Comedy actor and writer John Early has added director to his resume as he brings his first feature, Maddie’s Secret, to open the Toronto Film Festival Discovery sidebar for first-time and emerging filmmakers.
The film about Maddie, a Food Network content creator trying not to allow her dark past to pierce her perfect veneer, stars many of Early’s colleagues in the L.A. stand-up comedy scene, including Kate Berlant, Vanessa Bayer and Connor O’Malley.
In all, Discovery programmers have assembled 23 world premieres for their 25th edition. Also booked into the Toronto section is director Nadia Latif’s The Man in My Basement, which plays with the horror genre and stars Corey Hawkins as an African American man about to lose his family’s home, until a white businessman (Willem Dafoe) offers to rent his basement to clear his debts in a deal he chose not to refuse, but should have.
Other titles: Cato Kusters’ love story Julian, about two women — Nina Meurisse playing Fleur and Laurence Roothooft as Julian — planning to marry in 22 countries where they legally can, only to tragically halt their journey after four marriages; and Taratoa Stappard’s Maori gothic horror pic Marama, where Ariana Osborne plays a young woman fighting to reclaim her indigenous identity in Victorian-era Britain.
The section has two films with main characters who are deaf: writer/director Ted Evans’ debut thriller Retreat, starring an all-deaf cast led by Anne Zander, James Boyle and Sophie Stone; and Stroma Cairns’ The Son and the Sea, another debut feature and about three boys, one of whom is profoundly deaf, on a trip to the Northeast coast of Scotland.
Other Discovery titles include director Siyou Tan’s coming of age drama Amoeba, about a young woman launching a rebellion at an elite all-girls school by starting a gang; Laundry, from director Zamo Mkhwanazi and set in 1968 during South Africa’s apartheid era; and writer-director Eva Thomas’ solo directorial debut Nika & Madison, about two young Indigenous women, played by Ellyn Jade and Star Slade, who go on the run after a violent encounter with police.
Also in the 2025 Discovery sidebar is Kunsang Kyirong’s first feature, 100 Sunset, a character-driven mystery about a teenage kleptomaniac who spies on her Tibetan community and meets an unexpected confidant; Bikas Ranjan Mishra’s police drama Bayaan, an adaptation of a stage play; Sasha Leigh Henry’s Dinner With Friends drama about eight friends learning staying as a group is as hard as growing up; Joscha Bongard’s pic Babystar, about a child influencer trying to break free of parents deciding to have another baby; and Andy Hines’ debut feature and crime thriller Little Lorraine, starring Stephen Amell and Colombian reggaeton star J Balvin in his first movie role.
There’s also first looks for Tomas Corredor’s Noviembre; Karla Badillo’s Oca; Seyhmus Altun’s As We Breathe; Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja’s Egghead Republic; Seemab Gul’s Ghost School; Lucia Alenar Iglesias’ Forastera; Goran Stankovic’s Our Father; Melanie Charbonneau’s Out Standing; and Zain Duraie’s Sink.
The Toronto Film Festival is set to run from Sept. 4 to 14. Additional lineup announcements will be made in the coming weeks.
The post-pandemic theatrical landscape has mostly been an anxiety disorder punctuated by the occasional high. But one genre has consistently drawn audiences back to the multiplex in the past few years: horror.
No longer just pegged to Halloween, horror movies now dot the release calendar year-round. M3GAN 2.0 may have fizzled last month but 28 Years Later found new blood in a franchise only a fraction younger than its title. The legacy sequel I Know What You Did Last Summer, which opened last weekend, tests the limits of ‘90s nostalgia, while Dave Franco and Alison Brie’s Sundance body-horror hit, Together, arrives July 30. Hopes also are high for Weapons, with Josh Brolin and Julia Garner, opening early next month.
Since the turn of the 20th century, horror — first in literary form and later in movies — has reflected social anxieties about a rapidly changing world. In a 21st century plagued by such concerns as global warming, the rise of AI technology, democracy in peril and the demonization of “the other,” it’s unsurprising that horror in the past 25 years has become unusually fertile terrain, ushering in what might arguably be called a new golden age of screen terror.
