The world’s largest genre film festival, Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival is one of the most exciting, not to mention lengthy (it typically runs two, sometimes nearly three weeks), fests in the calendar year. It’s one of my favorites, despite (or perhaps because) of the relative obscurity of its catalog: Here is where you get to delve into some truly weird shit, from sci-fi anime to borderline adult films to action-comedies, thrillers, horror of all stripes from around the world.

Most interestingly, the fest will have one of its most high-profile opening night entries in its history: Ari Aster’s divisive pandemic-era polemic “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal as a small-town sheriff and mayoral candidate feuding over a small Texas town in the summer of 2020. (Curiously, the other opening night film? Chris Miller’s animated “Smurfs” musical, set to a new crop of songs from Rihanna. Fantasia is nothing without its counterprogramming.)

The fest will also be honoring a few Canadian luminaries this year: The Canadian Trailblazer awards will go to filmmaker George Mihalka (“My Bloody Valentine,” “Hostile Takeover”) and”I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing” director Sheila McCarthy. The Cheval Noir Career Achievement Awards are going to animation pioneer Genndy Tartakovsky (whose new film, “Fixed,” will close out the fest) and composer Danny Elfman (who will be in attendance at a screening of Henry Selick’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas“). Troma pioneer Lloyd Kaufman will snag an Indie Maverick Award, just in time for the World Premiere of the new Troma documentary “Occupy Cannes.”

In addition to the many premieres amid the festivals’ hundred-plus titles, some of the most exciting retro screenings include John Woo’s 1990 masterwork “Bullet in the Head,” the 1974 Lithuanian folkloric rock opera “The Devil’s Bride!”, ’70s giallo “House with the Laughing Windows,” James Brolin-starring ’80s crime flick “Night of the Juggler,” and more.

This year’s 29th edition runs July 17th through August 3rd, and we’ll be boots on the ground for much of it, giving you dispatches both in-person and remotely on some of our top picks from the fest’s robust roster of titles. But in anticipation of that journey, here’s a snapshot of some of the films we’re most excited about.

All You Need Is Kill

Those of us who champion Tom Cruise and Doug Liman’s criminally underrated 2014 sci-fi thriller “Edge of Tomorrow” know that its source material, the Hiroshi Sakurazaka manga “All You Need Is Kill,” has the far superior title. Luckily, director Kenichiro Akimoto and animation studio STUDIO4°C have re-adapted the manga as an anime, this time with a twist—charting the time-looped alien invasion story through the perspective of the manga’s secondary protagonist, Rita. It’s got an eye-popping visual style all its own from the glimpses we’ve seen, and I can’t wait to see what it looks like in motion.

Anything That Moves

“All Jacked Up and Full of Worms” was a sexy, gruesome delight in Fantasia 2022; now, director Alex Phillips is back with a steamy, funny spin on the erotic thriller, “Anything That Moves.” Shot in gorgeously grimy 16mm, the film follows sex worker and bike courier Liam as he goes about his day, delivering DoorDash and a quick lay on the side. But his randy routine gets disrupted by the presence of a serial killer whose dangers loom over the city of Chicago. We’ll also see roles from porn legends Ginger Lynn Allen and Nina Hartley, to add a tinge of authenticity to the horny antics on display.

Blazing Fists

It wouldn’t be a Fantasia without some output from the notoriously prolific Takashi Miike, who has a whopping three entries playing at the festival this year. But while legal thriller “Sham” and trippy J-horror anime series “Nyaight of the Living Cat” also pique our interest, my eye is on coming-of-age drama “Blazing Fists,” which follows two young hoodlums who befriend each other in prison and (after an inspiring speech by real MMA superstar Mikuru Asakura), decide to better their lot by fighting in a martial arts tournament. Big live-action anime vibes abound in this thing, according to some reports, and I’m always a sucker for that.

Every Heavy Thing

Oklahoma-based auteur Mickey Reece has long been a figure of fascination for me; his Lynchian ode to pop-country, “Country Gold,” was one of my most underappreciated favorites of that year. Now he’s back at Fantasia with “Every Heavy Thing,” which follows an office worker (Joe Fadem) who witnesses a murder and becomes embroiled in a strange conspiracy involving a number of disappearances. But knowing Reece, that simple plot synopsis belies a heaping helping of trippy lo-fi aesthetics, meditations on the fragmented nature of the American psyche, and a darkly witty script. Co-stars “The People’s Joker“‘s Vera Drew, Barbara Crampton, and John Ennis.

Fixed

Channelling Tex Avery by way of “Big Mouth,” animation legend Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Fixed” will close out the fest with the tale of a soon-to-be-neutered pitbull named Bull (Adam Devine) who, upon learning his impending fate, runs away from home before he’s set to get snipped. Thus begins what promises to be a literal balls-out adventure as Bull does his level best to keep his family jewels – at least long enough to make it with the sexy poodle next door (Kathryn Hahn). We don’t get enough raunchy animated comedies (that aren’t, like, “Foodtopia”), much less 2D animated films of any stripe; I’m eager to see what Genndy’s got in store for us.

I Am Frankelda

Guillermo del Toro proteges Rodolfo and Arturo Ruiz come to the fest with Mexico’s first stop-motion animated feature, “I Am Frankelda,” an extension of the Cartoon Network/HBO Max miniseries about phantom author Frankelda and her enchanted book Herneval. The character designs look phenomenal (shades of del Toro’s own “Pinocchio”), and the festival description promises a “world of weirdness and wonder.” Either way, stop-motion animation is a treasure to behold on the big screen, and I can’t wait to see how this craftsmanship plays out. (The puppets themselves will be on display at an exhibition early in the fest, as well.)

I Live Here Now

Julie Pacino channels David Lynch, Dario Argento, and the Coens in her first feature, “I Live Here Now,” a pulsing psychodrama (shot in 16mm) about a young woman (Lucy Fry) trapped in a motel room and left to face her demons. Past and present, reality and dreams all converge in what looks to be a nightmarish gumbo of generational trauma and the steady pressure of capitalism. Madeline Brewer co-stars, and it looks to be the feel-bad movie of the summer (if Pacino pulls off her brief).

