26/08/2025 - Claire Denis, Kaouther Ben Hania, Edward Berger and Paolo Sorrentino lead our picks of the season’s most exciting new titles

This year, the film world’s biggest autumn festivals are keeping it all in the family. The 82nd edition of Venice (27 August-6 September) will see Jim Jarmusch’s anthology film Father Mother Sister Brother in the main competition, led by an all-star cast of Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver and Vicky Krieps. Meanwhile, the festival’s Orizzonti strand holds the keys to two parentally themed titles, Father (Tereza Nvotová) and Mother (Teona Strugar Mitevska) – the latter of which shares religious themes with Goran Stanković’s gritty drama Our Father, which will premiere in Toronto’s (4-14 September) Discovery strand. The fraternal connection between these so-called siblings – the last (but not least) of which is the picturesque Basque locale of San Sebastián (19-27 September) – continues into their healthy dose of overlap in titles.

Echoes of frustration surrounding last year’s lack of access to talent will no doubt continue to reverberate during Venice as we crash onto the Lido – just as the locals bounce back from the unwelcome clamour of the ritzy-glitzy Bezos-Sánchez wedding. Two past Golden Lion winners, Yorgos Lanthimos and Guillermo del Toro, are part of a group vying for the coveted Venice prize via a jury overseen by Alexander Payne.

Not to be outdone, Toronto and San Sebastián boast their own assortment of works by lauded filmmakers. It’s also the golden anniversary for Toronto, the youngest of the trio, which is celebrating its semicentennial under the “TIFF 50” banner. Both festivals will screen Edward Berger’s Conclave [+see also:
film review
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interview: Red Carpet @ European Film …
film profile] follow-up, Ballad of a Small Player, Agnieszka Holland’s Kafka biopic and Claire Denis’s newest effort, The Fence, among other shared titles. There’s also something for the eclectic in us all: Venice holds the immersive section, Toronto has its flagship “Festival Street”, and San Sebastián continues its free-wheeling Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section, with no restrictions on form or length.

Follow along as we explore a handful of titles that have caught our eye – but of course, these back-to-back festivals always turn up new, fresh and unexpected surprises. Like everyone, we’ll eagerly wait our turn in the queue for the cinema.

Bouchra - Orian Barki, Meriem Bennani (Italy/Morocco/USA)

(World-premiering in Toronto’s Platform section)

Drawing from the documentary sensibilities of Orian Barki with the Moroccan background of Meriem Bennani, this is the debut feature by the New York-based filmmaking duo, guaranteed to be something a little different from the rest of this year's autumn line-up. Bouchra follows the titular queer Moroccan filmmaker living in New York as she writes an autobiographical film and navigates the relationship with her cardiologist mother living in Casablanca, who seems to have unresolved anxieties around her daughter's sexuality. The twist? Both characters are anthropomorphic coyotes, with the film made using a blend of 3D animation, live action, metafiction and documentary techniques.

The Voice of Hind Rajab - Kaouther Ben Hania (France/Tunisia/UK/USA)

(World-premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival)

Vying for the Golden Lion is the Oscar-nominated Tunisian filmmaker's Four Daughters [+see also:
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interview: Kaouther Ben Hania
film profile] follow-up, a dramatisation of the call from, and attempted rescue of, the eponymous six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in January 2024. Kaouther Ben Hania combines published recordings of the devastating phone call with reenactments and the interspersion of archival material, building on the docufictional explorations she cultivated in her previous film. We expect a furious and powerful indictment of both the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and the bureaucratic hurdles needing to be overcome by the Palestine Red Crescent Society before they could even attempt the rescue of Rajab and her family in their car – which, in the end, was solemnly to no avail.

Ballad of a Small Player - Edward Berger (UK/Germany)

(World-premiering at Telluride, followed by showings at Toronto and in competition at San Sebastián)

Swiss-Austrian director Edward Berger has reached that enviable industry position, similar to where Denis Villeneuve and Luca Guadagnino found themselves the prior decade, with his versatility and style granting him the cream of Hollywood scripts and IP. With no small task following up Conclave’s perfect fusion of mystery and political thriller, here he teams with Colin Farrell as the kind of weathered anti-hero he now specialises in, playing a con man escaping his sordid past at the plush gambling tables of Macau.

