2025 Venice Film Festival Preview: 23 Must-See Films To Watch

“Father Mother Sister Brother”
American minimalist Jim Jarmusch braids four gentle collisions between parents and adult children across Venice, Tangier, and New York. Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Charlotte Rampling, Vicky Krieps, and Mayim Bialik orbit estrangements that thaw into something like grace.

“Silent Friend”
Hungarian poet of time Ildikó Enyedi centers a ginkgo tree and three seekers—an early-1900s pioneer, a 1970s undergrad, and a contemporary neuroscientist—whose lives echo across a century; Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Léa Seydoux, and Luna Wedler lead an ensemble with Enzo Brumm, Sylvester Groth, Martin Wuttke, and Johannes Hegemann.

“The Testament of Ann Lee”
Filmmaker Mona Fastvold (co-writer of “The Brutalist”) interleaves a 1960s New York musician with visions of Shaker leader Ann Lee, letting faith and performance mirror one another; Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Christopher Abbott, Lewis Pullman, Tim Blake Nelson, and Stacy Martin carry a candlelit, musical reverie about devotion and self-invention.

“No Other Choice”
South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook transposes Donald E. Westlake’s The Ax to the present day: a laid-off specialist decides the only path back to stability is eliminating his job rivals, with Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin testing the line between domestic tenderness and moral rot as Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, and Cha Seung-won close in.

“The Wizard of the Kremlin”
French filmmaker Olivier Assayas crafts a confession from a Kremlin image-maker who once scripted a nation’s reality—until love and conscience jam the machine—guided by Paul Dano, Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge, Will Keen, and Jeffrey Wright in a world where truth is a rounding error.