Ten 2025 Oscar-Winning Films That You Can and Should Watch Immediately

Every year, no matter which movies earn Oscars — regardless of what and who is nominated, the titles and talents that miss out, the fun of the ceremony and the scandals that pop up beforehand — the best way to celebrate a great 12 months in cinema is also the easiest. Films are made to be watched, be they blockbuster musicals, deeply personal documentaries, gorgeous animation, sci-fi spectacles, top-notch dramas or anything and everything in-between. If you hadn't seen 2025's newly anointed Academy Award-winners in advance, now's the time to change that.

Almost every feature that picked up a gong on Monday, March 3, Down Under time is available to watch this second. Put Flow on your list for later, when it releases mid-March — but check out these other ten winners now.

Need the full list of 2025's Oscar recipients? The nominees? Our pre-ceremony predictions regarding what would and should win? A rundown of where the rest of 2025's contenders are screening in Australia? Consider that pre-movie reading, then get comfy at your favourite picture palace or on your couch.

Anora

Along with playfulness, empathy, and an eagerness to look beyond the usual characters and pockets of America that tend to grace narrative cinema, tenderness is one Sean Baker's special skills, as splashed across the New Jersey-born talent's filmography for more than two decades now. It's in Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket, for instance, all three of which are stunning feats. It also couldn't be more evident in his Cannes Palme d'Or-recipient and now five-time Oscar-winner Anora. The writer/director's work has always been as clear-eyed as movies get, unflinchingly seeing the struggles that his protagonists go through, though — but their troubles are never the be-all and end-all for anyone in front of his lens. No one should be defined by their circumstances, their misfortunes, their unlucky lots in life, their woes, their mistakes, their missed chances, or how their existence does or doesn't measure up to anyone else's, and no one is in Baker's features. He pens, helms and edits with a wholehearted commitment to seeing people who they are. The fact that he undertakes all three roles on his films, each of which earned him an Academy Award here, means that the credit is almost all his, too; it isn't just the use of his beloved Aguafina Script Pro font that signifies a Baker flick.

Spotting Cinderella elements and riffs on Pretty Woman isn't hard in Anora, as the picture's eponymous Brooklyn erotic dancer (Mikey Madison, Lady in the Lake) meets, dances for, hangs out with and is soon wed to Vanya, the son (Mark Eydelshteyn, Zhar-ptitsa) of a wealthy Russian oligarch (Aleksey Serebryakov, Lotereya). But just as Ani is always her own person, the magnificent Anora is always a Baker film. Fairytale experiences in life don't always come with a happy ending. Failures aren't always the worst options. Following your heart or whims is rarely either solely sublime or awful. Baker knows this, and so does this feature. Assured yet vulnerable, playing a woman capable of holding her own against mobsters — and standing up to almost anything else that comes her way — but not immune to sadness and disappointment, Madison is hypnotic as Ani. Eydelshteyn, Compartment No 6's Yura Borisov as one of the henchmen tasked with babysitting Vanya: they're mesmerising as well. The spirt of Anora — the vivid and audacious way that it bounds from start to finish, the grit and heart that it sports — is equally as pitch-perfect.

Oscars:

Won: Best Picture, Best Director (Sean Baker), Best Actress (Mikey Madison), Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing

Other nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Yura Borisov)

Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Apple TV and Prime Video.

A Real Pain

He didn't feature on-screen in his first film as a writer/director, but 2022's When You Finish Saving the World couldn't have sprung from anyone but Jesse Eisenberg. Neither could've 2024's A Real Pain. In the latter, the Fleishman Is in Trouble actor plays the anxious part, and literally. He's David Kaplan, with his character a bundle of nerves about and during his trip to Poland with his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin, Succession) — a pilgrimage that they're making in honour of their grandmother, who survived the Second World War, started a new life for their family in the US in the process and has recently passed away. David is highly strung anyway, though. One source of his woes: the ease with which Benji seems to move through his days, whether he's making new friends in their tour group within seconds of being introduced or securing a stash of weed for the journey. With A Real Pain as with When You Finish Saving the World, Eisenberg is shrewdly and committedly examining an inescapable question: what is real pain, and who feels it? Are David's always-evident neuroses more worthy of worry than the despondency that Benji shuttles behind his carefree facade, and is it okay for either to feel the way they do, with their comfortable lives otherwise, in the shadow of such horrors such as the Holocaust?

