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Get ready for a packed August 2025, as theaters welcome a diverse slate of films. From action-packed blockbusters to intimate dramas, re-releases of classics, and fresh documentaries, there’s something for everyone this month.

Kicking off on August 1 and rolling through August 29, the lineup includes family-friendly animations, chilling horrors, and star-studded comedies. Whether you’re into heart-pounding thrillers or reflective documentaries, we’ve got the full breakdown of every release below.

Monk in Pieces (2025) Arte

This documentary dives into the creative mind of Meredith Monk, a trailblazing artist known for her work in music, theater, and dance. Featuring interviews with icons like Björk and David Byrne, it explores her innovative legacy.

With a runtime of 94 minutes, the film offers a vibrant look at Monk’s boundary-pushing career. Zeitgeist Films brings this wide release to audiences eager for a deep dive into avant-garde art.

She Rides Shotgun (2025) Fifth Season

A gritty drama-thriller,...

It can be hard to pinpoint why, or even how, Billy Shebar’s “Monk in Pieces” is so much better and more involving than the average documentary about the life of an artist. While this loving and attentive portrait of avant-garde icon Meredith Monk makes a decent effort to disguise its conventionality (in so far as its shape occasionally reflects the freeform recursiveness of its subject’s music), underneath it all the film is still a largely chronological tribute spliced together with the usual assortment of archival footage and talking heads — David Byrne chief among them. Shebar may not follow the transliterated Wikipedia page template by starting with Monk’s greatest triumph before doubling back to her modest childhood years, but the path that “Monk in Pieces” charts from the fringes of the Greenwich Village art scene in the 1960s to the National Medal of Arts ceremony in 2015 isn’t...

There are sounds that exist before words, utterances from a place so deep within the human animal that language feels like a recent and clumsy invention. This is the territory of Meredith Monk. To hear her work is to hear a voice splinter into a chorus of ghosts and children, a percussive chatter of bone against tooth, a soaring lament that seems to carry the weight of a species.

It is the sound of the body thinking. The documentary Monk in Pieces does not attempt to explain this phenomenon. It wisely chooses to circle it, to witness it, to get close enough to the fire to feel the heat.

The film invites us into the quiet rooms where this storm of sound is born, presenting not an icon but a person, vulnerable and fiercely intelligent. It documents a life spent in radical service to a singular idea: that the fragile,...

We’re officially a month into summer, when the blazing sun is still bearable and the usual suspects—camping, swimming, traveling—start to pick up speed. Another activity, purposely left out to have its own spotlight of course, is moviegoing! While big budget films make their way to the front of the crowd, some indie films proudly extend and wave their arms as they very much should. Luckily, there are a few already out ready to be taken in this Fourth of July weekend. For some people, it understandably feels like a precarious time to be celebrating Independence Day, and for others national pride flows ever so naturally. This July, whether you’re feeling like you’re under the Tuscan sun or a raisin in the sun, there are enough fruitful films to feast your eyes to, and in this heat? There probably isn’t a better place to stay...

While drama schools have largely emerged from the shadow of Covid-19, many are now in the midst of figuring out how to respond to different audience behaviors post-pandemic, funding changes and the evolving needs of an arts education. Amid this changing environment, institutions have been updating their curricula to better prepare their students and put a greater emphasis on on-camera training and on actors creating their own work. And as several programs maintain (or try to grow) tuition-free models, the rising cost of education continues to be a significant factor for students pursuing a career in performing arts.

THR spoke with industry members and educators to determine its ranking of the best schools for an acting degree while weighing factors including overall training, cost, alumni success and industry connections. When applicable, tuition is listed on an annualized basis for the upcoming year and does not include housing and other fees.

Exclusive: Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to this year’s Berlinale world premiere Monk In Pieces.

‘Monk In Pieces’ review

The film profiles the interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk, who rose up in New York’s male-dominated downtown arts scene of the 1960s and 70s.

Monk went on to establish herself as a leading light in the music, opera, dance, visual arts, and film, earning particular renown for her innovative vocal techniques. She received the National Medal of Arts Award from President Obama in 2015.