That made it a challenging task to whittle down a roundup of just 25 favorites, covering studio releases and indies, American and international. For every film included on the entirely subjective ranked list below, a handful of others regrettably got bumped (see Honorable Mentions for several of them).
I make no apologies for personal preferences that lean more toward atmospheric or allegorical horror than sadistic schlock, so you won’t find The Human Centipede slithering here. Likewise, I’ll take monster movies and ghost stories over torture porn — don’t look for Saw or Hostel representation. And as much as I enjoyed X, Pearl and MaXXXine, Ti West’s playful trilogy showcasing the vixenish charms of Mia Goth, I opted to skip slasher flicks in favor of the occult.
Finally, please don’t bitch and moan about David Lynch’s incomparable Mulholland Drive not being here. Love it, but the genre-defying stunner is not horror.
Honorable mentions: Barbarian (2022), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), The Eye (2003), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), Goodnight Mommy (2014), The Innocents (2022), It Comes at Night (2017), Midsommar (2019), Nanny (2022), The Orphanage (2008), Prey (2022), Pulse (2005), Raw (2017), She Dies Tomorrow (2020), Thelma (2017)
horror romance, adapted from the novel by Camille DeAngelis, is a love story bathed in the pools of blood spilled during the cannibal protagonists’ feeding times. The Italian director also bathes the movie in unexpected sweetness, poetry, lush sensuality and emotional depth. Evincing simmering chemistry, Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet play the protein-diet drifters on a cross-country road trip, feasting whenever they can, “bones and all,” on human flesh. Separating and reuniting, they find a home in each other and attempt to live a normal life, until the past — in the maximum-eccentricity form of Mark Rylance — catches up with them in a shattering final act. Guadagnino cites Terrence Malick’s Badlands as an influence, but this oddly tender trail of death evokes a whole panoply of American outsider tales.
possession spook show, a violent cautionary tale warning us not to mess with the spirit world. A group of Adelaide teens who never met a frightening moment unsuitable for social media sharing somehow get a hold of what’s allegedly a severed forearm encased in ceramic. By clutching the hand and saying the three words of the title, they invite the dead to occupy their bodies. But there’s a strict 90-second limit before the presence puts down roots. In a knockout big-screen debut, Sophie Wilde plays Mia, whose mother’s apparent suicide makes her especially receptive to spiritual exploration. But a crisis explodes when Mia’s surrogate little brother stays too long at the party. The talented Philippous handily sidestepped the sophomore jinx with this year’s Bring Her Back.
alien-invasion chiller that became a sizable worldwide hit. With solid support from Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe, the suspenseful film tracks a family’s survival ordeal in a post-apocalyptic America overrun with spindly, blind extraterrestrials whose acute sense of hearing allows them to pinpoint their doomed targets in seconds. Early on, Krasinski folds in shattering tragedy that many films might have saved for the climax. Instead, here it raises a pulse rate that seldom slows down. The sequel, A Quiet Place: Part II, and prequel, A Quiet Place: Day One, are not half bad either.
spellbinding story of supernatural siege, inspired by the British Iranian director’s Tehran childhood. Set in 1988 as post-revolutionary conflict rages on, the movie plays like one of Asghar Farhadi’s intense domestic dramas deftly crossed with paranormal horror in the vein of Poltergeist or The Babadook. The cultural specificity of its political turmoil and the feminist view of a society that oppresses women turn up the alarm of a former leftist radical (played with fierce grit by Narges Rashidi) trying to save herself and her young daughter from a seemingly inescapable war and an infestation of djinn — Middle Eastern spirits carried by the wind — bent on dividing or destroying them. The most haunting image of this white-knuckle watch is a faceless figure in a whirling chador that threatens to engulf the mother.
