Our 16 Most Anticipated Films of the 2025 Tribeca Festival

The Scout

Although the heat has yet to properly arrive, today’s kickoff of the annual Tribeca Festival, now firmly ensconced in its post-Cannes calendar slot,  signals the unofficial start to the summer season among the New York City cinema-going sect. Running from June 4 through 15, the program this year boasts 118 feature films with an impressive 95 world premieres among them. 

Even if the word “film” is no longer centered in the festival’s actual title, it certainly remains the concerted programming focus. Though there are also plenty of offerings in their TV, games, audio, interactive and Tribeca X sections—the latter of which emphasizes “brand-driven storytelling”—the self-described “core” of the festival is its movie slate, which this year features new work from established filmmakers like Takashi Miike and Alex Ross Perry as well as a smattering of enticing feature debuts, including that of Walter Thompson-Hernández, who appeared on Filmmaker’s annual 25 New Faces of Film list back in 2022. 

Below, find a list of titles we’re hoping to catch at this year’s Tribeca Festival, which includes international icons, American indie darlings, scrappy new talent forged in NYC and even an episodic selection. Make sure to check back during the festival for interview coverage of several of the films highlighted here.

Videoheaven (Alex Ross Perry) 

Totalling nearly three hours, the latest from the Pavements director makes its North American premiere at Tribeca. A video essay documenting the cultural significance of video stores during their peak and eventual decline, Perry is also well aware of the way that home media irrevocably altered the filmgoing landscape. However, despite the loss of revenue felt by theaters, the VHS format, and the rental landscape it created, felt truly revolutionary: a wide array of titles became widely accessible, the ability to pause, rewind and fast-forward allowed for more scrupulous viewing, and the stores themselves became a casual watering hole for local cinephiles. Riffing heavily on Thom Anderson’s Los Angeles Plays Itself, Perry’s film also showcases the video store as a fixture of media itself, splicing in clips ranging from Seinfeld to Clerks throughout. — Natalia Keogan

Sham (Takashi Miike) 

The Japanese genre master behind Audition, Ichi the Killer and Imprint brings his most recent effort, Sham, to Tribeca for a world premiere in the “Spotlight Narrative” section. Based on the 2007 book by journalist Masumi Fukuda entitled Fabrication: The Truth About The”’Murder Teacher” in Fukuoka and the real-life case that spawned a media frenzy in Japan, the film narrativizes allegations brought against a school teacher regarding abhorrent behavior toward pupils. Touted as a thrilling courtroom procedural that toys with the cruelty often inherent to herd mentality and the inability for law and order to truly restore balance. — NK

The Scout (Paula González-Nasser)

The exhausting daily regimen of a Brooklyn-based location scout is the basis of Paula González-Nasser’s first feature film as writer-director. A founding member of 5th Floor Pictures—the scrappy production company born out of her and filmmaker Ryan Martin Brown’s time at Florida State University—she has also produced several short and feature films, most recently Brown’s wonderfully acerbic feature debut Free Time. The Scout feels perfectly aligned with the fare that 5th Floor has released to date: it features New York City as both a place of unbridled serendipity and hostility; focuses on a young adult who comes to realize that their current path is not ultimately fulfilling; includes familiar names in the credits, including Brown as producer and editor; and finally possesses a somewhat downcast air, aided in part by a dreary early spring atmosphere, that somehow never gets in the way of the film’s wryly comedic sensibility. More specifically, it follows location scout Sofia (Mimi Davila) as she attempts to secure a location for a new production. Based in part on González-Nasser’s own tenure as a location scout—during which she worked on series like High Maintenance and Search Party—the highs and (far outnumbered) lows of this gig are recounted with a sardonic streak. — NK

Andy Kaufman is Me (Clay Tweel)

The second documentary about the late iconoclastic comedian to be released this year (it follows Alex Braverman’s Thank You Very Much), Andy Kaufman is Me boasts David Letterman as an executive producer, Dwayne Johnson as a producer and, according to its write-up on the festival page, a couple of new elements. The first is, narrating the story, Kaufman’s own voice, “unearthed from a vault of never-before-heard audio diaries.” The second is more ominous: “marionette puppetry that turns his eccentric vision into a dreamlike spectacle.” That said, we can never have enough Kaufman out in the world, especially as contemporary heirs like Nathan Fielder continue to productively mine the kind of real-or-not blurring that made his work so memorable. — Scott Macaulay