Lucid

Speaking of young women going on trippy tales, Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall’s 2022 Fantasia short gets expanded into the darkly psychedelic “Lucid.” The film follows Mia Sunshine Jones (Caitlin Acken Taylor), an art student with a mean streak who’s feeling the pressure of her demanding art professor on her next big project. Her solution? Like many an artist before her, she’ll take drugs for inspiration. However, the drug of choice, an elixir named Lucid, may tap into something darker than she’s expecting. Full of punk-art aesthetics and ’90s grunge vibes, as well as live on-set music, “Lucid” feels like it’ll be quite the crazy experiment.

Terrestrial

From the director (curiously enough) of “Hot Tub Time Machine” comes Steve Pink’s “Terrestrial,” a dark sci-fi comedy about a young writer (“Sorry to Bother You”‘s Jermaine Fowler) who experiences a sudden windfall and invites his three best college friends to his new mansion to help him write his first book. As he mines his life for inspiration, the cracks in his self-mythology begin to form, and the friends soon discover they’re in for more than they initially bargained for.

The Undertone

Podcasting meets folk horror in sci-fi author Ian Tuason’s debut feature, which follows Evy (“The Handmaid’s Tale”‘s Nina Kiri) as she investigates a series of disturbing audio files featuring a mysterious man and his wife, linking the story to Evy’s dying mother. I’m a big fan of the way smart horror can use audio media to sell scares (“Archive 81“), so I’m curious how Tuason’s blend of modern technology and psychological religious torment has in store for us.

One of the world’s oldest film festivals, and the most prestigious such festival in Central and Eastern Europe, the Karlovy Vary Film Festival kicked off its 59th edition Friday night with an opulent opening ceremony, at which poignant tributes to the festival’s late president shone as bright as a theatrically choreographed dance-and-lights display later-evening fireworks that vividly illuminated this westernmost corner of the Czech Republic.

Nestled in the hills of western Bohemia, less than a two-hour drive from Prague, the fabled spa town of Karlovy Vary attracts visitors year-round for its healing mineral springs and magnificent architecture, both of which seem more magical for the scenic forests that envelop them. Clouds of steam abound as evidence of subterranean hot water from thermal springs that flow into the confluence of the Teplá and Ohře rivers, where the town is situated. This vapor adds to the air a mirage-like shimmer. Meandering through Karlovy Vary, time itself can feel suspended. 

Indeed, Karlovy Vary’s exquisite atmosphere imparts a certain serenity even during the festival, which brings a vast international delegation to town each July, screening hundreds of films that comprise a vast cross-section of contemporary arthouse cinema. It wouldn’t have been right to devote one’s first day in such a picturesque place to the inside of one of the city’s many movie theatres, though even these rank among Europe’s most beautiful. Strolling riverside on Friday down Karlovy Vary’s main promenade, past narrow cobblestone streets that snake between centuries-old buildings with pastel-painted facades, there was a faint taste of salt in the air, and throngs of passersby became increasingly well-dressed as the evening’s festivities approached. 

Friday’s opening ceremony was held at the Hotel Thermal, which serves as the central venue for the festival. A towering, exposed-concrete complex in the city’s historical center, the Hotel Thermal is visible from a great distance. Approaching it each day brings one past drinking fountains and Corinthian columns, through colonnades of wood, stone, and cast-iron, but the Thermal itself is another sort of spectacle.

Purpose-built in the mid-1960s by Czech architects Věra and Vladimír Machonin as a festival palace in the heart of Karlovy Vary, its brutalist design—emblematic of the relative architectural freedom that existed in Czechoslovakia at that time—is most striking today for its proximity to the colorful art nouveau styles that otherwise populate this oasis of sandstone statues and spa houses. Czechoslovakia was occupied in 1968, while the Thermal was under construction; this did not prevent its completion, though many of its artistic contributors were blacklisted after the Warsaw Pact invasion, rendering the structure a complex symbol of history made concrete.

With few exceptions, all of the festival’s screenings take place between the Thermal and the ornate Grandhotel Pupp across town, whose neo-baroque facade inspired Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” (It was also a stand-in for Montenegro’s Hotel Splendide in pivotal sequences of “Casino Royale.”) Inside the Thermal, amid a sea of tuxedos and evening gowns, attendees walked the red carpet and toasted one another with glasses of champagne before heading inside the Grand Hall, a 1,131-seat venue that serves as the festival’s main stage.

A Night for Remembrance

As is festival tradition, brothers Michal and Simon Caban choreographed an elaborate opening performance to kick off Karlovy Vary, this one featuring dancers interacting with multivalent cones of light. At one point, they literally dazzled the audience with a dancer whose elaborate, hall-of-mirrors headpiece sent an array of beams coruscating around the venue. 

Organizers struck a bittersweet note in other areas of the opening ceremony, which was to be expected given the passing—in early May of this year—of Czech actor Jiří Bartoška, who’d served as president of KVIFF since 1994. Although the festival was founded in 1946, political pressures had forced organizers to alternate it with the Moscow Film Festival year by year until 1993; it was Bartoška, together with film critic and journalist Eva Zaoralová, who was primarily responsible for reshaping Karlovy Vary into the annual destination for world cinema that it is today. Even outside of his estimable acting career, Bartoška was in this respect a lion of the European film industry; he was “our Robert Redford,” explains Tatiana Detlofson, International Representative of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, whose work with the festival dates back decades. 

In honor of Bartoška, the festival’s opening film screening was of “We’ve Got to Frame It! (a conversation with Jiří Bartoška in July 2021),” a documentary feature directed by Jakub Jurásek and Milan Kuchnya that finds its subject reflecting—insightfully, and with rakish good humor—on his long and varied life in the Czech performing arts. From his years at performing-arts theatres in Brno, to his time in Prague, first during a residency and then at theatres co-founded by colleagues, to his emergence as a film star and subsequent association with the festival, Bartoška found his way through the constantly evolving arts scene and never stopped changing alongside it. 

