This year we are expanding our end of year awards season. We already name our top movies and TV shows (the TV list will be expanding from 5 to 10 this year too!), and give out our unique and coveted Best Cascadian Film award. But this year we will be giving out prizes to the best achievements in film. We very likely will continue to expand this section as we grow ourselves. Members first put forth nominations, then we voted on a final winner. The CFTCA presents our slate of 2025 film awards.
Best Director
- Chloe Zhao – Hamnet
- Clint Bentley – Train Dreams
- Joachim Trier – Sentimental Value
- Park Chan-wook – No Other Choice
- **Paul Thomas Anderson – One Battle After Another**
- Ryan Coogler – Sinners
In our most decisive category, Anderson, long a movie lover’s favourite filmmaker, took our Best Director prize in a landslide. A veteran of Hollywood and a rare auteur who manages to make big budget movies for adults within the studio system. PTA is once again mining the works of Thomas Pynchon, as he manages to blend off beat humour with revealing the underbelly of white supremacy groups that are financed by corporate America. He assembled an all star cast that features no weak links and put to film one of the most unique car chase sequences ever made.
Best Lead Performance
- Chase Infiniti – One Battle After Another
- Ethan Hawke – Blue Moon
- Jessie Buckley – Hamnet
- **Leonardo DiCaprio – One Battle After Another**
- Michael B. Jordan – Sinners
- Renate Reinsve – Sentimental Value
- Rose Byrne – If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Leo just barely edged out both Buckley and Hawke, showing once again he’s the king of the world. DiCaprio being paired with Paul Thomas Anderson for the first time in his career shows why the duo was a match made in film lovers heaven. Playing both a revolutionary named Ghetto Pat, an explosives expert in the French ‘75 madly in love with Perfidia Beverly Hills and the now retired single dad who goes by the assumed name of Bob, we see a wide range of emotions and character choices from the veteran actor. Whether he is stumbling across roof tops or using a rifle to take out immigration officers DiCaprio turned in the lead performance of the year.
Best Supporting Performance
- Amy Madigan – Weapons
- Benicio Del Toro – One Battle After Another
- Hailee Steinfeld – Sinners
- Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas – Sentimental Value
- Jacob Elordi – Frankenstein
- **Sean Penn – One Battle After Another**
- Stellan Skarsgård – Sentimental Value
- Teyana Taylor – One Battle After Another
In what came down to a runoff vote between Penn, Skarsgård and Elordi (a battle of who played a monster best according to CFTCA member Todd Pengelly), Penn took our award by a hair. A long time leading man, Sean Penn has solidified himself as a new company player in PTA’s troupe after appearing in Licorice Pizza. Here Penn plays Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, who runs a immigration detention centre that gets knocked over by the French ‘75 and gets humiliated by Perfidia Beverly Hills. He then spends the rest of his life making it his mission to take down the group, one member at a time. With a gait not used by any normal person and enough facial tics to question if it is too much, Penn hones in on an absolute buffonish racist that you can’t wait for him to get what he deserves.
Best Original Screenplay
- Black Bag
- Eddington
- Sentimental Value
- **Sinners**
- The Secret Agent
- Weapons
Ryan Coogler’s genre mash up between post World War One life in the south drama and vampire invasion thriller is oozing with creativity. Adding textual layers that will be discussed for years, like specifically making the lead vampire Remmick, Irish, a group that was not considered white during the films 1932 setting and their own colonial battles against the British is just one piece of genius in Coogler’s screenplay. Managing to make identical twins, Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan, feel so unique and different, highlights the level he is working on. The film’s most iconic moment, the performance of “I Lied To You” where Sammie Moore conjures up both the ancestors and descendants of music started on the page. Coogler crafted a smart and thrilling horror movie that will be topping best of lists for years to come.
Best Adapted Screenplay
- Bugonia
- Hamnet
- No Other Choice
- **One Battle After Another**
- Train Dreams
- Wake Up Dead Man
Anderson returns to the work of Thomas Pynchon, a writer he mined for 2014’sInherent Vice as well. Here he uses 1990’s Vineland as a jumping off point to help create the world that characters such as Perfidia Beverly Hills, Ghetto Pat, Jungle Pussy, Sensei Sergio and the Christmas Adventures Club all inhabit. The novel may have been written in 1990, but it couldn’t be more relevant to today. With immigration concentration camps popping up across America that are run by ICE, underground railroad groups protecting vulnerable people and acts of civil disobedience all on the rise, PTA has tapped into the moment. The film is darkly funny, from the white supremacists shouting out “Hail Saint Nick”, to the disturbing acts of violence and racism portrayed on screen it should be a hard film to pin down. Instead it is uniquely Anderson and boldly stands alone at the top.
Stay tuned for more great end of year content. Check out the nominees for Best Cascadian Film.