22 OctOber 2-8, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | F all means a slight chill in the air, pumpkin spice in your cof- fee, and, oh yeah, all the best movies finally coming to Flor- ida. Miami Film Festival Gems is back with a new slate of awards season contenders, harvested like pumpkins from the major film festivals, including Cannes, Toronto, and New York. This is your chance to get a sneak peek at some of the films that will be in the running for Oscars, Golden Globes, and other top honors early next year. It’s also a chance to see some major stars in the flesh. After his Before Trilogy castmate Julie Delpy appeared at MFF earlier this year, Ethan Hawke, star of First Reformed, Gattaca, Dead Poets Society, and countless other films, will be in attendance to receive the Variety Virtuoso Award at the festival. His new film Blue Moon, his latest collab with director Richard Linklater, will also screen at the festival. Dylan O’Brien of Maze Runner fame will also receive an award, and Mona May, costume designer of Clueless, will attend for a 30th anniversary screening of the classic high school rom-com. Of course, the movies are the main attrac- tion, with cinema from Brazil, Norway, Spain, Taiwan, and Hollywood screening this year. Here are 11 films you need to see at Gems 2025. Arco Though Japanese and American animation get more attention, France is one of the larg- est and most prolific markets for cartoons in the world, holding its own thanks to classics like Fantastic Planet and more re- cent films like Ernest and Celes- tine. This year, the country is giving Gems its only ani- mated film, director Ugo Bienvenu’s sci-fi adven- ture Arco. The Natalie Portman-produced film follows the titular Arco, a 10-year-old time-trav- eler from 2932 who be- comes stranded in the slightly-less-distant year of 2075, where a climate crisis is in full effect. He makes friends with Iris, a girl his age, who tries to help him return home. Though Arco is Bien- venu’s first film, he’s already a well-estab- lished comic artist in France; the film’s animation style recalls recent Western sci-fi cartoons such as Scavengers Reign. Both the French and English versions of the film are stacked with prominent actors, including Swan Arlaud (Anatomy of a Fall) and Louis Garrel (Little Women, The Dreamers) in the French original, and Portman joined by Will Ferrell, America Ferrera, Flea, Mark Ruffalo, and Andy Samberg in the English dub. Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague Ethan Hawke will be on hand to present Blue Moon, in which he stars as songwriter Lo- renz Hart on the eve of his former partner Richard Rodgers’ Oklahoma! debuting on Broadway. But the musical-adjacent film, co- starring Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott as Rodgers, isn’t the only movie Richard Linklater is bringing to Mi- ami. The proud Texan famous for the Before Trilogy, Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, and most recently Hit Man, is also showing Nou- velle Vague, his dramatization of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave film Breathless. It’s told in the same style as the in- fluential crime caper, complete with black- and-white cinematography and character cameos from all your (weird cinephile cous- in’s) French film favorites: Truffaut, Chabrol, Varda, Rohmer, Rivette, Cocteau, and even Roberto Rossellini. Zut alors! Castration Movie Anthology i. The Fear of Having No One to Hold at the End of the World A lo-fi, 275-minute docu-drama about trans people and incels in Vancouver? Sign us the fuck up. This first part of director Louise Weard’s Castration Movie saga is as idiosyncratic and personal as movies get, featuring the di- rector herself in the lead role as a trans sex worker who, in the words of the director, “decides to re- claim some sense of control by seeking out a back alley orchiectomy.” Featuring cameos from a who’s who of trans film creators, including Vera Drew (The People’s Joker), Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw The TV Glow), and Theda Hammel (Stress Positions), Castration Movie Anthology i is unlike anything else you’ll see this year. Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein Monster movies are what Guillermo Del Toro excels at, from his kaiju action franchise Pacific Rim to the Shape of Water, his Best Picture Oscar-winning riff on the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Now he’s going back to one of the original movie monsters with his own very distinctive take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The 1818 novel, following a mad scientist’s attempt to create a living creature out of dead body parts, is considered a forma- tive influence on both science fiction and horror, and Del Toro’s adaptation is report- edly more faithful than the classic Hollywood version starring Boris Karloff. Jacob Elordi, playing the Creature, plays a very different version of the Monster than audiences might be accustomed to from pop culture and spoofs like Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. The rest of the cast is equally stacked with stars, with Oscar Isaac as Dr. Frankenstein and Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz in sup- porting roles. The film debuted at the Venice Film Festival and premiered in North Amer- ica at the Toronto International Film Festival. Hamnet In recent years, Chloe Zhao has been respon- sible for both a controversial Best Picture Os- car-winner (Nomadland) and a notorious superhero flop (Marvel’s The Eternals), but in adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed histor- ical novel Hamnet, she may have found her best film yet. Based on the tragically short life of Hamnet, the son of William Shakespeare, who died at age 11, the story focuses on Wil- liam (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley). Their already fraught marriage is tested even more by tragedy, from which emerges a great masterwork, Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. The film has already won ac- claim from appearances at Telluride and the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People’s Choice Award. Left-Handed Girl Even after sweeping the Oscars and Cannes with Anora, Sean Baker has been busy produc- ing and co-scripting this Taipei-set film di- rected by Shih-Ching Tsou. The two previously partnered on Take Out, which is now in the Criterion Collection. Shot on iPhone, much like Baker’s previous feature Tangerine, Tsou’s film follows elementary school-aged I-Jing (Nina Ye), who’s having trouble adjusting to city life with her mother Chu-Fen (Janel Tsai). Things get even worse when her grandfather tells her one day that her left-handedness is a sign of the devil. Full of the sights and sounds of urban Taiwan and telling a rewarding story about family and the struggles of working-class existence, Left- Handed Girl is an earthy, heartfelt addition to the Gems lineup. Rental Family The phenomenon of “rental people” in Japan has been documented in everything from memoirs (Rental Person Who Does Nothing) to manga (Rent-a-Girlfriend). Even Werner Herzog made a film about the trend, Family Romance LLC. Now comes Rental Family from Japanese director Hikari, best known for her work on the Netflix show Beef. The film stars Brendan Fraser — fresh off his Os- car win for the Whale and a cameo in Killers of the Flower Moon — as Philip, a struggling actor in Tokyo hired by a firm that rents out actors to play real-life family members, friends, and other roles. Complications arise when Philip is asked to play the long-lost fa- ther of a young girl. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Secret Agent You’ve got to be pretty good at making movies to win one prize at Cannes. The Secret Agent won two: Best Director for Kleber Men- donça Filho and Best Actor for Wagner Moura, who starred in last year’s Civil War. Like last year’s Oscar-winning I’m Still Here, The Secret Agent takes us to the era of Brazil’s dictator- ship, tracing the path of former professor Ar- mando (Moura). On the run from the government and living under an alias, he’s searching for a way out of the country and a newfound connection with his estranged son. Things get complicated from there. Mendonça Filho meticulously recreates his hometown of Recife as he experienced it as a cinema-addled youth, when movies served as a sanctuary from a brutal world outside. Frankenstein Netflix SCREEN TEST This is your chance to get a sneak peek at some of the films that will be in the running for top honors. 11 movies to catch at at Miami Film Festival Gems 2025. BY DOUGLAS MARKOWITZ >> p24