Through the turbulence of the Velvet Revolution (after which the film festival fell on difficult times and required rehabilitation) and up through his final years overseeing KVIFF, Bartoška became an icon, meeting and often personally securing the festival’s all-important international guests. A film seemingly made to be seen by Czech audiences in a setting like Karlovy Vary, “We’ve Got to Frame It!” covers a lot of ground, encompassing many of Czech cinema’s most beloved and influential figures; the audience’s delighted sounds of recognition and amused appreciation in the Grand Hall made it clear this was for many a deeply personal occasion for catharsis and remembrance. 

Vicky Krieps and Peter Sarsgaard Salute Cinema and Denounce Fascism

With acclaimed actors Vicky Krieps (“Phantom Thread”) and Peter Sarsgaard (“Memory”) both honored during the ceremony as recipients of KVIFF Presidents’ Awards, the opening night had star power to spare. Krieps—whose tribute was a Saturday screening of the French drama “Love Me Tender,” which recently premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes—responded to a standing ovation with brief, contemporaneous gratitude. “I love film festivals,” she said. “They are just the best thing in the world, together with cinema. And if movies are not misused, they can go across borders and transfer the most powerful messages. They do not ask for your passport, or where you’re from, or how much money you have… We should protect them, so they can continue to spread love, peace, and—above all—forgiveness.”

Sarsgaard—whose tribute was a Sunday screening of journalism drama “Shattered Glass,” from 2003—“Making a film is a collective action,” he reflected, “but any actor will tell you that good work is only possible in an environment that supports it.” Praising directors like Michel Franco (whose “Memory” won Sarsgaard the prestigious Volpi Cup for best actor in Venice), Billy Ray (“Shattered Glass”) Lone Scherfig (“An Education”), and his wife Maggie Gyllenhaal (“The Lost Daughter”), he affirmed, “There is no going it alone,” reflecting as well on the disturbing current state of U.S. culture and politics. 

“As my country retreats from its global responsibilities and tries to go it alone, it is also being divided into factions from within: factions of politics, gender, sexuality, race, Jews split over the war,” he said. “But when there’s a common enemy, there is no going it alone. The enemies are the forces that divide us, that individuate us. We all know who they are. Collective action is the only way forward in art and in our happiness.” To murmurs of collective approval from the hall, Sarsgaard concluded by quoting Václav Havel, former president of Czechoslovakia: “One half of a room cannot remain forever warm, while the other half is cold.”

British electro-pop duo La Roux performed an open-air concert in front of the Hotel Thermal later in the evening; as their ecstatic vocals and sugar-high synth beats reverberated through Karlovy Vary, few in attendance resisted dancing along to the catchy chorus of their ’80s-toned hit “Bulletproof,” and the fireworks display that followed was lavish enough to bathe guests in throbbing, incandescent hues almost as vibrant as those exhibited throughout the town by day.

Michael Douglas and Dakota Johnson Receive Special Awards

Saturday saw American actor Michael Douglas return to Karlovy Vary for the first time in over a quarter-century. He previously attended the festival in 1998, receiving the festival’s prestigious Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema. (Stellan Skarsgård will be in town later this week to collect the same award and present the film “Sentimental Value,” which won the Grand Prix at Cannes this year.) 

This time around, Douglas was on hand to introduce a newly restored version of Miloš Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” celebrating the 1975 masterpiece—the second of only three films ever to sweep all five major categories at the Academy Awards—on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. 

Having co-produced the film, which won him the Oscar for best picture, Douglas reflected in Karlovy Vary that he owed his involvement in the project to his father, the actor Kirk Douglas, who’d played Randle McMurphy on stage more than a decade before Jack Nicholson’s take on the character. The older Douglas, eager to play McMurphy in a movie adaptation, had retained the film rights but was unable to find collaborators who’d help him make it.

“I have to thank my father, Kirk, for getting the rights to the book,” Douglas told the audience. “He tried to get it made as a movie for many years, and he couldn’t, and he was going to sell it, and that was when I stepped in and I said, ‘Dad, please, please don’t sell this.’ I never thought about being a producer, but I loved this project so much. So I thank my father for giving me that opportunity and not selling it.”

Douglas appeared in Karlovy Vary alongside co-producer Paul Zaetz and members of the Forman family; one of the most prominent figures of the Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960s, the late Forman had a long-standing relationship with Karlovy Vary, a personal friendship with Bartoška, and had been previously awarded the Crystal Globe. On stage, KVIFF executive director Kryštof Mucha bestowed a new Crystal Globe statuette upon Douglas, as his previous one had an earlier, wafer-shaped look that festival organizers deemed harder to hold than the new statuette. At a press conference later in the day, Douglas declared, “They upgraded me!” 

At that same press conference, Douglas reflected on the “timeless” appeal of Forman’s anti-establishment classic, about the battles for freedom between rebellious patients and disciplinarian authority figures at a state mental hospital. Reflecting on “how precious democracy is, how vulnerable it is, and how it always has to be protected,” Douglas decried the state of U.S. politics in the second Trump administration. 

“Our country is flirting with autocracy, [akin to] some other democracies in this world,” Douglas said. “And I hope that what we’re struggling with right now is a reminder of all of the hard work the Czech did in terms of gaining their freedom and their independence… Democracy is not to be taken for granted. I think it reminds us that we all need to make our efforts. It’s not the job of somebody else.” While Douglas has “no real intentions” to act again, he said he’d return “if something special came up.” Otherwise, “in the spirit of maintaining a good marriage,” he joked, he’s just “happy to play the wife” to actress Catherine Zeta Jones. 

