The best cultural releases from 2025: The most notable films, books and music
Ten friends of Monocle share the best things that they have watched, read and listened to in the past year.
As part of our cultural round-up The Wrap, we asked 10 friends of Monocle – from a diplomat to a festival director – to share the best works that they have encountered over the past year.
Joyce Wang
Interior designer
The best thing I watched:
The heartwarming film How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, directed by Pat Boonnitipat, offers an insight into the nuances of Thai and Chinese culture that I otherwise would not have known about. It’s a serious subject told with humour.
The best thing I read:
I re-read parts of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun this year for inspiration for a project. I love imagining the different spaces from the text.
The best thing I listened to:
I’ve loved the Danish band Mew since the early 2000s and they are coming to Hong Kong soon. I first heard them live in Los Angeles.
Wang is an interior designer based in London and Hong Kong.
Tim Weiner
Writer
The best thing I watched:
The Seed of the Sacred Fig, directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, who fled Iran on foot last year after repeated jailings, arrests and harassment. It’s a brilliant movie about repression and resistance in Iran, when “women, life, freedom” was the rallying cry.
The best thing I read:
Barbara Demick’s Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: China’s Stolen Children and a Story of Separated Twins is an epic of literary non-fiction describing the ripping apart – and the reunion – of sisters born under the one-child policy.
The best thing I listened to:
The song “Breaking” by Anohni and the Johnsons [from the sessions for the album My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross]. Like Édith Piaf, Anohni has a voice that encompasses all the terrible beauty of the world.
Weiner is an American writer and the author of ‘The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century’.
Antonio Patriota
Diplomat
The best thing I watched:
I loved Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent. It’s a gripping, intelligent film that sheds light on Brazil’s recent past, with cinematic finesse. It’s both thrilling and thought-provoking and illustrates the damage done to society by authoritarian rule and the culture of impurity that it promotes.
The best thing I read:
Philippe Sands’ 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia is a masterful blend of personal history and international law. The book is meticulously researched and a groundbreaking testimony of the link between Nazis guilty of war crimes and the torture chambers of the Pinochet regime in Chile.
The best thing I listened to:
Abdullah Miniawy’s album Le Cri du Caire; in particular, the song “Pearls for Orphans”. Miniawy’s voice is just unforgettable. His music is poetry in motion, very spiritual and transcendent. It’s a compelling tribute to child victims of violence.
Patriota is the Brazilian ambassador to the UK.
Nina Conti
Comedian
The best thing I watched:
I was lucky enough to see an early screening of Aneil Karia’s Hamlet. I have never before been able to follow Hamlet’s every feeling so viscerally; it’s such a skilful and realistic performance from Riz Ahmed. A total masterclass in believability from beginning to end.
The best thing I read:
There are passages of Maria Bamford’s audiobook Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult where I had to pull over the car because I couldn’t stop laughing, especially her section on intrusive thoughts. Her worst fears are so dysfunctional, it just makes me glad to be alive.
The best thing I listened to:
This could be anything from Pavarotti to Aphex Twin, but this has caught me on a day when I have listened to “Shoulder Song” by Victor Jones about 20 times. There’s a strength in his voice and an honesty in his lyrics that throw a mighty gut punch. I think he’s going to be huge in no time.
Conti is a British comedian who directs and stars in new film ‘Sunlight’.
Bruna Castro
Writer
The best thing I watched:
Une Langue Universelle [Universal Language], Matthew Rankin’s story set somewhere between Winnipeg and Tehran. I don’t really remember seeing a comedy quite like this before – it’s so quirky and poetic.
The best thing I read:
Camila Sosa Villada’s novel Las Malas (Bad Girls) is about a trans woman finding community on the margins, written in a style of magical realism. Camila Sosa Villada is a brilliant Argentinian author who deserves to be widely translated.
