Sundance 2025: 24 Most Anticipated Movies

“The Alabama Solution” (Premieres)

Andrew Jarecki is no stranger to Sundance, having debuted four projects there: Oscar-nominated “Capturing the Friedmans” (2003), “Just a Clown” (2004), “Catfish” (2010)and Emmy-winning series “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” (2015). This expose of the brutal Alabama state prison system, a six-year investigative project made with co-director Charlotte Kaufman, deploys video footage taken on the contraband phones of the inmates themselves, as well as interviews by the filmmakers. —AT

“Atropia” (U.S. Dramatic Competition)

Writer/director Hailey Gates casts Alia Shawkat as an aspiring actress living in a fictional Iraqi role-playing city based in California, where soldiers are trained in combat and relating to the “locals” before deployment. Like an elaborate 4D studio lot (complete with artificially induced smells like burning flesh and chai spice to give a tangible local feel), Medina Wasl, or “The Box” as it’s known, even has its own BOX! News channel, with Jane Levy as an out-of-water fake war zone correspondent. Chloë Sevigny joins the ensemble as the stone-faced leader of the operation, while Callum Turner plays a war-traumatized soldier circling Shawkat’s affections. Here’s a satire so outrageous that, with Shawkat (whose father hails from Iraq) in the lead, it almost feels like a Maeby Fünke-centered spinoff of “Arrested Development” were she to pursue an acting career. —RL

“Bucks County, USA” (Episodic)

Co-directed by Barry Levinson and Robert May, “Bucks County, USA” will premiere the first two episodes of a timely five-part documentary series that digs into the deep ideological divides in this purple Pennsylvania county, where equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans co-exist. The first episode shows how the pandemic pushed school parents apart over mask-wearing and school closures. Things got worse from there. —AT

“By Design” (NEXT)

To employ some a very loose, possibly quite bad interior design metaphor, it’s hard to choose just one element that ties this cinematic room together. Everything about “By Design” is exciting: it’s written and directed by the singular Amanda Kramer; includes an eye-popping cast that boasts Juliette Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Melanie Griffith, Samantha Mathis, Robin Tunney, and Udo Kier; and then there’s that logline. It’s simple, elegant, refined, completely insane: “A woman swaps bodies with a chair.” And just when we worried there was nowhere new for the body swap comedy to go. —KE

“Deaf President Now!” (Premieres)

In 1988, students at Gallaudet University, the only college for the Deaf and hard of hearing, led an angry mob in protest of the university’s decision to appoint a president who was not Deaf. The acronym DPN caught fire, and so did some literal effigies burned on campus, until all the demands were met and Irving King Jordan was named the university’s first Deaf president. “Queer as Folk” star Nyle DiMarco, an alumnus of Gallaudet, teams with Davis Guggenheim on this doc that could figure to be a buzzy awards contender down the road for distributor Apple Studios. —BW

“Folktales” (Premieres)

“Jesus Camp” filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady return with another hyper-specific and deeply involving coming-of-age documentary, this one about three teenagers who decide to step away from the modern world and enroll in a school that will strand them in the arctic wilderness for an entire year, where they’ll learn a very different — and far more dangerous — curriculum than you’d find at your typical K-12. Instead of social media, they have sled dogs. Instead of friend groups, they have… sled dogs. Instead of getting a drivers’ license, they’re allowed to drive the sled dogs. Delightful and emotive, sensitive and dreamy, “Folktales” takes us inside the heart of an experience both utterly unique and yet oddly universal. —DE

“Free Leonard Peltier” (Premieres)

David France (“How to Survive a Plague,” “Welcome to Chechnya,” “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson”) and co-director Jesse Short Bull tackle the 50-year story of activism surrounding the contentious conviction of the prominent American Indian Movement leader. The film promises to dig into the 1975 Pine Ridge shootout where Peltier was accused of killing two FBI agents, and the ongoing attempt to set Peltier free, all in the context of the 500-year continuum of Indigenous resistance. France’s history of finding innovative ways to use technology and archival promises this won’t be just another history doc. —CO

“Hal & Harper” (Episodic)

Writer/director/actor Cooper Raiff returns to Sundance three years after his breakthrough “Cha Cha Smooth” to test the burgeoning indie TV market with a family dramedy about the co-dependent bond between of the eponymous brother (Raiff) and sister (Lili Reinhart). Mark Ruffalo plays the siblings’ father, as Hal and Harper’s single-parent childhood looms over the three characters’ present-day lives in the flashback-heavy show. All three actors play the younger versions of their characters, including Raiff and Reinhart as grade schoolers.