Also in Karlovy Vary over the weekend was the actress Dakota Johnson, who received a KVIFF President’s Award; her latest films, “Splitsville” and “Materialists,” both screened at the festival. (Though “Materialists,” by writer-director Celine Song, is already out in U.S. theaters, it has not yet opened theatrically in the U.K. and Europe, unexpectedly turning a Sunday-night screening introduced by Johnson into one of Karlovy Vary’s hottest tickets.) 

Praising Song as “an exceptional creator and probably the best filmmaker of our time,” after a standing ovation that preceded the film, a visibly emotional Johnson thanked the audience in Czech. He said, “I hope it makes you cry, laugh, and consider your own lives.” Johnson was also on hand for the Saturday screening of “Splitsville,” calling it a “film about love, friendship, and the complexity of human relationships’ during a brief introduction. 

During Sunday’s press conference, Johnson revealed that she’s preparing to direct her first feature: a collaboration with Vanessa Burghardt, an up-and-coming actress who played her daughter in “Cha Cha Real Smooth.” The project is “really close to my heart,” she said. “I’ve always felt that I’m not ready to direct a feature,” said Johnson. “I don’t have the confidence. But with her, I feel very protective, and I know her very well, and I just won’t let anybody else do it.”

Johnson advocated for more women-centered stories and spoke of her desire to “avoid toxic sets.” Johnson has also been increasingly active as a producer; “Splitsville” was produced via her TeaTime Pictures banner, which focuses explicitly on “visually or emotionally provocative” female storytelling, where the woman is different from what you see, and complex and nuanced, and maybe an anti-hero that you love.” It was Johnson’s first time at Karlovy Vary, as evidenced by her glowing reaction to her surroundings: “This place looks like Disneyland,” she exclaimed. 

Across the festival’s opening weekend, there was rarely a quiet moment in Karlovy Vary; one oft-expressed sentiment by the locals is that all of the Prague film industry travels in for at least the festival’s first few days, resulting in more foot traffic—plus traditional Czech food carts, beer and wine stalls, and concerts at musical stages visible all up and down the promenade—than at any other point in the year. 

And so it’s a testament to the revitalizing power of Karlovy Vary itself that, even in its abundance of sights and sounds, the film festival has thus far retained the warm and welcoming aura of a spiritual retreat, rather than a stress test—unusual, as attendees at most festivals of similar scale and circumstance can attest. Excitingly, the first few days of film screenings around town—to be covered in the following dispatch—have yielded an embarrassment of riches. But that’s only fitting for what’s clearly a bright-sparkling hidden gem of the global film-festival circuit. 

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will pay tribute to Stellan Skarsgård, Vicky Krieps, Dakota Johnson, and Peter Sarsgaard, welcoming the actors to personally present screenings of their recent films, festival organizers for the upcoming 59th edition announced Wednesday.

In addition, while 11 of the films screening in Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe main competition had been announced, a 12th and final film—from Iran, and previously kept secret to ensure the safety of its delegation—has been officially unveiled. “Bidad,” from director Soheil Beiraghi, centers on a young musician who sings in the streets, in defiance of religious laws that prohibit women in Iran from performing in public.

The film “was made as an independent production; otherwise, it would never have been approved by the censors because of its critical tone,” KVIFF organizers emphasized in a statement. “Even so, director Soheil Beiraghi was investigated by the authorities during filming. It was necessary to withhold announcement of the film’s inclusion in the festival’s program until he and the members of his crew could safely travel out of Iran. A few days ago, the festival team was overjoyed to hear that they were on their way.”

Stellan Skarsgård—previously a guest of the festival in 2002, to present István Szabó’s film “Taking Sides”—will be presented with the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema. He will personally present a screening of “Sentimental Value,” which won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Joachim Trier, the family drama centers on a celebrated director (Skarsgård) who seeks to make a film with his estranged daughter (Renate Reinsve). 

At the festival’s opening ceremony, Vicky Krieps will be honored with the KVIFF President’s Award. To mark the occasion, the festival will screen “Love Me Tender,” from director Anna Cazenave Cambet, in which a former lawyer (Krieps) navigates a custody battle over her son after coming out as a lesbian. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this year. 

Dakota Johnson, meanwhile, will be honored with the KVIFF President’s Award and attend the festival to present two of her latest films: recently released romantic drama “Materialists,” from Celine Song, and upcoming romantic comedy “Splitsville,” from Michael Angelo Covino. She will be presented with the award at a “Materialists” screening, closing out the festival’s opening weekend. 

Elsewhere, Peter Sarsgaard will also receive the KVIFF President’s Award at the festival’s opening ceremony. Though the actor was most recently seen in “September 5,” about a sports broadcasting crew that finds itself covering a hostage crisis involving Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, KVIFF will instead honor Sarsgaard with a screening of journalism drama “Shattered Glass,” in which the actor portrayed New Republic editor Charles Lane. 

Others invited as guests of the festival for the Crystal Globe competition include actress Camille Cottin (presenting the world premiere of “Out of Love”), director Bence Fliegauf (presenting the world premiere of “Jimmy Jaguar”), and director Max Walker-Silverman (presenting the international premiere of “Rebuilding”).  

Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, who won Best Actor at KVIFF just over a decade ago for “All Yours,” returns to the festival with “Kill the Jockey,” directed by Luis Ortega. 

Hlynur Pálmason will be on hand to present “The Love That Remains,” while Sergei Loznitsa will personally introduce “Two Prosecutors,” both filmmakers having previously premiered their films at Cannes. Mstyslav Chernov, an Oscar winner for “20 Days in Mariupol,” will introduce his latest documentary, “2000 Metres to Andriivka,” and Michel Franco will present “Dreams,” a love story that premiered at this year’s Berlinale. Dea Kulumbegashvili will also present her second feature, “April,” which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Jay Duplass, whose comedy “The Baltimorons” was an audience favorite at SXSW and the Chicago Critics Film Festival, will attend a screening of his film at KVIFF. Italian filmmaker Paolo Genovese will present “Madly,” his latest work, and Italian actor Valerio Mastandrea will present “Feeling Better,” which he directed and stars in. Finally, Mark Jenkin will be at KVIFF for the world premiere of his short film “I Saw the Face of God in the Jet Wash,” to be shown in the Imagina section.

