The Tribeca Lineup 2025
Good afternoon: This article contains the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival program lineup.
Typically, when you see lineups, it is a long list spread across multiple web pages. What we have done is broken it up into categories:
Cover Story that breaks down the top films at the festival.
Tribeca Industry News, which breaks out the festival films from the major studios.
Tribeca Actor Spotlight, highlighting the top talent at the festival.
Tribeca Tech Section, with a film about AI that caught our attention.
Tribeca Indie Filmmaker Spotlight, showcasing first and second-time filmmakers.
Tribeca International News, showing the top international filmmakers at Tribeca.
Enjoy!
To see the full article, you can read it here.
Tribeca Film Festival in NYC is a menagerie of some of the best up-and-coming in indie cinema.
This year’s edition features a robust competition by mostly newcomers, while some of the flashier films, detailed below, are in non-competition sections:
Dir: David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water)
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Lily James
Premiere: TIFF
Section: Spotlight Narrative
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Synopsis:
Elusive professional fixer Ash has his skills put to the test while protecting whistleblower Sarah Grant from increasingly ruthless corporate mercenaries in this breathless, New York-set thriller.
Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Sean Bean
Prod: Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed, Jurassic World)
Logline:
A down-on-their-luck trio of wannabe improv comedians are recruited to go undercover and bust petty criminals.
Dir: Patricia Arquette (directorial debut)
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Ray Nicholson, Arquette
DP: Bobby Bukowski (Oren Moverman’s The Messenger, Time Out of Mind, Rampart)
Section: Member Exclusive Event
Why it’s hot: Dafoe plays a gonzo journalist inspired by Hunter S. Thompson (image). The film premiered at TIFF in 2023.
The Trainer
Dir: Tony Kaye (American History X)
Cast: Vito Schnabel, Julia Fox, Bella Thorne
Section: Escape from Tribeca
Our Interview with Tony Kaye on The Trainer, his Punk Marvel movie
Everything's Going to Be Great
Dir: Jon S. Baird (Tetris, Filth)
Cast: Allison Janney, Bryan Cranston, Chris Cooper
Studio: Lionsgate
Cast: Lee Pace, Rupert Friend
Prod: David Hinojosa (Babygirl, Past Lives)
Premiere: Berlin
Section: Spotlight
Dir: Michael J. Weithorn (Creator: The King of Queens)
Cast: Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick
Sales Rep: CAA
Section: Spotlight
Why it’s hot: Husband and wife Bacon and Sedgwick reunite on screen for the first time in decades.
Tidbits:
Robert De Niro does a talkback after the Premiere of the Spotlight+ doc Nobu. The conversation includes Chef Nobu Matsuhisa and director Matt Tyrnauer. Sign up here.
Miley Cyrus does a talkback after the premiere of her Spotlight+ doc, the pop-opera visual album Something Beautiful with Miley Cyrus. Check it out here.
Marc Maron does a talkback after his SXSW premiering bio-comedy-doc Are We Good? where he opens up about the devastating loss of his partner. Get tickets here.
Metallica does a talkback after the premiere of their Spotlight+ doc, Metallica Saved My Life. Sign up here.
We love a prison triangle. Oscar-nominee Guy Pearce and Emmy-winner Cosmo Jarvis play a soon-to-be-paroled convict and Australia's most despised criminal. They ensnare a teenager transferred from a juvenile prison to their adult facility. Check out the North American premiere Spotlight, Inside.
THE TRIBECA INDUSTRY NEWS
HBO’s Billy Joel two-part doc And So It Goes will open the Tribeca Film Festival. Directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, it explores Joel’s personal and musical journey, featuring unseen footage and interviews. Produced by Pentimento, Hazy Mills, and Playtone, it promises revelations even for longtime fans. Will be launching on HBO this summer.
HBO will also world premiere:
Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately? About the overnight success of the band Counting Crows
Season 3 of The Gilded Age
Not a studio film, but some studio directors united for Man Finds Tape:
EP: C. Robert Cargill (writer: The Black Phone, Sinister)
Prod: Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson (The Endless, Synchronic, Moon Knight)
Synopsis:
Pulled in by a series of strange and unexplainable video clips, a brother and sister team up to investigate the events captured in the footage, only to discover a shocking secret that’s overtaking their small-town Texas community.
Check out more details here.
Tibits:
Buried in the Escape from Tribeca line-up is Hulu's animated Predator: Killer of Killers, directed by Dan Trachtenberg (Prey). Trailer here. Releasing on Hulu and Disney+ June 6th.
Sony Pictures Classics’ End of Wall and Oh, Hi!, both of which premiered at Sundance, will play at Tribeca in the Spotlight Narrative section.