Amulet, Peter Strickland’s beguilingly weird Berberian Sound Studio and Joe Cornish’s Spielbergian sci-fi monster comedy, Attack the Block. One of the best is Remi Weekes’ debut, a highly original marriage of haunted house terror with harrowing social realism. The film depicts the refugee experience as its own kind of horror — fleeing the violent massacres of a war-torn country; making a perilous crossing in an overcrowded boat; surviving, albeit with sacrifices and guilt; and then facing the endless bureaucratic red tape that asylum seekers are required to navigate, along with the myriad anxieties of cultural displacement. Wunmi Mosaku (a standout in Sinners) and Sope Dirisu bring agonizing depth of feeling to their roles as South Sudanese refugees. Their adjustment to life in England goes from difficult to hellish when they discover that their dilapidated government-assigned housing is inhabited by an “apeth,” a night witch that has followed them from East Africa to claim retribution for their sins.
lo-fi fright feast, sex is the means of transference for a dark force bringing certain death to whomever is last on the copulation conquest list. The only escape is by sleeping with someone else and letting them fend off the lethal entity, which can take on any form, including that of friends and family. Maika Monroe stars as the young Detroit suburbanite with a target on her back, who enlists her friends to help thwart the possibly supernatural assailant. Mitchell cited George A. Romero, John Carpenter and still photographer Gregory Crewdson as influences on the taut, almost unbearably tense film’s seductive visual compositions, full of virtuosic pans and voyeuristic tracking sequences. It’s a surreal fusion of 1950s horror with dreamy adolescent limbo.
haunted house movie as gripping and scary as this low-budget quickie from Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp. That central spark is the choice to shoot the entire single-location film in first-person perspective, with the camera standing in for the unseen entity of the title. In a sense that also makes us the ghost that gives a chilly welcome to the home’s new owners, gradually slamming the family with the full force of its diabolical intent. It’s a dazzling exercise in sustained tension and steadily mounting dread, with a terrific ensemble led by Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan.
Black Panther, Ryan Coogler delivered his first entirely original blockbuster — not based on real-life events or existing IP — with this genre-crossing panorama of the Jim Crow South. It stars a magnetic Michael B. Jordan as twin brothers known as Smoke and Stack, Chicago gangland veterans returning to the Mississippi Delta to open a juke joint. But beyond that compelling narrative spine, the movie is a soaring ode to the spiritual and supernatural power of the blues, an allegory about the elusiveness of freedom and an orgy of vampire violence. The time and care spent on character and milieu make the explosive carnage pop in a pulse-racing thriller with a lot on its mind.
crackling debut tests the boundaries between faith and insanity via a palliative care nurse who becomes a Christian convert and assumes the godly name of the title after the shock of losing a patient at her former hospital job. Welsh actress Morfydd Clark plays the tightly wound Maud as a zealous self-appointed savior, obsessed with rescuing the darkened soul of her private patient Amanda, who is slowly succumbing to cancer. Played by a never-better Jennifer Ehle with a cymbal clash of withering hauteur and fearful neediness, the once-celebrated dancer seems an unlikely candidate for absolution — she’s an unapologetic hedonist, a non-believer and a fiend for sins of the flesh, indulging during regular visits from her girlfriend. The enthralling interplay between the principal characters steers them toward mutual destruction as Glass orchestrates a crescendo in which demonic visions and splinters of the supernatural collide with religious ecstasy.
immortal vampire tale travels the same tar-black depths, but casts its own unique spell. Bill Skarsgard plays the lugubrious Count Orlok with Lily-Rose Depp as the young woman who becomes his “affliction,” her seeming purity masking a raw sexuality and innate darkness that bind them together with a heady erotic charge. A fever dream of a movie steeped in disturbing poetry and intoxicating imagery, it’s a triumph of design, atmosphere and malevolent intent, with a superlative cast also featuring Nicholas Hoult, Emma Corrin, Willem Dafoe and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
cryptic creep show, can still spark shudders years later. The Wilson family’s beach vacation is interrupted one night when Adelaide (Nyong’o), her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) and their two kids are startled to see four doppelgängers silhouetted in their driveway. Those uncanny twins — sadistic, animalistic, feral versions of the Wilsons wearing red jump suits — are known as “the Tethered,” shadows connected to their counterparts, set on untethering themselves by the bloodiest means possible. I confess I cackled at the double of Elisabeth Moss’ Kitty clumsily applying lipstick with a maniacal smile, but mostly I cowered. A deeply distressing reflection on the enemy within us that mercilessly skewers the “Kumbayah” spirit of “Hands Across America.”