As a filmmaker, Eisenberg keeps interrogating what he knows: A Real Pain's main train of thought, which was When You Finish Saving the World's as well, is one that he ponders himself. Although he's not penning and helming strictly autobiographical movies, his latest does crib some details from reality, swapping out an IRL aunt for a fictional grandmother, as well as a trip that Eisenberg took with his wife for a cousins' act of tribute. It's no wonder, then, that he keeps crafting deeply felt features that resound with raw emotion, and that leave viewers feeling like they could walk right into them. With A Real Pain, he also turns in a stellar performance of his own and directs another from Culkin, who steps into Benji's shoes like he wears them himself everyday (and takes on a part that his director originally had earmarked for himself). Thrumming at the heart of the dramedy, and in its two main players, is a notion that demands facing head-on, too: that experiencing our own pain, whether big or small, world-shattering or seemingly trivial, or personal or existential, is never a minor matter.

Oscars:

Won: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Kieran Culkin)

Other nominations: Best Original Screenplay

Where to watch: in Australian cinemas, and via Disney+, Apple TV and Prime Video.

Read our full review and our interview with Jesse Eisenberg.

The Brutalist

Since switching from acting to writing and directing — in his on-screen days, Thirteen, Mysterious Skin, Funny Games, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Melancholia, Force Majeure, Clouds of Sils Maria, Eden and While We're Young were among his credits, spanning works by quite the array of excellent fellow filmmakers — Brady Corbet hasn't lacked in ambition for a second. Still, as excellent as both Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux are, and they are, his third feature towers above them. With Adrien Brody (Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty) as Hungarian Jewish architect László Toth, The Brutalist is as epic as a three-and-a-half-hour drama about trying to escape life's horrors, including those of the Holocaust, by chasing the American dream can be. The buildings designed by its protagonist aren't the only things that are monumental here, career-best turns by Guy Pearce (Inside) and Felicity Jones (Dead Shot) among them. The Brutalist is a vision, too, with Corbet's ambition apparent in ever millimetre of every frame. (Shooting in VistaVision, a format used for Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and Vertigo, but last deployed in the US for an entire movie with 1961's One-Eyed Jacks: yes, that's bold as well).

Crossing the world is meant to bring the Toth family a new beginning. Waiting for his wife Erzsébet (Jones) to follow, and their young niece (Raffey Cassidy, a Vox Lux alum) with her, László arrives in New York and then Philadelphia solo, however — and etching out a fresh start with help from his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola, The Room Next Door) doesn't pan out the way he hopes. Neither does scoring a job revamping the personal library of the wealthy Harrison Lee Van Buren (Pearce), even when it seems to, then doesn't, then sparks the opportunity of László's dreams. Given everything that its protagonist needs to wade through, as does Corbet thematically, it's no wonder that The Brutalist clocks in at three-and-a-half hours with its intermission. Not a moment is wasted, that mid-movie pause included. As it muses on what it means to leave a legacy, this is a film to sit with. It's filled with performances that demand the same. Brody, Pearce, Jones: what a haunting trio.

Oscars:

Won: Best Actor (Adrien Brody), Best Cinematography, Best Original Score,

Other nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Brady Corbet), Best Supporting Actor (Guy Pearce), Best Supporting Actress (Felicity Jones), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design

Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.

Read our interview with Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones and Brady Corbet.

Conclave

Who knew that papal succession would become a film and TV trend? Fights for supremacy have driven three of the biggest television shows of the past 15 years, of course — Game of Thrones, Succession and Shogun — so repeatedly bringing the battle for the head Catholic Church job to the screen shouldn't come as a surprise. The Young Pope, The New Pope, The Two Popes, Conclave: they've all headed to the Vatican. The latter is quite the entertaining thriller, too. The idea behind this page-to-screen delight, as based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris: cardinals, they're just like everyone else seeking power, aka bickering, gossiping, scheming, feuding and trying to find their way to the top by any means possible. Here, when the pope passes, Canadian cardinal Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow, The Old Man), American cardinal Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci, Citadel), Nigerian cardinal Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati, A Gentleman in Moscow) and Mexican cardinal Vincent Benitez (feature first-timer Carlos Diehz) are among the contenders vying to step into their religion's ultimate position — all with differing views on social issues, ranging from liberal to conservative leanings.

