In 2025, as Foreign Policy expanded its film and television coverage, it seemed that the geopolitical turbulence of recent years finally made its way to the big screen. This year’s popular titles felt more internationally minded than previous ones, perhaps reflecting a public desire to better understand our volatile world. Thankfully, FP contributors were up to the task of critiquing these films and unpacking their lessons for today’s global thinker.
So grab your popcorn—and maybe a notepad, because the reviews below are sure to teach you something new about the world, whether they are unraveling the tensions at the heart of German security debates or exploring what Superman might have to say about the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
In 2025, as Foreign Policy expanded its film and television coverage, it seemed that the geopolitical turbulence of recent years finally made its way to the big screen. This year’s popular titles felt more internationally minded than previous ones, perhaps reflecting a public desire to better understand our volatile world. Thankfully, FP contributors were up to the task of critiquing these films and unpacking their lessons for today’s global thinker.
So grab your popcorn—and maybe a notepad, because the reviews below are sure to teach you something new about the world, whether they are unraveling the tensions at the heart of German security debates or exploring what Superman might have to say about the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
1. It’s (Still) Henry Kissinger’s World
By Julian E. Zelizer, Oct. 24
Long before his death in 2023, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s legacy was already a controversial subject of debate: Was he a brilliant diplomat, or a war criminal? Kissinger, a two-part documentary released this year, “offers a refreshing alternative to the black-and-white lens through which many have debated his career,” FP columnist Julian E. Zelizer writes.
From his childhood in an observant Jewish household in Weimar Germany to his peak influence on the global stage, the film examines the experiences that shaped Kissinger and how he, in turn, shaped the worldview of generations of elected officials that followed. It does not shy away, however, from the devastation his realpolitik wrought in places such as Chile and Cambodia: “Not only did he accept rampant political violence and repression but crafted foreign policies that strengthened those very forces,” Zelizer writes. “In doing so, his policies intensified the exact kind of instability that he promised to avoid.”
2. ‘September 5’ and the Pitfalls of German Idealism
By Allison Meakem, Feb. 27
The 1972 Munich Olympics massacre was not only the biggest tragedy in Olympic history—it was also the first act of terrorism that the world watched in real time, broadcast on television.
September 5 is a fictional rendering of this harrowing hostage crisis from inside a chaotic ABC newsroom, whose staffers largely struggle to fathom Germany’s lack of security measures and armed police. It’s a deft media study, FP’s Allison Meakem writes, but also a revealing look at a fundamental tension in German security policy that endures to this day: “When so much of the country’s history is rooted in military and police atrocities, how can modern Germany correct course while still assuming the basic defensive responsibilities of a state?”
3. Putin vs. the Press
By Anastasia Edel, Oct. 3
Olga Churakova, a subject in the documentary My Undesirable Friends, used to be in Russia’s presidential press pool, back when it allowed independent media. Now she is considered a foreign agent and lives in exile.Film still from My Undesirable Friends.
Press freedoms were certainly on the mind this year, particularly for those of us living in the United States. The documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow serves as a warning of how quickly a free press can be dismantled. It’s an intimate and chilling glimpse into Russia’s crackdown on the fourth estate leading up to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The film follows a group of independent female journalists “whose job is to tell the truth in a place where truth has been banned,” social historian Anastasia Edel writes. Though burdened by their designation as foreign agents, they are fearless, defiant, and determined to continue their work. Edel’s review manages to capture just how compelling and harrowing their story is: “It is at once a female odyssey, a historical record, and a hard look at an unraveling society on the edge of the abyss.”
4. Superman the Interventionist
By Jordan Hoffman, July 11
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane—it’s the definitive pop culture representative of American exceptionalism!” With his characteristic humor, film critic Jordan Hoffman reviews the blockbuster hit that was this year’s Superman movie. Though lighter fare than the others on this list, it’s a surprisingly insightful look into the history behind the world’s most famous superhero.
Created by two first-generation Jewish Americans, the original Superman character was “a fantasy version of the American Dream” grounded in the Jewish and immigrant experience. In U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, this symbolism has taken on new resonance. So too have Superman’s “interventionist” tendencies: Depending on your point of view, when Superman flies in and destroys a foreign country’s tanks without a single casualty, he “is either stepping up to a heroism the U.S. government has no stomach for, or is using his might unilaterally without government oversight,” Hoffman writes.
If nothing else, the movie is sure to spark some debates with the foreign-policy wonks in your life.
5. What Happens to China’s Surplus Men?
By Drew Gorman, Dec. 12
It’s hard enough to find love, let alone when the demographic odds are stacked against you. The Dating Game is a documentary that follows a group of Chinese bachelors struggling to navigate the dating world in the wake of the one-child policy. To improve their prospects, they seek out Hao, a dating coach whose blunt and cringeworthy methods promise to help them land a partner.
“It is somewhat confounding why thousands of men are supposedly signing up for this awful advice,” FP’s Drew Gorman writes. But it makes more sense when you understand the immense marriage pressure these men face, compounded by severe economic challenges that “cast a gloomy shadow over an entire generation’s romantic prospects.” The film provides an insightful look into how state policies have shaped individual people’s lives, from former leader Deng Xiaoping’s industrialization push to the current youth unemployment crisis.
As the bachelors’ journeys unfold, Gorman writes, viewers may begin to “worry about the social fallout from a dating system that, by failing to deliver the success it promises, can drive men toward the dangerous politics of resentment”—a growing issue in China and beyond.