Fall is right around the corner, and with that comes festival season. There’s been a lot of chatter this year about Hollywood’s lack of presence at Cannes, Venice, and TIFF, and while the major studios are having a softer showing than usual, that means it’s a great time to highlight the work of independent and international filmmakers. While there’s still a few wild cards on the horizon (not everything has a release date yet, as some buzzy festival picks have yet to pick up distribution, including Florian Zeller’s psychological thriller Bunker, Ira Sachs’s The Man I Love, and The Julia Set), the next few months in movies have largely come into view.
This year’s crop has more than a few kindred spirits to be found. There’s social realism from at least a couple angles, including Possible Love‘s romance in the face of layoffs and The History of Concrete‘s verité irreverence. There’s two takes on early 20th-century gay European military bonds to be found in Los Javis’ La Bola Negra and Lukas Dhont’s Coward. More than a few films are interested in the economic and psychological landscape of care work, including Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden and Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care.
Below, take a look at our editors’ most anticipated independent movies of the fall.
The History of Concrete, directed by John Wilson
When: Sept. 18
What It Is: It’s what it says on the can: The How To creator returns after the beloved HBO show wrapped in 2023 with, what else, a feature-length probe into the most mundane, foundational element of modern life. But as with all things Wilson, concrete is just an entry point into open-hearted explorations of New York’s crumbling infrastructure, cover bands, two-month-long races, Hallmark movies, DMX, and a 3D-printed Starbucks in Texas.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Wilson’s work has largely been about how bananas people act as soon as you train a camera on them, and this project captures some of his best and most baffling footage yet. (There’s a scene from the GQ Man of the Year dinner honoring Kim Kardashian that will have you in tears.)
Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim
When: Sept. 25
What It Is: In 2025, documentary director David Osit released Predators, a chilling look at the series To Catch a Predator, from the Wild West of early reality TV, which aimed to entrap and expose child abusers on air from 2004-07. In an odd moment of synchronicity, the first narrative feature from newcomer Lance Oppenheim (also a documentarian) dramatizes the stranger-than-fiction nature of the same show in this true crime thriller.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Robert Pattinson isn’t holding back even a little bit as the show’s host, who seems pathologically hellbent on creating a sensational episode of television—no matter the cost. You’ll catch some other familiar faces too: Phoebe Bridgers, for one, Anna Faris, Alex Winter (of Bill and Ted fame), and, somehow, former president of CNN Jeff Zucker.
Fjord, directed by Cristian Mungiu
When: Oct. 9
What It Is: This family drama stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a strictly religious Romanian couple who move to a small liberal village in Norway where they soon bump up against some irreconcilable cultural differences. Mungiu has a way of cutting right to the heart of globalization and its accompanying crises, without sacrificing the very intimate, person-to-person level of a story.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Awards junkies take note: Neon has an unprecedented track record with Palme d’Or winners—it’s nabbed the last seven in a row. All of those movies scooped up at least a few Oscar noms, with Anora and Parasite winning Best Picture.
Misty Green, directed by Chris Rock
When: Oct. 9
What It Is: A brief survey of Chris Rock’s directorial career thus far: a 2003 political satire, an Éric Rohmer remake (and box office bomb), a love letter to New York comedy, and now a sex, drugs, and the Hotel Roosevelt-style drama about a talented-but-volatile actor in the second act of her career.
Why It’s Worth a Look: This is Chris Rock with A24’s prestige sheen. As the lead, Rosalind Eleazar will be one to watch, but the supporting cast has a lot to offer too—from the expected (Adam Driver in greaseball mode), to the hotly anticipated (Daniel Kaluuya as Misty’s troubled brother in his first live-action role since 2022’s Nope), to the oddball (Anna Kendrick as the sassy white friend).
La Bola Negra, directed by Los Javis
When: Oct. 16
What It Is: The most ambitious epic yet from Los Javis (Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo), the Spanish directorial duo behind Veneno and La mesías, La Bola Negra follows three intertwined stories across decades, drawn from the vignettes of poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. Netflix is betting big on this one. This will be the longest theatrical window the streamer has ever given a film.
