Screen critics’ standout films from the 2025 Venice and Toronto film festivals

This year’s Venice/Toronto film festival double header concluded on Sunday with Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet winning TIFF’s audience award, following a Golden Lion victory for Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother the weekend before.

Screen’s critics were on the ground at both festivals, and have selected a combined 22 standout titles to watch out for.

Compiled by Nikki Baughan

Venice

Below The Clouds
Dir. Gianfranco Rosi
Our critic said: “Strikingly melancholic documentary portrait of Naples… [that is] deeply evocative, and not without moments of wry humour.”
Read our review

Broken English
Dir. Jane Pollard, Iain Forsyth
Our critic said: “Not just a documentary about Marianne Faithfull, it’s a film which is fully infused with her distinctive spirit – it is free, candid and rebellious to the core.”
Read our review

Bugonia
Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
Our critic said: “Lanthimos regulars Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are terrific as two individuals on opposite sides of an ideological chasm, and there’s a great deal of the macabre playfulness of previous Lanthimos works.”
Read our review

Cover-Up
Dir. Laura Poitras
Our critic said: “Distributors and audiences are sure to be tempted by the combination of tantalizing story and balanced, clear-eyed filmmaking.”
Read our review

Dead Man’s Wire
Dir. Gus Van Sant
Our critic said: “For his first feature in seven years, director Gus Van Sant turns this fascinating true crime story into both an entertaining period drama and an evergreen tale of ordinary men pushed into desperate acts.”
Read our review

Divine Comedy
Dir. Ali Asgari
Our critic said: “A free-wheeling, sharp-witted satire that unpeels seemingly endless layers of Iranian cultural bureaucracy.”
Read our review

Father Mother Sister Brother
Dir. Jim Jarmusch
Our critic said: “It’s a work of pared-back humanism in which the cineaste from Ohio, now in his 70s, finally goes full Ozu, but it also feels, at times, like the work of a younger director with an appetite for the expressive potential of slow cinema.”
Read our review

A House Of Dynamite 
Dir. Kathryn Bigelow
Our critic said: “Precision-tooled, ambitious in scale yet bracingly concise, this is Bigelow’s boldest and most assured film yet.”
Read our review

Landmarks
Dir. Lucrecia Martel
Our critic said: “Martel’s debut documentary focuses on a real-life murder trial. It’s very much from the heart, and from the political conscience – a critique of colonial history and the enduring abuse of power in Argentina.”
Read our review

No Other Choice
Dir. Park Chan-wook
Our critic said: “Park’s filmmaking is as elegant as ever in a wildly enjoyable picture that balances psychological tension against giddily hilarious comic set pieces.”
Read our review

Notes Of A True Criminal
Dir. Alexander Rodnyansky, Andriy Alferov
Our critic said: “Ukraine’s precarious present is filtered through its tragic past in Rodnyansky’s personal, despairing documentary that combines footage he shot more than 30 years ago with recent images emerging from the imperilled nation since Russia launched its invasion in 2022.”
Read our review

Orphan
Dir. László Nemes
Our critic said: “The film’s immediacy should strike more of a chord commercially than its sometimes dauntingly oblique predecessors. Its intelligent, achieved substance merits serious consideration in awards discussions.”
Read our review

Rose Of Nevada
Dir. Mark Jenkin
Our critic said: “For his third feature following Bait and Enys Men, Jenkin returns to the location and themes that have preoccupied his work and delivers more of the same. That’s no bad thing, particularly for fans of his atmospheric folk tales and, with its relatively straightforward narrative, this could be his most accessible prospect yet.”
Read our review  

The Tale Of Silyan
Dir. Tamara Kotevska
Our critic said: “Kotevska’s exquisite hybrid documentary charting the highs and lows of rural life in modern Macedonia shares common ground with her double Oscar-nominated picture Honeyland.”
Read our review

Toronto

Couture
Dir. Alice Winocour
Our critic said: “The film should draw the interest of Angelina Jolie’s fans; she conjures the same bewitching mystique and raw poignancy that shot her to stardom.”
Read our review

Good Fortune
Dir. Aziz Ansari
Our critic said: “A blistering barrage of jokes backed by immense heart, Good Fortune is a belter of a debut for Ansari.”
Read our review

Good News
Dir. Byun Sung-hyun
Our critic said: “This kinetic dramatisation of the hijacking of Japanese Airlines Flight 351 is the Kill Boksoon director’s most ambitious film to date.”
Read our review

Hamnet
Dir. Chloe Zhao
Our critic said: “A potent love story anchored by Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal’s expertly modulated performances.”
Read our review

Rental Family
Dir. Hikari
Our critic said: “In a role requiring far less artifice than his physically transformative Oscar-winning performance in The Whale, Fraser puts a face to forlornness in an unconventional, endearing crowd pleaser.”
Read our review

Steve
Dir. Tim Mielants
Our critic said: “This adaptation of Max Porter’s 2023 novella Shy features a superb central turn from Cillian Murphy as the school’s eponymous, exhausted head Steve, around whom the propulsive, bittersweet drama revolves.”
Read our review

The Ugly
Dir. Yeon Sang-ho
Our critic said: “The new film from South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho (Train To Busan) is an intimate mystery in which an adult son (Park Jeong-min) vows to discover who killed his long-lost mother decades ago.”
Read our review

Wake Up Dead Man
Dir. Rian Johnson
Our critic said: “This mystery-comedy is as clever as the previous films, and is bolstered by a graceful performance from series newcomer Josh O’Connor.”
Read our review

• Five talking points from TIFF 2025