Voting for a new pope is a ceremony that lends itself to theatricality on-screen, which Conclave eagerly captures. The manoeuvring guiding the College of Cardinals' various rounds of choices is the movie's focus; trying to win support is an election campaign, and a heated one. At the heart of the drama is Britain's cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes, The Return), Dean of the College, and also responsible for ascertaining the complete circumstances surrounding the last pope's death. Aided by a stellar cast that's answering viewers' prayers (also outstanding: Spaceman's Isabella Rossellini as Head Caterer Sister Agnes), filmmaker Edward Berger swaps World War I's horrors in fellow Oscar-winner All Quiet on the Western Front for a pulpy and twisty but smart affair. He hasn't completely switched thematically, though: how tradition and modernity butt against each other also remains in the director's view amid Conclave's many secrets and scandals.

Oscars:

Won: Best Adapted Screenplay

Other nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best Supporting Actress (Isabella Rossellini), Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design

Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Apple TV and Prime Video.

Dune: Part Two

Revenge is a dish best served sandy in Dune: Part Two. On the desert planet of Arrakis, where golden hills as far as the eye can see are shaped from the most-coveted and -psychedelic substance in author Frank Herbert's estimation, there's no other way. Vengeance is just one course on Paul Atreides' (Timothée Chalamet, Wonka) menu, however. Pop culture's supreme spice boy, heir to the stewardship of his adopted realm, has a prophecy to fulfil whether he likes it or not; propaganda to navigate, especially about him being the messiah; and an Indigenous population, the Fremen, to prove himself to. So mines Denis Villeneuve's soaring sequel to 2021's Dune, which continues exploring the costs and consequences of relentless quests for power — plus the justifications, compromises, tragedies and narratives that are inescapable in such pursuits. The filmmaker crafts his fourth contemplative and breathtaking sci-fi movie in a row, then, after Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 as well.

The vast arid expanse that constantly pervades the frames in Dune: Part Two isn't solely a stunning sight. It looks spectacular, as the entire feature does, with Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser (The Creator) back after winning an Oscar for the first Dune; but as Paul, his widowed mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson, Silo), and Fremen Stilgar (Javier Bardem, The Little Mermaid) and Chani (Zendaya, Euphoria) traverse it, it helps carve in some of this page-to-screen saga's fundamental ideas. So does the stark monochrome when the film jumps to Giedi Prime, home world to House Harkonnen, House Atreides' enemy, plus Arrakis' ruler both before and after Paul's dad Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) got the gig in Villeneuve's initial Dune. People here are dwarfed not only by their mammoth surroundings, but by the bigger, broader, non-stop push for supremacy. While there's no shortage of detail in both Part One and Part Two — emotional, thematic and visual alike — there's also no avoiding that battling against being mere pawns in an intergalactic game of chess is another of its characters' complicated fights.

Oscars:

Won: Best Sound, Best Visual Effects

Other nominations: Best Picture, Best, Cinematography, Best Production Design,

Where to watch: Via Netflix, Binge, Apple TV and Prime Video.

Read our full review and our interview with Greig Fraser.

Emilia Pérez

As it follows its namesake character's (Karla Sofía Gascón, Harina) identity-swapping journey from cartel leader to trying to live her authentic life, Emilia Pérez isn't just a musical and a crime drama rolled into one. It's also happily and devotedly a melodrama — and French filmmaker Jacques Audiard (Paris, 13th District) goes bold in leaning in, and in embracing the juxtapositions of the movie's three main genres as they jostle against each other. That audacity; that willingness to be both spectacular and messy again and again; the feature's three key performances, including from Zoe Saldaña (Special Ops: Lioness) and Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building): they all assist in making this vivid viewing. Also pivotal: the clear cues that A Prophet and Rust and Bone writer and helmer Audiard has taken from the work of Spanish great Pedro Almodóvar. The Room Next Door, the latter's latest, was completely overlooked by this year's Oscars, but it's easy to connect the dots between Almodóvar's immense filmography over four decades now and the look, feel and themes of Emilia Pérez.

