The Spool / Festivals
15 of our most anticipated titles from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival
From simulated realities to trenchant interpersonal dramas, this year's Sundance is full of as-yet-unearthed treasures.
15 of our most anticipated titles from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival

It’s a funny thing to be sinking yourself deep into festival season at a time like this, both for the country and the film industry. The new presidential administration heralds unprecedented (and terrifying) new implications for everything from healthcare to immigration to the safety and care of our most marginalized groups; Hollywood is still reeling from the wildfires that have decimated Southern California; and the open question of the future of streaming and AI leave creative endeavors uncertain, both in scope and in quality.

But life and art will out, which leads us to the Sundance Film Festival, the prototypical start of film festival season. Running from January 23-February 2nd, 2025 (with a virtual component taking up the last five days of the fest), this year’s Sundance features over 90 features and a bevy of shorts and other programs from the most exciting filmmakers from around the globe. Most notably, there aren’t a lot of huge names putting their hats in the ring this year: Few of the indie auteurs you might expect, from Linklater to Soderbergh, have their names attached to pictures in this fest. The “Directed by” credit is increasingly left open to new filmmakers, which is exciting in its own way: Begone the lull of the familiar, hail the appeal of the new.

We at The Spool will try to cover Sundance as comprehensively as we can from the comfort of our homes, and here are a few titles we’re most excited about. (Descriptions courtesy of Sundance.)

Atropia (US Dramatic Competition)

A still from Atropia by Hailey Gates, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

When an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility falls in love with a soldier cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.

Welcome to Atropia: an invented city constructed to exercise Western imaginations and soldiers. Mostly home to war games rendered in dazzling 4D (smells included), Atropia is just close enough to Los Angeles to double as a film set — and just far enough away that the performers who live on-site to bring the bustling faux-Iraqi streets to life are not exactly flourishing in their acting careers. This mirage of a place is a bizarre, liminal construction of writer-director Hailey Gates, whose incisive satire and clever wit are on full display. Co-stars Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner are joined by Chloë Sevigny, Tim Heidecker, and more in this completely original, surprisingly romantic, and sharply amusing directorial debut.

Bubble & Squeak (U.S. Dramatic Competition)

Himesh Patel and Sarah Goldberg appear in Bubble & Squeak by Evan Twohy, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Accused of smuggling cabbages into a nation where cabbages are banned, Declan and Delores must confront the fragility of their new marriage while on the run for their lives.

Writer-director Evan Twohy’s eccentric debut feature — adapted from his acclaimed comedic play — strands bickering newlyweds Declan (Himesh Patel) and Dolores (Sarah Goldberg) in a fictional foreign country, doggedly pursued by Shazbor (Matt Berry), a ruthless customs enforcer who suspects them of smuggling cabbages. Arranged in discreet chapters, Bubble & Squeak is a skewed storybook fable about a marriage tested by tourism and slowly coming apart at the seams. Twohy derives deadpan comedy from his patchwork vision of a cheerfully malevolent European backwater, alternating between scenes of pastoral beauty and whimsical artifice. Patel and Goldberg lead a committed cast who deliver Twohy’s oddball dialogue with utter conviction, gently unearthing the melancholy beneath the film’s idiosyncratic surface. Bubble & Squeak explores the vagaries of love with uncanny humor and heart.

By Design (NEXT)

Samantha Mathis, Juliette Lewis and Robin Tunney appear in By Design by Amanda Kramer, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Patrick Meade Jones

A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.

Writer-director Amanda Kramer brilliantly collages tropes of literature, cinema, and performance art to cleverly take the piss out of common social scripts people use to convince themselves that they have full lives of purpose when they do not.

Fashioned as an epic fable featuring diminutive characters, By Design recounts the story of Camille (exceptionally played by Juliette Lewis), a woman sustained by friendships with women who use her to talk about themselves. When Camille falls in love with a chair she can’t afford, she becomes the chair, which gets gifted to a beautiful piano player-for-hire, Olivier (Mamoudou Athie), by his ex.

Camille and Olivier are intriguing people with rich interior character landscapes. But in a society that refuses to acknowledge their existence, is it better to be a chair?