One of the oldest film festivals in the world, and the most prestigious of its type in Eastern and Central Europe, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) will hold its 59th edition on July 4-12 in the Czech Republic. The festival had previously announced that Michael Douglas will present a newly restored version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, and the official selection for its two main competitions.

Although the documentary section of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival often seemed to dominate the proceedings, there were a number of notable narrative items as well and one of them even turned to be one of the big award winners as well.

In the International Narrative section, the top prize went to “Happy Birthday,” Sarah Goher’s debut film about an eight-year-old girl named Toha (Doha Ramadan in a fantastic performance) who works as a maid for a wealthy family in Cairo and who is best friends with her employer’s young daughter, Nelly. On the occasion of Nelly’s birthday, Toha is determined to ensure that she has the best celebration imaginable—in part because she has never celebrated her own—and as the day goes on, her optimism and exuberance inevitably run smack into the social hierarchies that continue to dominate contemporary Egypt. This may sound like the makings of an especially mawkish melodrama. Still, it manages to avoid that with a thoughtful screenplay by Goher and Mohamed Diab (which also won the Best Screenplay prize) that tackles the issues at hand without milking the material for overt sentiment.

The U.S. Narrative Feature prize went to Libby Ewing’s “Charliebird,” which also won Best Performance for Gabriela Ochoa Perez, with the Special Jury Mention going to “Esta Isla,” Cristian Carretero and Lorraine Jones Molina’s beautifully filmed (it also won the award for Best Cinematography) but dramatically inert tale of a couple of young lovers who go on the run after one runs afoul of drug dealers and hide out in isolation in the mountains. Best Screenplay went to “On a String,” a very funny and incisive debut feature from writer-director-star Isabel Hagen about a Juilliard-trained violinist who is still struggling to make it by giving lessons and playing as part of a quartet for people far more successful than her. (At one point, she is taking a break from playing and is mistaken for one of the caterers.) Although I suspect that many of the reviews to come will employ some variation of the phrase “Gerwig-esque,” Hagen demonstrates genuine wit on both sides of the camera.

The Best Performance prize went jointly to Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn for their work in “Dragonfly,” writer-director Paul Andrew Williams’ film about a woman (Riseborough) who gets so infuriated with the slipshod care her elderly neighbor (Blethyn) is receiving from nurses hired by her son (mainly as an excuse not to visit her) that she offers to help out with the shopping and other chores for free. A friendship develops between the two, but as things progress, there are indications that there may be more to the woman’s motives than she is letting on. Without going into detail, what starts as a quietly biting critique along the lines of the films of Mike Leigh for the first two-thirds goes into some very different waters in the final stretch. While some may object to that turn, the performances from the two actresses are so good that they make it work against all odds.

As for the other films in the narrative section, several of them seemed crafted to remind viewers of earlier works, although they never quite lived up to those sources of inspiration. For example, the largely tedious “Paradise Records,” tells the story of the beleaguered owner of a failing record shop (musician Logic, who also wrote and directed) who, over the course of one long day, deals with his weirdo co-workers and clientele, the imminent loss of his business and a hostage situation and is so clumsily derivative of “Clerks” that when Jay & Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smth, the latter serving as an executive producer) turn up for a brief appearance, it seems more inevitable than surprising.

Rick Gomez’s “She Dances” tries to recapture the success of “Little Miss Sunshine” with a story of a father (Steve Zahn, who also co-wrote the screenplay) and his somewhat estranged daughter (Audrey Zahn, his real-life daughter) attempting to reconcile with each other and a shared tragedy when he is pressed into service at the last moment to chaperone her and her best friend (Mackenzie Ziegler) to a dance competition in a work that tries way too hard to be heartfelt and poignant. However, it does have the benefit of a strong and promising performance from the younger Zahn.

Rather than taking its inspiration from any single film, Melody C. Roscher’s “Bird in Hand” seems to be paying homage to any number of indie films that Miramax dumped onto the market during the ’90s. In this one, a quirky young biracial woman named Bird (Alisha Wainwright) visits her quirky estranged mom (Christine Lahti) with news of her impending wedding. As it turns out, however, she has an entirely different goal that she is hoping to accomplish in the quirkiest way imaginable. If that weren’t enough, she also becomes involved with her mom’s quirky neighbors (James Le Gros and Annabelle Dexter-Jones). None of the characters are particularly involving (Lahti is particularly wasted), and the result is more annoying than endearing.

However, I would certainly take it over the likes of Laurent Slama’s “Second Life,” a film clearly wanting to be the next “Before Sunrise.” It follows a suicidal young woman (Agatha Rouselle) working at a dead-end job showing clients to their apartment rentals for the Paris Olympic Games when she meets an aggressive free spirit (Alex Lawther) who is determined to bring joy to her existence even while masking his own sadness. Without beating a dead horse (one of the many activities preferable to sitting through this thing), I will merely state that this is a movie shot in Paris that features Rouselle, the knockout star of “Titane,” and is only 77 minutes long. Even with all that, I struggled to make it to the end.

While the narrative titles mentioned so far have come from emerging filmmakers, there were also a few titles from more established names. One of the more high-profile examples was “Gonzo Girl,” the directorial debut from Patricia Arquette that finds her adapting Cheryl Della Pietra’s novel inspired by her time working as a writing assistant to the legendary journalist Hunter S. Thompson in the early 90s. As the ersatz HST, known here as Walker Reade, Willem Dafoe is clearly having a good time (though his impersonation is not nearly as convincing previous attempts by Bill Murray and Johnny Depp). Still, as the assistant who gets caught up in his world of booze, guns, drugs and competing with his legacy, Camila Morrone is stuck with a role that rarely gives her any moments to shine. Essentially, Arquette (who also appears as Reade’s world-weary right-hand woman) has taken a story about someone struggling to avoid coming across as a side character in their own story and turned it into a story in which he ends up doing just that.