In Mexico City, defence attorney Rita Mora Castro (Saldaña) begins the film languishing in her job and its grey areas. She wins a high-profile case, but knows that she shouldn't have. Then comes a proposition delivered via an unexpected phone call, plus a secret meeting that she's whisked off to blindfolded: a job to assist a drug kingpin with transitioning from Juan 'Manitas' Del Monte to Emilia Pérez. Making that mission happen isn't simple. Everyone connected to Manitas' old life, wife (Gomez), children and colleagues alike: none of them can know. As it unfurls its story largely through exuberantly staged songs, the film is still really just kicking off when it then hops forward in time, diving into what comes next when Emilia is living her new life and Rita has been well-compensated for her efforts — and, in the process, exploring the consequences of getting what you want, or seeming to. The entire female cast won Cannes Best Actress prize but, after years spent on-screen tinted green (in the Guardians of the Galaxy films) and blue (in the Avatar flicks) in big-budget fare, this is Saldaña's moment to shine.

Oscars:

Won: Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña), Best Original Song — 'El Mal' by Clément Ducol, Camille and Jacques Audiard

Other nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Jacques Audiard), Best Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón), Best International Feature Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Original Song — 'Mi Camino' by Camille and Clément Ducol

Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.

I'm Still Here

It came as no surprise when Fernanda Torres (Fim) won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Eunice Paiva in Walter Salles' (On the Road) deeply moving political and personal drama. Her understated yet also expressive performance as the real-life wife of Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello, Bury Your Dead), who was taken away by Brazil's military dictatorship in 1971 and never seen again, is that powerful. I'm Still Here poignantly charts the task of endeavouring to endure under such heartbreaking circumstances — under oppressive rule, when your existence crumbles, when your family is fraying courtesy of the trauma and when fighting back is the only choice, too. The film sees the early happy times for the Paivas, even as uncertainty lingers. It watches their lives by the beach, where Eunice, Rubens and their five children fill busy days. It then looks on as the military raids their home, as more than one Paiva is imprisoned and interrogated, and as the husband and father who was previously a congressman doesn't return. Also, it stares solidly as the quest for answers and justice never fades among Rubens' loved ones.

Conveying the pain, the fortitude, the grief and the despair of someone in Eunice's situation might seem easy, not that relaying those emotions ever is; who wouldn't feel that way in these circumstances, or understand how someone would? It isn't a straightforward ask, though, giving a part the complexity that every role should demand when much about a character's inner life appears obvious — because the job is to dig far deeper than that, and to unpack what that natural reaction means for this person and this person only. Torres perfects the task. As a director, working with a screenplay that Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega (also collaborators on Mariner of the Mountains) based on Eunice and Rubens' son Marcelo's memoir, Salles is in superb form as well. Teaming up with the filmmaker keeps turning out exceptionally for Torres and her IRL family, with her mother Fernanda Montenegro also Oscar-nominated for Salles' Central Station back in 1999, long before featuring here as the elder Eunice.

Oscars:

Won: Best International Feature Film

Other nominations: Picture, Best Actress (Fernanda Torres)

Where to watch: In Australian cinemas.

No Other Land

In No Other Land, Basel Adra films what he knows but wishes that he doesn't — and what he knows that the world needs to see. Co-directing with Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham, plus farmer and photographer Hamdan Ballal and cinematographer Rachel Szor, the Palestinian activist chronicles the takeover of the West Bank region of Masafer Yatta, purportedly for an Israeli military base. As a result of the latter, families with generations and centuries of ties to the land are forced to dwell in caves, battle soldiers and fight to survive. Their possessions, their homes, their lives: none seem to mean anything to those displacing the area's villagers. The suffering, the deaths, the grief, the children growing up knowing nothing but a literally underground existence: that doesn't resonate with the occupation, either, or with the trigger-happy soldiers patrolling in its name. Also falling on deaf ears: the please that gives this documentary its title, from a woman understandably asking where else these communities are meant to go.

The apathy and worse that's directed towards Adra's family and other Palestinians in No Other Land, as captured in footage spanning from 2019–2023, could never be shared by this film's audience. As is plain to see by everyone watching, making this doco is an act of bravery of the highest order. It's also a downright daring feat — not only to record its contents in the most difficult of circumstances, at a potentially fatal cost, but with two Palestinians and two Israelis coming together to make the movie happen. Viewing No Other Land, and bearing witness as Adra demands, couldn't be more essential. It's as distressing as cinema gets, too, especially as the campaign of destruction against Masafer Yatta's residents just keeps repeating within its frames. While the urgency of Adra, Abraham, Ballal and Szor's film is inherent, thrumming from start to finish, so too is the thought and care that's gone into its construction. As with 2024 Oscar-winner 20 Days in Mariupol , this is truly unforgettable cinema.

