Best of 2025
The 10 Best Art Films of 2025
A day in the life of Peter Hujar, a bungled museum heist, and Meredith Monk's six-decade career were the subjects of some of our favorite art films this year.
Film
Features
Running Is Resistance in “Remaining Native”
The new documentary follows a Paiute teenager as he navigates his passion for running and the story of his great-grandfather, who escaped from an Indigenous residential school.
Features
Drunk Santas, Yoko Ono, and Other Joys of DOC NYC
From the disruptive nonsense of Santacon to Kwame Brathwaite’s “Black is Beautiful” movement, here’s what to see or stream.
Film Review
The Sacrifices of the Single-Mother Artist
Artists in Residence tells the story of Lois Dodd, Eleanor Magid, and Louise Kruger as they forged lives as working artists and single mothers in midcentury New York.
Interview
The Art World Loves to Talk Shit
The co-directors of “It’s Just a Fucking Opening,” a new short film, spoke to Hyperallergic about toxic sociality and the line between criticism and gossip in the art world.
Features
The Museum Donors Accused of Sucking California Dry
Pistachio Wars argues that billionaires Lynda and Stewart Resnick are harming California’s environment as they artwash their damage.
Features
Berlin’s Porn Film Festival Celebrates 20 Years
Pushing back against rigid boundaries between erotic film and art, the annual festival creates an inclusive, sex-positive space for exploring human desire.
Film Review
The True-ish Story of a Rediscovered Schiele Masterpiece
The new film Auction layers an awful lot of melodramatic meat on the skeleton of the facts to create its vision of the art world.
Film Review
Sharon Lockhart’s Beguiling Tableaus of Children in Nature
Windward pulls us into an almost prelapsarian vision of childhood existence on Newfoundland’s Fogo Island: no phones, no screens, no sense of impending climate crisis.
Film Review
Mount Vesuvius Casts Its Shadow Over Below The Clouds
Gianfranco Rosi beautifully captures the unease of life in Naples, near the legendary volcano, and of modern times in his new film.
Film Review
Not Your Typical Art Heist Flick
Blue-collar art thefts were the inspiration for Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, which plumbs the conservative turn of the 1970s United States.
Features
The New York Film Festival Dives Into the Art Scene
From feature films to experimental shorts, several highlights of this year’s lineup explore what it takes to live and work as an artist.