Barbenheimer. Gladicked. Deadpool & Wonkarine. The big movies of the past couple of years have been cash-splash smashes by mainstream directors loudly airing strong authorial voices. They are films on which studios have taken heavy bets during the rocky post-Covid period and ushered through a landscape potholed with strife and strikes.
Major arty punts have been less in evidence. But the acclaim and appetite for those that have been made – The Zone of Interest and Poor Things, Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist – is cheering, not least because 2025 looks likely to go down as the year auteurs roared back. The slate of releases by international big hitters needs only a new Haneke – and perhaps a splash of Almodóvar – to be unrivalled in recent memory.