Raiff directed all the episodes, and his production company Small Ideas, independently financed the entire eight-episode season, now looking for a small-screen home when the first four episodes are unveiled on the Sundance big screen. —CO

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” (Premieres)

Sundance’s programming luminaries Eugene Hernandez and Kim Yutani spotlighted this one early, and for a range of reasons, including star Rose Byrne (in the kind of leading role she’s long been deserving) and the return of “Yeast” filmmaker Mary Bronstein. The A24 title (also produced by Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, Mary’s husband, and their Elara shingle) is rife with names that get us excited for just about anything, Byrne and Bronstein, of course, plus co-stars Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, and A$AP Rocky. But it’s the synopsis that really grabs: “With her life crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.” Sounds like a raging good time. —KE

“It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” (Premieres)

“It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” is far from the only music doc on Sundance’s slate this year. Buckley isn’t even the only musician to die young with their own doc at the festival (looking at you, Selena). But the Buckley doc, which hails from “A Real Pain” producers Topic Studios and “Deliver Us From Evil” director Amy Berg, is described by Sundance as an “elegant and compassionate” portrait of the “Hallelujah” singer with some never-before-seen footage, audio, and animation sharing his story. —BW

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” (Premieres)

Bill Condon, who brought his elegant, Hollywood-centric first film “Gods and Monsters” to Sundance in 1998, adapts Manuel Puig’s celebrated novel about the bond between cellmates in early-1980s Argentina as the war between revolutionaries and a mounting dictatorship ravages the nation. Condon is also the writer of musical movie “Chicago” and movie musical “Dreamgirls,” bringing that same flair to this cross-genre musical that features Jennifer Lopez in stylized, song-and-dance dream sequences. She plays elegant marquee movie star Ingrid Luna, as well as the characters she flamboyantly inhabited, in window dresser Molina’s (Tonatiuh) escapist reveries shared with Marxist political prisoner Valentin (Diego Luna) during their intimate time behind bars. The film wrapped production last summer and is already a hot ticket as one of the potentially splashiest buys out of the festival. —RL

“Love, Brooklyn” (U.S. Dramatic Competition)

Brooklynites navigating personal and professional lives amid a rapidly changing city may suggest familiar terrain. But director Rachael Abigail Holder and writer Paul Zimmerman work to bring a more specific edge to this New York tapestry starring André Holland (a Sundance favorite last year with the emotional art world portrait “Exhibiting Forgiveness”), DeWanda Wise (TV’s “Three Women”), and Nicole Beharie (“Miss Juneteenth”). “Love, Brooklyn” also embeds its tale of modern romance in Brooklyn’s gallery scene, as the characters deal with juggling parenting, dating, and professional ambition. —RL

“Lurker” (NEXT)

“Beef” executive producer Alex Russell makes his feature filmmaking debut with “Lurker,” an unsettling thriller starring the great rising actor Théodore Pellerin as a young man obsessed with an L.A. pop star, played by talented “Saltburn” breakout Arche Madekwe. Matthew’s (Pellerin) attachment to Oliver (Madekwe) at first seems innocent, even if he’s being exploited by Oliver’s groupies as a photographer who could potentially direct the musician’s videos or a documentary about his career. But the obsession turns dangerous and potentially career-killing in this spare, sharp first film shot on location in Los Angeles and evocative of all the city’s dreamers and hangers-on, in a place where you are defined not by who you are but by what you do. And who, however ruinously, you want to become. —RL

“Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)” (NEXT)

Bronx hometowner Joel Alfonso Vargas brings a cinematic urgency to his debut feature, “Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo),” a New York summer party movie on its surface that spirals from the carefree to the suspenseful. Rico (Juan Collado) makes a living selling DIY “nutty” drinks out of a cooler — New Yorkers, you know these drinks if you’ve ever spent a day at a public beach there. His romance with Destiny (Destiny Checo) introduces new challenges when she crashes at his family home. Vargas blends improvisation with street-casted actors to paint a lively portrait of the local Dominican American community in this NEXT entry that should generate buzz for its confident filmmaking. And it’s already headed to the Berlinale next. —RL

