From Michael Schwartz and Tyler Nilson, the directors of 2019’s Peanut Butter Falcon, Los Frikis is a coming-of-age drama set in 1990s Cuba. Inspired by true events, the film tells the story of teenagers who injected themselves with HIV to escape the country’s economic crisis by entering government-run sanatoriums.
Originally making its world-premiere at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival, Aurélie Saada’s debut feature film Rose won the festival’s Variety Piazza Grande Award. The film follows an elderly widow as she tries to discover herself after her husband’s death with the help of her children.
Kicking off December, a vast selection of movies is hitting theaters. Steffen Haars and Nick Frost’s family-thriller-comedy Get Away follows a family vacation in Sweden gone wrong. Amy Adams turns into a canine in Nightbitch. Justin Kurzel brings action to theaters with The Order starring Jude Law while Kyle Mooney brings back the early 2000s with Y2K. Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera’s You Are Not Me turns family drama into horror. Jharrel Jerome is one-legged wrestler Anthony Robles in Unstoppable. Christmas trip turns into heartbreak in H. Nelson Tracey’s drama Breakup Season. Shea Whigham and Carrie Coon attempt to escape mobsters in Lake George. Magnus von Horn’s period drama captures post-WW1 Copenhagen in The Girl With the Needle. Lillah Halla’s Power Alley follows a teenage volleyball player and her struggle for women’s rights in Brazil. Ralph Fiennes is Odysseus in Uberto Pasolini’s The Return. Joshua Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic musical The End stars Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon, and documentary Sabbath Queen follows the story of a gay rabbi.
Following its North American premiere at the Asian World Film Festival, Fang Li’s feature documentary The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru opened for an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run in U.S. theaters. The film chronicles the search for the wreckage of the Lisbon Maru, a Japanese freighter carrying British POWs that was unknowingly torpedoed by a U.S. submarine in 1942.
Chosen to represent Mexico in the 2025 Academy Awards Best International Feature category, Sujo is a coming-of-age film telling the journey of the son of a cartel gunman trying to find his identity after his father’s passing.
Selected as the official entry for Palestine for the 2025 Academy Awards Best International Feature category, Above Ground Zero is an anthology film made by 22 Palestinian filmmakers telling the story of their homeland and its people during the Israel-Gaza war.
Dekanalog has acquired Drowning Dry (Sesės), the sophomore feature film by Lithuanian filmmaker Laurynas Bareiša selected as Lithuania’s official entry in the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards. The haunting family drama celebrated its world premiere at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, where the film won the Best Director prize for Bareiša, and the Best Performance Award was shared by its ensemble cast.
Academy Award-winning director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty, The Hand of God) returns with Parthenope, a coming-of-age drama exploring the love life of a young woman set against the picturesque backdrop of Naples. The film premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and also screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the 38th AFI Fest.
Movies opening in theaters this weekend include the Cannes Grand Prix-winning Indian film All We Imagine as Light, directed by Payal Kapadia and filmmaking duo Kalman & Horn bring an absurdist ’90s cable TV style to their new film, Dream Team, which follows the journey of two Interpol agents.
Altered Innocence debuted the US theatrical trailer for Endless Summer Syndrome (Le syndrome de l’été sans fin), Iranian filmmaker Kaveh Daneshmand’s feature directorial debut following a mother of two adoptees who is tipped off about the possible affair her husband may be having with one of their children.
World-premiering earlier this year at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, Magnus von Horn’s gothic thriller The Girl With the Needle follows a wet nurse working for an underground adoption agency in post-WWI Copenhagen. It was recently selected as the official Danish entry for Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards,
BAFTA-winning Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not a Witch) returns with her sophomore feature, a surreal dramedy titled On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. The film follows a young Zambian woman who stumbles upon her uncle’s body, uncovering family secrets and lies as funeral preparations unfold.