2025 Wrapped with Poster Room
Editors: Tammie Lim and Stephanie Jaina Chia
Contributors: Tammie Lim, Stephanie Jaina Chia, Glenn Koh, Yu Ke Dong, Nigel Goh, Randall Go
‘Tis the season of cultural scorekeeping. As year-end wraps roll in, our art consumption is flattened into numbers: films logged on Letterboxd, books counted on Goodreads, minutes tallied by Spotify. Across the mainstream and alternative, these metrics collapse into the same accounting logic—that cultural capital can be measured, compared, and overzealously shown off.
We cannot be wholly absolved from the above, but this “Poster Room Wrapped” is our promise to somewhat resist that scorekeeping. What follows isn’t a leaderboard built from algorithmic logic, nor a flex of quantity and obscurity, but a reflection of the works that minutely rearranged our sensibilities and tarried a while more in our hearts and minds.
It’s also worth noting that this collective is far from homogenous. We come to art from distinct preoccupations—cinema, visual arts, theatre, music, literature—and with them, different habits of attention, reference points, and thresholds for resonance. Hopefully, this results in a “Wrapped” that reflects the delightfully uneven and plural ways art moves through us.
Without further ado—
Tammie
Top New Watch: Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)
Thrice watched, thrice renewed. Coogler has a rare gift for elevating mainstream genres—think Black Panther and Creed’s action; Sinner’s vampiric tropes—into the realm of the historical, of life-affirming spirituality. Setting aside the tired demand for “realism” (suspension of disbelief is a moral necessity, I argue!!), Sinners unfolds its love stories—between man and woman, boy and blues—and its tensions—vampire versus Black community, man’s inclinations versus religion’s doctrines—like the most discordant pairs of chords resolving into the most moving of gospel harmonies. Aided by Ludwig Göransson’s 10/10 score and original songs (he really understood the assignment), the feelings swell, crest, have nowhere to go but lodge themselves firmly in your chest. To experience the essence and power of whole cultures pulse through sight and sound, rendered in something close to the psychic and transcendent, is good fortune in this lifetime.
Special Mentions:
It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi, 2025)
Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, 2025)
Top Old Release: The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2021)
There are films I’ve watched this year whose final sequences retroactively altered how I felt about everything that came before, for better or worse. The Worst Person in the World is one of them. For the first 100 minutes, my inner thoughts were largely cerebral: okay Joachim Trier, I see what you’re doing, very smart, very fresh. Admiration, held at arm’s length.
But by the time the ending sequence rolled around, and we followed Julie as she wrapped up work and returned home, I was suddenly undone. Bawling and grinding snot into tissue paper. An entirely involuntary emotional rupture. It really doesn’t help that Trier (and his music team) has such a good ear for folk-adjacent melancholy. Listening to Art Garfunkel’s “Waters of March” in this final sequence—A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the road…—felt like a final twist of the knife. I wept harder.
Special Mentions:
In The Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000) - Thank you, Singapore Film Society, for allowing me to rewatch this film in its 4K restoration on the big screen for the first time 🥺
Farewell, My Concubine (Chen Kaige, 1993)
Top Read: The Emperor of Gladness (Ocean Vuong, 2025)
At 416 pages, this behemoth of a novel—in terms of paperback size (really, it’s quite huge in the hand) and poetic sway—proved a deeply affecting read. Set in East Gladness, Connecticut, it traces an unlikely friendship between Hai, a runaway Vietnamese American young adult, and Grazina, a Lithuanian American woman living with dementia. In characteristic Vuong fashion, the prose distills the essence of his poetry into narrative form: rich ideas, lush imagery, intense emotional payoff. I was especially taken by Hai’s time at HomeMarket, where he works alongside his intellectually disabled cousin Sony and a ragtag crew of coworkers. These characters feel astonishingly lived-in; I’m convinced that if I were to travel to East Gladness now, I’d find them there, fully formed, going about their lives.
Special Mentions:
Tess of the D’urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
Shantih Shantih Shantih (Daryl Qilin Yam, 2021) - Favourite SingLit work I’ve read this year, among more recent and hyped releases such as Amanda Lee Koe’s Sister Snake and Jemimah Wei’s The Original Daughter.
Top Albums
Son of Spergy – Daniel Caesar
Favourite Tracks: “Who Knows”, “Sins of the Father” (ft. Bon Iver)
Mood: You’re standing in front of a mountain, and you take in the sky’s expanse and recognise the inexplicable gravitational pulls of this world.
The Diary of Living – Adam Melchor
Favourite Tracks: “The Diary of Living” (ft. Bruno Major), “Lightweight”
Mood: You’re kind of hungover after a night out. You start weighing the consequences of all the choices you’ve made in this lifetime.