Why It’s Worth a Look: In pre-dictatorship Spain, one young gay man is barred from an exclusive male social club. In another, while the country teeters on the brink of the Spanish Civil War, a man conscripted into the fascist arm grapples with his sexuality after he develops a relationship with a prisoner of war. Finally, in modern times, a historian sifts through the wreckage of his own family history and the aftershocks of Franco’s dictatorship.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem, directed by William and David Greaves
When: Oct. 19
What It Is: William Greaves wanted to be an actor but, disillusioned with the limited roles offered to Black performers in the ’60s, instead he made a career as one of the pioneering documentary filmmakers of the Civil Rights era. This film begins with footage he collected from a 1972 party at Duke Ellington’s townhouse.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Once Upon a Time in Harlem was completed by William Greaves’s son after lying unfinished for more than 50 years. It’s a portrait of the afterlife of the Harlem Renaissance and includes footage of writer Richard Bruce Nugent, poet Arna Bontemps, painter Aaron Douglas, and musician Eubie Blake.
Fatherland, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
When: Oct. 23
What It Is: Paweł Pawlikowski has his hallmarks—an austere tone, sharp black-and-white, political persecution—and all are present and accounted for in the director’s latest. This father-daughter tale teetering on the eve of the Cold War is also a road-trip movie, following Death in Venice author Thomas Mann and his daughter as he is summoned back to Germany to receive a prize after escaping Nazi rule in the ’30s.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Sandra Hüller is having a great year. Project Hail Mary was a crowd pleaser that swept the box office, Digger is already one of the most talked about releases of the year, and with Fatherland, she manages to squeeze in a collaboration with one of Poland’s most respected auteurs.
Wildwood, directed by Travis Knight
When: Oct. 23
What It Is: From the stop motion studio that created Coraline and ParaNorman, Wildwood is a hand-animated love letter to the Pacific Northwest. Based on a book by the Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, the movie follows a young girl who discovers a portal to a magical realm in Portland’s Forest Park.
Why It’s Worth a Look: No studio out there is doing what Laika is doing right now. In a world where CGI rules supreme (and A.I. has thrown the future of animation into flux), the time and labor-intensive process of stop-motion animation stands out for its craftsmanship. The team behind the movie has its own PNW pedigrees: cinematographer Caleb Deschanel directed several legendary episodes of Twin Peaks.
Wicker, directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson
When: Oct. 23
What It Is: Up until this point, every single director has been too cowardly to ask the real question: What if Alexander Skarsgård was a sexy wicker basket man? No longer. Olivia Colman stars as a spinster woman living on the outskirts of a restrictive medieval village. After the jabs at her rejection of marriage become too much, she enlists the town’s master weaver (Peter Dinklage) to fashion her a hardwood husband, throwing the confined society into chaos.
Why It’s Worth a Look: You’ll know if this one’s for you based purely on how much of a thrill the premise of a smelly old fisherwoman and her hot wicker husband upending uppity social mores runs through you. This rom-com delighted audiences at Sundance earlier this year, not just for its light comedic touch but also its gorgeous cinematography (courtesy Lol Crawley, who received an Oscar for his work on The Brutalist).
Possible Love, directed by Lee Chan-Dong
When: Oct. 23
What It Is: This film follows two middle-aged married couples in crisis against the backdrop of economic struggle and dispossession in South Korea. Mi-ok and Ho-seok have been together since middle school, but their life is thrown into imbalance when Ho-seok is fired from his factory job after a labor strike is violently quashed. Meanwhile, a well-to-do couple of documentary filmmakers decide to make them the subjects of their latest.
Why It’s Worth a Look: This is Lee Chan-Dong’s first film since 2018’s Burning was released to rapturous acclaim. Where’s he been all these years? Writing, mostly. He even penned a short story collection in English, Snowy Day & Other Stories.