The feature includes interviews with Björk, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne,...

The 2025 edition of Doc NYC Selects is almost here, and IndieWire can announce the program for the summer extension of the annual fall documentary festival. This year, Doc NYC Selects will take place between July 9 to 29, at New York’s IFC Center, with all of the filmmakers attending in person.

The festival will begin with Academy Award-nominated Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” which was acquired by Netflix after debuting at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. “Apocalypse in the Tropics” is Costa’s follow-up to “The Edge of Democracy,” which Netflix also distributed. Costa returns to Brazil to document the political impact of Christian evangelical leaders in the nation for “Apocalypse in the Tropics.”

Doc NYC Selects will close with “Monk in Pieces,” an ode to composer and performer Meredith Monk; the film is directed by Billy Shebar and David Roberts and debuted at Berlinale. Additional Doc NYC...

Billy Shebar’s Monk in Pieces stars Meredith Monk, an artist so singular as to be unclassifiable. A progenitor of what we now call “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance,” Monk began her career in the downtown NYC art scene of the ’60s and ’70s — a time and place not all that kind to female boundary busters. (Indeed, New York Times reviews ranged from scathing to the […]

The post “Meredith Understood That I Needed the Freedom to Create My Own Interpretation of Her Work and Life”: Billy Shebar on his Berlinale-Premiering Meredith Monk Doc, Monk in Pieces first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Billy Shebar’s Monk in Pieces stars Meredith Monk, an artist so singular as to be unclassifiable. A progenitor of what we now call “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance,” Monk began her career in the downtown NYC art scene of the ’60s and ’70s — a time and place not all that kind to female boundary busters. (Indeed, New York Times reviews ranged from scathing to the […]

The post “Meredith Understood That I Needed the Freedom to Create My Own Interpretation of Her Work and Life”: Billy Shebar on his Berlinale-Premiering Meredith Monk Doc, Monk in Pieces first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The 39th annual Teddy Awards, the longest-running LGBTQ+ prizes at a major film festival, arrive at a time of increasing challenges for queer communities worldwide. Against a backdrop of controversial policies and rising anti-lgbtq+ sentiment in several countries, the awards spotlight films that offer a counterpoint to global hostility toward gender diversity and queer rights.

Michael Stütz, head of the Panorama section since 2019, observed that queer cinema has become an integral part of the festival’s fabric. “I can’t remember a recent year where there was no queer film in [the main] competition in Berlin,” he said, highlighting how recent years have seen a shift toward a more balanced representation and inclusion of voices from Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities.

This year’s program features a number of projects with political resonance. Among them is Billy Shebar and David Roberts’ documentary portrait, Monk in Pieces, a study of composer...

This year marks the 39th annual Teddy Award honors, the longest-running LGBTQ+ prizes at any major film festival. While the Feb. 21 closing ceremony is business as usual for the Berlinale, global events could make this one of the most important years in Teddy history.

U.S. President Trump is implementing numerous anti-transgender policies, withdrawing President Biden’s executive order making federal agencies enforce a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that sex discrimination laws include LGBTQ discrimination, and even declaring that there are only two sexes – seemingly oblivious to children born intersex, a plot point in one of this year’s biggest Oscar contenders. His appointee Elon Musk regularly makes anti-trans statements and endorsed Germany’s far-right AfD party, which has opposed some gay rights. And rapper Kanye West has proudly aligned himself with the Nazi party, unaware or unconcerned that it persecuted Black people like him during Hitler’s reign.

Yet for now,...

While Terrence Malick happily toils away on year five of editing his Biblical epic The Way of the Wind, he’s found a number of artistic diversions in recent years. The latest is an epic-looking interactive exhibit that finds him reuniting with his Knight of Cups, Song of Song, and Voyage of Time collaborator Cate Blanchett, while also boasting contributions from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.

Premiering at Australia’s Acmi and what looks to be an expanded version of the Tribeca premiere Evolver, Marshmallow Laser Feast: Works of Nature “illuminates the hidden forces surrounding us, revealing the sublime through sensory journeys beyond our everyday perception. From the roots of a majestic Amazonian tree to the unseen branches of the body and the birth of galaxies, this hypnotic, immersive experience explores the rhythm that cultivates and connects all life – breath.”