More interesting are the returns of two filmmakers who have been absent from the big screen for a while. Along with co-director David Merriman, Jim Sheridan returned with “Re-Creation,” an intriguing hybrid of documentary and fiction to reexamine the real-life 1996 murder of French filmmaker Sophie Toscan Du Plantier at her vacation home in Ireland—although British journalist Ian Bailey was tried and convicted in absentia in France, he never faced trial in Ireland and the case remains technically unsolved.

Using “12 Angry Men” as its obvious inspiration, Sheridan and Merriman speculate what might have occurred if Bailey had gone to trial in Ireland by focusing on a fictional jury (including Sheridan himself as the foreperson and Vicky Krieps as the one initial holdout) as they debate the facts and inconsistencies of the case while tempers flare among them. Although the film will likely resonate more with viewers in Europe than in America, the points that Sheridan and Merriman strive to make about the importance of facts in the face of emotion and sensationalism still come through with powerful effect.

“Relay,” the new film from David Mackenzie (“Hell or High Water”), is also a throwback of sorts, to the kind of smart, mid-budget adult-oriented thriller that Hollywood used to have no problem making once upon a time. In it, Riz Ahmed plays Ash, a recluse who makes his living helping to protect corporate whistleblowers from threats from their former employers by negotiating settlements between them (for a healthy fee), utilizing an impossible-to-trace phone-to-text relay service as his form of communication.

One day, he is approached by a scientist (Lily James) who stole incriminating files from her former employer and, having changed her mind, wants to use Ash’s services to negotiate their return while her former employer’s goons (led by Sam Worthington and Willa Fitzgerald) try to track her down. It’s a crisply made and very effective thriller that builds upon its intriguing hook with a script that provides numerous inspired twists and turns. There are fully developed characters for the cast to play—Ahmed and James develop a convincing relationship despite hardly ever appearing in the same frame—and exciting moments that make effective use of the New York locations.

As “Queens of the Dead,” the raucous debut of director/co-writer Tina Romero, begins, a warehouse party catering to the Brooklyn drag queen community is threatening to go off the rails for its organizer (Katy O’Brien, the scene-stealer from “Love Lies Bleeding”) before it even begins—the performers are fighting with each other, the big draw has dropped out at the last second for a bigger gig and the toilet is clogged. Things get exponentially worse when the area is suddenly stuck with an ever-growing onslaught of flesh-eating zombies.

Yes, Romero is the daughter of horror legend George Romero, and while his influence can be felt in some of the more overtly satirical moments, she is not merely trying to emulate his distinct approach. Instead, she goes for something a bit broader and goofier, and while her gags may not always work, they are done in such a genial manner that it is easy to forgive the occasional duds. The cast—which also includes Riki Lindhome, Cheyenne Jackson, Jaquel Spivey, Nina West, and Margaret Cho—is clearly having a blast playing off of each other and helps to fortify Romero’s basic underlying theme of how a real sense of community can be an invaluable asset in dealing with adversity. (In her father’s films, the focus was usually on witnessing that sense of community falling apart for all the usual reasons, leading to disaster for everyone.) Look, you are probably as tired of zombie films as I am at this point, but despite some rough patches here and there, it’s a blast.

Among my other favorites on the narrative side of the festival was “What Marielle Knows,” a pointedly funny and occasionally unnerving work from Frederic Hambalek about an eleven-year-old girl (Laeni Geiseler) who, after getting slapped in the face after saying something cruel to a friend, gains the inexplicable ability to see and hear everything that her parents do and experience. This leads to increasing tensions among them as Mom (Julia Jentsch) and Dad (Felix Kramer) try to figure out how to live with this new reality while the child is forced to deal with things that she would rather not know about.

Another one I liked a lot is “Pinch,” a bold, angry, and darkly funny work from writer-producer-director-star Uttera Singh about Maitri, a would-be travel blogger about to leave her Indian neighborhood for a trip that will bring attention to her YouTube channel. While journeying to a temple with her disapproving mother, Maitri is groped on a bus by someone who is both a family friend and the landlord. When she impulsively decides to retaliate, it sets off an unexpected chain of events for all involved.

Another fraught mother-daughter conflict is at the heart of Lilian Mehrel’s “Honeyjoon,” a funny, touching and occasionally sexy comedy-drama about a young woman (Ayden Mayeri) at loose ends who finds herself vacationing with her widowed Persian-Kurdish mother (Amira Caesar) at a resort overrun with honeymooners on the one-year anniversary of her father’s death. While she just wants to have fun (preferably with their hunky tour guide), her mom continues to dwell on their loss—not to mention the oppression of young women back in Iran—in ways that drive them both to distraction.

Closer to home, at least geographically, Paula Andrea Gonzalez-Nasser’s “Scout” is an innovative and intriguing debut about a woman who works as a location scout tasked with finding just the right home to use to shoot a TV pilot. This job finds her bearing witness to the lives of complete strangers, while she is somewhat at odds with her own existence.

However, the film from this year’s Tribeca lineup that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon is Oscar Boyson’s “Our Hero, Balthazar,” a satire so dark and corrosive that just a vague description is likely to put most potential viewers off. The Balthazar of the title (played memorably by Jaeden Martell) is a spoiled New York teenager who likes making TikTok videos of himself performing crybaby tears over whatever tragedy has currently overtaken the Internet—the latest being a school shooting in Arkansas.

In order to hit on a plainly uninterested classmate who is sincerely concerned about gun violence, he starts making videos pleading for stricter gun laws that she ignores but which attract the scorn of an online troll (Asa Butterfield). Convinced that the other person is genuinely a potential school shooter, Balthazar journeys to Texas to confront him—mostly to win the favor of the girl back home—and finds him to be a pathetic shlub who has just been fired from his job for being creepy to a coworker and has been pushed by his loutish dad to participate in an obvious scam. The two form an uneasy friendship that can’t possibly end well and most certainly doesn’t.