Coexistence My Ass! (World Documentary Competition)

Noam Shuster Eliassi appears in Coexistence, My Ass! by Amber Fares, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi creates a personal and political one-woman show about the struggle for equality in Israel/Palestine. When the elusive coexistence she’s spent her life working toward starts sounding like a bad joke, she challenges her audiences with hard truths that are no laughing matter. 

Coexistence, My Ass! in title, conception, and content brings a bold frankness and lens of great clarity to address perhaps the most critical issue of our time. Director Amber Fares makes her Sundance debut with this urgent documentary made over several years. With a narrative backbone of Noam Shuster Eliassi’s brilliant stand-up set developed at Harvard University and filmed before a live audience, the film documents not only the shifting perspective of Eliassi — a UN diplomat turned comedian — but also the unfolding realities in the region and the resulting seismically dynamic discourse surrounding it. Audiences will come away with a laugh, a tear, and an openness that feels all together like both a salve and a kick in the ass.

Heightened Scrutiny (Premieres)

Chase Strangio appears in Heightened Scrutiny by Sam Feder, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Amid the surge in anti-trans legislation that Chase Strangio battles in the courtroom, he must also fight against media bias, exposing how the narratives in the press influence public perception and the fight for transgender rights.

After his 2020 premiere of Disclosure, Sam Feder returns to the Sundance Film Festival with Heightened Scrutiny, another cornerstone contribution to contemporary trans cinema. Feder’s deep research and keen sociopolitical eye map a disturbing correlative relationship between media coverage of trans issues and material legislation impacting the lives of trans Americans with crystalline and alarming clarity. These macro forces are illuminated with intimacy and charisma in the story of Chase Strangio and his consequential career as an ACLU lawyer participating in historic trans litigation. His preparation for Supreme Court argumentation is as urgent as it is high stakes. In Heightened Scrutiny, both Feder and Strangio display signature intellectual rigor, critically contributive insight, and unshakable commitment to justice that solidifies them both as preeminent trans masculine voices of our time.

Life After (U.S. Documentary Competition)

Gregory Dugan appears in Life After by Reid Davenport, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Reuters.

In 1983, a disabled Californian woman named Elizabeth Bouvia sought the “right to die,” igniting a national debate about autonomy, dignity, and the value of disabled lives. After years of courtroom trials, Bouvia disappeared from public view. Disabled director Reid Davenport narrates this investigation of what happened to Bouvia.

Life After brings Reid Davenport back to Sundance after his 2022 Sundance Film Festival debut, I Didn’t See You There. Reid’s signature participatory approach makes this investigation both gripping and personal. His insightful perspective and evident passion build a look at one complex case into an expansive and existential exploration of the theoretical sanctity of life and the stark practical realities of disabled experience in an ableist society. Profound and unflinching, this documentary engages in philosophical terrain that is treacherous, challenging, and ultimately rich and necessary. Life After looks closely and critically at where progressive values of bodily autonomy and individual choice collide with latent fears of disability and an unequal value of the lives of disabled people. In doing so, Reid untangles an issue at the heart of our moral societal standing.

Middletown (Premieres)

Joshua Dickstein appears in Middletown by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Inspired by an unconventional teacher, a group of teenagers in upstate New York in the early 1990s made a student film that uncovered a vast conspiracy involving toxic waste that was poisoning their community. Thirty years later, they revisit their film and confront the legacy of this transformative experience.

No strangers to stories centering on resourceful young people, filmmaker alums Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine (Girls State, 2024 Sundance Film Festival; Boys State, 2020 Sundance Film Festival) revisit an improbable but true tale of civic engagement and youth empowerment. Tasked with teaching filmmaking and media production, Fred Isseks’ Electronic English class at Middletown High School also provided his students a space for self-expression and critical thinking. As this uplifting documentary reveals, the teens — underestimated because of their age — regularly caught adults off-guard as they conducted a multiyear investigation into illegal dumping, organized crime, and political corruption. Deftly crafting a time capsule of a more innocent, less documented era before ubiquitous camera phones and social media, Middletown simultaneously reveals the power of investigative journalism and the life-changing impact of teachers.