Universal’s How to Train Your Dragon, live action, will have its NY Premiere at the Spotlight Narrative section. Check out the trailer.
Universal Pictures Content Group premieres Kerouac's Road: The Beat of a Nation, a doc on the impact of the novel On the Road. Interviewees: Michael Imperioli, Josh Brolin, Matt Dillon, and many more.
Netflix will world premiere Titan: The OceanGate Disaster in the Spotlight Documentary category.
TRIBECA ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Lucy Liu is headed to Tribeca. She stars in and produces Rosemead (US Narrative Competition).
Synopsis:
Irene, a Chinese immigrant mother (Liu), is driven to desperate measures by her unstable son’s escalating mental health crisis and growing obsession with mass shootings.
Some of our favorite Liu performances are in indie films. She recently starred in Steven Soderbergh’s Presence (2024) and played an empassioned and frustrated college counselor in Tony Kaye’s Detachment (2012). Watch her lose her shit on a student.
She should be similarly distraught in Rosemead. Veteran indie producer Mynette Louie (The Tale, Swallow, Gemini) produces.
Andrea Riseborough is a Dragonfly. Not literally, but in this International Narrative Competition film, Dragonfly, she plays Colleen, who volunteers to care for her elderly neighbor Elsie. Of course, as they bond, motives start to be questioned, leading to a devastating series of events.
Oscar-nominee Riseborough displays a forlorn, yet calculated empathy in the first look image.
Riseborough’s best work often tilts to unflinchingly raw, typically low-life yet effervescent characters:
Nancy
An emotionally traumatized woman seeks solace in knowing she may have been kidnapped as a child
To Leslie
In this Oscar-nominated role she plays a lottery winner whose lost all her money. A kinetic forlorn drifter
We look forward to seeing her play for keeps in Dragonfly.
Agathe Rousselle is sensational in Titane as the lead, “car-loving” character. We haven’t seen her in much since the film won the Palme d’Or. She returns with A Second Life (2025), world premiering at the International Narrative Competition.
Synopsis:
A hearing-impaired American and a free-spirited tourist form an unlikely friendship amid the buzz of Paris during the Olympic games in this charming tale of human connection.
We love how she’s able to make the world revolve around her, heightened only by the spherical Bokeh going on in this first look image.
Tidbits:
Isabel Hagen plays the lead role in On a String (US Narrative Competition). She also directs, writes, produces, and EPs. No big deal. She plays a young, Juilliard-trained violist who returns home to live with her parents in the heart of New York City. The project has a good prod company behind it, Dweck Productions (Michael Cera’s The Adults, Jane Schoenbrun’s debut We're All Going to the World's Fair). The real-life Isabel Hagen is a stand-up comedian (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon) and classically trained violist (master’s degree: Juilliard).
Rose Byrne makes a big transformation in a Tow (World Premiere: Spotlight Narrative), which follows an unhoused woman living in her car who fights a predatory towing company when they refuse to return her stolen vehicle. Byrne is becoming a bit of a festival darling lately. Later this year, she leads A24’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which premiered at Sundance, where she is gloriously unhinged and exasperated.
Longlegs scream-queen Maika Monroe is fresh out of prison in Spotlight Narrative In Cold Light. The film centers around her attempt to reclaim her drug operation, which collapses when she witnesses a brutal crime, forcing her to flee for her life and track down who wants her dead. First look photo of Monroe here. There’s no one better than her at convincing us they’re in true peril and must run (e.g., It Follows).
Mini Tidbits:
Uttera Singh is the lead, director, writer, and producer for her International Narrative Competition film Pinch. She plays an aspiring travel blogger who is groped by her landlord while traveling to a festival, and she impulsively takes retributive steps.
Kevin Kline (Disclaimer) and Julia Fox (Uncut Gems) co-star in Fior Di Latte about a frustrated playwright, Mark, who becomes addicted to huffing perfume to conjure memories from a previous Italian summer vacation. Playing in the Viewpoints section.
Iggy Pop co-stars in How Dark My Love about controversial painter Joe Coleman, known for his intricate portraits of serial killers.
Alexandra Daddario and Josh Gad, make quite a pairing in drama comedy, A Tree Fell in the Woods. World premiering in Spotlight
Sundance-premiering doc Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, which was just picked up by Kino Lorber, premieres in the Spotlight Doc section.
TECH SECTION
Dan Romer’s music is vast and mythological. You’ve heard his scores in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), Beasts of No Nation (2015), Death of a Unicorn (2025) and Lilo & Stitch (2025). So we’re quite excited to hear what he’s composed for the US Narrative competition, Horsegirls.