Featuring five major digital artworks, the experience features “guided meditation, large-scale screen works and interactive experiences,...

The Coen brothers’ quirky cult classic The Big Lebowski has one of the directing duo’s best soundtracks, featuring songs from an eclectic mix of artists. This offbeat take on the film noir revolves around Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, a zen slacker whose carefree existence is disrupted by a case of mistaken identity and a convoluted kidnapping plot that may or may not have been faked. The soundtrack full of breezy blues tunes and chill rock ‘n’ roll hits is a big part of the relaxed, easygoing mood of the Coens’ uniquely zany neo-noir.

While it received mixed reviews upon its release and initially bombed at the box office (via Collider), today The Big Lebowski is considered a comedy masterpiece, with a widespread cult following and even a religion in its name. This is one of the rare movie soundtracks in which the main character comments on how much he likes the music being played.

Tribeca Film Festival wrapped up its competition Thursday by announcing awards for “Good Girl Jane,” “January (Janvaris)” and “The Cave of Adullam,” among other films.

Sarah Elizabeth Mintz’ “Good Girl Jane,” about a lonely, bullied high schooler lured into the hard-partying scene by a charming bad boy, took home the Founders’ Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature. Its star, Rain Spencer (“The Summer I Turned Pretty) also picked up the award for Best Performance in a U.S. narrative film.

The top prize for international narrative feature went to Latvian coming-of-age drama “January (Janvaris),” written and directed by Viesturs Kairiss. The film follows an aspiring filmmaker who tries to figure out who he is amidst the struggle for Latvian independence.

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‘Tíu’ Film Review: Icelandic Band Of Men and Monsters’ Documentary Is an Intimate Gem

Best Documentary Feature was awarded to “The Cave of Adullam,” Laura Checkoway’s portrait of sensei Jason Wilson,...

Star signs on as an exec producer alongside Terrence Mallick and Edward R. Pressman.

Cate Blanchett is narrating virtual-reality project Evolver and has signed on as an executive producer alongside Terrence Malick and Edward R. Pressman.

Billed as a free-roaming, immersive journey through the breathing body, Evolver is world premiering in competition at the Tribeca Immersive programme at the 2022 Tribeca Festival where it will be presented at 120 Broadway from June 9-19.

The VR experience drops audiences inside the human body, following the flow of oxygen from first intake of breath.

Dirty Films’ Cate Blanchett, Coco Francini and Andrew Upton have boarded Evolver as executive producers.

Jewish Story Partners, a new Los Angeles-based film foundation with initial funding from Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw’s Righteous Persons Foundation, named its first round of grantees Wednesday including projects from Joey Soloway (Transparent), Maxim Pozdorovkin (Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, Our New President) and Luke Lorentzen (Midnight Family).

Jsp awarded a total of $225,000 to ten U.S. documentary projects. The selections jury included Lou Cove, founder of Jewish arts funding collaborative Canvas; documentary film producer Julie Goldman, and Kim Yutani, Director of Programming, Sundance Film Festival.

“We are honored to support this bold and imaginative group of filmmakers and their projects,” the trio said in a joint statement. “These excellent films reflect a broad range of Jewish experiences, from the spiritual and artistic to the cultural and political.”

Jsp is led by Roberta Grossman, who serves as Producing Director, and veteran film festival programmer, former Sundance Catalyst director,...

Buffy Sainte-Marie and David Byrne are among the artists who will appear during the upcoming Northern New Mexico festival Virtual LemonAid, which will stream for free on May 8th at 10 p.m. Et via Instagram TV, Facebook Live, Youtube Live, with additional channels to be announced on the event website. The digital arts festival will benefit All Together Now New Mexico Fund and Santa Fe County Connect Fund. Both funds will use the proceeds to address the immediate needs of New Mexicans during the Covid-19 crisis.

Hosted by the inaugural...

