IndieWire Critics Poll Topped by… Do I Even Need to Say It?

Another poll, another win for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another.”

Sometimes critics simply follow their instincts—and when a movie captures widespread admiration, it’s impossible to ignore. That’s the case with the top film in IndieWire’s 2025 Year-End Critics poll. Out of 148 critics participating in the survey, 101 included “One Battle After Another” somewhere in their Top 10, and 43 of those placed it at #1.

The film has now topped several critics’ polls, including Sight & Sound and Film Comment. On the awards front, it’s claimed Best Film honors from an impressive array of critics’ groups, including the Gothams, NBR, and the critics’ circles of Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, Toronto, and Washington.

At this point, the only real suspense left in awards season is whether it will lose anything at all. When’s the last time a film dominated the conversation this completely, flattening every critics’ group and ballot in its path?

I’m always a little wary of total unanimity. Not just with OBAA, but in general—massive critical consensus tends to feel syspicious to me. When a film manages to be the favorite of both Film Comment and Empire—bridging the supposed gap between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” tastemakers—there’s a small part of me that wonders whether it’s simply too broadly agreeable.

Typically, a clean awards-season sweep like the one “One Battle After Another” is enjoying signals a film that’s hit the zeitgeist a little too hard: a work that articulates ideas audiences and critics already want to hear, delivered in a form that’s accessible, affirming, and easy to rally around. OBAA will almost certainly land in my top ten of the year, and it contains several genuinely great sequences, but it’s not quite the radical, complex, or challenging work some would have you believe.

That said, I don’t see this as some catastrophic sign that film criticism has finally hit rock bottom—there’s plenty of other, more substantiated evidence pointing in that direction already. “One Battle After Another” isn’t the problem so much as it is a symptom: a reflection of a critical culture that often rewards comfort, consensus, and message alignment over friction, and genuine disagreement.

FULL INDIEWIRE RESULTS

Best Film

1. “One Battle After Another” — 573
2. “It Was Just an Accident” — 501
3. “Sinners” — 479
4. “Sentimental Value” — 391
5. “The Secret Agent” — 336
6. “Marty Supreme” — 259
7. “Train Dreams” — 259
8. “Sirat” — 206
9. “Hamnet” — 183
10. “Sorry, Baby” — 177

Best Director

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
2. Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
3. Kleber Mendonca Filho, “The Secret Agent”
4. Jafar Panahi, “It Was Just an Accident”
5. Josh Safdie, “Marty Supreme”
6. Oliver Laxe, “Sirat”
7. Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”
8. Mascha Schilinski, “The Sound of Falling”
9. Clint Bentley, “Train Dreams”
10. Guillermo del Toro, “Frankenstein”

Best Performance

1. Rose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
2. Ethan Hawke, “Blue Moon”
3. Wagner Moura, “The Secret Agent”
4. Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”
5. Timothee Chalamet, “Marty Supreme”
6. Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners”
7. TIE: Benicio Del Toro/Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”
9. Amanda Seyfried, “The Testament of Ann Lee”
10. Renate Reinsve, “Sentimental Value”

Best Screenplay

1. “One Battle After Another”
2. “It Was Just an Accident”
3. “Blue Moon”
4. “Sentimental Value”
5. “The Secret Agent”
6. “Sorry, Baby”
7. “Sinners”
8. “Weapons”
9. “Marty Supreme”
10. “Train Dreams”

Best Documentary

1. “The Perfect Neighbor”
2. “Predators”
3. “Orwell 2+2=5”
4. “My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow”
5. “Afternoons of Solitude”
6. “Put Your Soul on My Hand and Walk”
7. “Come See Me in the Good Light”
8. “Cover-Up”
9. “2,000 Meters to Andriivka”
10. “The Tale of Silyan”

Best Cinematography

1. “Train Dreams”
2. “One Battle After Another”
3. “Sinners”
4. “Frankenstein”
5. “Resurrection”
6. “The Secret Agent”
7. “Marty Supreme”
8. “The Sound of Falling”
9. “No Other Choice”
10. “Sirat”

Best International Feature

1. “It Was Just an Accident”
2. “Sentimental Value”
3. “The Secret Agent”
4. “Sirat”
5. “The Sound of Falling”
6. “Misericordia”
7. “No Other Choice”
8. “My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow”
9. “Caught by the Tides”
10. “Resurrection”