watchable, and Pete has one of the most infectious laughs you will ever hear.
Dry Leaf
When his adult daughter goes missing, leaving a mystifying note behind, Irakli (David Koberidze) goes on a road trip around Georgia hoping to find her.
Though that’s the ostensible plot, much like his previous film, What Do We See When We Look At The Sky? Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf is more of a meditative, beautiful exploration of his home country than a traditional narrative-led movie. A three-hour film shot entirely on an ancient Sony Ericsson mobile may sound like a daunting challenge, but the painterly images that result, combined with Koberidze’s playfulness (there’s an invisible character, for one thing!), makes for an extraordinary viewing experience.
Singing Wings
In a small village in Iran, an indomitable elderly Kurdish woman, Khadijeh, tries her very best to keep an ailing stork alive, while coming to terms with the last of her twelve children flying the nest.
Gentle, funny and fascinating, Singing Wings is both a lovely character study, and a moving exploration of the deep emotional bond between humans and the animals that live all around us. You won’t be forgetting Khadijeh in a hurry!
