Archive for the 2025 Films Category

2025 (USA)

Directed by: Jennifer Tiexiera and Guy Mossman

Captivating audiences with spellbinding words and unshakable passion, SPEAK. follows five top-ranked high school seniors as they compete in the fiercely competitive world of national oratory championships. These students are storytellers, advocates, and visionaries. As they make their way through the highest rounds of competition, it becomes clear that their true power lies not in their technique but in their deep personal perspectives on the world. Each competitor speaks from the heart, tackling issues that have shaped their lives. Though the competitions bind them together, it is the contenders’ unique experiences shared through their fearless storytelling that set them apart on stage. Fueled by the desire to be heard, these students wield words like weapons, aiming not just to win but to leave an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of their listeners. SPEAK. takes us on a journey through the joys, pressures, and triumphs of students who have mastered the art of speech.

Premiere – Sundance Film Festival – Nominated – Grand Jury Prize Documentary

Directed by Jennifer Tiexiera – an Incline High School graduate

Incline Village Cinema – December 6 – 6:45pm

Watch the Trailer

2025 (Mexico, USA)

Directed by: Michel Franco

After a passionate fling with affluent philanthropist Jennifer (Academy Award® winner Jessica Chastain) in Mexico, ballet dancer Fernando (real-life dancer Isaac Hernández) crosses the border with the cash she left him, intent on rekindling their romance and realizing his dream of dancing in the United States. His sudden appearance stateside both surprises and intrigues Jennifer, who welcomes the young man back into her life — except when her friends and colleagues are around. As Fernando comes to realize, Jennifer will do a lot to support him but even more to protect her own elite status. Director Michel Franco’s chilly yet erotic exploration of power dynamics — in love, in sex, in wealth — and the performative altruism of the upper-class speeds toward a shocking conclusion.

Premiere – Berlin International Film Festival – Nominated – Golden Berlin Bear

Northstar Village Cinemas – December 6 – 5:45pm

Watch the Trailer

2025 (United Kingdom, USA)

Directed by: Mona Fastvold

Academy Award® nominee Amanda Seyfried delivers a spell-binding performance in this musical historical drama from writer-director Mona Fastvold and co-writer Brady Corbet (Academy Award nominees, THE BRUTALIST). Ann Lee (Seyfried) is the dynamic and devout leader of the Shakers, an 18th century radical religious movement known for its loud and uninhibited singing and shaking during prayer. As Ann leads the Shakers from the oppression of England to the religious freedom of the Americas, she seeks the salvation of those around her alongside her own spiritual ecstasy. Through enthralling dance sequences and a career-best performance from Seyfried, THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE brilliantly and inventively evokes the passion of one woman with a conviction to better the world around her.

Premiere – Venice Film Festival – Nominated Golden Lion

Northstar Village Cinemas – December 7 – 7:30pm

2025 (USA)

Directed by: Tasha Van Zandt

Marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder has spent a lifetime exploring the ocean depths, which contain endless secrets. She made headlines for devising the camera system that captured the first footage of a giant squid in its natural habitat. But her greatest passion is studying the occurrence of bioluminescence — the awe-inspiring phenomenon of underwater organisms that produce their own light. Widder first witnessed it for herself on an expedition in the 1980s when she ventured into the ocean twilight zone below the reach of the sun. At the time, women in oceanography were scarce. The sexism was so prevalent that some chauvinistic boat crews considered it bad luck to have a woman at sea. Widder overcame countless obstacles to become renowned in her field and chart a path for the next generation. Filmmaker Tasha Van Zandt tells that backstory while following Widder on a contemporary expedition that she hopes can be a breakthrough for bioluminescence research. She teams with OceanX to use the latest technology of submersible vessels with the goal of capturing bioluminescence on camera like it has never been documented before.

Premiere – Toronto International Film Festival

Incline Village Cinema – December 7 – 3:30pm

2025 (USA)

Directed by: Kim A. Snyder

As an unprecedented wave of book banning addressing race and LGBT issues is sparked in Texas, Florida, and beyond. Librarians under siege join forces as unlikely defenders fighting on the front lines of democracy. Filmmaker Kim A. Snyder takes an unexpected front line where librarians emerge as first responders in the fight for democracy, free access to information, and our First Amendment rights. Despite facing harassment, threats, and laws aimed at criminalizing their work, the librarians’ rallying cry for freedom to read is a chilling cautionary tale. THE LIBRARIANS engaged and enraged audiences at Sundance and SXSW with its exposure of a systematic attack on intellectual freedom and the unlikely heroes leading the resistance.

