After highlighting the best films from the first half of this year, it’s time to venture into the second leg of 2025 with July’s lineup. While perhaps only our number-one pick will make it to year-end lists, there’s still plenty to look forward to, from riveting documentaries to genre delights.
10. Diciannove (Giovanni Tortorici; July 25)
While he stays prolific on the directing side by following last year’s Challengers and Queer with this year’s After the Hunt, Luca Guadagnino is also lending producing expertise to a number of projects. Along with Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April and the Sundance premiere Atropia, he’s also backed Giovanni Tortorici’s directorial debut Diciannove, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and follows a new student arriving in Siena. From just the first few passages, one can easily recognize the director and producer’s shared sensibility for drawing out a deeply felt sense of style.
9. Eddington (Ari Aster; July 18)
Reteaming with Joaquin Phoenix after the divisive, impressively anxiety-inducing Beau Is Afraid, Ari Aster is back with his fourth feature. His western Eddington, which world-premiered in competition at Cannes, had perhaps an even more mixed response than his last effort, but I’m still curious to see. Rory O’Connor said in his Cannes review, “Eddington is nothing if not ambitious, a period piece for an era that is still just four iPhones ago, and one that prods issues most wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot poll. Richard Nixon was only two years resigned when All the President’s Men was released, but the majority of Americans had by then agreed it was probably the correct course of action. Set in the heady summer of 2020, events that the world is far from coming to terms with, Eddington is picking at an open wound.”
8. To a Land Unknown (Mahdi Fleifel; July 11)
Mahdi Fleifel’s gripping first narrative feature To a Land Unknown, following Palestinian refugee cousins attempting to escape life in the underbelly of Athens, premiered at Cannes and TIFF to much acclaim last fall; it’s now set for a theatrical release this month. David Katz said in his Cannes review, “The tragic predicament of the Palestinians and what they’re now being subjected to begs to be analyzed and dissected, with various areas of dubious historical consensus put to new scrutiny; in Mahdi Fleifel’s fiction debut To a Land Unknown, we’re solely in a disorienting present tense, where there’s seldom time to think and reflect, only to agitate for survival.”
7. No Sleep Till (Alexandra Simpson; July 18)
Following theatrical releases of Eephus and Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, the latest from Omnes Films is coming to U.S. theaters. Alexandra Simpson’s feature-directing debut No Sleep Till premiered at Venice last fall, played at New Directors/New Films and the Los Angeles Festival of Movies in the spring, and now arrives this month. Jared Mobarak said in his review, “A hurricane is coming and Atlantic Beach, Florida is directly in its path. The tourists have already left. Most residents remain. Why? Because this is hurricane country. None of this is new. Maybe the storm will hit. Maybe it won’t. Is that chance worth the time and effort of skipping town? Or is the excitement of experiencing it as it washes over you too good to pass up? And what about those who simply can’t be bothered either due to age or complacency? This is home, after all. For some, this is all they’ve ever known. Alexandra Simpson’s No Sleep Till plays out in a slice-of-life documentarian style. It’s a quiet piece with gorgeous images (kudos to cinematographer Sylvain Froidevaux) and interesting characters engaged in the seemingly wild juxtapositions inherent to maintaining a mundane status quo through the uncertainty of impending chaos.”
6. Together (Michael Shanks; July 30)
One highlight from this year’s Sundance was Together, the latest collaboration between Alison Brie and Dave Franco. Jourdain Searles said in her review, “It’s hard to talk about Together without clearly stating what’s going on between these two. Their bodies have become a metaphor for their codependent relationship, and every time they’re physically close to each other it becomes even harder to separate. Together really shines in its VFX and sound effects, showing every thrillingly gross detail of this couple’s predicament. We hear bones cracking and limbs jerking, and we get to see plenty blood and gore. In one of the film’s best scenes, the couple has passionate sex and then struggles to separate afterward. Their bodies feel safe intertwined and don’t want to be apart again. Before this move, they hadn’t had sex in a while and Millie is eager to be intimate again, but Tim’s clinginess adds apprehension to their time together. Does he really want her this badly or does he just feel desperate because he can feel that she may want to end things soon?”