domestic shocker about a family hammered by sinister events after the death of their secretive grandmother. Having contributed an indelible portrait of a sensitive but spiky mother in one of the ’90s’ most iconic horror hits, The Sixth Sense, Toni Collette reaches almost operatic heights of hysteria as another spooked mom, Annie, notably in a spectacularly angry meltdown with her traumatized teenage son, played by Alex Wolff. The entire ensemble, which also includes Gabriel Byrne, Milly Shapiro and Ann Dowd, is exceptional. Making Annie a mixed-media miniature artist specializing in architectural models allows Aster to frame the entire story as if in a dollhouse, depicting the home not as a refuge but a point of entry for a malevolent coven. Thanks a lot, Grandma.
supernatural freakout ushered in the Warrens as central characters, played with an optimal balance of grave seriousness and warmth by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. The intelligence, conviction and mounting heebie-jeebies with which the married couple approach their work anchors the movie as the Warrens in 1971 battle to save a Rhode Island family whose house stands on land cursed by the Satanist witch who died there. Old-fashioned in the best possible sense of favoring practical over digital effects, it locks the viewer in a stranglehold of fear. My blood froze as the Warrens attempted to communicate with the mother possessed by the dark entity (Lili Taylor in spectacular form), and she wheeled around snarling, “She’s already gone.”
tenebrous fairy tale unfolds soon after, in the early days of the Franco regime. It parallels the ruthless efforts of a sadistic Civil Guard officer to eradicate rebel freedom fighters with the fantastical wanderings of his 10-year-old stepdaughter through an ancient stone labyrinth. Among the magical beings there, she meets a faun. Believing her to be the reincarnation of an underworld princess, the creature assigns her three tasks to complete in order to acquire immortality and return to her kingdom. A work of unbridled imagination and breathtaking beauty.
action thriller about flesh-eater mayhem on a high-speed inter-city train from Seoul. That claustrophobic setting, along with the gratifying amount of time and attention allotted to character establishment, gives the thrill ride an entertaining kinship with ‘70s disaster movies. Among the passengers is a workaholic finance manager trying to repair the broken bond with his daughter, a blue-collar couple expecting a child, a snaky COO, a high school baseball team and a homeless stowaway. Yeon fosters genuine investment even in the stock characters and their ordeal as they band together — or look out for themselves — in the fight to survive.
nerve-rattling debut finds psychological complexity and visceral fear in a child’s imagination — fueled by a gothic picture book right out of Edward Gorey — and in the 6-year-old boy’s fraught relationship with his depressed mother, a widow played in a wrenching whirl of despair, rage and helplessness by Essie Davis. The Australian director artfully blurs fantasy and reality in a story that’s as much about grief and the dread of parental failure as it is about the malevolent, black-hatted, steampunk-styled entity that emerges from the clothbound pages of that creepy kid-lit volume. It’s a gruesome assault on the senses with a hand-tooled aesthetic that evokes pre-digital horror stretching back to the German Expressionists.
Showtime series) is one of the most distinctive and delicately textured vampire movies in decades. A bullied 12-year-old boy finds companionship when a pale, mysterious girl who appears to be around his age moves in next door. While never edging away from pre-sexual innocence, their friendship evolves into love, even as gruesomely murdered bodies mount up and she is revealed to be an ancient vampire with an insatiable bloodlust. Light years away from the surging teen hormones of Twilight, this mortal-undead romance is equal parts melancholy, tender and bracingly scary.
first feature, with its provocative reflections on racial divisions, loss of identity and Black bodies treated as commodities by the white privileged class. The writer-director uses horror tropes to address needling questions that hung in the air at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency and have been steadily amplified in the years since. Daniel Kaluuya stars as a photographer meeting the parents of his white girlfriend (Alison Williams), thrust into a nightmarish reality in which the aggressively welcoming, seemingly ultra-liberal WASPs — played to insidious perfection by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener — have other plans for him. Both terrifying and hilarious, it’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers with well-heeled upstate New Yorkers as the predators.