The best thing I listened to:
Colombian artist Lucrecia Dalt creates experimental music. As someone from Brazil, I know how frustrating it is when people reduce Brazilian music to the same three familiar rhythms. It’s the same with Colombia. I love cumbia but there’s so much more.
Castro is a Brazilian writer and the cofounder of new magazine ‘LatimLove’.
Henry Wilson
Designer
The best thing I watched:
The 2022 documentary Fire of Love tells the love story and work lives of two volcanologists and features incredible, slow visuals and a poignant, tragic end.
The best thing I read:
Simon Winchester’s Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World is an inspiring account of the history of precision and its profound impact on our lives. I’ve made it essential reading here at the studio. The audiobook is also excellent.
The best thing I listened to:
Alabaster DePlume’s Visit Croatia EP. His music is melodic jazz and we often have this on repeat in the studio and store. There’s a wonderful softness to it; I imagine it’s the kind of music my objects would listen to if they could.
Wilson is a designer based in Sydney and the founder of Studio Henry Wilson.
Robin Givhan
Fashion editor
The best thing I watched:
The Netflix series Adolescence is about a boy from an average, decent family who’s accused of a terrible crime. It’s a gutting story of our times that comes with no clear answers, only profound questions about isolation, virtual relationships and masculinity.
The best thing I read:
Wally Lamb’s The River is Waiting is a novel about forgiveness and what it means to those who receive it and those who are willing to offer it.
The best thing I listened to:
I love the New York Times’ The Interview podcast. Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks at length to people who are famous, powerful or simply interesting. There are no gimmicks. It’s just an exceptionally well-prepared interviewer asking smart questions, listening carefully and being curious rather than judgemental.
Givhan is the author of new book ‘Make it Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh’.
Zaho de Sagazan
Musician
The best thing I watched:
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, a beautiful film about children living on the margins of society. It’s full of colour and innocence, yet deeply heartbreaking.
The best thing I read:
All About Love by bell hooks made me rediscover what love means: its essence, its depth and its power to transform. It’s a book that questions everything we think we know about love and invites us to live it more consciously.
The best thing I listened to:
All the albums by Italian artist Andrea Laszlo De Simone have been the soundtrack of my year. His latest, released this year, is sublime. There’s something timeless and cinematic in his music that stays with me.
De Sagazan is a French singer-songwriter whose new album, ‘Les Symphonies des Éclairs (Orchestral Odyssey)’, is out now.
Bob van Heur
Festival director
The best thing I watched:
Oliver Laxe’s Sirât isn’t the best movie per se but it’s the most intense and epic movie I have seen. It leaves you stunned, mind-blown and even a bit traumatised. It has the epic proportions of Aguirre, the Wrath of God.
The best thing I read:
In Kalaf Epalanga’s book Whites Can Dance Too, so many of my interests come together: music, the realities of touring musicians, passport inequality, references to my favourite city, Lisbon, and an endless stream of mostly Angolan musical references. It’s told in three parts and has the dynamic energy of a great album.
The best thing I listened to:
Amor de Encava, from the Venezuelan collective Weed420, sounds like nothing else I’ve heard. A collage of sounds mixing Salsa Baúl, noise, reggaeton, encava bus sounds and more. With each listen you discover something new.
Van Heur is the founder and artistic director of Le Guess Who? festival.
Lynne Tillman
Author
The best thing I watched:
In four, hour-long films, Adolescence is a raw, unflinching depiction of a human dilemma and the ethical challenges that nearly break a family.
The best thing I read:
Natalia Ginzburg’s novel Family and Borghesia (translated by Beryl Stockman) portrays the “ordinary” worlds of two families in scrupulous and fierce writing, stripped bare of sentimentalism and melodrama.
The best thing I listened to:
Leon Russell’s “A Song for You”, sung by Russell, Ray Charles and Willie Nelson – the moving lyrics and Ray Charles’ piano-playing “feel” love and death.
Tillman is the author of new book ‘Thrilled to Death: Selected Stories’.