Club Kid, directed by Jordan Firstman
When: Nov. 6
What It Is: This year’s unlikeliest Cannes breakout was a 14-year-old British kid yukking it up on the red carpet with Jordan Firstman. The occasion? Firstman’s directorial debut, a sensitive comedy about a party promoter on the wrong side of his 30s whose days of GHB, MDMA, and poppers-fueled revelry are interrupted by a child he never knew he had.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Cara Delevingne plays Firstman’s coke-addled best friend, there’s father-son bonding over Elliot Smith, queer family is found, and an Arthur Russell needle drop. What’s not to like?
Paper Tiger, directed by James Gray
When: Nov. 13
What It Is: Boasting one of the starriest casts you can while still technically being an indie, the Ad Astra-director’s film takes place in 1980s Queens and follows two hustling brothers that get caught up with the Russian mob. Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, and Miles Teller capture hardscrabble outer borough life and the anxiety of ambition for one 20th-century Jewish family.
Why It’s Worth a Look: There’s a reason people never get tired of stories about New York strivers getting way in over their heads. The obvious analogue last year is Marty Supreme, but Paper Tiger is less the story of a hustler pushing their limits than the story of a decent man pressed just a little bit too far.
Minotaur, directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev
When: Nov. 20
What It Is: The adultery thriller has a long and rich history. This film alone is based on Claude Chabrol’s 1969 erotic thriller The Unfaithful Wife (which in turn inspired Adrian Lyne’s 2002 smash Unfaithful).
Why It’s Worth a Look: With a piercing gaze and a tensile script, Zvyagintsev, who nearly died from Covid complications in 2021, tells the age-old tale of a powerful man whose life unravels in a self-destructive spiral when he discovers his wife is having an affair.
All of a Sudden, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
When: Nov. 25
What It Is: The newly appointed director of an elder care facility makes a quietly transformative proposition to prioritize respect and empathy over profit for patients suffering from cognitive degeneration. In her quest to transform the health care system from the inside, she strikes up a unique friendship with a theater director with terminal cancer.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Ryusuke Hamaguchi makes movies about the spaces between us—linguistic, emotional, economic—and stubborn persistence needed to bridge them. Fans of Drive My Car will be pleased to find a similarly expansive kind of love story told with quiet contemplation. Lock in: the run time on this thing is over three hours.
The Debut, directed by Jesse Eisenberg
When: Dec. 11
What It Is: Julianne Moore is back in repressed housewife mode (complete with a collection of knit cardigans and ankle-length skirts) as a New Jersey woman who auditions for a local show and ends up in a battle of wills with the director (Paul Giamatti) in this musical.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Jesse Eisenberg’s transformation from Hollywood’s go-to for a surly nerd to one of the industry’s most promising writer-directors was swift. After A Real Pain scooped up an Oscar for Kieran Culkin (and garnered an original screenplay nomination for Eisenberg), the machers have been eagerly awaiting his next move. The fact that he chose a musical is a testament to Eisenberg’s guts. (He even wrote the music and lyrics.)
Tender Loving Care, directed by Mike Leigh
When: Dec. 4
What It Is: As the film’s name suggests, this movie turns its lens to an often unseen and unconsidered group of the British population: care workers. After a bad break up, a government child protection worker moves back in with her best friend, a social services officer who remains chipper despite the daily confrontations.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Mike Leigh has announced that, being in poor health, this will likely be his last film. Throughout his career, from Topsy-Turvy to 2024’s Hard Truths (which really should have earned Marianne Jean-Baptiste an Oscar), Leigh never lost his incisive sense of character, in no small part due to the boundless empathy he affords even the smallest of parts.
Coward, directed by Lukas Dhont
When: Dec. 25
What It Is: Gay yearning on the Western front! In 1916, a shy soldier finds himself drawn to a flamboyant infantryman leading a ragtag theater troupe of male performers in drag who roam the countryside to keep spirits high.
Why It’s Worth a Look: The tension between tenderness and brutality amongst soldiers has proven to be powerful cinematic fodder in the past (Beau Travail, for one, this year’s La Bola Negra, for another). Despite the terror and stakes of the setting, Coward is ultimately a wartime romance with all the gentle touches of first love.
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