Hers – Matt Maltese
Favourite Tracks: “Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow”, “Holiday From Yourself”, “Everybody’s Just As Crazy As Me”
Mood: You’re in the train, going crazy thinking about the person you’re obsessed with. Everyone around you is in a festive, joyous mood. You feel rich (but kind of sick) with all the love you have to give.
Who’s the Clown? – Audrey Hobert
Favourite Tracks: “Sue me”, “Sex and the city”
Mood: You feel like the main character in a movie, and you’re dancing in the room with no one watching. A hairbrush is your microphone.
Sinners (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) – Ludwig Göransson
Favourite Tracks: “I Lied to You”, “Last Time (I Seen the Sun)”
Mood: Life is on the cusp of starting anew. You’re in the back of a car, looking out at the sunrise. The air smells like a new dawning.
Steph
Top New Watch: Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, 2025)
There’s a Catholic prayer that ends with the words “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end”. The kind of warmth I receive from that prayer is similar to the feeling that grew in me as Silent Friend’s 2.5-hour runtime ticked on. I was absolutely rapt, and I could almost physically feel my brain rewiring and my view of the world shifting, creaking into clarity and peace.
Thinking about trees and flowers, academia and knowledge, human connection, and all the tiny untold stories across time that sing to each other without ever realising it. Very grateful I got to see this in a cinema!
Also, I wish I made this movie soooo bad lol… the last time I felt this way was after seeing Aftersun.
Special Mentions:
Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024)
One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)
Hamnet (Chloé Zhao, 2025)
Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, 2025)
Top Old Watch: The Hidden Fortress (Akira Kurosawa, 1958)
The blueprint! It’s so crazy watching an old-ass film and seeing the well-defined strokes of what will go on to shape so many seminal, beloved movies of our generation. A hugeee, hilarious, epic film about unlikely friendships, sacrifice, and power.
Kurosawa is your favourite filmmaker’s favourite filmmaker.
Special Mentions:
A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2001 4K restoration)
Stranger Things (Seasons 1-4)
Hot Ones (the interview series by First We Feast)
Top Listens
“Nissan Altima” – Doechii
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” – Gil Scott-Heron
“Will Ye Go, Lassie Go?” – Sinners (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
“Simulation Swarm” – Big Thief
“The Sun is Burning” – Simon and Garfunkel
“Landslide” – Fleetwood Mac
“Otis” – Jay-Z, Kanye West, Otis Redding
“Through the Wire” – Kanye West
“Afraid of Heights” – boygenius
“Sun Bleached Flies” – Ethel Cain
“A House in Nebraska” – Ethel Cain
“200度” – Sally Yeh
“Mood Ring” – Lorde
“Broken Glass” – Lorde
“Henry, Come On” – Lana Del Ray
“Tough” – Lana Del Ray
“老实情歌 / 靠近” – Harlem Yu, Joanna Dong
Top Artworks
Bombay Tilts Down (CAMP, 2022)
“Has this city died?!”. An incredible, jaw-dropping video installation compressing the pulse of Bombay into a hypnotic percussion-and-base-heavy soundtrack (by Tushar Adhav), and several screens of video taken from a CCTV camera mounted atop a thirty-five storey building. This work shook me to my core… I was not the same afterwards.
Listening Air (Shilpa Gupta, 2019-2025)
I actually cried experiencing this. Rows of dim bulbs, wires, and hanging microphones sway in the space. From the microphones – engineered such that each is a speaker emitting a single, unique voice – rise the music of protest songs sung across generations and cultures. Amazing sound design… this work moved me.
* Both artworks were viewed at Choreographies of the Everyday (2025), the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s 30th Anniversary exhibition.
Glenn
Top New Watch: Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, 2025)
If anything, this movie made me feel. Going in blind without the context of Hamlet or other Shakespearean works, the stellar performances of Jessie Buckley & Paul Mescal carried the weight of grief, loss, and the kind of love only a Mother is capable of. The stage (no pun intended) was set for the rousing sequence of Shakespeare’s tribute to and remembrance of Hamnet, offering catharsis for everyone involved. Some might contend that the feel trip was forcibly engineered, but I’m not ashamed to admit that it worked.
Top Old Watch: Oasis (Lee Chang-dong, 2002)
Described to me as a heavy watch, progressive feels like a more apt interpretation of Oasis. Amid its bleakness—an ex-offender struggles to find his place in society, and makes morally reprehensible decisions—there are moments of colour and tenderness. The relationship between Jong-du and Gong-ju as they navigate life as outcasts to family and society brings unexpected warmth. Oasis beautifully portrays disability with dignity and, rather than passing judgement on the characters’ actions, chooses to humanise them. Far ahead of its time, the film would be equally lauded if released in 2025. A poignant watch!
