The 2025 Festival Films You Need to Know

Speed + Volcano, with the watertight direction of Paul Greengrass (United 93, Captain Phillips), and a pair of outstanding performances from a hard-luck Matthew McConaughey and a determined America Ferrera, The Lost Bus maneuvers past the ‘90s disaster thriller genre to which the film is so clearly indebted, mainly with stunning visual effects that will make you believe that Greengrass actually recreated hell on earth ... then drove a busload of kids through the middle of it! Based on the true account of a school bus driver and an elementary teacher’s race to rescue 22 children from the rapidly spreading wildfires that consumed acres of Northern California during the 2018 Camp Fire, this ride is best on a big screen, but I suspect most everyone will idle their engines until it hits Apple TV+ on Oct 3. — Alex Logan

Streaming on Apple TV+

For fans still reeling from 2019’s Uncut Gems, the Safdie Brothers—now working solo—are delivering not one, but TWO sports-driven features this year, and The Smashing Machine is Benny’s entry into the ring. The film tracks the real-life highs and lows of MMA and UFC champion Mark Kerr, with Dwayne Johnson shedding his usual action-hero persona to fully inhabit the fighter’s grueling world—period-accurate looks, prosthetic makeup, and all. The Smashing Machine promises the intense, visceral punch the Safdies are known for. If it lands, Johnson won’t be the only one drenched in sweat.

In theaters

With his heart on his sleeve and a devilish grin on his lips, Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro explained that adapting Mary Shelley’s masterwork into a personal fable of fathers and sons is “like marrying a widow – you have to respect the memory of the late husband. But on Saturday, you gotta party on.” Oscar Isaac plays the bad dad/mad scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein, while Jacob Elordi absolutely disappears, physically and vocally, into the role of del Toro’s misunderstood monster, whose reanimated tissue is the beating heart of this extremely earnest and epic morality play. Sure, there may be too much of Victor’s childhood in Act I, then these chintzy CGI wolves look like leftovers from The Day After Tomorrow, and there are a few trademark on-the-nose lines, like “Victor, you’re the monster!” But, the visual spectacle of del Toro’s rip-roaring retelling hits harder than the Creature’s super-powered punches that literally break a man’s back in half during the film’s arctic ass-kicking of an opening — Alex Logan

In select theaters Oct. 17; coming to Netflix Nov. 7

Ronan Day-Lewis is a painter, and Anemone would play better in a collection of his artwork. As a prestige feature film being positioned as an awards contender, one distinguished by Daniel Day-Lewis' return to acting, the project is a thorough let-down. Mixtape emotions and prosaic filmmaking obscure the story, where themes of child abuse, areligion, and veteran's trauma are drowned out by the beautiful score by Bobby Krlic (aka The Haxan Cloak). Two decades ago, Ray (DDL’s character) made a personal choice to retreat from the world to a cabin the woods, completely off the grid. In the present day, as Jem (Sean Bean’s character, Ray’s estranged sibling) learns why Ray made his decision – courtesy of a vile DDL monologue that no one will turn into a meme – the best decision Ray could have made for his family, and the audience, would have been to cut tail and respect this irredeemable character’s life choices. — Arno Kazarian

In theaters

Here’s another where I love the director’s work so dearly that I bought a ticket without reading a synopsis. And then, here’s a film that almost defies being synopsized into a brief log line. Like Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice, two all-timers for me, writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen cranks the dark humor up to eleven for this wild fable of brothers trying to retrieve a buried loot. The great Mads Mikkelsen leads all three of Jensen’s directorial efforts, always playing a drastically different role. In fact, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Nicolas Bro, and Lars Brygmann also carry over from the other films, a stock company of Danish comedic deviants who are fully on board for Jensen’s non-stop chaos that dashes between a history of Viking society in Denmark, a bank robbery, a hospital escape, the forming of a Beatles tribute act (of mental patients with dissociative identity disorders) that quickly transforms into an ABBA cover act instead, and a reckoning with the abuse the brothers suffered at the hands of their father. The zig-zagging tone may make your head spin, but if you hang on tight, this bumpy ride pays off with a lot of heart. — Alex Logan

In theaters Oct. 9

Channing Tatum drops into the unbelievable true story of Jeffrey “Roofman” Manchester, a former U.S. Army Reserve soldier who earned his nickname by breaking into McDonald’s through the roof—and later living inside a Toys “R” Us for months to evade capture. Director Derek Cianfrance, known for intense dramas like Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines, taps into his lighter side, bringing a comedic edge to this wild real-life tale. Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, and Juno Temple also star.