Taking on issues of class, economics, toxic masculinity, gun culture, online harassment, and identity issues with razor-sharp wit and no small amount of insight—not to mention deeply committed and often discomfiting performances from the two leads—Boyson is taking a lot of big swings here. He connects more often than not, though his refusal to pull back on the reins will almost certainly appall as many as it entertains.

Over 12 days, the 2025 edition of New York’s Tribeca Film Festival screened 118 feature films, 93 of them premieres, featuring titles from all over the world and covering pretty much every imaginable genre and then some.

Not counting the numerous classic titles that were given high-profile retrospective screenings, I managed to see about half of the titles being presented, and my reactions to them were just as varied. Some of them were quite good, some were aggressively mediocre, and there were a couple so bad that the mind reels at the thought of what the titles that were rejected must have been like to allow them to sneak through. And yes, happily, there were even a couple of out-of-nowhere items that deliver their messages with such skill, style and audacity that it’s genuinely exciting and astonishing to watch unspool.

This year’s lineup seemed slanted a little more heavily toward documentaries than in the past, and, perhaps not surprisingly for a festival that has always attracted a heavy star contingent, a number of them were also celebrity-driven with a particular emphasis on music-related projects. Perhaps the highest profile of these was “Miley Cyrus: Something Beautiful,” a visualization of the top-selling singer’s new album of the same name as directed by Jacob Bixenman, Brendan Walter and Cyrus herself—while the results won’t make you forget such rock opera classics as “Tommy” or “Pink Floyd the Wall” anytime soon, they do make for an entertaining and occasionally eye-popping 55 minutes and the sequence bringing together Cyrus and supermodel Naomi Campbell on “Every Girl You Ever Loved” is undeniably iconic.

Also appealing to the younger generation were Eugene Yi’s “The Rose: Come Back to Me,” a chronicle of one of the most popular K-Pop bands in the world today, and “Rebbeca,” Gabrielle Cavanagh and Jennifer Tiexiera’s film observing pop star Becky G as she goes about recording her first Mexican-language album and embarking on her first headlining tour. While these films will no doubt be loved by their respective (and considerable) fan bases, they feel like they were made not because they had something to say, but because their competitors had films produced about them, and they wanted to get in on the fun.

For older viewers, there were films about two of the most iconic symbols of the MTV generation in Alison Ellwood’s “Boy George & Culture Club” and Jonas Akerlund’s “Billy Idol Should Be Dead”. In both cases, the subjects at hand are compelling and entertaining enough in recounting their meteoric rises to fame and drug-fueled crashes to almost, but not quite, make viewers forget that the films themselves are little more than extended episodes of “Behind the Music.” On the other hand, the late and legendary jazz musician (among many other things) Sun Ra certainly left behind a life and legacy worthy of cinematic treatment but Christine Turner’s “Sun Ra: Do the Impossible” doesn’t take any of the creative risks that he took throughout his career, disappointingly sticking to the standard-issue “American Masters” format instead of going out on a limb in the way that the material seems to call out for.

There were also a number of documentaries examining the world of comedy on display. Matthew Perniciaro’s “Long Live the State” chronicled the history and 2024 reunion of the sketch comedy troupe The State, which formed at NYU in the late 80s and soon afterwards landed a show on MTV that, while short-lived, became a cult favorite that helped launch the careers of such members as Michael Showalter, David Wain, Joe Lo Truglio and others who would go on to make their marks on American comedy over the last 30 years. Again, the film is pretty much for fans only—it insists upon their greatness without quite making the case for anyone who isn’t already in the bag for them and inexplicably glosses over what could have been the most interesting aspect, the prospect of coming back together after such a long time.

The legendary Dadaist comedian Andy Kaufman has been the subject of so many books and documentaries trying to figure out what made him tick, yet another film about him might seem superfluous. Clay Tweel’s “Andy Kaufman is Me” (featuring Dwayne Johnson and David Letterman among the array of co-producers) manages to set itself apart from the pack by offering insights into Kaufman and his approach to comedy from the man himself. This is done via archival materials supplied by his family that include numerous audio diaries, which help provide a fuller picture of him and his work, which still has the power to amuse, anger, and confuse people decades after his passing.

On the other hand, few would argue that Pat, the recurring “SNL” character from the early-’90s incarnation of the show, whose single joke was that she drove others to distraction by her apparent refusal to observe gender lines, has aged particularly well. In the intriguing “We Are Pat,” filmmaker Ro Haber grapples with the legacy of this divisive character and, with the blessing of Julia Sweeney, who created and portrayed Pat, gathers together a group of LGBTQ comedians to see if they can reframe the character in a contemporary context that acknowledges the vast changes in attitudes towards trans visibility and make them into something empowering instead of insulting.

This may sound like a lot of effort for a comedic premise that wasn’t that amusing in the first place, but it offers viewers a way of exploring shifts in comedic sensibilities and social attitudes.

One cannot have a film festival without including a few entries about the history of cinema itself, and Tribeca was no exception to that, coming up with a trio of fascinating titles. As you can probably surmise from the title, Jeffrey McHale’s “It’s Dorothy!” is yet another documentary revolving around “The Wizard of Oz” but puts the focus solely on the central character of Dorothy Gale and how she has been portrayed in various productions over the years. These range, of course, from Judy Garland’s legendary turn in the 1939 classic to Stephanie Mills’ equally memorable work on Broadway in the role in “The Wiz” to Fairuza Balk’s appearance in the fascinating 1985 semi-sequel “Return to Oz.” This study is based on observations from individuals who have played her, such as Balk and Ashanti, as well as devotees like Rufus Wainwright and John Waters, whose obsession with the film has been well-documented.

In his first feature, the charming and surprisingly moving “Runa Simi,” filmmaker Augusta Zegarra follows Fernando, a Peruvian voiceover artist whose online hobby of dubbing film clips into his native Quechua—as a way of allowing the nearly-extinct language to thrive and gain relevance—leads him on a quixotic quest to attempt a complete dub of “The Lion King.” The film observes as he tries to pull the project together while simultaneously attempting to secure permission from Disney for the endeavor.