Under the Skin (2013)
Image Credit: Everett Collection
With a slender output of just four features over 25 years, Brit director Jonathan Glazer has established himself as an exacting craftsman across different genres. It’s no surprise that he would make the most original and enigmatic horror movie of the new century — also among the most polarizing — with this experiential adaptation of the Michel Faber novel. Scarlett Johansson is in quiet command as an extraterrestrial female in Scotland, preying on lone men whom she lures into an inky abyss, until the discovery of human empathy scrambles her instincts. The scene in which the alien seduces and then spares the life of a facially disfigured man played by Adam Pearson is as affecting as it is disturbing. Few films deliver more hypnotically on the promise of their title.
The 2025 New York Film Festival has selected Luca Guadagnino‘s After the Hunt as its opening night film.
The movie — which stars Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield — will receive its North American premiere at New York’s Alice Tully Hall on Friday, Sept. 26.
After the Hunt, from Amazon MGM Studios, follows Roberts’ Yale philosophy professor Alma whose personal and professional lives are disrupted after her PhD candidate protégée Maggie (Edebiri) accuses Alma’s longtime friend and colleague Henrik (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault. Exploring the murkiness of contemporary morality, the film sees Alma navigating minefields of gender, sexuality, race and institutional power, as she attempts to reconcile her choices with past demons. Directed by Guadagnino from a script by Nora Garrett, After the Hunt also stars Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny.
After the Hunt just earlier this week was selected for the 2025 Venice Film Festival and is set to be released in theaters in New York and L.A. on Oct. 10 before expanding on Oct. 17.
Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, Bones and All and Queer all screened as part of past New York Film Festivals.
“I have always found the New York Film Festival to be an arbiter of global cinema. For over 60 years it has been a festival that makes audiences open their minds and hearts to the most daring and compelling global cinema from both established and emerging filmmakers,” Guadagnino said in a statement. “To be invited to open the 63rd edition is a tremendous responsibility and honor. I, alongside the incredible cast and crew and our companions at Amazon MGM Studios who made After the Hunt possible, am elated and thrilled to bring to New York our tale of morality and power. My most heartfelt thanks to Dennis Lim and the singular NYFF team.”
NYFF artistic director Lim added, “We are excited to open this year’s festival with Luca Guadagnino’s latest, which confirms his status as one of the most versatile risk-takers working today. Brilliantly acted and crafted, After the Hunt is something rare in contemporary cinema: a complex, grown-up movie with a lot on its mind that also happens to be a deeply satisfying piece of entertainment.”
The 63rd New York Film Festival is set run from Sept. 26-Oct. 13.
Freddie Fox’s time-spanning short film The Painting & the Statue has been selected for the 2025 HollyShorts Film Festival.
Starring Mark Gatiss (Sherlock), Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) and Asim Chaudhry (Barbie), the short follows two works of art — a painting and a statue — across 250 years: trapped in the same space, aware of each other’s existence, yet forever unable to meet.
“As the world changes around them, from the spoils of the 19th-century empire, through decadent Bright Young Thing parties, midnight Nazi bombings, and into the sterile halls of a modern-day museum reckoning with its colonial past, the silent observers remain unmoving, unseen, yet ever-watchful,” a plot synopsis reads. “Until, one day, by pure chance, their eyes meet, and for a fleeting, magical moment, the centuries melt away.”
The movie is produced by Kαrimα Sammout Kanellopoulou through her BAFTA-nominated company, Galazia Productions, and executive produced by Oscar-winner Chris Overton (The Silent Child) and Slick Films, alongside Fox’s own Brandy Bay Productions.
The Painting & the Statue (2025), directed by Freddie Fox.
Publicity
Nathan Stewart Jarrett (Femme), Fenella Woolgar (Bright Young Things), and rising stars Will Merrick, Andy Monaghan, and Hannah Onslow also star as the six castmembers play 22 characters between them.