In theaters Oct. 10

Harris Dickinson is going for it. The newly minted A-list actor, who first caught our eye with Beach Rats, will make his directorial debut at Cannes with Urchin. Despite the heavy sounding premise, we’ve read the movie finds humor in its protagonist’s circumstances. Feels like a custom fit for Frank Dillane, an actor who knows a thing or two about dicey on-screen situations; he’s the guy who had to try and kick heroin during a zombie outbreak on “Fear the Walking Dead.”

In theaters Oct. 10

Kathryn Bigelow introduces US President Idris Elba near the midpoint of her contemporary disaster movie, where a doomsday scenario plays out in 18-minute segments from an array of government situation rooms and military outposts. Normally, I'd love to live in a movie world where the former Stringer Bell runs the country, just shooting hoops with kids from an after-school program. But A House Full of Dynamite is Rashomon stripped of the notion of subjective truth. Instead, we watch Bigelow's ensemble cast acknowledge the same harrowing reality, where their respective training and billions of dollars spent on defense are no certain guarantee against an attack on domestic soil. This isn't The Hurt Locker, or even Zero Dark Thirty; it's is a salvo from a director who has brought the threat home. — Arno Kazarian

In theaters Oct. 10 and coming to Netflix Oct. 24

Director Edward Berger's lightweight follow-up to papal thriller Conclave attempts to channel Wong Kar-wai and Bi Gan for a neon-soaked lost weekend in the lush hotels and dark alleys of Macau’s gambling paradise/purgatory. Colin Farrell was made to smooth a John Waters-style pencil thin mustache as a degenerate card shark, and Tilda Swinton is in her comfort zone as the mysterious kook trailing Farrell, but this trip is only about the sightseeing, failing to dig below the grime and blood-soaked streets. I still recommend the virtual visit to Macau and pretty much anything with Farrell playing a dirtbag. — Alex Logan

In theaters Oct. 14 and coming to Netflix Oct. 20

Here’s a movie that instantly made me want to marathon the director’s entire filmography. Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been arrested for his art; Accident and his past five features were illegally shot in his home country. Despite the injustice he suffers, Panahi retains his compassion and channels it into a satirical revenge story that is more human drama than searing commentary in which a former political prisoner named Vahid believes he recognizes the distinctive squeak of his torturer’s artificial leg, but having been blindfolded during their past encounters, he does the only sensible thing – Vahid locks the suspected torturer in the back of his work van and hauls him around the city to ask other former political prisoners if they can identify the guilty party. What ensues is a gutting tale of traumatized people triggering their suppressed pain that is suddenly funny when you least expect it to be. But, it’s always human, always compassionate. — Alex Logan

In theaters Oct. 15

Lesser Luca Guadagnino still can haunt you. After the Hunt, a chamber piece shot within gorgeous interiors, is an irritant, a story unconcerned with truth or conclusions. I’m just not convinced there’s more to these provocations than icky characters, most of them careerist academics who are protected, to varying degrees, at a fictional version of Yale University. With no one to champion, and no certainty any transgression occurred, I felt unaffected as the characters gravitated toward their own black holes. With the exception of Michael Stuhlbarg’s Frederik, who plays Julia Roberts’ mildly addled husband; I wanted him to get a divorce and teach me how to make a cassoulet.

In theaters Oct. 17

With Josh O'Connor's name above the title, the latest project from director Kelly Reichardt (First Cow) has attracted a fair share of chatter. The Mastermind, one of two O’Connor-led films set to compete for the Palme D’or at Cannes 2025 (the other being The History of Sound), is a crime drama set in 1970s Massachusetts, so let’s hope the Challengers star and his castmates give a masterclass in regional accents.

In theaters Oct. 17

I want a Courteney Cox moment if I’m going to watch a Bruce Springsteen biopic, to feel young, enraptured, and pulled up on stage by my hero for a dance. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Scott Cooper's depressed and imprecise biography of The Boss's early-career crisis, really needs a hug. The movie is as uncompromising as its source material, Nebraska, the acoustic record Springsteen released before Born in the USA made him a superstar. It’s a story that doesn’t mention any member of the E Street Band by name. Jeremy Allen White has the voice and the guitar chords down, but there are no callouses on his fingers. He’s a trained dancer, but there are zero sexy moves when he’s on stage at the famed Stone Pony. The story's coda knocked me off balance with its father-son understanding — it’s so Stephen Graham’s year — but there's no moment for the audience share in the hero's triumphs. The "Ted Lasso" maxim doesn't apply; you need to know Nebraska, down to its linear notes, to walk out of the theater with your fist in the air. — Arno Kazarian