5. Drowning Dry (Laurynas Bareiša; July 18)
Winner of Locarno’s Best Director and Best Performance awards last year, Laurynas Bareiša’s Drowning Dry went on to be selected as Lithuania’s entry for the Best International Feature Academy Award. Now, following a stop at New Directors/New Films, the beguiling drama is set for a release this month. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Memories can be slippery things. Take what happens around the halfway point of Laurynas Bareiša’s beguiling second feature: two women––more specifically Ernesta (Gelminė Glemžaitė) and Juste (Agnė Kaktaitė), sisters on holiday with their respective families (a husband each, with one son and one daughter, respectively)––start dancing to Donna Lewis with what looks like an old routine, part half-remembered movements, part muscle memory. This entrancing sequence is cut short when their kids ask to go swimming, where one of the children appears to drown. The film then jumps forward in time, where Ernesta is visiting a man whose life was saved by one of her late husband’s organs. Before finding out how he died, we jump back again: same holiday, same sisters, same dance, only this time it’s Lighthouse Family. ‘When you’re close to tears, remember,’ Tunde Baiyewu sings, ‘someday it’ll all be over.’“
4. 2000 Meters to Andriivka (Mstyslav Chernov; July 25)
After winning the Oscar for 20 Days in Mariupol, Ukrainian director Mstyslav Chernov is back with another harrowing portrait from the frontlines of Russia’s attack on his country. Dan Mecca said in his review, “In 2000 Meters to Andriivka, we are thrown headfirst into war. From a first-person point of view, we live with a brigade of Ukrainian soldiers as they make their way to liberate the village of Andriivka, which is occupied by the Russians. As the Ukrainians trudge through the forest (they have to avoid the mine-filled roads) they take heavy fire from the opposition. The village is just over a mile away, a strategic power point in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.”
3. Apocalypse in the Tropics (Petra Costa; July 14 on Netflix)
Even more frighteningly relevant than when I first saw it at the New York Film Festival last fall, prior to the new wave of Trump-fronted fascism, Petra Costa’s Apocalypse in the Tropics lucidly explores how evangelical Christianity is inseparable from Brazil’s far-right political movement. Luke Hicks said in his review, “Five years, the closest presidential election in Brazilian history, and one insurrection after her last examination of Brazil’s tumultuous socio-political sphere, Petra Costa––the brilliant documentarian behind Elena and The Edge of Democracy––hones in on Jair Bolsonaro, the radical evangelical right that won him the presidency in 2018, and the theocracy they collectively fight to instate. With Costa’s nearly unfettered access to the main characters of modern Brazilian politics, the events of Apocalypse in the Tropics practically unfold in real time––a thrilling, profound documentary horror.”
2. Videoheaven (Alex Ross Perry; July 2)
A late but exciting addition to the July movie calendar is Alex Ross Perry’s second release of the year. The three-hour essay film / documentary Videoheaven takes a comprehensive, staggering look at the history and near-demise of the video store solely through film and video excerpts narrated by Maya Hawke. David Katz said in his review, “In Videoheaven, Blockbuster––to take after Thom Andersen––plays itself. Now deep in a pop-cultural-scholarship phase inaugurated by his last feature Pavements, Alex Ross Perry has made a generous, absorbing three-hour essay film-cum-documentary on nothing else but video-rental stores, those fabled and most benign of places. That is the loveably niche subject, but like the best examples of those brick-and-mortar venues, it contains multitudes: closely inspired by academic Daniel Herbert’s acclaimed media studies text Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store, Videoheaven is the ne plus ultra consideration of this topic to date, dispensing large portions of information and close analysis entirely through a combination of film and TV excerpts, occasional pieces of archive, and voiceover from Maya Hawke (who appears in some of the former, along with her dad). Born in 1984 and coming of age in the early millennial period, Perry is declaiming that this was his generation and this was what mattered. It was magnetic tape and clumpy boxes, yes, but through rose-tinted shades, they look burnished in gold.”
1. Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa; July 18)
While we’ve long lamented that Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films often lack the substantial U.S. releases they deserve, that looks to change with his stellar thriller Cloud, which premiered on the fall festival circuit last year, was selected by Japan as their Oscar entry, and will now roll out from Janus Films. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “We might not be quite into late-period Kurosawa just yet, but after four decades behind the camera there are already signs of that same lack of fuss to his filmmaking. Just watch the opening sequence of Cloud, which delivers a full psychological profile of the film’s protagonist before even a title card appears. This sequence sees our dubiously motivated reseller flip a haul of medical equipment: ruthlessly haggling the seller down; meticulously setting up the listing; and then the anxious wait, first as he hovers over the sale price and then watching from afar as the products get snapped up, one by one; letting out a small, haunting sigh of ecstasy as the final item turns from white to red.”
More Films to See This Month
- Kill the Jockey (July 2)
- Little, Big, and Far (July 11)
- Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (July 11)
- Daniela Forever (July 11)
- Wild Diamond (July 11)
- Collective Monologue (July 17)
- Life After (July 18)
- Heightened Scrutiny (July 18)
- Ick (July 24)
- Folktales (July 25)
- Oh, Hi! (July 25)