Top Coffee Shop Visit: Prolog Coffee Bar (Papirøen)
Picture this: a sunny Tuesday in Copenhagen at noon, a perfect ten degrees. Skirting the crowds at the iconic Nyhavn, we cross a bridge over gleaming blue waters to arrive at Paper Island. Once a storage site for rolls of newsprint for the Danish press, the area has since been transformed into a modern enclave of contemporary art, residences, and dining.
We settle onto one of the outdoor benches, where the first sip of a washed-process Ethiopian Chelchele iced black (iced coffee in autumn? A perfect exercise of free will, if you ask me…) unfolds almost like iced tea, expressive with stone fruit and citrus. Its natural-process counterpart from Chelchele, by contrast, delivers punchy mixed berries and florals in equal measure.
What made our visit, beyond the excellent coffees, was the calm I felt in that moment: a quiet gratitude for encountering such ideal conditions, fully lived and deeply felt.
Ke Dong
IT’S BEEN GOOD. WE STAY BLESSED. WE STAY WINNING.
Top New Watch: Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi, 2025)
If you’ve ever wanted to experience life as a chronically bitchless gingko tree, go watch this movie. I’m going to make it my personal mission to be trapped in an empty university campus with all the free time in the world to go slowly insane while conducting crazy experiments in a beautiful park.
Top Old Watch: Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
“I had a dream. I was in a strange land. A vast wilderness. I went on and on, but met no one. I called, I shouted...but no one answered. I was alone. Alone in the wide world. I felt a chill... Such stupidity!”
Don’t watch this on your laptop or something ridiculous like that. Watch it in a cinema packed with people, with a screen at least the height of the average male giraffe. It’s amazing.
Top Matcha Spot: ROOKIE & HAUS CONCEPT STORE
I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve had matcha in, like, at least four different cities. My favourite one thus far—and I won’t lie—is the matcha latte at ROOKIE & HAUS CONCEPT STORE at Golden Mile Tower. This one’s for the folks who like out-of-the-way spots, dying malls, thrift stores, punk tattoos, grunge graphic design, and banana pudding. The matcha is the perfect mix of intensely gao, deliciously creamy—a beautiful marriage of performative beverage and ice cream sundae. Not too sweet.
Best Kaya Toast: Toast Box…
This one’s important. Best kaya toast you probably haven’t had is Toast Box’s “kaya butter soft bun” (limited-time menu). Listen. LISTEN. Regular kaya toast is CRUMBLY, SOFT and structurally unsound—especially when you dip it in egg or kopi or whatever. Soft buns are built different. It not only holds up under pressure, but will absorb AS MUCH soft boiled egg as you need it to. The end result is like kaya toast on crack—dense and savoury and sweet and delicious. There is a gorgeous balance between fluffy bread and crispy surface that will elevate your breakfast experience to the next level. Beware the “soft bun kaya toast”: once you have it, you won’t be going back.
Top Album: AMERIKA’S NEXT TOP PARTY! – PARTYOF2
It’s everything you want: a bit of screamo, a bit of rap/hip-hop, a bit of diss track and a bit of boppy disco exercise music. It’s a mindbending odyssey from start to finish, and after you’re done, you wonder if PARTYOF2 will even stick together after this release, cus’ how can you possibly top this album?
Top Tracks
“jungle” by Chanpan, but specifically the version they sang in Medium Sized Backyard (available on YouTube). It’s slick, it’s sexy, it’s too cool for school. Grace’s voice is perfect in this one—think ethereal punk rock—and the twins back her up with a breakcore-influenced guitar and drum track that ties it all together. Shoutout to SEA kids for making it big in music, we need MORE.
Also, Charli XCX’s “house featuring John Cale”. Wonky strings, Cale’s sexy growl, Charli’s anguished screech, it all comes together into the rawest track that’ll fuck up your eardrums and also your entire afternoon. If you like mourning, plotting revenge, stewing in your own fury and wreaking havoc, this is your jam.
Nigel
wyd in 2026?
Top New Watch: Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025)
Generational memory, struggle, experience, and love run deeply throughout the film. Structured around a house, bittersweet nostalgia oozes out of every frame, even as the central arc invites suspense over whether the film-within-the-film is autobiographical.
From the loving attention paid to intimate shots, awkward scans, and ponderous looks, Trier really spends a lot of time letting his actors sell the story. The result is a heartfelt story filled with introspection, encouraging the audience to witness and hold onto the characters’ experiences, and to reflect on what has truly kept the house, the structure, and the family together all this time.
Special Mention: Amoeba (Tan Siyou, 2025)
Divisive and masterfully made in equal measure, Amoeba has become a darling of film festivals worldwide. Plot threads go nowhere at times, or resolve into even more loose points—it’s perhaps a consequence of having so many film labs touch the film. In my opinion, the director delivered a thrilling first two-thirds, only to wrap things up with a finish that felt flimsy and oddly cold.