In theaters Oct. 24

Who wouldn’t want to sit at a bar and listen to Ethan Hawke deliver some of the most delicious monologues in contemporary times? Richard Linklater's assured direction makes Blue Moon, a single-character story about the last months of famed lyricist Lorenz Hart’s life, into something that should be watched by more than just the Broadway set, or people, like me, who feel Hawke still is, somehow, a profoundly underrated actor. Bobby Cannavale is peak Chazz Palminteri as the bartender at Sardi’s, and he deserves all the tips. Margaret Qualley ascends in a tricky role as the ambitious young socialite with whom Hart is foolishly in love. And as you might expect, Andrew Scott walks off with the movie as Richard Rodgers, Hart’s longtime creative partner who is transitioning into his Rodgers and Hammerstein era. — Arno Kazarian

In theaters Oct. 24

Inspired by Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 scifi-thriller-horror-satire-comedy Save the Green Planet!, the latest Yorgos Lanthimos film follows two conspiracy theorists (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) as they attempt to kidnap a pharmaceutical CEO (Emma Stone) who they believe is an alien with ill intent. Bugonia marks the fourth feature collaboration between Stone and Lanthimos and the third between Plemons and the Oscar-nominated director. So what to expect from this pitch black comedy? Well, we know Stone shaved her head on camera and that Ari Aster served as a producer, so we suspect things are about to get pretty dark. Not since The Killing of a Sacred Deer has a Lanthimos film had so much feel-bad promise, and we can’t wait.

In theaters Oct. 31

Jim Jarmusch's patented form of slow cinema turns its gaze upon the relationships between adult siblings and their aging parents. Father Mother Sister Brother will be told in three chapters, each of them focusing on a new set of characters. If we had to pick the family drama we're anticipating the most, it'd be the story of two sisters (Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett) who reunite with their novelist mother (Charlotte Rampling) in Dublin.

In theaters Oct. 31

Director Richard Linklater churns out films more often than I go see the dentist (he had TWO period-set features at TIFF this year). I opted for his French language film history lesson that has to be the most engrossing educational tool ever made. College professors must be rubbing their hands in anticipation – finally, a movie that introduces all the notable names from the 1960s French New Wave (or, Nouvelle Vague) before launching into a day-by-day recap of Breathless (1960), and how critic-turned-director Jean-Luc Godard (played by Guillaume Marbeck in the darkest set of sunglasses) changed cinema forever by virtue of his on-set inexperience and his exuberantly contrarian choices that all fly in the face of his frustrated American star, Jean Seberg (luminously embodied by Zoey Deutsch). In the end, Godard and Seberg chisel a 90-minute masterpiece from the raw marble of a girl and a gun, while Linklater codifies a movement in stone for all of us who weren’t around to catch it the first time ‘round. — Alex Logan

In select theaters Oct. 31; coming to Netflix Nov. 14

Opening with what feels like familiar territory for Joachim Trier, the brilliant mind behind The Worst Woman in the World, his latest expands beyond one alluring basket case (again played by the exceptional Renate Reinsve), to detail an estranged Scandinavian family of traumatized traumatizers and the home that holds generations of their secrets. Stellan Skarsgård just breaks your heart as the failed patriarch, a fading filmmaker who makes a last ditch attempt to undo years of neglect by casting Reinsve, an accomplished stage actress, in the lead role of his autobiographical comeback feature. When his daughter rejects him, Skarsgård casts a young starlet (Elle Fanning), who desperately wants to be taken seriously. While it can sometimes feel like Trier is aping an Ingmar Bergman movie about making a different Ingmar Bergman movie, this isn’t only for film nerds. The self-reflexiveness is earned and then balanced by the delicate performances of Reinsve, Skarsgård, Fanning, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, who plays the saner of the two sisters. — Alex Logan

In theaters Nov. 7

In the hackneyed parlance of a pugilist, Christy is a knockout that lingers in the ring for one round too many before “peekaboo” punching audiences in the guts with a harrowing survival story that I won’t spoil in case you aren’t familiar with the real-life bio of boxer Christy Martin. I wasn’t, and the climax left me agog. Agog, I tell you! Sydney Sweeney convincingly bobs and weaves in her custom pink tank tops and trunks, probably just enough to earn a nomination (if there’s room at the Academy for two fighters this year, assuming Dwayne Johnson will hit the campaign trail hard with The Smashing Machine). But, her performance “works” because of writer/director David Michôd’s subtle skill of loading all the hurt and rage of the real Christy behind Sweeney’s doe-eyes. Life’s incessant body-blows back her into a corner, until she explodes forth with the pent-up anger of a caged animal. Ben Foster could also earn his own much-deserved awards buzz, unless audiences are too repulsed by what might be his most detestable villain role yet. Still, you gotta admire the guy for never shying away from a heel turn. — Alex Logan

