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It’s an interesting moment for the medium of movies: Questionably-legal giant corporate mergers and their related political affiliations raise the specter of the industry soon being entirely controlled by non-creatives who only care about shareholder returns. Meanwhile, the fast-developing menace of AI suggests soon maybe humans won’t be making most screen entertainment at all; they cost money, so why not replace them with programs trained to approximate past work (by humans of course). If those scenarios come to full fruition, count me out—I’ll watch oldies, and read more books.
It’s already a pretty diminished landscape for cinema, as fewer artistic risks seem to be taken every year—even though some pay off bigtime (like The Odyssey), and there are signs of audience fatigue with too many cookie-cutter franchises. Despite the latter, this fall will be full of sequels, with new installments to The Hunger Games, Avengers, Dune, and more. Plus horror and animation sequels, unnecessary remakes (notably Sense and Sensibility), the ever-increasing field of “faith-based entertainments,” the adjacent one of disgraced talents starring in reactionary violent action movies (say hello again to Jonathan Majors), and a surprising surfeit of biopics of people you didn’t realize required one. (Those include a chocolatier in Hershey, still-kicking Sylvester Stallone in I Play Rocky, and Anna Nicole Smith’s physician in Trust Me, I’m A Doctor.)
But there will also be plenty of alternatives, if you know where to look. Fall is now institutionalized as the time of the year for “serious” films, since for the most part Hollywood only dares to release chewier non-popcorn films when they can ride the momentum of “awards season.”
So coming months will bring new missives by a global range of interesting directors, including Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (whose satirical Digger sounds closest to Birdman among his films to date), Cristian Mungiu (Cannes prize-winner Fjord, his first shot outside Romania), Taika Waititi (Klara and the Sun, from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel), Cold War’s Pawel Pawlikowski (German-language Fatherland, about writer Thomas Mann after WW2), The Banshees of Inisherin’s Martin McDonaugh (CIA sendup Wild Horse Nine, with a golden cast encompassing Malkovich, Buscemi, Sam Rockwell, Parker Posey and Tom Waits), and James Gray (80s-set crime drama Paper Tiger, with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johanssen).
Many of these Oscar-bait features will no doubt be available for an advance view at the Mill Valley Film Festival (Oct. 1-11, more info here), which hadn’t announced its full program by presstime but is a reliable stop for hopefuls en route to the Academy Awards.
The premise doesn’t sound fascinating, but I’ll be looking forward to actor Jesse Eisenberg’s new feature as writer-director, The Debut—because his last, A Real Pain, was probably my favorite movie of 2024. Also raising expectations are an as-yet-untitled mystery project from Jordan Peele (all the more so since its release has been repeatedly delayed for two years now) and writer-director-producer-star Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G: Who Iz I?, reviving his first signature character.
Here are a few more things to look forward to further down the line in 2026:
SF CritterFest (Sept. 17-20)
There are older and bigger Bay Area film festivals, but none have been so prolific in generating other festivals as SF IndieFest—which has not only endured since 1998, but now has five spinoff events scattered throughout the annual calendar. The latest addition is this inaugural showcase at the 4-Star Theater for movies about the animal kingdom, domesticated and otherwise. There are animations, documentaries, features and shorts, with subject matter ranging from the very serious (The Ark focuses on a Ukrainian refuge for creatures displaced by war) to the ridick (starrily voice-cast ‘toon series Stoner Cats) to the irresistibly self-explanatory (Bears In Hot Tubs). Info is here. Additional IndieFest events in the fall are the concurrent SF Short Film Festival and Green FilmFest (both Oct. 15-22), as well as genre-oriented Another Hole in the Head (Dec. 1-31). All will have online as well as in-person screening options.
Barbara Forever (opens Sept. 18)
Though she passed away just shy of age 80 in 2019, Barbara Hammer remains a towering influence in feminist, experimental and queer cinema, having pioneered unmediated lesbian perspectives and imagery onscreen. Her astonishingly expansive filmography over a half-century course would encompass the diaristic, erotic, political, celebratory, analytical, abstract, and eventually feature-length nonfictions like Nitrate Kisses and History Lessons. Brydie O’Connor’s Sundance prize-winning documentary pays tribute to a singular talent that was primarily based in NYC, but spent formative years in San Francisco. That geographic backstory also applies to former SF resident Sam Green, whose latest playful exploration The Oldest Person in the World likewise opens in Bay Area theaters Sept. 18. Stay tuned for more info on venues—both O’Connor and Green will be present at select local shows.