Move Ya Body: The Birth of House (Premieres)

Vince Lawrence and Jesse Saunders appear in Move Ya Body: The Birth of House by Elegance Bratton, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Vince Lawrence.

Out of the underground dance clubs on the South Side of Chicago, a group of friends turn a new sound into a global movement.

Vince Lawrence was an eccentric, nerdy Black child growing up in Mayor Daley’s segregated Chicago. One summer when his dad couldn’t afford to send him to summer camp, Lawrence embarked on a personal journey that would lead him to become the first person to record a house song. He catalyzed a force of radical togetherness that would break down his city’s invisible walls of segregation, and fundamentally transform the music world.

Director Elegance Bratton concocts a loving mix of interviews with the lively characters of house music blended together with an archive treasure, creating a definitive history of a cultural revolution rarely told. Move Ya Body: The Birth of House is a road map of how a rebellion against bodily repression can clutch joy and creative expression to sidestep empire.

OBEX (NEXT)

A still from OBEX by Albert Birney, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Pete Ohs

Conor Marsh lives a secluded life with his dog, Sandy, until one day he begins playing OBEX, a new, state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and game blurs and Conor must venture into the strange world of OBEX to bring her home.

Baltimore-based writer-director Albert Birney (Strawberry Mansion, 2021 Sundance Film Festival) returns with another delightfully skewed and surreal lo-fi fantasy. Set in pre-internet 1987 and strikingly shot in monochromatic black and white, the film depicts Conor’s (Birney) lonely existence of solitary screen time, transfixed by early Macs with slowly rendering graphics and TVs aglow with the horror movie late show. Matching these hypnotic images, Birney immerses us in a dense soundscape of warm droning synths, clacking keyboards, malevolent static, chirping cicadas, and the click and whine of dot matrix printers. The film’s dreamy nostalgia soon becomes an analog nightmare as Conor finds himself trapped in a low-tech but high-stakes video game. Audacious and uncanny, OBEX revisits the dawn of personal computing to reflect on the loneliness of our always-online present.

Opus (Midnight)

Ayo Edebiri appears in Opus by Mark Anthony Green, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by A24

A young writer is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. Surrounded by the star’s cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she finds herself in the middle of his twisted plan.

Mark Anthony Green’s feature debut is a bold, fun, and flashy pop-horror. Ayo Edebiri delivers as the meek yet hungry journalist Ariel — her unique charm radiating alongside a distinct final-girl prescience. John Malkovich is effervescent and hypnotic as Moretti, a deified global phenomenon making a dramatically malevolent reintroduction.

Amidst eye-catching, synthy musical numbers and the enigmatic desert compound, the facade of civility gradually erodes between the pair, revealing the underbelly of a tense, psychosocial game of cat and mouse. Opus offers an electric, clever indictment of the literal cult of celebrity, presenting characters and dangers within a symphonic ambience — giving way to a foreboding ease through which power is generated and embedded within pop culture.

Rebuilding (Premieres)

Josh O’Connor and Lily LaTorre appear in Rebuilding by Max Walker-Silverman, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Jesse Hope.

After a wildfire takes the family farm, a rancher seeks a way forward.

Max Walker-Silverman’s sophomore feature is a personal, affecting story of a community’s life and resilience. A follow-up to his captivating debut, A Love Song (2022 Sundance Film Festival), Rebuilding similarly operates as a careful, loving portrait of the American West — this time whispered in the quiet aftermath of environmental and personal disaster. Against the backdrop of charred lands and a struggling small town, scattered lives coalesce in grief, and a uniquely resonant love story emerges.

Josh O’Connor is a subdued and assiduous protagonist, embracing a call to heal his fledgling family and newfound community. Authentic, nuanced performances from Meghann Fahy, Amy Madigan, and Kali Reis quilt a narrative enveloped by the multiplicity of the American experience — legacies of land, labor, and family.

Rebuilding is a warm tip of the hat to community building through human tenacity, and the abundance of life and love contained therein.

SALLY (Premieres)

Sally Ride appears in SALLY by Cristina Costantini, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by NASA.