In theaters Nov. 7

Noah Baumbach isn't in the business of making crowd-pleasers, but I don’t know anyone who'd want to watch George Clooney as the self-possessed A-list actor Jay Kelly in the twilight of his career. Good thing the movie belongs to Adam Sandler, who plays Ron Sukenick, Kelly's devoted manager, who is more than worth the 20% he earns from his client's going rate. This is Peak Mensch Sandler, and he’s thoroughly deserving of his first-ever Oscar nomination. I’d watch Ron Sukenick, especially if that edit lived more in an alternate world where Billy Crudup, who plays a failed actor from Kelly's past, is a star. — Arno Kazarian

In theaters Nov. 14 and coming to Netflix Dec. 5

The bleak, big truck energy of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, or William Friedkin’s tough-guy remake Sorcerer, is imbued into the soul of this French and Spanish co-production that sets its suicide mission in the deserts of Morocco during a time of an unspecified war breaking out around the edges of the frame. Luis (heartbreakingly played by Sergi López) and his teen son Estaban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) stick out like sore thumbs at the crust-punk rave that sets the tone and canvas for this saga of sand, blood, and disaster. The pair are searching for Estaban’s missing sister, so they follow a two-truck convoy of desert dwellers to another, even more remote rave. But, their journey is doomed from the jump as it spirals from setback to tragedy, until it ends in the middle of a literal minefield. — Alex Logan

In theaters Nov. 14

It’s Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life meets Celine Song’s Past Lives (Defending Your Past Lives?) as a recently-deceased Elizabeth Olsen struggles to choose whether she spends eternity with her first love who died in the war (the hunky Callum Turner), or her husband of 65 years (a nebbishy Miles Teller), while the lovers’ triangle fumbles through the sumptuous production design of a mid-century modern limbo. What ensues is as light on its feet as it is funny and charming, at least for the first 90 minutes, but afraid to close on a satisfying, if melancholy downbeat, the movie instead vamps for another 20 minutes, breaking all of its own rules and lore to get to a double happy ending that no one needs. Maybe it’ll work for you, maybe it won’t. Regardless, Olsen and her plucky Afterlife Coordinators played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early are too much fun to throw this baby out with the bathwater. — Alex Logan

In theaters Nov. 26

In a Benoit Blanc mystery, the cast is just as important as the crime. For the third Knives Out film, Daniel Craig’s southern detective will be surrounded by some of the biggest talents in Hollywood, and you’ll forgive us if we name drop just a few. Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, Josh O’Conner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, and Cailee Spaeny will all contribute to the conundrum at the center of Rian Johnson’s new feature that the teaser has called “the holy grail” of murders.

In theaters Nov. 26 and coming to Netflix Dec. 12

Most of the time I just like looking at Wagner Moura. But it’s no exaggeration to say The Secret Agent provides the actor with his finest role to date. The movie also heralds the complete arrival of Kleber Mendonça Filho as a filmmaker (shout out to fellow Bacurau fans.) Genre movies can be relegated to the margins by studios, streaming services, and critics, but The Secret Agent has more to say, convincingly, than the higher-profile films at NYFF this year. I am going to keep details sparse here and plead for you to go on a bender of your choice before seeing the movie, so you can fully soak in its sweat. — Arno Kazarian

In theaters Nov. 26

Humanity! Heart! Hamnet! I was worried that the “Shakespeare’s dead kid” movie was going to be a major bummer, especially at 9 in the morning, but writer/director Chloé Zhao is an empath who turns feelings – even the ones that hurt the most – into pure cinema. Jessie Buckley will be the one to beat for Best Actress, and for my money, Jacobi Jupe, who plays the titular doomed son, gave the most emotional performance by a child ... perhaps ever? Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Hamnet proffers that the Immortal Bard (played by Paul Mescal) concentrated the pain of losing his 11-year-old boy into writing "Hamlet," just as Zhao transforms the tragedy of loss into a wistful whimsy in her every frame of celluloid. Cinematographer Łukasz Żal and composer Max Richter combine forces with Zhao to create a pastoral dreamscape akin to Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven. — Alex Logan

In theaters Dec. 12