About as far away from the likes of “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Lion King” as you could possibly get were the films of Andy Milligan, the insanely prolific exploitation filmmaker who, from the late ’60s through the ’80s, ground out lurid exploitation films over the years that brought together sex, violence, perverse situations and thoroughly unpleasant characters on beyond-minuscule budgets that left even the hardiest grindhouse viewers of the day feeling confused and icked out by what that had just witnessed. As bad as his movies were, he was clearly someone who, like any real artist, was consumed with trying to express themselves through their work (even if he ultimately wasn’t very good at it).

In their often-fascinating documentary “The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan,” co-directors Josh and Grayson Tyler Johnson examine Milligan’s bizarro personal and professional legacy through interviews with former colleagues (who still seem poleaxed by the experience) as well as a number of astonishing excerpts from his singular oeuvre. While I doubt that it will spur a reexamination of his work or inspire a quirky biopic, it does offer viewers an eye-opening look into one of the weirder and darker corners of cinema history.

As a further boon to Milligan scholars, the fest additionally presented screenings of two Milligan features that had been thought to be lost for many years: 1967’s “The Degenerates” (a post-apocalyptic chamber drama in which three soldiers happen upon five women living in a farmhouse and things quickly go sideways) and 1968’s “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me!” (a frustrated housewife makes a play for her inattentive husband’s best friend and things quickly go sideways). While these showings may not have had the cachet of the fest’s other retrospective screenings of such classics as “Casino,” “Best in Show,” or “Shivers,” my guess is that no one who attended these will ever forget them, no matter how hard they may try.

Not surprisingly, New York itself was a central feature of a number of documentaries in the lineup, led by “Sixth Borough,” Jason Pollard’s engaging and exciting look at Long Island’s often-overlooked contributions to the rise of hip-hop culture through the work of such local heroes as Public Enemy and De La Soul, who used their music to both celebrate and critique their experiences growing up there. Somewhat less enlightening was Josh Swade’s “Empire Skate,” a somewhat glib examination of the city’s skateboard culture as it grew in the ’90s, as seen through the perspective of the celebrated skater brand Supreme. Produced by ESPN as part of their “30 for 30” series, the slickness of the film too often seems at odds with the world it is trying to celebrate.

That said, “Empire Skate” feels like a Frederick Wiseman epic in comparison to the likes of Matt Tyrnauer’s “Nobu” and Greg Oliver and Karin Raoul’s “Raoul’s: A New York Story,” films about two of the city’s dining institutions that feel more like extended commercials than legitimate films especially in the case of the former, which is co-owned by festival co-founder Robert De Niro, who makes several appearances during its running time. Of the two, “Raoul’s” may be slightly better as some of the stories told during its duration are a little more interesting, but in either case, they will leave viewers hungry afterwards for a good meal and a better film.

There were also several films touching on LGBTQIA+ issues, both past and present. On the historical side, Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard’s uplifting documentary “I Was Born This Way” recounted the story of Carl Bean, who fled a childhood marked with abuse to make it as a singer, first as a gospel performer and later with the 1977 gay anthem “I Was Born This Way” before shifting gears in the 80s by responding to the growing AIDS crisis by forming the Minority AIDS Project and the Unity Fellowship Church to minister to LGBTQ+ people of color, through animated interludes and interviews with the likes of Billy Porter, Lady Gaga, Dionne Warwick and Bean himself.

Even more powerful is “Just Kids,” Gianna Toboni’s alternately angering and heartbreaking look at three transgender kids and the specific ways in which their lives are thrown into upheaval by the draconian laws against gender-affirming care. (These laws, it must be said, being instituted throughout the country by people who would never have the spine to watch this movie.)

Likewise, Chase Joynt’s “State of Firsts” follows Delaware politician Sarah McBride on her campaign to become the first transgender person elected to Congress and, following her convincing victory, the appalling treatment she receives from MAGA slime like Nancy Mace who cheerfully go about enacting bathroom bans explicitly aimed at her and misgendering her at every opportunity. These moments are enraging, of course, but they don’t wind up overwhelming things thanks to the perseverance on McBride’s part that Joynt wisely allows to take center stage.

Of all the documentaries that I saw, there were three that really stood out for me and which you should put on your radar. Zippy Kimundu’s “Widow Champion” unveils how in areas of rural Kenya where tribalism and patriarchy still rule, widows are often cruelly dismissed and booted off of land that they should rightfully inherit by their former in-laws and how one woman, Rodah Nafula Wekesa, a widow herself, has taken on the task of mediating between the parties in order to bring peace and justice to both sides while recognizing both the old and new ways.

Ole Juncker’s “Take the Money and Run” takes one of the weirder art-related stories of recent years—having been loaned an enormous sum of money as part of an museum installation revolving around economic inequality, Danish artist Jens Haaning instead only presented two blank canvases and refused to return the money, suggesting that this act was itself the work—as a way of exploring issues of creation, ownership and authenticity that become all the more complicated when they become the focus of the inevitable legal ramifications of his act.

The real jaw-dropper, however, is Suzannah Herbert’s “Natchez,” which explores the still-unreconciled history of the American South and who should ultimately get to tell its story—those who still cling to the romanticized vision of hoop skirts and lavish plantations or those with a tale that doesn’t quite correspond to those “Gone with the Wind”-inspired fantasies. These issues are represented by a wide array of locals, ranging from a preacher who serves as a tour guide to the area who somehow manages to be jovial without glossing over the realities of what he is showing to his clients to one person who, towards the end, is caught on camera cheerfully saying the kinds of things you would never want to be caught saying on camera.

“Natchez” proved to be the big winner in the documentary section of the festival’s awards presentation, scoring the Best Documentary prize as well as special Jury Mentions for its cinematography and editing.