“This story is about isolation, connection, and the passage of time,” Fox said. “It’s a timeless love story, but told from a perspective we don’t usually get to see, or even imagine. I’m deeply proud of the incredible team that brought it to life, and thrilled to premiere it at HollyShorts.”
Fox is best known to audiences for his roles in Slow Horses, The Great and HBO’s House of the Dragon. The actor made his directorial debut with the short film Hero, which won the Directorial Discovery Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. He is also working on a feature documentary about British theater, in co-production with The Kenneth Branagh Company and so far starring the likes of Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, Gary Oldman and Eddie Redmayne.
The Painting & the Statue‘s wider creative team includes including Ryan Eddleston (director of photography) Annie Symons (costume designer) Jules Chapman (makeup designer) Violet Elliot (production designer) and Arthur Pita (choreographer).
The HollyShorts Film Festival takes place Aug. 7–17, 2025 in Los Angeles. The full list of jurors for the fest, unveiled by The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, can be found here.
The wildly anticipated anime sequel Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – the Movie: Infinity Castle is already making box office history in Japan.
The anime epic opened with $11.1 million (1.65 billion yen) from 1.16 million admissions Friday — a new single-day record for Japan. From Friday to Sunday, the film totaled $37.3 million, but including Monday — a national holiday in Japan — it soared to $49.4 million. Either way, the performance represents a new opening-weekend record in the country.
The film also posted historic results for Imax in the country. Playing on just 59 premium screens, Infinity Castle generated $3 million over the standard Friday–Sunday weekend, and $3.5 million when including Monday’s Marine Day holiday. The result marks the format’s biggest opening frame ever in the market, with a per-screen average of approximately $48,000.
The blockbuster debut echoes the stunning performance of 2020’s Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, which became Japan’s all-time top-grossing film — amid the challenges of the pandemic — with a record-breaking total of over $365 million (40 billion yen). Infinity Castle’s three-day opening gross came in approximately 19 percent ahead of Mugen Train’s equivalent debut, suggesting the latest installment could be on course for another historic run, depending on word of mouth and staying power.
Directed by Haruo Sotozaki and produced by acclaimed animation studio Ufotable, Infinity Castle adapts the final arc of Koyoharu Gotouge’s best-selling manga series. Voice cast regulars Natsuki Hanae (Tanjiro), Akari Kitō (Nezuko), Hiro Shimono (Zenitsu) and Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (Inosuke) return as the Demon Slayer Corps embarks on a climactic assault against the demon king Muzan Kibutsuji. The film was co-financed by Aniplex, a subsidiary of Sony Group. International distribution is set to begin Sept. 12 via Toho, Aniplex and Crunchyroll, with Imax releases planned in over 40 territories worldwide.
The record-setting performance comes as Japan’s film industry continues to tilt heavily toward local content — particularly animation. Japanese films earned $1.01 billion (155.8 billion yen) in 2024, capturing approximately 75 percent of the market, while foreign films slumped to $329 million (51.2 billion yen) amid softness from major Hollywood tentpoles. Anime accounted for more than half of all ticket sales, thanks to the sustained popularity of long-running domestic franchises such as Detective Conan and Haikyu!!. The overseas market for anime, meanwhile, continues to surge.
Imax, virtually alone among North American theatrical players, is reaping the rewards of this shift. The company has been expanding its local presence through new site deals with Japanese exhibitors and increased collaboration with studios and distributors on Imax releases of major anime titles.
The Sarajevo Film Festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina unveiled the lineup for its 31st edition on Wednesday. The festival’s four competition sections – for feature, documentary, short and student films – will feature 15 world, six international, 28 regional and two national premieres. A total of 50 films will compete for the Heart of Sarajevo awards.
This year, the Sarajevo festival programmers team, led by creative director Izeta Građević, watched 1,036 films, including 195 feature fiction films, 291 documentaries, and 550 shorts and student titles.