Oscars:

Won: Best Documentary Feature

Other nominations: NA

Where to watch: Via DocPlay.

ano

The Substance

If you suddenly looked like society's ideal, how would it change your life? The Substance asks this. In a completely different way, so does fellow Golden Globe-winner A Different Man (see: below), too — but when Revenge's Coralie Fargeat is leading the charge on her long-awaited sophomore feature and earning Cannes' Best Screenplay Award for her troubles, the result is a new body-horror masterpiece. Pump it up: the sci-fi concept; the stunning command of sound, vision and tone; the savagery and smarts; the gonzo willingness to keep pushing and parodying; the gore (and there's gore); and the career-reviving performance from Demi Moore (Landman). The Substance's star has popped up in Feud, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Please Baby Please and Brave New World in recent years, but her work as Elisabeth Sparkle not only defines this period of her life as an actor; even with an on-screen resume dating back to 1981, and with the 80s- and 90s-era likes of St Elmo's Fire, Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal and Disclosure to her name, she'll always be known for this from this point onwards, regardless of whether awards keep rolling in.

Turning 50 isn't cause for celebration for Elisabeth. She's already seen film roles pass her by over the years; on her birthday, she's now pushed out of her long-running gig hosting an aerobics show. Enter a solution, as well as another 'what if?' question: if you could reclaim your youth by injecting yourself with a mysterious liquid, would you? Here, The Substance's protagonist takes the curious serum. Enter Sue (Margaret Qualley, Drive-Away Dolls), who helps Elisabeth wind back time — and soon wants Elisabeth's time as her own. Just like someone seeking the glory days that she thinks are behind her via any means possible, Fargeat isn't being subtle with The Substance, not for a second. She goes big and brutal instead, and audacious and morbid as well, and this is the unforgettable picture it is because of it. No one holds back — not Elisabeth, not Sue, not Moore, not the also-fantastic Qualley, not Dennis Quaid (Lawman: Bass Reeves) eating shrimp, not Fargeat, and definitely not cinematographer Benjamin Kracun (Promising Young Woman) or composer Raffertie (99).

Oscars:

Won: Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Other nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Coralie Fargeat), Best Actress (Demi Moore), Best Original Screenplay,

Where to watch: Via Stan, Apple TV and Prime Video.

Read our full review.

Wicked

The colour scheme was always a given. "Pink goes good with green," Galinda (Ariana Grande, Don't Look Up) tells Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo, Luther: The Fallen Sun). "It goes well with green," the grammar-correcting reply bounces back. The songs, beloved echoing from the stage since 2003, were never in doubt, either, as both centrepieces and a soundtrack. As a theatre-kid obsession for decades, it was also long likely that the big-screen adaptation of Wicked — a movie based on an immensely popular and successful musical springing from a book that offered a prequel to a film that walked the celluloid road 85 years ago, itself jumping from the page to the screen — would have big theatre-kid energy as it attempted to ensure that its magic enchants across mediums. Enough such buzz and verve to fill every theatre on Broadway radiates from Grande alone in the two-part franchise's first instalment, beaming from someone who, as a kid, won an auction to meet the OG Wicked good witch Kristin Chenoweth (Our Little Secret) backstage. For audiences watching on, that enthusiasm is impossible not to feel.

No one would ever want a muted Wicked, where the hues, in yellow bricks and emerald cities and more (rainbows of tulips and sprawling university campuses, too) weren't trying to compete with Technicolor — and where the tunes, with Chenoweth and Idina Menzel's (You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah) voices previously behind them in such full force, weren't belted to the rafters. Jon M Chu has a knack as a filmmaker of stage hits reaching cinemas: matching the vibe of the show that he's taking on expertly. It was true of his version of In the Heights, which is no small matter given that it's a Lin-Manuel Miranda musical. It now proves the case in its own different way with Wicked. Achieving such a feat isn't always a given; sometimes, even when it does happen, and blatantly, any stage spark can be lost in translation (see: Cats). Again, movie viewers can feel that synergy with Wicked's first part, and also feel how much it means to everyone involved.

Oscars:

Won: Best Costume Design, Best Production Design

Other nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress (Cynthia Erivo), Best Supporting Actress (Ariana Grande), Best Film Editing,  Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects

Where to watch: In Australian cinemas, and via Apple TV and Prime Video.

Read our full review and our interview with Nathan Crowley.

Looking for more Oscar-nominees to watch? You can also check out our full rundown of where almost all of this year's contenders are screening or streaming in Australia.