Still, Ranice Tay’s lead performance as Choo is quietly compelling. As she totes her camcorder around, we see the hairs rising on the back of her neck when she encounters a love interest, and the ghost she cohabits with in her bedroom at home. The film becomes less about narrative resolution and more about observation.
A must-watch for anyone hoping to capture and understand the anchors of the Singaporean teenage experience. What begins as one girl’s attempt to steady herself amid friendships, rituals, and routines gradually reveals something sharper: a life constantly being reinvented and reshaped in pursuit of becoming the “perfect” Singaporean student, one exam at a time. That, I thought, was quite clever. Watch it in March 2026 (thank you, Anticipate Pictures)!!
Top Old Watch: Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2010)
Shame is a strange thing. It can quiet you, make you act out, drive you to emigrate to Canada, and do some crazy things.
Watching Incendies for the first time on a flight back to Singapore, I was struck by how viciously and brutally shame announces itself in the opening scenes. The film’s haunting cinematography pulled me through a disorienting progression of: “holy hell this is so slow”, into an “okay what the heck is happening”, before crescendoing into a “NO THAT CAN’T ACTUALLY BE ONSCREEN RIGHT?” When the realisation finally lands—that moments in the film’s seemingly uneventful first third mattered far more than you ever imagined—the weight of that despair is devastating.
It’s a rare emotional rollercoaster. By the end, your heart feels as though it’s leapt out of your chest—beating, pulsing in your own hands.
Top Listens
Forever is a Feeling – Lucy Dacus
Favorite Track: “Best Guess”
Mood: Watching Challengers for the fourth time and you kinda get what the scene in the brake lights means. Such catharsis when Tashi got in the car.
Moisturiser – Wet Leg
Favorite Track: “mangetout”, “pokemon”
Mood: Burning a streak down the CTE at 2am, your heart in your chest, your mouth in your lungs.
(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? – Oasis
Favorite Track: “Roll with It”
Mood: This is your Garnier song of feeling supremely hydrated and refreshed. Can you feel the rain on your skin?
Kaputt – Destroyer
Favorite Track: “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker”
Mood: Silky smooth lick on a flute – bear with the long-ass intro, it’s a lot of ponderous synth, but it opens up into a wondrous soundscape.
Virgin – Lorde
Favorite Track: “Man of the Year”
Mood: You’re gonna tear something, or someone a new butt – this is your therapy song after feeling dangerous.
Randall
Top New Watch: Happyend (Neo Sora, 2024)
I was fortunate to have caught Happyend on the big screen in 2025. This year, like the students in Happyend, I graduated too. The coincidence added weight to my watch of the film, offering perspective on the unavoidable departure I was coming to terms with as Graduation drew near.
Happyend’s absurdism, paired with its social commentary on surveillance and ethnic diversity in a futuristic Tokyo, was compelling. But it was its ending that completely undid me. Over the course of the film, best friends Yuta and Kou navigate the slow unravelling of their relationship as they approach the end of high school. Their friendship drifts for many reasons, but at its core, the rupture is ideological. Though their separation feels inevitable, the film approaches their growth and farewell in a way that feels distinct within the coming-of-age genre.
(Spoiler alert!)
The film ends on a freeze frame: Yuta and Kou stand on opposite sides of a Y-shaped overhead crossing. They smile. They wave. While the film suggests that they have come to terms with the end of this chapter in their friendship, the freeze frame denies the viewer the act of departure itself. Instead, we are held in the suspended moment of goodbye. This pause confronted me with my own memories of parting—goodbyes I’ve said to people whom I no longer regularly see, now that we’ve gone our separate ways.
Top Artwork: Textile Collection at KALM Village, Chiang Mai
On the second and third levels of the KALM Archive, there is a Textile Collection presenting a survey of Southeast Asian textiles. Within this quiet corner of the premises, the brilliance of artisans from across the region is celebrated. Works on display embody an “intricate grandness”—handmade textiles of remarkable skill, patience, and cultural depth. Notably, however, there were no Singaporean textiles represented in the collection.
Visiting this archive left me with two reflections:
How deeply interconnected Southeast Asian countries are through shared techniques, motifs, and histories;
How uprooted Singapore feels from its own rich cultural ancestry.
Poster Room’s Special Mentions
Anticipate Pictures
Thank you to Vincent and the team for fighting the good fight. For continuing to bring indie cinema to our sunny shores and for persisting when the going got tough. All done with keen eyes and impeccable taste!!
Team behind We Can Save The World (2025)
Sending our love to Chai Hong, Martin, Yi Jia, Jia Min, and the entire cast and crew of the epic We Can Save The World. You made the year feel so much lighter—and more hopeful. Singapore needs more good comedy, and we’re thrilled to see you leading the charge.
Spotify Playlist Here!
Want to check out our favourite music of 2025? Fear not—we’ve put it all in a playlist for you!