“The competition programs of the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival bring together filmmakers who, each from their own perspective and in various film formats and genres, explore how we live and how we survive within complex and unstable social frameworks,” said Građević. “The backbone of this year’s competition programs are films that, transcending national boundaries, remain true to the universal stories that shape our lives. In this range – from topics that deal with today to those that question the past – this selection opens up space to remember, through film stories, what we all have in common: the need for meaning, for closeness, for understanding – ourselves and others.”
Elma Tataragić, the programmer of the competition program – feature film, said that the section’s nine films include three world premieres and six regional premieres, making for “an impressive and diverse panorama of contemporary regional cinema.” Touting “a dynamic mix of bold narration, visual innovation and fresh perspectives that reflect the richness of the region’s cultural tapestry,” she highlighted that the competition includes six debut films that “bring original voices and bold creative approaches to the big screen.”
Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino will receive this year’s Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award. The Sarajevo fest runs Aug. 15-22.
Check out the full Sarajevo lineup below.
COMPETITION PROGRAM – FEATURE FILM
OTTER (VIDRA), Srđan Vuletić (Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Croatia, Kosovo, 2025, 88 min.) – World premiere STARS OF LITTLE IMPORTANCE (MINDEN CSILLAG), Renátó Olasz (Hungary, 2025, 83 min.) – World premiere YUGO FLORIDA, Vladimir Tagić (Serbia, Bulgaria, France, Croatia, Montenegro, 2025, 112 min.) – World premiere DJ AHMET, Georgi M. Unkovski (North Macedonia, Czech Republic, Serbia, Croatia, 2025, 99 min.) – Regional premiere FANTASY, Kukla (Slovenia, North Macedonia, 2025, 98 min.) – Regional premiere GOD WILL NOT HELP (BOG NEĆE POMOĆI), Hana Jušić (Croatia, Italy, Romania, Greece, France, Slovenia, 2025, 135 min.) – Regional premiere SORELLA DI CLAUSURA, Ivana Mladenović (Romania, Serbia, Italy, Spain, 2025, 103 min.) – Regional premiere WHITE SNAIL, Elsa Kremser, Levin Peter (Austria, Germany, 2025, 115 min.) – Regional premiere WIND, TALK TO ME (VETRE, PRIČAJ SA MNOM), Stefan Đorđević (Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, 2025, 100 min.) – Regional premiere
COMPETITION PROGRAM – DOCUMENTARY FILM
BOSNIAN KNIGHT (BOSANSKI VITEZ), Tarik Hodžić (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, 2025, 79 min.) – World premiere I SAW A ‘SUNO’ (SUNO DIKHLEM), Katalin Barsony (Hungary, Belgium, 2025, 92 min.) – World premiere KITE (CHARTAETOS), Thanos Psichogios (Greece, 2025, 15 min.) – World premiere STEEL HOTEL SONG, Bojan Stojčić (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2025, 19 min.) – World premiere LETTERS (PISMA), Aysel Küçüksu (Bulgaria, 2025, 11 min.) – International premiere MY DAD’S LESSONS (LEKCIJE MOG TATE), Dalija Dozet (Croatia, 2025, 62 min.) – International premiere RED SLIDE (CRVENI TOBOGAN), Nebojša Slijepčević (Croatia, 2025, 27 min.) – International premiere THIRD WORLD (TREĆI SVIJET), Arsen Oremović (Croatia, 2025, 101 min.) – International premiere CUBA & ALASKA, Yegor Troyanovsky (Ukraine, France, Belgium, 2025, 93 min.) – Regional premiere DIVIA, Dmytro Hreshko (Ukraine, Poland, The Netherlands, USA, 2025, 79 min.) – Regional premiere DREAMERS: PEOPLE OF THE LIGHT (XƏYALPƏRƏSTLƏR: İŞIĞIN UŞAQLARI), Imam Hasanov (Azerbaijan, 2025, 86 min.) – Regional premiere EVERYTIME YOU LEAVE, YOU ARE BORN AGAIN (SVAKI PUT KAD ODEŠ, PONOVO SE RAĐAŠ), Mladen Bundalo (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, 2025, 24 min.) – Regional premiere I BELIEVE THE PORTRAIT SAVED ME (MUA BESOJ MË SHPËTOJ PORTRETI), Alban Muja (Kosovo, The Netherlands, 2025, 10 min.) – Regional premiere IN HELL WITH IVO, Kristina Nikolova (Bulgaria, USA, 2025, 80 min.) – Regional premiere MILITANTROPOS, Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova, Simon Mozgoviy (Ukraine, Austria, France, 2025, 111 min.) – Regional premiere OUR TIME WILL COME (UNSERE ZEIT WIRD KOMMEN), Ivette Löcker (Austria, 2025, 105 min.) – Regional premiere THE MEN’S LAND (KACEBIS MITSA), Mariam Bakacho Khatchvani (Georgia, Hungary, 2025, 15 min.) – Regional premiere SLET 1988, Marta Popivoda (Serbia, Germany, France, 2025, 22 min.) – Regional premiere 19-MONTH CONTRACT, Ketevan Vashagashvili (Georgia, Bulgaria, Germany, 2025, 77 min.) – B&H premiere TATA, Lina Vdovîi, Radu Ciorniciuc (Romania, Germany, The Netherlands, 2025, 82 min.) – B&H premiere
OUT OF COMPETITION FILM
OHO FILM, Damjan Kozole (Slovenia, Croatia, 2025, 93 min.) – International premiere, out of competition
COMPETITION PROGRAM – SHORT FILM
BERNA’S EYES (SYTË E BERNËS), Ermal Gërdovci (Kosovo*, North Macedonia, 2025, 17 min.) – World premiere DESERT, SHE (IERIMOS), Ioanna Digenaki (Greece, 2025, 14 min.) – World premiere PROCEDURE (PROSEDÜR), Rabia Özmen (Türkiye, 2025, 18 min.) – World premiere ALIȘVERIȘ, Vasile Todinca (Romania, 2025, 15 min.) – Regional premiere ERASERHEAD IN A KNITTED SHOPPING BAG, Lili Koss (Bulgaria, 2025, 19 min.) – Regional premiere HYSTERICAL FIT OF LAUGHTER (HISTERIČNI NAPAD SMEHA), Matija Gluščević, Dušan Zorić (Serbia, Croatia, 2025, 15 min.) – Regional premiere INDEX, Radu Muntean (Romania, 2025, 28 min.) – Regional premiere THE SPECTACLE, Bálint Kenyeres (Hungary, France, 2025, 17 min.) – Regional premiere UPON SUNRISE (KAD SVANE), Stefan Ivančić (Serbia, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, 2025, 15 min.) – Regional premiere WINTER IN MARCH (LUMI SAADAB MEID), Natalia Mirzoyan (Armenia, Estonia, France, Belgium, 2025, 16 min.) – Regional premiere
COMPETITION PROGRAM – STUDENT FILM
AFTER CLASS (DUPĂ ORE), Marius Papară (Romania, 2025, 18 min.) – World premiere FOUND & LOST, Reza Rasouli (Austria, 2025, 17 min.) – World premiere HOME, A SPACE BETWEEN US, Effi Rabsilber (Greece, 2025, 16 min.) – World premiere RAHLO, Jozo Schmuch (Croatia, 2025, 19 min.) – World premiere TARIK, Adem Tutić (Serbia, 2025, 27 min.) – World premiere CURFEW (KOMENDANTSKA HODYNA), Yelyzaveta Toptyhina (Ukraine, 2025, 23 min.) – International premiere BACKSTROKE (SIRTÜSTÜ), Asya Günen (Türkiye, 2025, 14 min.) – Regional premiere LIVING STONES (ÉLŐ KÖVEK), Jakob Ladányi Jancsó (Hungary, 2025, 20 min.) – Regional premiere MILK AND COOKIES (FURSECURI ȘI LAPTE), Andrei-Tache Codreanu (Romania, 2025, 21 min.) – Regional premiere PENINSULA (POLUOTOK), David Gašo (Croatia, 2025, 19 min.) – Regional premiere WISH YOU WERE EAR, Mirjana Balogh (Hungary, 2025, 10 min.) – Regional premiere
