The Year in Culture, from Hollywood to the Margins

It has been a year of growth for Truthdig’s arts and culture coverage. Award-winning writers reviewed films from every corner of the globe, celebrated the quirks and lesser-known works of legendary artists, and new and veteran contributors interviewed groundbreaking documentary filmmakers. They engaged with authors grappling with rapidly advancing technology and asked whether Hollywood learned anything from the #MeToo movement. Along the way, we also won an award for photojournalism, an essential format that we will continue to showcase in the coming year. 

Here are some of our most-read arts and culture stories from 2025: 

Stefano Schirato won an Eppy Award for Best Photojournalism on a Website for his photo essay “Caravans of Faith and Memory.” In his 23 images, Schirato tells the story of an ancient tradition — the annual Romani pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France, to honor St. Sara the Black, their patron saint — while capturing quieter, intimate moments of Romani life. 

Siddhant Adlakha reviewed the French sci-fi satire “The Empire,” a film that combined space opera and farce into an absurdist critique of both the genre’s tropes and the dehumanizing nature of violent conflict. He also wrote about “Red Rooms,” an icy, haunting thriller that exposes the ugliness behind our society’s true-crime obsession. Bedatri Choudhury interviewed Lebanese director Heiny Srour about her life, feminism and the legacy of her work given the current political climate in the Middle East upon the rerelease of her films “The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived” and “Leila and the Wolves.”

Longtime Truthdig contributor Jim Knipfel celebrated two giants of American art in essays this year. In honor of the Thomas Pynchon’s 88th birthday  — and the impending arrival of a new book and a film adaptation of one of his novels (Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” was inspired by “Vineland”) — Knipfel shared many reasons why we should be happy Pynchon is still with us. And after we lost legendary filmmaker and artist David Lynch in January, Knipfel remembered “On the Air,” Lynch’s short-lived and long-forgotten follow-up to “Twin Peaks.”

Eli Zeger lamented the fact that the paranoid political thriller is dead, while trust in institutions is at rock bottom and conspiracy theories are public policy, at the time we need it most. While the thrillers of the ’70s may be dead, Corey Atad looked at the ways current mainstream filmmakers are embracing ambiguity in their storytelling. He also took stock of 10 years of #MeToo cinema and found a disheartening truth: “What’s left is a few men who got punished, dashed hopes of female solidarity and the structures of power marching on.” 

Finally, Veronica Phillips looked at the long tradition of what one might call “endurance” entertainment. From “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” to the novel and film versions of “The Long Walk” to the viral video challenges of MrBeast, Americans keep tuning in to see people suffer for a prize.