Our 15 Most-Anticipated Films Premiering at Venice, TIFF, and NYFF

After highlighting the 50 must-see films confirmed to be arriving in theaters this fall, we turn our attention to the festival-bound titles either without distribution or a confirmed 2025 date. Looking over Venice, Toronto, the New York Film Festival, and other selections, we’ve rounded up 15 we can’t wait to see over the next few weeks.

Find our 15 most-anticipated festival premieres below and return for our reviews, as well as news if some of these hit theaters this fall, by subscribing to our daily newsletter.

Back Home (Tsai Ming-liang; TIFF and NYFF)

For his patient, observational style that often places characters in real locations and allows the world at large to impact the film no less than a scripted scenario, Tsai Ming-liang moves between fiction and documentary more nimbly than almost any living director. His latest, Back Home, follows Days star Anong Houngheuangsy in his native Laos; at only 65 minutes, it suggests both a much-needed respite from everyday living and the opportunity to experience a faraway place through Tsai’s tranquil, inimitable form. – Nick N.

The Christophers (Steven Soderbergh; TIFF)

The ever-prolific Steven Soderbergh has already released two features this year: the formally thrilling ghost tale Presence and the even better, tightly wound spy caper Black Bag. Now he’s set to premiere his third feature of the year, the comedy The Christophers, which marks his fourth collaboration with writer Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move, Mosaic). Starring Michaela Coel, Ian McKellen, Jessica Gunning, and James Corden, the film follows the children of a once-famous artist who hire a forger to complete some unfinished, long-abandoned canvases so they’ll have an inheritance when he dies. – Jordan R.

Cover-Up (Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus; Venice, TIFF, and NYFF)

For directors hoping to work in secret until their premiere is announced, the feat is just slightly easier for those working in the documentary field, and Laura Poitras has done it again. Returning a few years after her astounding Golden Lion winner All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, she’s teamed with Mark Obenhaus for Cover-Up. Exploring the life’s work of intrepid political reporter Seymour Hersh, one imagines it’s arriving at the perfect time as the entire United States project is under rightfully deep scrutiny. – Jordan R.

The Fence (Claire Denis; TIFF and NYFF)

Though inarguably one of the world’s foremost filmmakers, Claire Denis’ last several years (including risky ventures into English-language cinema) can’t help making new work feel a tad less like some outright event. None of which should diminish hopes or expectations for The Fence, which finds her returning to racial tensions in Africa and stars Denis mainstay Isaach de Bankolé as a local man forced to face down a shifty construction manager (Matt Dillon) while seeking the body of his deceased brother. The first nocturnal image of de Bankolé should fire the synapses of anybody who’s come to cherish her alternately graceful and brutal cinema. With respect to everything else on this list, there’s a chance The Fence emerges as this fall’s greatest premiere; even if it were somehow the worst film Denis has ever made, it’ll be valued for gifting us a new Tindersticks soundtrack. – Nick N.

Duse (Pietro Marcello; Venice, TIFF, and NYFF)

While the rollout of his directorial breakthrough Martin Eden was sadly hobbled by the pandemic, Pietro Marcello returned a few years ago with the beautiful fable Scarlet. He’s now back with Duse, a drama featuring Valeria Bruni Tedeschi starring as legendary Italian actress Eleonora Duse. With Marcello’s grand sense of history and large-canvas filmmaking, one expects this will be the rare biopic that doesn’t fall into easy convention. – Jordan R.

Gavagai (Ulrich Kohler; NYFF)

A perpetually underrated figure in world cinema, Ulrich Köhler (In My Room) returns with what already seems a major statement. In a metacinematic spin on Medea, a pair of actors (Jean-Christophe Folly and Maren Eggert) film Euripides’s play in Senegal under the guise of an anxious director (Nathalie Richard) while carrying an offscreen affair; a later incident at its Berlin premiere opens tough questions about bias and intent. If Köhler’s past films are any indication, it’ll also be genuinely funny. – Nick N.

Girl (Shu Qi; Venice and TIFF)

The legendary Shu Qi, perhaps best known for her trio of Hou Hsiao-hsien collaborations, returned to screens earlier this year with Bi Gan’s Cannes premiere Resurrection, which will also be stopping by some festivals ahead of a Janus Films release. She’s also completed her directorial debut Girl, a coming-of-age story about friendship that will premiere at Venice and come to TIFF. – Jordan R.

Late Fame (Kent Jones; Venice and NYFF)

To a certain era of cinephile (hello), Kent Jones’ criticism and programming were a perpetual north star. He’s been largely absent since leaving the New York Film Festival in 2019, and though a longtime documentary collaborator of Martin Scorsese, filmmaking has only started to suggest a new phase: if 2018’s thorny, odd Diane might not have been what people anticipated from his venture into narrative cinema, Late Fame––scripted by Samy Burch (May December), starring Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee––seems more at home with Jones’ longtime interest in life’s work and the artist-advocate relationship. Adapting a novella by Arthur Schnitzler (most famously the author of Eyes Wide Shut source Traumnovelle), it concerns a lesser-known poet (Dafoe) receiving late-in-life recognition for a reassessed collection, and the efforts of an actress (Lee) to gain his attention. The combination of director, scribe, stars, and DP Wyatt Garfield points towards an appreciably adult take on artistic practice. – Nick N.

