After the relatively barren month of February and the awards season mercifully in the rearview, March finally brings the goods. From some of our favorite festival premieres charting all the way back to a few from Berlinale and Rotterdam last year to new documentaries and thrillers from accomplished directors, check out the batch of eclectic recommendations below.

15. The Empire (Bruno Dumont; March 7)

A year on from its Berlinale debut, where it picked up the Silver Bear Jury Prize, Bruno Dumont’s sci-fi feature The Empire is finally headed stateside. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Playing his signature brand of rural French absurdity in stark counterpoint to the grandiose strains of a space opera, Bruno Dumont returns with The Empire: his Barbarella bourguignon, his dijionnaise Dune. The Empire is the story of two warring factions: one whose mothership resembles the palace of Versailles; the other’s as if someone glued together two Notre Dames, crypt to crypt. It follows their envoys on earth, now in human form and attempting to capture a toddler who they believe to be the Chosen One––whose mere presence makes them bow down like bodies in rigor mortis. There are blasé beheadings with lightsabers, a group of men on Boulonnais horses who call themselves the Knights of Wain, and, for no apparent reason, the commandant (Bernard Pruvost) and lieutenant (Philippe Jore) from P’tit Quinquin.”

14. The Heirloom (Ben Petrie; March 21)

One highlight from last year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam was Ben Petrie’s The Heirloom, a rom-com psychodrama in which he stars alongside Grace Glowicki as a couple who adopt a dog and learn what it means to become a family. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “This is often very funny, even as Eric’s narrativizing threatens to further hinder the relationship. Petrie allows Eric’s new obsession to spill into sequences that feel genuinely Kaufmanesque (an overused word, granted, but a distinction well-earned here). In one example, shot from Eric’s POV, Allie excitedly turns around to inform him that Milly has peed; Eric then begins seeing the moment repeated as if in multiple takes, Allie’s performance straining to hit the desired note. Whether these repeats are real or imagined is never explicated, though it’s fevered enough to appear like a figment of Eric’s lockdown brain. In a later scene, a boom mic operator crosses the shot without disturbing the character’s flow, a jarring intrusion during a moment of real vulnerability––and a sharp directorial choice that both douses the tension and accentuates its source.”

13. The Woman in the Yard (Jaume Collet-Serra; March 28)

After making waves this holiday season with the wildly thrilling Carry-On, marking one of Netflix’s most-watched movies ever, Jaume Collet-Serra is back with two features in 2025. Before his Cliffhanger reboot, he’s returning to his first full-blown horror feature since the 2009 breakout Orphan. The Woman in the Yard, which reteams him with Danielle Deadwyler, hasn’t yet premiered, but here’s hoping Collet-Serra’s post-Dwayne Johnson period continues to bear fruit.

12. Secret Mall Apartment (Jeremy Workman; March 21)

One of our favorite films to premiere at SXSW last year is now rolling out next month. Secret Mall Apartment retells the strange, true tale of a group of friends who created a secret apartment in the busy Providence Place Mall in the early 2000s, bringing back the participants together for the first time in nearly two decades. John Fink said in his review, “Shedding light on a quirky 2007 story that made national headlines, Secret Mall Apartment takes us deep into the bowels of the Providence Place Mall, centerpiece of the renaissance of Rhode Island’s capital city developed under convict mayor Buddy Cianci. (As it happens, a few months before the discovery of the secret mall apartment, I had been right above it seeing Cherry Arnold’s Buddy, an insightful film about the mayor and his transformation of Providence, at the mall’s Showcase Cinemas, but that is another story.) Apartment residents had the advantage of private access to the theater anytime they wished.”

