If the line-up for the 2025 Venice Film Festival is anything to go by, cinema fans are in for a pretty busy year. Not only are a slew of much-loved directors releasing new work – including Sofia Coppola, Luca Guadagnino, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Jim Jarmusch – but the films themselves are also getting longer.
“It’s a bit worrying, let me tell you,” artistic director Alberto Barbera recently told Variety. “Cramming all these movies in our programming calendar is becoming problematic. But we will figure it out.” That’s reassuring to hear, thanks Alberto! In the meantime, we’ve gathered some of the films that we’re most excited to see, to help you use your time judiciously. Find them listed below.
Yorgos Lanthimos has teamed up once again with Emma Stone (Poor Things) and Jesse Plemons (Kinds of Kindness) for this black comedy about two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a prominent, Stanley Cup-sipping CEO, believing she’s an alien who wants to destroy Earth. Comedian and former Cum Town podcaster Stavros Halkias also stars.
Marc Jacobs and Sofia Coppola go way back – appropriate, then, that the Virgin Suicides director will be the one to tell the designer’s story in Marc By Sofia, which will premiere out of competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
With a stacked cast including Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Rampling, Vicky Krieps, Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Indya Moore, and Luka Sabbat, this self-proclaimed “anti-action film” is a triptych that revolves around the relationships between adult children and their “somewhat distant” parents, spanning the northeastern US, Paris, and Dublin.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson stars as an IRL UFC champion, Mark Kerr, in this A24 fighting drama from one half of the Safdie brothers. True to form, unconventional casting choices include numerous real-life fighters, while the film itself deals with Kerr’s personal struggles against the backdrop of the early 2000s.
One of several Netflix films to be included – for better or worse – at this year’s festival, Del Toro’s Frankenstein reimagines the classic story about the dangers of egomaniacal scientists playing god. Jacob Elordi stars as the all-important monster created by Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), with Mia Goth starring as the scientist’s fiancée, Elizabeth.
In her new documentary, the Headless Woman director and Björk collaborator Lucrecia Martel focuses on the real-life murder of Indigenous activist Javier Chocobar in Argentina, to tell a wider story about land rights and the legacy of colonialism in Latin America.
After getting fired from the company where he’s worked for 25 years, Man-su (played by Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun) is not having a good time. Adapted by Park Chan-wook from the horror novel The Ax by Donald E Westlake, the film sees a desperate job hunt descend into violent chaos. Stressful!
This thriller stars Julia Roberts as a college professor who has to come to terms with her own past after a serious accusation is levelled at a colleague (played by Andrew Garfield). More importantly, it marks the first serious collaboration between Guadagnino and Ayo Edebiri, with returning roles for the likes of Chloë Sevigny and Michael Stuhlbarg.
In his latest film, the German filmmaker follows a mysterious herd of ghost elephants in the jungles of Angola. But it’s not a wildlife documentary – don’t let him hear you call it a wildlife documentary. Instead, we can expect a typically fantastical take on nature, narrated via Werner Herzog’s philosophical voiceover.
First look at Gus Van Sant’s ‘DEAD MAN’S WIRE’, starring Bill Skarsgård, Colman Domingo and Dacre Montgomery.
The hostage thriller follows a man who takes a mortgage banker who did him wrong hostage, demanding $5 million and a personal apology. pic.twitter.com/iMMeDnKdox
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) July 21, 2025
Starring Bill Skarsgård, Gus Van Sant’s latest film is based on the true story of a kidnapping that took place in the 1970s. Orchestrated by Tony Kiritsis (Skarsgård) the crime saw him take his mortgage broker hostage by wiring a shotgun to his head, followed by a standoff that took place via public radio broadcasts.