Synopsis:
Living under the full time care of her cancer-stricken mother, a twenty-two-year-old, socially awkward, horse-obsessed woman attempts to prove her independence by winning a hobbyhorse competition.
It’s very on-theme for him to take a project with an animal name in the title.
Congrats as well to friend of The Industry, Blair Skinner, for co-producing. The project is produced by the President of Mad Dog Films, Alix Madigan-Yorkin (EP: The Age of Adaline, Prod: Winter’s Bone).
We love an AI boxing movie. My Father's Son, playing in the International Narrative Competition, delivers.
Synopsis:
A father’s complicated legacy lives on in his son’s memories — and an AI boxing model — in Qiu Sheng’s unique and engrossing blend of sci-fi, family drama, and sports movie.
As AI becomes more prevalent, we can start to imagine a world where our loved ones are not cloned or cryogenically frozen, but in fact replicated by chatbots.
We love Sergio Armstrong’s cinematography. Working with him on Sebastian Silva’s Kristin Wiig-starring, Nasty Baby (2015), we could see his joy in mobile framing. He DP’s International Narrative Competition Twelve Moons. Here’s a surreal first look image.
Synopsis:
Sofia is 40, childless, with a neglectful marriage, and spiraling into chaos as her life unravels. With striking imagery and a raw central performance, the film is a haunting character study trapped in a social nightmare.
Victoria Franco directs and her brother, the famed festival indie darling Michel Franco (Dreams, Memory) produces. Top international sales rep The Match Factory (The Substance, Neon’s Perfect Days) has just taken sales.
TRIBECA INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Melody C. Roscher makes her feature debut, Bird in Hand, after years of producing stellar indies. She will premiere at the US Narrative Competition.
Synopsis:
Bird returns home to visit her mom in search of the perfect wedding venue after a surprise engagement to her longtime boyfriend, but much to everyone's surprise, she is actually on the hunt for something else.
Previously, she has worked extensively with Borderline Films (Josh Mond, Antonio Campos, and Sean Durkin):
Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) - Line Producer
Simon Killer (2012) - Co-Producer
James White (2015) - Producer
Christine (2016)- Producer
Bird in Hand has a stellar producing team, Sam Bisbee (Netflix’s Daughters, Robot & Frank), Craig Shilowich (EP: Marriage Story, Prod: Christine), Cody Ryder (The Art of Self-Defense, The Clovehitch Killer).
James Le Gros, known for Drugstore Cowboy, who was recently excellent as the supportive but clueless father in Metrograph’s Good One, co-stars.
Safdie Brothers producer Oscar Boyson directs his sophomore film, Our Hero, starring Balthazar, playing in Viewpoints.
Synopsis:
In this bold dark satire, wealthy NYC teenager Balthy makes dramatic gun control videos to impress his activist crush. When an online troll targets his content, Balthy becomes convinced he's communicating with a potential school shooter and embarks on an ill-advised journey to Texas to confront him.
Boyson was instrumental in getting the Safdie brothers’ careers off the ground, producing:
Heaven Knows What (2014)
Good Time (2017)
Uncut Gems (2019) - EP
We can’t wait to see this comedy about young men in America.
With more than a decade in the making, beloved indie filmmaker Alex Ross Perry’s anticipated Videoheaven, an homage film to the culture surrounding VHS tapes, makes its US premiere after debuting at Rotterdam.
Videoheaven is said to celebrate video stores in traditional Hollywood cinema. Described as a three-hour video essay narrated by actress Maya Hawke, this film is composed of scripted moments, interviews, and found footage dating back to the 1980s, showcasing the progression and unfortunate demise of “your neighborhood video store.”
Perry’s musical fiction/documentary hybrid film Pavements (trailer) premiered earlier this year at Venice to great reviews, starring Stranger Things’ Joe Keery and Wes Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman (who loves himself an experimental indie movie).
Videoheaven is playing in Tribeca’s Viewpoints.
Director Tina Romero (daughter of George Romero) will world premiere Queens Of The Dead in the Escape from Tribeca section. Starring: Katy O’Brian (Love Lies Bleeding) with IFCFilms/Shudder as the production company.
Synopsis:
Drag queens and club kids battle zombies craving brains during a zombie outbreak at their drag show in Brooklyn, putting personal conflicts aside to utilize their distinct abilities against the undead threat.
It’ll be great to see a zombie movie from the daughter of the man who invented the genre.
