Sojourners’ Top Movies of 2025

For five years now, Sojourners has created a list of our favorite films of the year. And because we’re Sojourners and not Vulture or IndieWire, our list follows a different set of priorities. We only focus on films that are concerned with spirituality or justice (or when we’re really lucky, both).

This year, more than any of the other four years we’ve done this round-up, I was struck by the sheer number of films grappling with faith and justice. So, to help with the difficult task of only choosing 10, I enlisted the help of our culture columnists, Abby Olcese, Zachary Lee, and Georgia Coley; and our managing editor, Tyler Huckabee. 

In a year full of meaningful cinema, these films moved us most.  —Jenna Barnett, culture editor

One Battle After Another

With its epic scope, colorful characters, and theme of hope in the face of oppression, One Battle After Another feels like writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s version of Star Wars. The film follows burned-out activist Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) on his quest to save his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) from malevolent, hateful Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Along the way, Bob finds some unlikely allies, heroic resistance fighters, and a shadowy cabal of powerful men determined to stay in power. It’s a visually thrilling saga that keeps love, community, and humor at its center. In a time when it’s easy to feel isolated, One Battle After Another reminds us that as long as we fight for what’s right, we’re never alone. —Abby Olcese  

Wake Up Dead Man 

As a former youth group kid, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out movies have always been, whether implicitly or explicitly, about God. More broadly, the whole detective genre might be reflective of an audience’s desire for a righteous judge to see the evil done in darkness brought into the light. With Wake Up Dead Man, easily Johnson’s most personal whodunnit to date, Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc finally goes to church—to solve a murder, of course. And through his unlikely pairing with Josh O’Connor’s Father Jud, Blanc’s pursuit of truth as “checkmate” is challenged by a novel contrast: the transcendent value of grace. Wake Up Dead Man is one of the most surprisingly nuanced portrayals of faith—in all its perversions and purities—we’ve seen onscreen in years. —Georgia Coley

28 Years Later

As writer Matt Bernico points out, “It’s not unusual for a zombie movie to have political subtext or social commentary.” Director Danny Boyle’s eerie and chilling 28 Years Later comes loaded both with post-apocalyptic thrills and said commentary, but its most poignant theme lies in how it “interrogates the systems of violence that comprise the background of human life.” As we follow father and son duo Jamie and Spike traversing through a post-apocalyptic world overrun by humans turned “infected” monsters, their odyssey reminds us that we should strive to throw off the bellicose spirit that so easily entangles. As Bernico shares, the film “doesn’t offer a neat political program to help us escape pure war. But it does invite us to reflect on death and love, which can be a helpful antidote to violence.” —Zachary Lee

It Was Just an Accident 

The Iranian film It Was Just an Accident is a complex revenge fantasy, as funny as it is wise. When the grumpy, kind Vahid just so happens to cross paths with the intelligence officer who tortured him for years, he kidnaps the man with the intent to kill him. The only problem? He isn’t 100 % sure he has the right person. So, he turns to other survivors—a bride, a photographer, a self-proclaimed “zombie”—hoping someone can identify the tormentor with certainty. That uncertainty drives the film’s taut suspense: Is the figure in the trunk evil or innocent? But there’s a deeper, more unsettling question that gives the film it’s staying power: Even if the man did in fact torture this motley crew, will forgiving him or killing him bring them more healing? —Jenna Barnett

Sinners

Next time someone tells you Hollywood never takes risks anymore, point them toward Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s Reconstruction-era vampire musical about the horrors of cultural assimilation (and also vampires). On paper, this movie should not work. In practice, it’s crackerjack entertainment, with Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, and newcomer Miles Caton delivering a cinematic feast equal parts thrilling and thoughtful. Sinners spends much of its time somewhere between a smolder and an explosion but when the credits roll, you’re left with a rich meditation on colonial proselytism versus true spiritual community. —Tyler Huckabee

Next time someone tells you Hollywood never takes risks anymore, point them toward 'Sinners.'

Roofman

The first thing I did after watching Roofman was research the true story to see what was exaggerated in the film—only to find that the real-life story was pretty much exactly as absurd and heart-rending as it had been presented onscreen. An amusingly blundering criminal-on-the-run story set distinctly in the Charlotte, N.C., of the early 2000s, the film shines in its lived-in depiction of an ordinary church community that heeds the call to welcome the stranger and visit the prisoner. And Roofman is more than just a stranger-than-fiction tale—it’s also a deeply melancholic meditation on the ways we can rationalize our deceptions to others and ourselves, and the uniquely American systems that make that deception feel necessary in the first place. —Georgia Coley

The Testament of Ann Lee

A movie-musical about the founder of the Shakers is an undeniably strange logline, but The Testament of Ann Lee is an undeniably singular film. Director and co-writer Mona Fastvold follows the life of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) from childhood through her search for a spiritual home, to her emergence as a matriarch and religious leader. The songs by composer Daniel Blumberg adapt Shaker hymns to tell the story of Lee and her community. Celia Rowlson-Hall’s stunning choreography emulates the physicality of Shaker worship with raw, almost feral movement. This is a film about belief in its most elemental form, the spirit moving within individuals so strongly that they can’t help but sing, shout, cry, and beat their chests. —Abby Olcese

Sentimental Value 

“Praying isn’t really talking to God. It’s really just you acknowledging your despair.” These lines are the crux of an unproduced movie script that Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) is trying to get his stage actress daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve) to star in. But the project unearths decades of buried pain in Joachim Trier’s lovely, quietly devastating Sentimental Value. A movie about the wounds we pass down across generations and the imperfect ways we try to find healing, Trier’s film is an exploration of a family finally acknowledging their despair and, in doing so, finding unexpected answers to prayer. —Tyler Huckabee 

KPop Demon Hunters

Between KPop Demon Hunters’ addictive soundtrack and eye-catching visuals lie thematic Rumi-nations around learning how to reconstruct one’s sense of self after being fed lies. Following a K-Pop girl group who use their music career to masquerade their true vocation as said demon hunters, Georgia Coley writes how the main character Rumi’s struggle may “resonate with anyone who has had any experience with the religious trauma that comes from being told a core part of their identity, such as queerness, neurodivergence, or physical disability, is a sinful stamp.” However, as the film colorfully and vibrantly shows, healing doesn’t look just like deconstructing the sources of this shame but includes “reaching out for connection with others, and finding new life in something honest and true.” Golden stuff, indeed. —Zachary Lee

Hamnet

Hamnet contains the best acting performances of the year (Sorry One Battle After Another, you can win every other award). Which makes sense, given that it’s an empathy film pushing us, urgently, determinedly, to take on each other’s burdens. Chloé Zhao’s lush adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel centers the muses of William Shakespeare (a giddy, tormented Paul Mescal)—most notably his wife Agnes (a wild, perfect Jessie Buckley) and his short-lived son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe, who will make you cry). Hamnet shows how sudden grief can embitter a person and plague a marriage. This is a tragedy after all. But the film also shows how empathy and story can blunt the sting of unexpected loss, rendering it more of a scratch than a fatal blow. —Jenna Barnett

+Sojourners’ Top Movies of 2024 

+Sojourners’ Top Movies and TV Shows of 2023  

+Sojourners’ 2022 Film and TV Roundup to Inspire Faith and Justice  

+Sojourners’ 2021 Film and TV Roundup