Joel and Ethan Coen are back in theaters and on Netflix this year with their acclaimed Western anthology film “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” but that’s not the only reason 2018 is a great one for fans of the legendary directing duo. This year marks the 20th anniversary of “The Big Lebowski,” the 1998 crime comedy turned cult classic starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, and John Turturro. Mondo is celebrating the anniversary by bringing the film’s incredible soundtrack to vinyl this month.

The Mondo “Big Lebowski” vinyl goes on sale Wednesday, December 5 (purchase a copy on the Mondo official website here) and features songs by Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Nina Simone, The Gipsy Kings, and Townes Van Zandt, among others. The most iconic song from the film, Kenny Rogers & The First Edition’s “Just Dropped In,” is included as well. The package features all new artwork by Paul Mann.

Since filming began all the way back in 2011, it’s been a revolving door of speculation as to what actors and musical acts will make the cut of Terrence Malick‘s Song to Song. As we’re less than 10 days away from the film hitting theaters, we’re now getting a clearer picture.

Along with Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman, and Cate Blanchett, we confirmed last month that Iggy Pop, Johnny Rotten, Patti Smith, Lykke Li, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Big Freedia, Diplo, Alan Palomo of Neon Indian, Spank Rock, Dana Falconberry, Black Joe Lewis and the Honey Bears, and The Black Lips will all be featured in the film.

Now, Pitchfork — along with premiering a featurette — have more details. Along with the aforementioned acts all appearing in some capacity in the film, Tegan and Sara and Florence Welch will also be seen. Lykke Li has a bigger role than expected,...

Meredith Monk has spent 50 years producing a familiar kind of strangeness, uttering sounds you’ve never heard before but that seem to have been in the air for eons. Occasionally she sings words and phrases, more often just indeterminate shreds of language like something heard in a dream. At 72, she remains a straight-backed pixie with two-foot pigtails and precise but slightly awkward movements. Her pliable, silver-toned voice can still trip lightly off a consonant or ricochet from angry buzz to high hoot to chesty growl, or disappear into a vocal weave. Monk’s yearlong residency at Carnegie Hall made it clear how hard it is to separate her presence from her music. Other performer-­composers of her generation, like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, long ago began to write scores that could fall into anyone’s hands and come out okay. She, too, has shared her skills with the members...

A weekly feature in which we spotlight shining stars

The Performer | Rory Kinnear

The Show | Penny Dreadful

The Episode | “Grand Guignol”

The Airdate | June 29, 2014

The Performance | Although Penny Dreadful has dazzled us with everything from vampire attacks to demonic possessions, the series’ most resonant moments may also have been its most human. Hear Read us out. In the first season finale, Frankenstein’s monster – Caliban to his friend, singular – was shown compassion once too often by his crush, Grand Guignol starlet Maud, setting in motion a series of events that allowed Kinnear to shine a spotlight not only on the...

Yoko Ono, an icon of imagination in a variety of artistic fields, declares that "inspiration, energy and elevation"are the themes that have run through all her creative activities. Her new album, Yokokimthurston (which I reviewed for eMusic.com) is a collaboration with Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore that embodies those qualities as thoroughly and provocatively as any album she's released since her classic '70s LPs.

Asked whether she finds the new album comparable to any of her previous work, Ono answers, "Maybe the first, Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band. But this time, the sound that came out was much darker, reflecting what's going on in the world now." Maybe it's the company she's keeping, maybe it's the times, but a big part of what makes Yokokimthurston like Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band is how it unleashes the unabashed, undiluted avant-garde Yoko at her most spontaneous.

Born in 1920 in Illinois, Anna Halprin studied modern dance and later abandoned her training in favor of improvisation and other investigative movement practices. Considered one of the pioneers of postmodern dance, Halprin founded the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop in 1955, hosting and collaborating with many of the dancers and artists who later founded the Judson Dance Theater. For decades Halprin has been at the forefront of the expressive arts healing movement and continues to teach workshops at the Tamalpa Institute in Marin County, California—an organization she founded with her daughter in 1978. celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the first dance concerts at Judson Church ttracting young people, like Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, and Meredith Monk...