Georgian Cinema Now: Part I (Sept. 23-Oct. 2)
Akin to the filmic renaissance that began in fellow former Soviet-bloc nation Romania some years earlier, this Caucasus-region country has won international attention with a new generation of filmmakers—and continues to, despite Georgia’s ongoing political instability over disputed elections. Berkeley’s BAMPFA has sporadically showcased that flowering for over a decade. Now it provides an entire year of programming, the first section bringing a delegation of ten visiting directors, critics and academics as well as 11 recent works.
The latter include feminist rural tale Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, stranger-than-fiction doc Taming the Garden, the excellent gay-themed drama Crossing, and more. Later installments will span the whole back-history of Georgian cinema. More info is here. Among additional globe-trotting fall series at BAMPFA are the self-explanatory Hong Kong Cinema: Rareties and Restorations (Oct. 23-Nov. 28, more info here) and The Cinema of Masaki Koabyashi: Midcareer Masterworks (Oct. 31-Nov. 21, more info here), which includes the Japanese director’s 1964 supernatural omnibus Kwaidan and epic antiwar trilogy The Human Condition.
The Social Reckoning (opens Oct. 9)
David Fincher’s 2010 The Social Network seemed pretty cutting-edge in portraying the then still-recent formative days of social media—though 16 short years later, it feels like ancient history. Its Oscar winner for Best Adapted Screenplay, Aaron Sorkin, is back with a “companion piece” he’s directed as well as written. This time he dramatizes the 2021 leak of internal Facebook intel that put the nail in the coffin of its “making the world a better place” spiel, which now also feels like an echo from an entirely different era. Mickey Madison (in her first part since the Oscar for Anora) and The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White play whistleblowers Frances Haugen and Jeff Horwitz.
Succession’s Jeremy Strong (who also essayed Trump-whisperer Roy Cohn in The Apprentice) takes on the role of beloved Bay Area figure Mark Zuckerberg—snark alert—because Network’s aforementioned Jesse Eisenberg did not want to go down that road again. If Sorkin can curtail his penchant for soapbox-speechifying, this might well be one of the more incisively relevant films of the year.
Josephine (opens Oct. 26)
Another drama of particular Bay Area interest is the second feature by writer-director Beth de Araujo, an SF native and UC Berkeley graduate. Her 2022 Soft & Quiet was a little-seen but uniquely intense fictive pulse-taking of our era’s lean towards politicized bigotry. She won both the Grand Jury and Audience Awards at Sundance for this tale of an eight-year-old girl (Mason Reeves) who witnesses a horrific assault in Golden Gate Park. Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan are the parents trying to help her cope with that trauma. Given that pretty well every early review out of the festival in January was an unqualified rave, Josephine could end up the most acclaimed movie set in our fair city since at least The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
30th Arab Film Festival (Nov. 5-14)
What a year for the nation’s oldest and largest such event to observe a major milestone—just as our current White House administration and its Israeli BFFs seem intent on blowing up the Middle East. Well, there’s never been a dull political moment for the Arab Film & Media Institute’s annual showcase to take place, alas. There are no program specifics announced as yet, apart from a planned opening night fete at SF’s AMC Kabuki 8. But you can expect an array of features, shorts, documentaries and narratives from throughout the Arabic world, including its diaspora presence in western nations. Keep an eye peeled here for more info as it gets announced.
Bitter Christmas (opens Nov. 25)
After the relative disappointment of his first English-language feature, 2024’s surprisingly talky and stilted The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodovar should be back on terra firmer with this seriocomedy sprawling over three decades. Its tricky structure provides the 76-year-old Spanish filmmaker another opportunity for fictionalized self-reflection, as in the excellent 2019 Pain and Glory. This time his alter ego is not Antonio Banderas, but Barbara Lennie as a troubled director in 2004—but then she turns out to be a fictive character in the movie within this movie, one being made by another, present-day authorial stand-in (Leonardo Sbaraglia). He, too, has woes both professional and personal. Though less starry by international standards than many a recent Almodovar joint, what he’s called his “cruelest” self-portrait was well-received in Spain during its home-turf release this spring.
Werwulf (opens Dec. 25)
Other favorites from ye olde Classic Universal Studios Monster roster (Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy) have been successfully revived in recent years. But not so much the werewolf, that folkloric entity which keeps resisting resuscitation. The last significant attempt, Saw and Insidious co-creator Leigh Whannel’s 2025 Wolf Man, was a particularly disheartening failure. There is reason to expect better from Robert Eggers, of The Witch and The Lighthouse fame. His ability to revivify tired genre tropes was demonstrated amply enough two years back with Nosferatu, even if I ultimately had mixed feelings about that vampire remake. This hairier horror brings back much of its cast—notably Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe and Ralph Ineson—and is set in 14th-century England, complete with dialogue entirely in Middle English. Though there are rumors the visual palette will be very close to sepia, one suspects much blood-red flesh will be vivid torn asunder. Um…Happy Holidays!