Premiere – Sundance Film Festival

Dallas International Film Festival – Won – Grand Jury Prize – Best Documentary

Hamptons International Film Festival – Won – Grant Award for Social Justice

Sarasota Film Festival – Won – Jury Prize

Seattle International Film Festival – Won – Award for Persistence of Vision

Northstar Village Cinemas – December 7 – 3:30pm

Watch the Trailer

2025 (France, Iran, Luxembourg)

Directed by: Jafar Panahi

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi (THE WHITE BALLOON, NO BEARS) won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for this taut, sharply written tale of revenge. What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences when car mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) believes he has encountered the government interrogator who tortured him, but he cannot be certain because he never saw the man’s face. Filmed in secret in Iran—where Panahi remains under arrest—IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT elegantly confronts its characters with entangled questions of suspicion, moral ambiguity, and the meaning of retribution. France’s entry in the Academy Awards® race for Best International Feature Film.

Premiere – Cannes Film Festival – Won – Palme d’Or

Mill Valley Film Festival – Won – Audience Award

Sydney Film Festival – Won – Best Film

Northstar Village Cinemas – December 4 – 6:00pm

Watch the Trailer

2025 (USA)

Directed by: Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi

From Academy Award®-winning filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi (FREE SOLO) comes this engrossing portrait of Pulitzer Prize-winning war photographer Lynsey Addario, who has spent decades documenting humanity at its most fragile and resilient — from the frontlines of Ukraine to the Middle East, Africa and beyond. With remarkable courage and a striking visual style, her lens captures both the brutality of war and the endurance of those living through it. Balancing her career and calling with her life as a wife and mother in London, Addario wrestles with the contradictions of a profession that constantly pulls her away from her two young children. When a male interviewer questions whether she should risk her life while raising kids, she retorts, “Do you ask men that question?” Weaving immersive frontline footage with moments of domestic life, the film presents a powerful meditation on family, sacrifice and the moral force of bearing witness.

Premiere – Toronto International Film Festival

Northstar Village Cinemas – December 7 – 5:30pm

Watch the Trailer

2025 (North Macedonia)

Directed by: Tamara Kotevska

Oscar®-nominated documentarian Tamara Kotevska (HONEYLAND) returns with a poetic and lyrical documentary set in rural Macedonia where family farms are struggling as their traditional way of life has become unsustainable. Looking down on this human drama are the town’s majestic storks perched in enormous nests atop telephone poles while their clattering beaks provide a constant soundtrack. Rooted in the Macedonian myth of Silyan — a boy transformed into a stork after defying his father — the film draws a parallel to its subject, Nikola, a weathered farmer left behind when his adult son and family depart for Germany in search of a more secure future. When Nikola encounters an injured stork and tends to the fragile bird, a tender bond forms — one that reflects both his yearning for companionship and the looming uncertainty of his vanishing way of life. Through folklore, striking images and intimate observation, Kotevska crafts a story about absence and resilience, and about the delicate thread that ties human survival to the natural world.

Premiere – Venice Film Festival – Won – Cinema & Arts Award

Incline Village Cinema – December 7 – 1:00pm

Watch the Trailer

2025 (Germany, Hungary, France)

Directed by: Ildiko Enyedi

For over a century, a ginkgo tree, standing sentinel in the garden of Philipps University of Marburg in Germany, experiences its surroundings — but how and what it experiences is a mystery. Every day, students, professors and staff pass by the tree, graze its bark, recline beneath its shade. Ildikó Enyedi’s profound scientific epic — locates three such passersby, separated by generations. In 2020, a professor of neuroscience, stranded and isolated on the COVID-abandoned campus, begins to conduct experiments on the tree’s sensorial faculties. In 1972, a first-year student, inspired by a romantic dalliance, cares for a sensitive geranium; and, in 1908, the university’s first female student discovers a new way of seeing plants through photography. 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. Their inquiries open a portal into an expanded sense of time and connection, uniting their story with those who came before them and with the plants who have borne witness all the while.

Premiere – Venice Film Festival – Won – Marcello Mastrioanno Award and the FIPRESCI Prize

Northstar Village Cinemas – December 5 – 5:00pm

Watch the Trailer

2025 (USA)

Directed by: Todd Jones and Steve Jones

Pressure Drop captures that fleeting space between calm and chaos — when breath slows, vision sharpens, and the mountain demands everything. Born from a dream and forged on the edge, it is a tribute to the fleeting moment when gravity takes over and everything else fades. Pressure Drop continues the tradition of what it means to dedicate your life to the fall line as we follow the world’s top skiers and snowboarders through deep powder, huge cliffs and iconic lines. Shot on location in: Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Lofoten Islands, Norway, Valdez, Alaska, Grand Targhee, Wyoming, Interior British Columbia, Haines, Alaska and Palisades Tahoe, California.

This is Teton Gravity Research’s 30th Annual Film

Crystal Bay Casino Crown Room – December 6 – 7:00pm

Watch the Trailer