“Magic Farm” (Premieres)

“El Planeta” filmmaker Amalia Ulman directs and stars in this inventive, far-flung tale of an incompetent American documentary film crew who travel to Argentina to profile a local musician — who appears nowhere to be found. Chloë Sevigny, Alex Wolff (in easily his funniest performance as a petulant but endearing man-child with a crush on his boss), Joe Apollonio, and Simon Rex round out a hilarious ensemble in this satire of cross-cultural clashes and media exploitation that blends genres and tastes (the good and the bad) with a playful absurdity. Without losing sight of the humanity of its core group, as inept as they sometimes can’t help but be. —RL

“Oh, Hi!” (Premieres)

Just two films in, rising filmmaker Sophie Brooks already seems to have quite the knack for excavating our relationship-based worst nightmares in service to quirky, sweet comedies. Her first film, “The Boy Downstairs,” followed a one-time couple (Zosia Mamet and Matthew Shear) as they discover they’ve – oops! – managed to move into the exact same apartment building years after their painful break-up. In her next offering, conceived of with co-star Molly Gordon, Brooks tackles the beginning of a seemingly ill-fated relationship, following Iris (Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman) on their very first weekend away together. But before Bridget Jones can scream, “A mini break makes true love!,” a fly in the ointment: Isaac reveals he didn’t know they were a couple. Per early word on the star-stacked indie, Iris responds the only way she knows how, by holding Isaac captive until he gets with the program. Who hasn’t dreamed of the same thing with an unwitting(-ish) paramour? —KE

“Peter Hujar’s Day” (Premieres)

Ira Sachs reunites with “Passages” star Ben Whishaw for a movie that, with its biographical roots in the 1974 art scene of New York, almost becomes like a documentary about the actor. Sachs’ camera adores Whishaw, who plays gay photographer Peter Hujar, who recounts a day in his life to writer Linda Rosenkrantz. She’s played by Rebecca Hall in fetching period costume and hair, listening in to Hujar’s recounting while providing gay-bestie commentary of her own, a tape recorder in hand. The two spend another day going over the facts of his last one, which included photo shoots with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, never leaving Rosenkrantz’s 94th Street apartment. Cinematographer Alex Ashe and editor Affonso Gonçalves conjure an affecting tale about how our every moment, down to their most mundane, has meaning. Or perhaps can be inflected with meaning with the right searching lens or authorship. As an intimate two-hander, this is among “Love Is Strange” director Sachs’ most complex and visually beautiful offerings. —RL

“Predators” (U.S. Documentary Competition)

“Why don’t you have a seat over here?” It’s perverse that a TV news program about child predators quickly developed its own catchphrase, as if host Chris Hansen were just incarnation of Steve Urkel, but such was the strange mix of harrowing docudrama and cheap entertainment that defined the “Dateline NBC” spinoff “To Catch a Predator.” The show, in which Hansen and his camera crew staged sting operations to ensnare some of the most sheepish — and least sympathetic — criminals in the world, helped turn pedophilia into a political buzzword by turning an unspeakable act into a public spectacle.

Few would argue that the men who appeared on the show deserved a significantly better fate, and it’s safe to assume that David Osit’s “Predators” doesn’t really make that case either. Instead, the documentary promises to unpack the tangled nuances of the show’s impact and legacy, and how “To Catch a Predator” paved the way for a media landscape that’s now largely shaped around humiliation rituals. It’s an unexpected lens through which to look at the current moment, but one that is poised to provoke a conversation 20 years in the making. —DE

“Rebuilding” (Premieres)

“A Love Song” director Max Walker-Silverman returns to Colorado for his sophomore feature, “Rebuilding,” which follows Josh O’Connor as a rancher whose family farm is destroyed by a wildfire. In this plaintive and lovely film shot on location in San Luis Valley, Dusty (O’Connor), now must relocate to temporary FEMA housing, reconnecting with his ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy, star of “White Lotus” who gives a compelling dramatic performance) and young daughter (the promising Lily LaTorre) in the process. Meanwhile, dreams of moving to Montana linger in Dusty’s mind as he must make some tough decisions. Amy Madigan and Kali Reis also bring texture to this sparse, touching Premieres entry that should find a buyer in Park City. —RL