11. Chaos: The Manson Murders (Errol Morris; March 7 on Netflix)

Over half a century later, what new information can be gleaned from the nights of August 9 and 10, 1969 in Los Angeles? Tom O’Neill and Dan Piepenbring’s riveting (if convoluted) book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties––released in June 2019, between the Cannes premiere and theatrical release of Quentin Tarantino’s cathartic rewrite of that history––argues that while all the evidence of the murders has been gleaned, there’s a complex and knotty web of conspiracies for the motivations, some more plausible than others. To pare down the 528-page book to its most overarching theory, it postulates Manson may have been allowed (and perhaps even directed) by the CIA to concoct a reign of terror in accordance with secret government programs created to squash left-wing movements demanding progress for the country. Culling the most vital elements of the book into an easily digestible, 96-minute Netflix documentary, Errol Morris’ CHAOS: The Manson Murders is an absorbing, albeit succinct adaptation of various theories that likely will never see a burden of tangible proof.

10. You Burn Me (Matías Piñeiro; March 7)

With his latest feature, Matías Piñeiro playfully, gorgeously adapts “Sea Foam,” a chapter in Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò. Centered around fictional dialogue between the ancient Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis, played by Gabi Saidón and María Villar, respectively, Piñeiro’s latest is a feat of effervescent poetic beauty, melding poignant words with stunning images to a dizzying, transcendent effect.

9. The Actor (Duke Johnson; March 14)

Duke Johnson’s long-anticipated The Actor, which comes a decade since he co-directed Anomalisa with Charlie Kaufman, sets André Holland in a moody, shapeshifting noir deconstructing the artifice of performance. The first of a trio of Donald E. Westlake adaptations this year, with Park Chan-wook and Shane Black to follow, this one adapts the author’s posthumously published Memory into a hazy exploration of a picking up the pieces of a life Holland’s Paul Cole can’t remember. With the impressive ensemble portraying multiple roles, Johnson’s live-action debut shines brightest as a slippery, peculiar showcase for Holland’s acting prowess.

8. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni; March 7)

One of my favorite titles from last year’s New York Film Festival was Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not a Witch follow-up On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes in its Un Certain Regard section (an honor shared with Roberto Minervini’s The Damned), Michael Frank said in his review, “Nyoni’s film becomes a mixture of rage and tackling of Zambian burial rites, a clear-eyed look at the impossibility of these situations for the abused, the affected, the broken. But Shula often doesn’t seem broken. She’s strong, stoic, and often much quieter than those around her. She cares for Nsansa and a young cousin who’s clearly been a victim of her uncle’s horrific actions. Chardy embodies this character with a near-silent anger, a simmering frustration with the systems that push her uncle to the forefront of the community and blame everyone else. Among them are an overwhelmed teenage wife who is constantly compromising, nodding her head to help those who won’t admit her uncle’s wrongdoings, forced to watch while someone who assaulted her be recognized for a local hero. Chardy gives one of the performances of the year in one of the films in a year; I just hope audiences seek it out.”

7. Viet and Nam (Trương Minh Quý; March 28)

A beautiful, haunting romantic drama, Trương Minh Quý’s second feature Việt and Nam was a stand-out at last year’s Cannes and now it’s finally arriving stateside. Luke Hicks said in his NYFF review, “The opening shot of Việt and Nam, writer-director Trương Minh Quý’s sophomore film, is a feat of cinematic restraint. Nearly imperceivable white specs of dust begin to appear, few and far between, drifting from the top of a pitch-black screen to the bottom, where the faintest trace of something can be made out in the swallowing darkness. The sound design is cavernous and close, heaving with breath and trickling with the noise of running water. A boy incrementally appears, walking gradually from one corner of the screen to the other. He has another boy on his back. A dream is gently relayed in voiceover. Then, without the frame ever having truly revealed itself, it’s gone.”

6. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes; March 28)

Miguel Gomes, the Portuguese filmmaker behind The Tsugua Diaries, Arabian Nights, and Tabu, made his long-awaited return at last year’s Cannes with the mesmerizing odyssey Grand Tour. Rory O’Connor said in his Cannes review, “If Chris Marker and Preston Sturges ever made a film together, it might have looked something like Grand Tour, a sweeping tale that moves from Rangoon to Manila, via Bangkok, Saigon and Osaka, as it weaves the stories of two disparate lovers towards a fateful reunion. The stowaways could scarcely be more Sturgian: he the urbane man on the run, she the intrepid woman trying to track him down. Their scenes are set in 1917 and shot in a classical studio style, yet they’re delivered within a contemporary travelogue––as if we are not only following their epic romance but a director’s own wanderings.”

5. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh; March 14)

If a James Bond or Mission: Impossible film excised all its action scenes––save a stray explosion and gunshot––while employing a script with a pop John le Carré sensibility, it might resemble something like Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag. A hyper-slick, suave spy thriller, it’s mainly relegated to dinner tables and office rooms as stages for rapid-fire, gleefully barbed verbal sparring scripted by David Koepp, returning to the genre after Ethan Hunt’s first outing. Primarily focusing on a trio of couples working in British intelligence, Koepp’s script poses the question: it is possible to have a healthy relationship when there’s no such thing as separating work from life, particularly when your job description is one of a professional liar?

4. Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho; March 7)

While Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 isn’t arriving with as much fervor as Parasite––certainly a hard bar to clear––as a fan of the pop delights of Ashton Edward’s source novel, I’m curious to see what the South Korean director does with his biggest budget yet, particularly with as versatile an actor as Robert Pattinson at the center. But our own Leonardo Goi wasn’t too hot on the film at Berlinale, saying in his review, “Like Okja, Mickey 17 ends up pitting an almost cartoonish embodiment of evil against a monstrous Other that slowly takes on a more benign aura. To be clear: I’m not suggesting the ‘creepers,’ as Marshall calls them, are anywhere near as adorable as a certain oversized pig. But the fact remains that Mickey 17’s good-vs-evil scaffolding is just as reductive and unimaginative.”

3. Who by Fire (Philippe Lesage; March 14)

After his revelatory coming-of-age film Genesis, Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage has expanded his canvas with Who by Fire, a lush, intimate, psychologically riveting drama following two families on a secluded getaway in a remote cabin as they contend with career and romantic jealousies. David Katz said in his Berlinale review, “It’s a truly unrequited, anti-love triangle, and like in his previous work, Lesage sensitively reflects on but never sentimentalizes adolescent behavior: what we observe is raw, tentative, sometimes inexplicable, and put before us as if in a clinical setting, under laboratory conditions and stark lights.”

2. Eephus (Carson Lund; March 7)

If the perfect sports movie illuminates the fundamentals that make one fall in love with the game, there may be no better movie about baseball than Carson Lund’s Eephus. Structured solely around a single round of America’s national pastime, Lund’s debut feature beautifully, humorously articulates the particular nuances, rhythms, and details of an amateur men’s league game. By subverting tropes of the standard sports movie––which often captures peak physical performance in front of legions of adoring fans––Lund has crafted something far more singularly compelling. Rather than grand slams and no-hitters, there are errors aplenty and no shortage of beer guts and weathered muscles amongst the motley crew. Lund is more interested in examining the peculiar set of social codes that only apply when one is on the field, unimpeded by life’s responsibilities and entirely focused on the rules of the game. Continue reading my full review.

1. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie; March 21)

While Alain Guiraudie earned much acclaim for his 2013 erotic thriller Stranger by the Lake, he’s receiving the most attention in his career thus far, for good reason, with Misericordia. A wildly entertaining, subversive tale of desire that would make Pasolini, Chabrol, and Hitchcock blush, Cahiers du cinéma‘s #1 film of 2024 is now arriving this month. Leonardo Goi said in his review, “In a career spanning four decades and eight features, Alain Guiraudie has cemented himself as one of our most astute chroniclers of desire. If there’s any leitmotif to his libidinous body of work, that’s not homosexuality (prevalent as same-sex encounters might be across his films) but a force that transcends all manner of labels and categories. His is a cinema of liberty: of vast, enchanted spaces and solitary wanderers who wrestle with their passions, and in acting them out, change the way they carry themselves into the world. Desire becomes an exercise in self-sovereignty, a way of reasserting one’s independence––a rebirth. It is often said that cinema is an inescapably scopophilic realm, where the act of looking is itself a source of pleasure, but Guiraudie has a way of making that dynamic feel egalitarian, as thrilling for those watching as it is for those being watched.”

More Films to See

No more articles