Natchez (Suzannah Herbert)

Suzannah Herbert’s Natchez follows the multiracial, and always enlightening, citizens of Natchez, Mississippi — a place solely financially reliant on its romantic, hoop-skirted, antebellum tourism industry. Which is a problem since many visitors these days crave some unvarnished truth inside the town’s heavily varnished mansions. Luckily, it’s precisely this generational and racial clash that Herbert’s lens also so patiently portrays. — Lauren Wissot

The Travel Companion (Travis Wood and Alex Mallis) 

Another Brooklyn-based story concerning the plight of unrecognized creatives is concocted in The Travel Companion, another of many feature debuts on this list. And much like González-Nasser, Travis Wood and Alex Mallis mine from personal experience for their foray into feature filmmaking. The protagonist is Simon (Tristan Turner), a 30-something struggling filmmaker currently working on an unspecified documentary that he hopes to miraculously “find in the edit.” Aiding him with his seemingly aimless artistic practice is his roommate and best friend Bruce (Anthony Oberbeck of Dad & Step-Dad), who works at an airline and, as a result, has made Simin his designated “travel companion,” meaning he has access to free flights on standby. This allows him to cast his search for footage far and wide as well as attend far-flung film festivals. But when Bruce starts seeing (albeit far more successful) fellow filmmaker Beatrice (Naomi Asa), Simon immediately begins to dread the inevitable loss of his perk. His behavior becomes increasingly desperate, suggesting that he’s not just scared of losing his status as Bruce’s travel companion to the new relationship, but the friendship as a whole. — NK

Underland (Rob Petit) 

The varied mysteries of the subterranean world are explored in the feature debut from British filmmaker Rob Petit, who adapts Robert Macfarlane’s non-fiction book of the same name. Striking cinematography showcases underground enclaves, among them a cave system in the Yucatan that was once used for Mayan rites, a Las Vegas storm drain that has become a deadly refuge for the unhoused and the Canadian SNOLAB facility, which runs extensive tests searching for elusive dark matter in a pristine facility located two kilometers below ground. Produced by Sandbox Films and Darren Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures—both known for backing projects that exist on the convergence between science and cinema—Underland isn’t merely notable for its ability to capture abject darkness (both literal and metaphorical, in terms of the human quest for illuminating knowledge), but for its stellar soundscape that whirrs, drones, hums and echoes, almost replicating the sensitivity one’s ears achieve when the light suddenly vanishes. — NK

Dear Ms: A Revolution in Print (Cecilia Aldarondo, Alice Gu, and Salima Koroma)

At Filmmaker we are of course interested in any doc about a magazine, especially one co-directed by a 25 New Face, Cecilia Aldarondo. But beyond our industry interest, the approach here sounds especially interesting. Each of the directors looks at the magazine, a mainstream standard-bearer for second-wave feminism, through a focus on one of three specific and iconic covers, in the process “highlighting [Ms’s] most powerful moments while also poignantly reflecting on its well-intentioned mistakes.” — SM

Kites (Walter Thompson-Hernández)

When Thompson-Hernández was profiled for the 25 New Faces list back in 2022, he’d already been in production on Kites, his feature debut, for two and a half years. Three years later, the film makes its anticipated world premiere at the festival. Almost entirely composed of a cast of first-time actors, the film centers on Duvo, a gang member whose mean streak is tempered by his sudden urge to sponsor a local kite festival for the neighborhood kids. There’s a raw truth to the characters and their surroundings—after all, the dialogue is entirely improvised and the film was shot guerilla-style in Rio—yet a fantastical air permeates the frame, particularly during scenes when Duvo encounters his guardian angel, a young man who was unjustly killed by police. — NK

Mrs. America (Penny Lane) 

Esteemed non-fiction filmmaker Penny Lane premieres the first two episodes of a four-part docuseries at Tribeca, about women competing for the crown that comes with winning the Mrs. America pageant. Originally only running between 1938-68, the contest was revived 45 years ago by David and Elaine Marmel, a couple that wanted to celebrate the role that married women occupy in society. Contestants can range from being in their 20s to 50s, with the eventual winner eligible to vie for Mrs. World. Lane’s most recent film, Confessions of a Good Samaritan, focused on her own organ donation journey; before that, she made Listening to Kenny G, about the polarizing music of the famous sax player. Mrs. America seems to harken to earlier entries in Lane’s filmography—like The Pain of Others and Hail Satan?—which hone in on communities on the fringes and often buck broader cultural misconceptions in the process of documenting them. — NK

