Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with mournful minimalism, Mohinder Kaur Bhamra’s 1982 album of Punjabi disco makes a comeback and Guatemalan duo Titanic serve up ecstatic tracks
• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

A 40-minute suite of continuous, repetitive drumming might not sound like the most accessible music but south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar’s latest album, There Is Beauty, There Already, turns this concept of insistent rhythm into strangely alluring work. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive language throughout the record’s 10 movements, channelling Steve Reich’s phasing motifs as well as Indian classical phrasing and anchoring each in the repetition of a continual, thrumming refrain. As the album continues, the refrain begins to emulate the hypnotic repetition of ceremonial rhythm, drawing us further into Korwar’s percussive world the longer we listen.

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© Photograph: Ada Navarro

© Photograph: Ada Navarro

© Photograph: Ada Navarro

Executed with trademark technical flair and empathy, this part-horror, part-fairytale set in a haunted orphanage from 2001 is one of the director’s best

He’s a household name now after The Shape of Water and his new Frankenstein, but 25 years ago Guillermo del Toro was a virtual unknown, still bruised from the Harvey Weinstein-produced Hollywood flop Mimic. But, as this overlooked follow-up attests, he was always a class act. In fact, this is one of his best: a rich, rousing ghost story shrouded in trademark gothic gloom but executed with technical flair and a good deal of empathy.

As with his later breakthrough Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s part-horror, part-fairytale, with children at its centre. The setting is a middle-of-nowhere boys’ orphanage in 1930s Spain, a leftist sanctuary from Franco’s fascists during the civil war. Newcomer Carlos (Fernando Tielve) must find his feet in this semi-surreal realm, with an unexploded bomb in the middle of the courtyard, some kindly adults (one-legged Marisa Paredes and kindly doctor Federico Luppi), some not-so-kindly adults (aggressive caretaker Eduardo Noriega), and junior bullies to win over. There’s also a ghost in the mix: a pale-faced boy named Santi, whose death no one seems to want to discuss, and to whose empty bed Carlos is ominously assigned.

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© Photograph: Miguel Bracho/Canal+Espana/Kobal/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Miguel Bracho/Canal+Espana/Kobal/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Miguel Bracho/Canal+Espana/Kobal/Shutterstock

The Harvard professor provides a ceaseless flow of startling details in this exhaustively researched, 1000-year account

In the early 17th century, the Peruvian city of Potosí billed itself as the “treasure of the world” and “envy of kings”. Sprouting at the foot of the Cerro Rico, South America’s most populous settlement produced 60% of the world’s silver, which not only enabled Spain to wage its wars and service its debts, but also accelerated the economic development of India and China. The city’s wealthy elites could enjoy crystal from Venice and diamonds from Ceylon while one in four of its mostly indigenous miners perished. Cerro Rico became known as “the mountain that eats men”.

The story of Potosí, in what is now southern Bolivia, contains the core elements of Sven Beckert’s mammoth history of capitalism: extravagant wealth, immense suffering, complex international networks, a world transformed. The Eurocentric version of capitalism’s history holds that it grew out of democracy, free markets, Enlightenment values and the Protestant work ethic. Beckert, a Harvard history professor and author of 2015’s prize-winning Empire of Cotton, assembles a much more expansive narrative, spanning the entire globe and close to a millennium. Like its subject, the book has a “tendency to grow, flow, and permeate all areas of activity”. Fredric Jameson famously said that it was easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. At times during these 1,100 pages, I found it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Capitalism.

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© Photograph: benedek/Getty Images/iStockphoto

© Photograph: benedek/Getty Images/iStockphoto

© Photograph: benedek/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Our 20 favourite pieces of in-depth reporting, essays and profiles from the year

Victor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist?

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© Composite: Guardian Design/Pamela Gordon/ Simon Dack / Alamy Stock Photo/Didier Descouens/REX/Shutterstock/PA/Mr Beast/Claudine O'Sullivan

© Composite: Guardian Design/Pamela Gordon/ Simon Dack / Alamy Stock Photo/Didier Descouens/REX/Shutterstock/PA/Mr Beast/Claudine O'Sullivan

© Composite: Guardian Design/Pamela Gordon/ Simon Dack / Alamy Stock Photo/Didier Descouens/REX/Shutterstock/PA/Mr Beast/Claudine O'Sullivan

Had just about enough of real-life Santas and 8-year-olds with booby traps? Kevin E G Perry rounds up a handful of darker and deranged movies that still deliver Christmas cheer

© Getty/The Independent

Un autre teaser du film Avengers: Doomsday circule sur le net, avec un doublage français. Il met en scène un autre super-héros clé du Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Un autre teaser du film Avengers: Doomsday circule sur le net, avec un doublage français. Il met en scène un autre super-héros clé du Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

She’s such a great interviewer that this chat with Kenneth Branagh feels like it deserves an entire series. It’s relentlessly charming – and hugely moving when they talk about Dame Judi’s late husband

Cast your mind back to Christmas 2017, and you might remember a slightly wacky BBC documentary called Dame Judi Dench: My Passion for Trees. On the surface, it seemed like one of those god-awful shows put together by tombola; matching a celebrity with a random subject and hoping it would pass muster.

However, this was not the case. Dame Judi Dench, it turned out, really did have a passion for trees. An obsessive passion, one that manifested itself in a small woodland where she named trees after friends of hers who had died. The result was unexpectedly tender and gorgeous, and the show ended up being the best thing on TV that Christmas.

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© Photograph: Sky UK

© Photograph: Sky UK

© Photograph: Sky UK

The coming of the New Year, and its attendant celebrations, are all about hope. Read More

Georgette Lemaire est décédée à l’âge de 82 ans. Figure de la chanson française, elle interprèta le succès de « Vous étiez belle, madame » en 1968.

Georgette Lemaire est décédée à l’âge de 82 ans. Figure de la chanson française, elle interprèta le succès de « Vous étiez belle, madame » en 1968.

La Bretagne a réduit sa dépendance au marché chinois. Mais la nouvelle taxe sur les produits laitiers pourrait indirectement toucher la filière.

La Bretagne a réduit sa dépendance au marché chinois. Mais la nouvelle taxe sur les produits laitiers pourrait indirectement toucher la filière.

La comédienne Monique Tarbès est décédée le 8 décembre à l’âge de 91 ans. Elle avait notamment été à l’affiche de « La Bonne occase » de Michel Drach ou encore de « Le Magnifique » de Philippe de Broca au côté de Jean-Paul Belmondo.

La comédienne Monique Tarbès est décédée le 8 décembre à l’âge de 91 ans. Elle avait notamment été à l’affiche de « La Bonne occase » de Michel Drach ou encore de « Le Magnifique » de Philippe de Broca au côté de Jean-Paul Belmondo.