No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook; Venice, TIFF, and NYFF)

Picked up by NEON, who has yet to announce a 2025 release date at the time of this publishing, Park Chan-wook’s return to theatrical filmmaking after Decision to Leave is among our most-anticipated fall premieres. Adapting Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, which Costa-Gavras first attempted in 2005, the black comedy thriller follows a man laid off from the paper company he worked at for 25 years. Some time later and still jobless, he hits on a solution: to genuinely eliminate his competition. Adapted by Park Chan-wook, Lee Kyung-mi (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, The Truth Beneath), Don McKellar (The Sympathizer), and Lee Ja-hye (Decision to Leave, The Handmaiden), the cast includes Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won, and Yoo Yeon-seok. – Jordan R.

Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks) (Lucrecia Martel; Venice, TIFF, and NYFF)

“I don’t know if the title will be Chocobar at this point, but the film is all about the crime involving this man. It’s been 13 years. I live very far from that community so I can’t spend large periods of time with them,” Lucrecia Martel told us back in 2023. “I also feel very uncomfortable when I interrupt the lives of these people. There are people, like people who make documentary films, they have this facility to connect with people very easily and I don’t have that. It’s a huge effort for me. And imagine: I have to use a cane now and these are mountainous areas!” The 15-year process of completing her first documentary has concluded with Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks), now set to premiere at fall festivals. Capturing the 2009 murder of Javier Chocobar, a member of the Indigenous Chuchagasta community in northwest Argentina, we imagine this, from one of the world’s great filmmakers, will feel remarkably different than the recent wave of true-crime documentaries. – Jordan R.

Pin de Fartie (Alejo Moguillansky; Venice and NYFF)

After creating some of the most structurally adventurous films of the century thus far with La Flor and Trenque Lauquen, the Argentine collective El Pampero Cine is returning this fall with Pin de Fartie. Deconstructing Samuel Beckett’s 1957 play Fin de Partie (Endgame), with the great Laura Paredes among the cast, it may not be as flashy as other big-name fall festival premieres this year, but we imagine it’ll go down as one of the best when the dust has settled. – Jordan R.

Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin; Venice, TIFF, and NYFF)

After Bait and Enys Men proved to be a pair of the most tactile, distinctive films from the last few years, director Mark Jenkin is expanding his scope for his latest. The Cornish director secretly finished production last summer on the time-travel mystery drama Rose of Nevada, which continues The Beast and The End star George MacKay’s auteur streak, while joined by Callum Turner. With it now set for premieres at the major trio of fall festivals, we wouldn’t be surprised if this one gets acquired quickly after its premiere. – Jordan R.

Sacrifice (Romain Gavras; TIFF)

After his formally assured (or perhaps assaultive) Athena, Romain Gavras has assembled quite the cast for his English-language debut Sacrifice, which features Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek Pinault, John Malkovich, and Charli xcx and is set at a high-end charity gala raided by a violent group of radicals on a mystical quest to fulfill a prophecy. It’s a bit odd this one would skip Venice for a TIFF world premiere, but we’re curious what’s in store. – Jordan R.

Two Pianos (Arnaud Desplechin; TIFF)

Do not let his diminished presence on the festival circuit fool you: Arnaud Desplechin stands among our most imaginative, fulfilling, delightfully go-for-broke filmmakers. While the last few years haven’t been so kind for stateside distribution, each work (Deception, Brother and Sister, Filmlovers!) has found him running in new directions, continually excited by the cinema apparatus as a formal stage and emotional landscape. I expect no less from Two Pianos, which stars François Civil, Charlotte Rampling, Hippolyte Girardot, and Nadia Tereszkiewicz in “a story of impossible love through the career of virtuoso pianist Mathias.” Expect some vivid voiceover, silent-era iris effects, and dynamic camera set-ups. – Nick N.

The Wizard of the Kremlin (Olivier Assayas; Venice and TIFF)

Talking to Olivier Assayas just this month, I learned he––about as established as any filmmaker in his native France, with more than 20 features to his name––has never managed to calm nerves in the weeks before a premiere. His reasons to fear for The Wizard of the Kremlin only sound like our potential gain: “[It’s] a complex, expensive film. It’s two-and-a-half hours. It’s not simple. I have a lot on my back.” His adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli’s French literary sensation––which might be something of a Vladimir Putin biopic starring Jude Law, Paul Dano, Alicia Vikander (reuniting from 2022’s monumental Irma Vep), Tom Sturridge, and Jeffrey Wright––may also return to the territory of 2010’s Carlos, but Assayas is some 40 years into a directing career that’s never quite let us picture what’s next. – Nick N.

More Fall Festival Premieres We’re Looking Forward To

• Barrio Triste (Stillz)
• Below the Clouds (Gianfranco Rosi)
• Carolina Caroline (Adam Carter Rehmeier)
• Couture (Alice Winocour)
• The Currents (Milagros Mumenthaler)
• Dead Man’s Wire (Gus Van Sant)
• Ghost Elephants (Werner Herzog)
• Orphan (László Nemes)
• Maddie’s Secret (John Early)
• Marc by Sofia (Sofia Coppola)
• Mile End Kicks (Chandler Levack)
• Remake (Ross McElwee)
• Silent Friend (Ildikó Enyedi)
• The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold)

We should also note that while the Locarno Film Festival doesn’t precisely land in the fall-festival season, many of its recent premieres are headed to additional festivals. One can see our coverage here, including highlights Blue Heron, The Plant from the Canaries, and Two Seasons, Two Strangers.

Don’t miss any of our fall festival coverage! Subscribe to our daily newsletter.

The post Our 15 Most-Anticipated Films Premiering at Venice, TIFF, and NYFF first appeared on The Film Stage.

from The Film Stage https://ift.tt/CnQZwJx