This is the first in a brief series exploring the Ecstatic Music Festival, a two-month-long musical event pairing musicians from the contemporary classical and indie rock worlds.

Though 30-year-old composer and musician Dan Deacon studied composition at Suny Purchase, he's perhaps best known for his dance ready synth and electronic sounds and the raucous, sweaty live shows that accompany them. His official biography describes his music as "striving to take contemporary experimental composition and electronic music out of the circle of the esoteric intellectual gangs and hipster communities, placing it into the more informal 'fun time.'"

Last year, at the inaugural Ecstatic Music Festival, Deacon teamed up with the percussion quartet So Percussion, for his new piece "Ghostbuster Cook: Origin of the Riddler" resulting in a wide-ranging performance that included soda bottles, marimbas, synths and percussion. He's back for more "fun time" at this year's Ecstatic Music Festival, where...

Edmund Patrick Cahill was born January 15 1978 in New York to parents of Irish and Italian descent. He is 6' 2". His Irish father is a stockbroker and his mother is an elementary school teacher. He has one older and one younger sister. Eddie graduated from Byram Hills High School, Armonk, New York, in 1986. Other famous attendees of this school are Eyal Podell and Sean Maher. He also attended Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York and the Atlantic Theater Acting School, which is part of the Tisch School of the Arts at Nyu. When he was in kindergarten, Eddie aspired to be a farmer. His big break came in the Summer Theater Festival at Vassar College. Eddie finally dropped out of Nyu and moved to Brooklyn in pursuit of a full time acting career. He dreamt of becoming an actor after he saw Les Miserables at the tender age of 17. Says Eddie:...

Ellen Stewart, founder of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and one of the pioneers of the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement, died on Jan. 12. She was 91.Stewart nurtured the careers of many influential theater figures, often giving them their first exposure, including directors Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson, Tom O'Horgan, and Joseph Chaikin; actor-playwright Harvey Fierstein; playwrights Sam Shepard, Charles Ludlam, Adrienne Kennedy, Taylor Mac, Lanford Wilson, and Israel Horovitz; composers Philip Glass, Elizabeth Swados, Meredith Monk, and Stephen Schwartz; and theater troupes Mabou Mines and the Talking Band. She also introduced American audiences to such European directors as Jerzy Grotowski and Andrei Serban.Stewart came to New York in the 1950s to become a fashion designer and founded La MaMa in 1961. More than 2,000 productions later, the theater, which is located at 74A E. Fourth St. in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, is still going strong. During the theater's infancy, Stewart funded it with her earnings from dress designing.

The latest crop of dance books and recordings includes the DVD of a fascinating 2009 film about Meredith Monk, as well as less-interesting books on pedagogy, technique, and career building.'Meredith Monk: Inner Voice'You don't have to be a Meredith Monk fan, or even terribly familiar with the multidisciplinary experimental artist's vast body of work, to be captivated by Babeth M. VanLoo's documentary "Meredith Monk: Inner Voice" (First Run Features, $24.95, 82 minutes). The riveting, well-structured film intersperses clips of Monk's work—musical compositions, operas, choreography, films, and theater pieces—with dialogues with the artist and interviews with her colleagues. The interviewees, always sharply and colorfully dressed, are situated in beautiful natural settings with lots of light or presented in strikingly composed indoor shots, making the documentary as aesthetically pleasing as it is intellectually enthralling.As Monk engagingly reveals the sources and inspirations behind her art, the listener begins to...

Press Release Meredith Monk – Inner Voice Brings the Iconoclastic American Performer, Singer, Filmmaker and Choreographer To Film Screens at the Dance On Camera Festival at Lincoln Center January 29, 1:30pm; Monday, February 1, 6pm Introduced by the director Babeth M. VanLoo "An admiring portrait of an individual whose calm, joyous personality makes her quite wonderful company, both at work and in conversation." - Dennis Harvey, Variety Meredith Monk is a true Renaissance artist: a composer, singer, director, choreographer and creator of new opera, music theater, films and installations. Monk first began working in New York in the mid 60’s and in 1968 founded The [...]...