Tidbits:
Esta Isla premieres in the US Narrative competition. It centers on young lovers Bebo and Lola — both from opposite social circles in Puerto Rico — as they flee to a remote part of the island in the wake of a heinous murder. The film is adapted from the filmmaker’s short film of the same name. There’s an ethereal quality to the trailer for the 2014 short that you can see is developed in the first look images of the feature.
Charliebird premieres in US Narrative Compeition. It centers on a devoted music therapist at a children’s hospital in Texas. And, Charlie, the rebellious teen patient assigned to work with her, forms an unexpected bond. The film co-stars one of the top indie actors in NYC, Nicholas Michael McGovern.
We really love the title: Lemonade Blessing. This NY comedy, premiering in the US Narrative Competition, centers on a kid freshly tossed into a private Catholic high school by his devout mother. He falls head over heels for a devious classmate ready to push his faith (and morals) to the brink with a series of increasingly uncomfortable actions, all in the name of love. First look photo in your face.
Briarcliff Entertainment (The Apprentice) will release the true-crime thriller Sovereign. The cast is pretty awesome, including Nick Offerman, Dennis Quaid, and Jacob Tremblay. Offerman and Tremblay play a father and son who identify as Sovereign Citizens (people who refuse to recognize the powers of the Government) and find themselves in a deadly standoff with a police chief (Quaid). Written and directed by Christian Swegal, the film is based on real events like the Bundy Ranch Standoff. The first look of Offerman makes this look like a big departure for him.
Mini Tidbits:
Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone producer Datari Turner produces US Narrative competition’s romance thriller Ride or Die.
We’ve always wanted a friend with free airline flights. Alex Mallis and Travis Wood’s US Narrative competition, The Travel Companion, explores.
RZA directs and writes One Spoon of Chocolate in the Escape from Tribeca section. We loved the rapper’s previous feature, The Man With The Iron Fists, which was stylish, a tad derivative, and had a stacked cast (trailer).
Berlin In Competition: What Marielle Knows about an 11-year-old telepathic girl who exposes her parents’ private lives is playing at Viewpoints.
TIFF competition K-POPS by Actor/Dirctor/Writer/Producer: Anderson .Paak (debut) follows a washed-up musician who jumps at the chance to capitalize on his long-lost son's stardom.
TRIBECA INTERNATIONAL NEWS
People and Meat made me laugh. This Korean film, playing in the International Narrative Competition, is about:
Three broke and lonely senior citizens reinvent themselves as the infamous “dine and dash trio” in a gambit to eat free across Seoul in this charming action-crime-comedy caper.
Dine and dash senior citizens running around Seoul sounds glorious. First look above.
This one seems fun. Straight out of Egypt, Happy Birthday plays in the International Narrative Competition.
Synopsis:
Eight-year-old maid Toha goes to great lengths to ensure that her best friend Nelly, the daughter of her wealthy employer, has a successful birthday party in this poignant debut feature exploring classism in modern-day Cairo.
Sarah Goher directs and co-writes. She serves as a consulting producer on Marvel’s Moon Knight.
Sexual awakening is ripe in Little Trouble Girls, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival Perspectives and won the FIPRESCI. The film has been sold to Kino Lorber for North America for theatrical and digital, and BFI for the U.K. Warner Bros. Discovery bought broadcast rights in Europe.
Synopsis:
16-year-old Lucia joins Catholic school choir, befriends senior Ana-Maria. During choir retreat at convent, Lucia's attraction to a restoration worker creates tension with Ana-Maria and challenges her faith.
You may need to eat a sour grape after watching the trailer.
Shudder’s Reflection in a Dead Diamond, the latest supernatural crime film by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, has its North American premiere in the International Narrative Competition. The film follows a former spy haunted by his past. Shudder picked up rights in North America, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, after the film’s Berlin Festival debut. Trailer here.
Go on a journey with The Wolf, the Fox and the Leopard. The film will play in the International Narrative Competition.
Synopsis:
A feral girl who has spent her life living among wolves is taken on an odyssey through contemporary human life while the threat of climate apocalypse looms.
The first look photo says it all.
Mini Tidbit:
Latvian, rotoscope animation in Dog of God. First look photo. Playing at the Escape from Tribeca section.
Ever heard Disney’s The Lion King in Peruvian? No. What about Quechua? Doc competition Runa Simi explores an indigenous Peruvian man and his young son's mission to dub The Lion King in their native Quechua to save the disappearing Peruvian language.
We’d love to watch Underland at Sphere in Vegas. The Darren Aronofsky-produced, Sandra Hüller-narrated in competition doc follows explorers into places rarely glimpsed by human eyes: caves, flooded drains, and underground laboratories.
See the full list of 2025 Tribeca films here.
Written and edited by Gabriel Miller.
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