The Fence - Claire Denis (France)

(World-premiering at Toronto, followed by a competition showing at San Sebastián)

With three of her four most recent films shot primarily in English, Claire Denis has leveraged her assured canonical status into larger budgets and collaborating with internationally recognisable actors, even if this run of work (which includes High Life [+see also:
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interview: Claire Denis
film profile] and Stars at Noon [+see also:
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film profile]) hasn’t always satisfied the new generations of fans weaned on the euphoric energy of Beau Travail. Shot in Cameroon, where she was partly raised in a French civil-servant family, this film – derived from Bernard-Marie Koltès’ 1979 play Black Battles with Dogs – is expectedly described as a chamber piece by early viewers, with Denis regular Isaach de Bankolé facing off against Matt Dillon, as the former plays a bereaved man investigating his brother’s demise on a construction site.

The Testament of Ann Lee - Mona Fastvold (USA/UK/Hungary/Sweden)

(World-premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival)

Coming hot on the heels of The Brutalist [+see also:
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film profile], on which she was a key collaborator with her partner Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold has devised an ambitious directorial effort of her own with The Testament of Ann Lee, which tracks the origins of the radical Christian-utopian Shaker movement, and its charismatic, eponymous founder (portrayed by Amanada Seyfried). Billed as something of a musical, with the sect’s hymns being one of their most prominent features, it should be a thematic companion piece to the couple’s prior award winner, telling of an émigré figure (this time from Britain) again offering a radical mode of thinking to the New World.

Father Mother Sister Brother - Jim Jarmusch (USA/France/Italy/Germany/Ireland)

(World-premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival)

Cannes’ loss is potentially Venice’s profound gain with Jim Jarmusch’s new feature, which returns the US indie legend to one of his trademark modes, the star-laden anthology film. Promising something more tender and less self-consciously “hip” than usual from him, it follows previous collaborators Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett and Tom Waits, with Charlotte Rampling and Vicky Krieps joining his troupe, as they negotiate the important and sober topic of siblings reconnecting in adulthood with their ageing parents.

Landmarks - Lucrecia Martel (Argentina/USA/Mexico/France/Denmark/Netherlands)

(World-premiering out of competition at the Venice Film Festival)

After they’ve originally established themselves, many of the best and most exacting auteur filmmakers have only felt the need to drop in once a decade or so. Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel fulfils this tradition and carefully develops themes from her past work, with her inaugural feature-length documentary Landmarks, focusing on the globally resonant topic of indigenous land rights, here relating to her home province in the country’s north. Centring on the trial after the activist Javier Chocobar was killed in 2009 following a confrontation with three white entrepreneurs, Martel excels in a procedural mode tracking the case’s development and, in the process, unearths the soul of her tempestuous country.

Father - Tereza Nvotová (Slovakia/Czech Republic/Poland)

(World-premiering in Orizzonti at the Venice Film Festival)

The Slovak filmmaker returns with an intriguing new feature after bagging the Golden Leopard – Filmmakers of the Present at Locarno in 2022 with her feminist, psychological folk-horror Nightsiren [+see also:
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interview: Tereza Nvotová
film profile]. Filmed using long, single-shot techniques with lensing by Polish DoP Adam Suzin, Father is inspired by the true story of a man who left his infant daughter in an overheating car in a case of forgotten baby syndrome. The film is set to focus both on the tragedy itself and on the aftermath of the event, complete with the social repercussions that come with such an incident.

Ungrateful Beings - Olmo Omerzu (Czech Republic/Slovenia/Poland/Slovakia/Croatia/France)

(World-premiering in competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival)

The Prague-based, Slovenian-born filmmaker makes his English-language debut with Ungrateful Beings, keeping on the accidental theme of family matters. With Omerzu’s sharp eye for the tricky dynamics of youth previously honed in A Night Too Young [+see also:
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interview: Jiří Konečný
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interview: Olmo Omerzu
film profile], the feature combines family drama with a coming-of-age story, examining the relationship between a father and his teenage daughter. According to Omerzu, the title calls into question the cynicism of adults towards children – and, refreshingly, not the other way around.

La Grazia - Paolo Sorrentino (Italy)

(World-premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival)

If the byword of Paolo Sorrentino’s earlier career was stylishness, his recent work has found a new emotional register of restrained tenderness; who would’ve thought the director behind the splintered, sleek Il Divo [+see also:
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interview: Nicola Giuliano
interview: Paolo Sorrentino
interview: Philippe Desandre
film profile] could make something as touching and as sincere as The Hand of God [+see also:
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interview: Paolo Sorrentino
film profile]? Toni Servillo will again be the grounding presence in the director’s immaculately set, deep-focus frames, playing a fictional Italian presidente making a final set of policy decisions that will cement his legacy. Early word promises a character study of a world leader handling his duties with the titular “grace” and restraint – indeed, not what today’s heads of state are famed for.