AFI FEST 2025 promises to be one of best collection of fine new films all jammed into five days of screenings at the American Film Institute Festival in Hollywood running from October 22 through October 26. It is a pity that the film festival’s tight programming schedule only allows film afficionados a choice of limited number of films that can be viewed in this window of time. This year’s schedule has a wealth of choices and especially notable is the section dubbed “Luminaries” – major well-known directors who have sizeable filmographies full of award-winning films. Many of these films have garnered major awards at international film festivals in 2025. One can only hope that many of these films will have international distributors and have theatrical releases in the USA later. Some of these already have distribution agreements and have been picked up by well-known companies.
I wanted to draw attention to some films that are emblematic of the themes and styles of the filmmakers who are considered “Luminaries.” First off is Father Mother Sister Brother, winner of the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, legendary indie auteur Jim Jarmusch’s newest work is a wry gem about the timeworn drift of familial intimacy. In this collection of three quietly humorous stories, families struggle to bridge or avoid the distance that has grown between them. Starring Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps and Charlotte Rampling, each episode concerns a different family in a different country — one in New Jersey, the others in Dublin and Paris — but connected through thematic and visual motifs. The awkward silences between the adult children and their aging but lively parents are wide enough to drive a tractor-trailer through, and in these moments of suppressed expression reside the failures of vulnerability. With guarded hush, the characters perform a ballet of emotional avoidance, slipping into falsehoods, half-truths and superficial niceties. Jarmusch finds the tension and the humor in these lacunae, as his characters attempt to hide themselves but can’t find the words for convincing cover. The final chapter turns many of these themes on their head and gives voice to the unspoken affinities animating family dynamics, in which enduring love and total comprehension/
François Ozon has become one of France’s most watched filmmakers. His L’Étranger (The Stranger) revisits Albert Camus’ acclaimed 1942 novel, bringing it to the big screen as a sun-baked, black-and-white neo-noir, a potent blend of psychological thriller and anti-colonial critique. The film opens with a vintage travelogue inviting tourists to visit Algeria, then under French control, playing up its exoticism for western eyes. But Ozon seamlessly segues from the travelogue into less tourist-friendly images of anti-French graffiti, the prison in Algiers, and a newly admitted prisoner, Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), seemingly the only European among the prisoners. Now told in flashback, Meursault’s story proceeds from the death of his aged mother to a period of mourning — although Meursault appears impassive and numb to all observers — which coincides with him reconnecting with an acquaintance, Marie (Rebecca Marder), with whom he begins a romance. At the same time, Meursault becomes embroiled in a dangerous and violent intrigue involving his neighbor, Raymond Sintès (Pierre Lottin), and an Algerian woman Sintès has been pimping out.
Always much-anticipated for his latest film is Kontinental ’25 from Romanian director Radu Jude who took home the Best Screenplay award at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. His scabrous black comedy is about a guilt-wracked civil servant’s effort to clear her conscience, instead discovering that guilt is only a relative concept in contemporary Romania. Distraught over an unexpected, fatal tragedy during her work as a court bailiff in the city of Cluj, Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) is thrown into a tailspin, backing out of a planned family vacation to Greece with her husband and kids to instead sort out her feelings. Meeting up with coworkers and old friends, she’s inevitably told that there’s nothing she could have done differently, and besides, legally, she’s not responsible. All the while, her conversations expose the sensitive fault lines in Romanian society: foreign investment powering rapid gentrification; casual antisemitism; ill will between ethnic Hungarians and Romanians in this Transylvanian town that not so long ago was part of Austria-Hungary; and racist disdain for the recently arrived South Asian immigrants.
There is also the latest film by Jean-Piere Dardenne and Luc Dardenne – Jeune Mères (Young Mothers). The celebrated Belgian auteurs focus on a quintet of teenage mothers — or mothers-to-be, living in a maternal group home in Liège. Each young woman faces a unique constellation of challenges — from abandonment and fractured family ties to toxic relationships, substance dependency in addition to all the daunting realities of learning to parent at such a tender age. Yet within the home’s walls, a fragile but vital sense of community emerges. Featuring a remarkable ensemble of mostly non-professional actors, this tender and intimate drama earned both the Best Screenplay award and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.
From Germany, there is Miroirs No. 3 – the fourth collaboration of director Christian Petzold and actress Paula Beer in an enigmatic depiction of haunting loss and mysterious connection. After surviving a car crash that kills her boyfriend, Laura (Beer), a music student at university, is taken in by Betty (Barbara Auer), an older woman who witnessed the accident. Betty cares for the unharmed but shaken Laura with a motherly devotion, and soon, Betty, her husband and their adult son are treating Laura like one of the family. Petzold imbues this close-quarters drama with atmospheric tension, agitating even the warmest domestic scenes with the disquiet of unspoken history.
Yet another film from Germany is Amrum, directed by Fatih Akin from an autobiographical screenplay by German actor/director Hark Bohm. Amrun delicately depicts the dawning of conscience, when those too young to know better begin to awaken to the ills and evils of the world and their own role in it. Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck) is a kind-hearted 12-year-old who enjoys exploring the beautiful North Sea island of Amrum where he lives with his high-strung mother Hille (Laura Tonke) and pragmatic Aunt Ena (Lisa Hagmeister). After Hille gives birth to a baby brother, she refuses to eat any food but white bread, butter and honey. But it’s 1945, and these foods are in short supply due to wartime rationing. Nanning resolves to find these prized goods for his beloved mother and undertakes a quest across the picturesque island — even crossing the mudflats to the mainland during low tide. All the while, Nanning discovers more about his family, his community and his country, which is on the verge of defeat in World War II, despite what he has been told, or what’s reported in the news or what his mother fervently believes.