“Sly Lives!” (Premieres)

It’s been a full four years since Questlove brought “Summer of Soul” to Sundance and made an instant splash with the largest sale for a documentary in the festival’s history. This year, “Sly Lives!” already has a buyer courtesy Hulu, so don’t expect any crazy sale on “Summer of Soul’s” level. But considering the Roots drummer has been tapped to direct just about every major music doc from one on Earth, Wind & Fire to the SNL 50 music doc in that time, it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen something new from him. Sly and the Family Stone appeared in “Summer of Soul,” but this one goes deep into the rise and fall of a pop music genius. —BW

“Sorry, Baby” (U.S. Dramatic Competition)

Multi-hyphenate Eva Victor’s feature directorial debut — in which she also stars, we said multi-hyphenate, after all — handily combines the intensely personal with the darkly funny, the unexpectedly tender and the viciously awful. In the film, Victor plays Agnes, who we first meet as a newly minted English professor spending the weekend with her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) in the same house the pair lived in together during grad school. While Lydie’s life has moved fast since graduation — she’s fallen in love, gotten married, and arrives for her visit with big news to share — Agnes has been oddly stagnant. The film then moves backward in time, taking us – by way of some cannily named chapters – through the years between the pair’s last year of grad school and the present, fully letting us into what exactly happened to Agnes to stall her out so spectacularly. Victor’s whipsmart combination of big emotions and bigger laughs seems poised to elevate this story into one of the most exciting offerings Sundance has this year, with a big rising star both in front of and behind the camera. —KE

“The Things You Kill” (World Cinema Dramatic)

Iranian director Alireza Khatami (“Terrestrial Verses”) shifts his lens to Turkey for this tense and convention-bending thriller about an impotent literature professor who conceives of his father’s murder. Or is it disappearance? With shades of Abbas Kiarostami in its self-awareness and “Lost Highway” in flipping the narrative (and a key cast member) halfway through, “The Things You Kill” is shot with cool precision as Ali (Ekin Koç) befriends an enigmatic gardener who opens the door to jumpstarting his flatlined life. It’s hard to say too much about this mesmerizing film without spoiling it, but Khatami, who lives in Canada, exhibits calm control over a story that’s inexorably hurtling toward doom. Until it flips the script yet again. A surreal and haunting entry in the World Cinema Dramatic competition that will trouble and touch moviegoers seeking a challenge. —RL

“The Wedding Banquet” (Premieres)

An updated remake of Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet” hardly screams “cash-in” to begin with, but one co-written and produced by Lee’s original co-writer James Schamus — and directed by “Driveways” filmmaker Andrew Ahn — sounds like nothing less than a reason to celebrate. The story is largely the same, but the names and nationalities have changed: Korean actor Han Gi-chan stars as Min, who goes rogue on his commitment-phobic boyfriend (Bowen Yang!) and offers his friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran!) a green card marriage in exchange for some money that she and her partner (Lily Gladstone!) can use for IVF. And they would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for Min’s sweetly meddling grandmother, who decides to throw him a lavish Korean wedding banquet. A recognizable array of warm-heated and lightly farcical culture clashes will surely ensue, but with the cast and crew involved we have reason to hope it’ll all feel equal parts cozily familiar and delightfully fresh. —DE

“Zodiac Killer Project” (NEXT)

Filmmaker Charlie Shackleton interrogates the aesthetics of true-crime documentaries and the complicity of viewers in their nation-seizing popularity in this unusual nonfiction outing that blends narrative elements. The director recounts a Netflix-level true-crime documentary film about the elusive, never-caught Zodiac killer he would’ve made were he given the resources. Most scenes unfold on long stretches of California highway or in empty parking lots as Shackleton spills in the spaces with voiceover. Rather than focus on the celebrity fanatics, like Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal in David Fincher’s film), associated with the killer, Shackleton examines a lesser-known book to shape his abandoned project. Hilariously, Shackleton includes clips from popular true-crime series like “The Jinx” and “Unsolved Mysteries” to show their almost cliched shared aesthetic choices that manipulate viewers (like this writer, or anyone reading this) into being compelled looking at crime scene photos and shock-tactic editing and reenactments. —RL