Sally Ride became the first American woman to blast off into space, but beneath her unflappable composure was a secret. Sally’s life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, reveals their hidden romance and the sacrifices that accompanied their 27 years together.

Cristina Costantini’s rich portrait of astronaut Sally Ride brings a fullness to her life that goes beyond the headlines of her trailblazing voyage past Earth’s atmosphere. SALLY skillfully weaves together the dual threads of Ride’s story: the private romance she shared with her partner and the professional trajectory of her time in the space program that saw her contend with overt sexism and homophobia, prompting her secrecy. Rare archival footage brings the viewer behind the scenes to witness NASA training and missions, while press appearances reflect the media frenzy Ride was subjected to both before and after her historic first flight. O’Shaughnessy takes a fitting central role in recounting her beloved Ride’s story and the legacy she left behind that inspires countless women and girls to dream for the stars.

Sauna (World Dramatic Competition)

Nina Rask and Magnus Juhl Andersen appear in Sauna by Mathias Broe, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Christian Geisnæs

Johan thrives as a gay man in Copenhagen, enjoying endless bars, parties, and casual flings. Everything changes when he meets William, a transgender man, and falls into a deep love that defies societal norms around gender, identity, and relationships.

The steamy mystique of the gay bathhouse is the perfect location for this exploration of queer affinity and slippery understanding. The storied setting is paired perfectly with the breaking of brand new narrative ground in this film that marries sweet romance with spiny complexity. Johan and William echo, invert, flip, and reconfigure the stories that they have been told about themselves, their world, and their community. Vacillating between attraction and revulsion, affection and grotesque jealousy, these two young people negotiate the tricky terrain of the contemporary queer romantic landscape. Writer-director Mathias Broe flexes his storytelling musculature and dexterity in this intricately engineered and beautifully fashioned film with stellar performances from leads Magnus Juhl Andersen and Nina Rask. This talented trio brings fresh dimension and unforgettable specificity to a culture ravenously hungry for it.

The Ugly Stepsister (Midnight)

Lea Myren appears in The Ugly Stepsister by Emilie Blichfeldt, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Marcel Zyskind

In a fairy-tale kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira battles to compete with her incredibly beautiful stepsister, and she will go to any length to catch the prince’s eye.

A twisted retelling of Cinderella with gruesome fidelity to the Grimm-est rendition, The Ugly Stepsister shifts the focus to stepsister Elvira’s pursuit of beauty at all costs. But where fairy tale Cinderellas have silkworms, this one has tapeworms. For good measure, Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt throws in decomposing corpses, tongue-in-cheek body horror, and a 19th-century surgical makeover, creating a darkly funny, blithely grotesque debut feature. It shrewdly satirizes manufactured beauty and its industries, selling body image as the means to attain desirability, success, and social status. We can’t help but empathize with Elvira, who is insecure and drawn into her avaricious mother’s barbaric beautification scheme largely as a means to an end: acceptance and happiness (ever after). From nose to toe, the vessel of Elvira’s disturbing transformation is breakout talent Lea Myren, who gives a heroically committed performance.

The Wedding Banquet (Premieres)

Frustrated with his commitment-phobic boyfriend, Chris, and out of time, Min makes a proposal: a green card marriage with his friend Angela in exchange for expensive in vitro fertilization treatments for her partner, Lee. Plans change when Min’s grandmother surprises them with an elaborate Korean wedding banquet.

Andrew Ahn returns to Sundance (Spa Night, 2016 Sundance Film Festival) with an exuberant romantic comedy that pays tribute to the unexpected ways friendship and community form modern family. Ahn collaborates with James Schamus, co-writer of Ang Lee’s beloved 1993 classic The Wedding Banquet, to create a contemporary reimagining that playfully complicates the original film’s conflict and comedy, updating a romantic triangle into a codependent queer quad of young lovers.

Led by a cast of some of the most acclaimed and funny actors working today, the core four’s charming performances are complemented by the beautifully articulated work of Joan Chen and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung (Minari) as the complex, formidable matriarchs of the bride and groom’s families.