How Dark My Love (Scott Gracheff)

Unfamiliar with the work of director Scott Gracheff, I find via IMDb that his credits include producing episodes of Sesame Street as well as TV specials and movies centered around that iconic children’s entertainment. But also within his CV is an associate producer credit for a documentary on experimental composer Tony Conrad, which is perhaps the bridge to this new film about another radical downtown artist, Joe Coleman. Through his paintings and performances, Coleman, with his Breugel-influenced eye, jewelers lenses and single-hair brush (according to his website), creates near-psychedelic portraits of figures ranging from Ed Gein to Capital Beefheart that pulse with psychological subtext. How Dark My Love focuses on Coleman’s relationship with wife Whitney Ward and his work on a seven-foot portrait of her. Coleman fans appearing in the doc include Iggy Pop, Dave Navarro and Asia Argento. — SM

Sun Ra: Do the Impossible. (Christine Turner)

The first concert I ever attended in New York City was the Sun Ra Arkestra — a four-hour set at Squat Theater on 23rd. And just a couple of months ago I saw the current iteration of the group — minus, of course, its titular leader, who passed away in 1993 — play in an onstage collaboration with Yo Lo Tengo at Knoxville’s Big Ears. Which makes me a target audience for a movie about this icon of interstellar jazz and a progenitor of Afrofuturism. But, really, these days, who isn’t a potential audience member for a film, executive produced by Stanley Nelson, about an artist so ahead of his time, and whose dreams of planetary travel were infused not with today’s eco-doomerism but with an exuberant joy and radical utopianism? Space is the place, indeed. — SM

Rosemead (Eric Lin)

Celebrated independent film DP Eric Lin (The Exploding Girl, Nancy, Please, Memory Box, The Sound of Silence) makes, following several shorts, his narrative feature directing debut with Rosemead, a bracing drama based on a true story. Lucy Liu (also a producer) plays a terminally ill Chinese immigrant grappling with her son’s fascination with mass shootings. The producing team includes Mynette Louie and Andrew Corkin, and the script is by Marilyn Fu, whose background includes work at the New York Times and Life Magazine. — SM

The Sixth Borough (Jason Pollard)

Moving with the speed and rhythm of the music itself, Jason Pollard’s The Sixth Borough is a fascinating celebration of the Long Island hip hop scene during its mid-80s to mid-90s “golden age.” Jam-packed with archival footage and extensive contemporary sit downs with “sixth borough” legends (everyone from Rakim and Method Man, to De La Soul’s Posdnuos and Maseo, to Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Keith Shocklee), and set to an addictive soundtrack, the doc is also a paean to a place that gave Black artists the room to grow to their own suburban beat. — LW

Maintenance Artist (Toby Perl Freilich)

Maintenance Artist is a riveting – and long overdue – tribute to feminist conceptualist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the “first-ever Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation.” (Yes, you read that right.) Beginning with her “Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969!,” the still active octogenarian has spent her entire career demanding that labor itself – from washing dishes in a diner to doing so as a mother – be honored as art in its own right. An idea, in the wake of a world-upending pandemic, whose time has finally (hopefully) come. — LW

It’s Dorothy! (Jeffrey McHale)

Director Jeffrey McHale premiered another film-centric doc — You Don’t Nomi — at Tribeca in 2019. But if the previous film dealt with a film character — Showgirls’s Nomi Malone — celebrated in ways both loving and deeply ironic, the new film  centers a more enduring figure of cinematic affection, and one especially meaningful to the queer community. The titular Dorothy is, of course, Dorothy Gale, played in The Wizard of Oz by Judy Garland and given the icon treatment here in an essay film with contributions from Amber Ruffin, Wicked author Gregory Maguire, John Waters, Lena Waithe, Margaret Cho, Roxane Gay, Rufus Wainwright, and numerous “Dorothys” through the eras: Ashanti, Fairuza Balk, Danielle Hope, Nichelle Lewis and Shanice Shantay. — SM