Back again this year is Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino reunites with actor Toni Servillo in La Grazia – a parable-like tale of parliamentary politics and difficult decisions. Servillo, (who previously starred for Sorrentino in Il Divo, The Great Beauty, Loro, and The Hand of God), here plays President Mariano De Santis of Italy, an office which plays an important role in finalizing parliamentary legislation but is cut off from the real power in government, which is controlled by the prime minister. Nearing the end of his term, and bereft at the loss of his beloved wife several years prior, De Santis has been going through the motions for some time, micromanaged by his daughter Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti), who, as his chief of staff, has become accustomed to doing her father’s thinking for him. Nicknamed “Cemento armato” (reinforced concrete) for his stolidity and caution, De Santis nevertheless remains a keen legal mind, even as he struggles with aging and depression. After years of coasting, he’s finally roused to action when asked to make a series of potentially legacy-defining decisions: whether to sign a landmark bill to legalize euthanasia in Italy.
From the Philippines is an epic film Magellan (Magalhäes), directed by Lav Dias, whose last film The Woman Who Left was featured at AFI 2014. Gael García Bernal stars as infamous Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan in this anti-colonial epic. After the brutal conquest of Malacca in 1511, Magellan returns to Europe poised to continue his expeditions but finds the Portuguese crown unwilling to put up the funds. Turning to Spain, he gathers a motley crew including indigenous slave Enrique (Amado Arjay Babon) and sets sail for the Spice Islands.
The films of New York based filmmaker Ira Sachs are much anticipated. In Peter Hujar’s Day, Sachs recounts a day in the New York West Village apartment of legendary queer photorgrapher Peter Hujar (played by Ben Whislaw), as he spends an afternoon with his friend and non-fiction writer Linda Rosekrantz (Rebecca Hall). He talks about a fraught photo session with Allen Ginsberg, the minutia of a Chinese carryout order, a phone call about an overdue invoice. Tiny moments are revealed to hold profound meaning. Recorded in December 1974 as part of an abandoned book project, the re-discovered transcript serves as the basis for Ira Sach’s luminous ode to a New York that no longer exists. Premiering to acclaim at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Peter Hujar’s Day is at once a tender portrait of an artist and a breathless time machine to an uninhibited pre-AIDS New York.
Also in the line-up of “Luminaries” at AFI FEST 2025 is a new film by Werner Herzog – Ghost Elephants, an atmosphere journey into the plateaus of Angola, accompanying Dr. Steve Boyes on a quest to document the existence of “ghost elephants” – the last survivors of a vanishing lineage of African elephants possibly descended from the Smithsonian’s legendary Fénykövi specimen. Part nature detective documentary, part fever dream, this is Herzog in his elemental mode — philosopher, provocateur and pilgrim — guiding us toward the edge of knowledge and asking, as always, what lies beyond.
Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi in her Silent Friends offers us a profound scientific epic centered around a ginkgo tree in the garden of Philipps University of Marburg in Germany, using this hundred-year-old tree as the focus of the fllm. This is her best work since 2017’s enchanting On Body and Soul, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival — locates three such passersby, separated by generations. Enyedi excavates these stories from the ginkgo tree’s roots, like living fossils that have inseminated themselves into its being. The cast is led by Tony Leung Chiu-wai)) and Léa Seydoux, as two preternaturally sensitive and curious modern researchers who wish to understand the mind of plants.
There are few films from Russia for U.S. audiences to view, but one is Two Prosecutors directed by Sergei Loznitsa, a Ukrainian director and respected independent filmmaker known for his work in both documentary and narrative films. Born in Belarus in 1964 and raised in Ukraine, Loznitsa has been making films since 1996. Set in 1937, at the peak of Josef Stalin’s Great Purge — yet chillingly relevant today — Sergei Loznitsa’s dark parable of tyranny is based on a short story by the dissident writer and scientist Georgy Demidov, who was himself imprisoned for nearly 20 years. Against all odds, a complaint letter written in blood escapes the bonfire at Bryansk prison and reaches young state prosecutor Kornyev (Aleksandr Kuznetsov), who visits the prison to investigate. After getting the runaround from the suspicious guards, Kornyev eventually meets the letter’s author — Stepniak (Aleksandr Fillipenko), a former attorney — who alleges torture by the secret police (NKVD) to elicit forced confessions from him and other older party loyalists in an effort to subvert Soviet society.
Finally, there is the latest film from prolific South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, with his What Does That Nature Say to You. Retaining his signature style and languid rhythm yet adopting a more wistful tone, Hong expands his frequent focus on friends and lovers to include the intricate dynamic between parents and their adult children. When Junhee brings her boyfriend Donghwa — an idealistic, 30-something broke poet, complete with a fledgling goatee — to her idyllic, hillside family home, he’s received politely by her parents but cautiously by Junhee’s older sister Neunghee, an unemployed boomerang daughter grappling with depression. Eventually and inevitably in Hong’s films, too much liquor is poured, and Donghwa’s respectful, ingratiating façade begins to crack when questioned about his own successful father.
To purchase tickets to some of these interesting films, go to: fest.afi.com. Several have two screening dates.
