AFI Fest returns to Los Angeles this week, starting Thursday, October 22, with the U.S. premiere of Laika Studios’ long-awaited animated feature “Wildwood” opening the festival. The festival is an annual opportunity to catch the best from the global festival circuit — especially as Oscar campaign season readies for November.
Highlights include IndieWire favorite and Venice Silver Lion winner “Possible Love,” directed by Lee Chang-dong; Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Cannes prize-winning “All of a Sudden,” starring Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto; Werner Herzog’s wily fantasy comedy “Bucking Fastard,” starring Kate Mara and Rooney Mara; Andrew Haigh’s “A Long Winter,” starring Fred Hechinger, Kit Connor, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Caitríona Balfe; Mike Leigh’s San Sebastián Golden Shell winner “Tender Loving Care”; and the North American premiere of Céline Sciamma’s “Tutti Frutti,” which premiered earlier this year at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
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But beneath the hood of the buzzier titles are plenty of lesser-sung selections worth your time, and a ticket. Below, IndieWire polled the AFI Fest programmers for their favorite films out of the features and shorts sections to help guide your long weekend at the movies. See the festival website for ticket info and full descriptions. The festival runs through October 25.
Features
Todd Hitchcock, Director, AFI FEST
“The Idiot(s)”
I am an unapologetic fan of biopics and period pieces, but these genres can tend toward weighty over-seriousness. How refreshing then to see what Polish filmmakers Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert have done with “The Idiot(s)”, their cheeky, spoofy take on Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Johnny Flynn) and his wife Anna’s (Aimee Lou Wood) honeymoon in Baden-Baden, when the great writer was supposed to be hard at work fulfilling a contract to write “The Idiot,” but instead wasted his time doing anything but, chiefly gambling and losing big. Englert also supervised the stunning cinematography, and one marvels at how this often silly film looks so smart. Fans of Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” will find much to like.
Abbie Algar, Director, Programming
“Mouse”
Contemporary masters of humane cinema Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson follow “Saint Francis” and “Ghostlight” with “Mouse,” a tender, bittersweet, and deeply truthful coming-of-age drama set in 2002 Arkansas. When shy theater kid Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer, who also starred in “Ghostlight” alongside her parents) loses her charismatic best friend Callie (Chloe Coleman), she forms an unexpected bond with Callie’s mother, Helen (Sophie Okonedo). This unconventional, generation-spanning bond opens a path through grief, love and self-discovery that gives the film a wholly unexpected arc. Eschewing and subverting teen drama tropes, “Mouse” finds its emotional power in the naturalistic performances of its stellar ensemble cast, an indelible sense of time and place and a warmth and humor that affirm O’Sullivan and Thompson’s rare gift for finding hope in humanity.
Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and screenwriter Kelly O’Sullivan, director and producer Alex Thompson and actors Sophie Okonedo, Katherine Mallen Kupferer and Tara Mallen.
Josh Gardner, Senior Programmer
“9 Temples to Heaven”
A meditative travelogue, Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s narrative feature debut finds a family making pilgrimage to nine Buddhist temples in a single day to bring good fortune to their skeptical matriarch. A revelation in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival, this simple setup uncovers existential truth about contemporary conceptions of mortality and spirituality. These ideas sparked my weary soul, fueled by both the deeply universal script and Chidgasornpongse’s formal control of his images, both mundane and surreal. A longtime collaborator of Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Chidgasornpongse’s narrative feature debut is Thailand’s Oscar submission for Best International Feature.
Javier Chavez, Programmer
“Iron Boy”
“Iron Boy” is an absolutely gorgeous film; so much of the pleasure of watching it is seeing the watercolor aesthetic in motion, loosely drawn ink lines wrapped around the characters. This style gives the rural French countryside a dreamy look, as if it were a cherished memory (in fact, filmmaker Louis Clichy drew on his personal life for the film). It serves a specific yet universal tale of acceptance and finding one’s place in the world — especially for children, but adults will connect with this inspiring story, too.
Mimi Brody, Programmer
“Flesh and Fuel”
One of the unexpected pleasures of my festival viewing this year was Pierre Le Gall’s “Flesh and Fuel,” an unconventional romance that completely won me over. Set in the unglamorous world of European long-haul trucking, it follows two men, Étienne, a veteran French driver, and Bartosz, a Polish trucker, whose casual hookup develops into an unexpected romance. Sexually frank, funny and surprisingly tender, the film features two terrific performances by Alexis Manenti and Julian Świeżewski, whose earthy, lived-in sensuality is a refreshing departure from conventional screen romance — and idealized male leads. I found myself completely invested in these two men and their unlikely romance, which was both refreshingly unsentimental and deeply affecting.
Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and screenwriter Pierre Le Gall.
Anna Li, Programmer:
“At Night”
Watching Beatrice Gibson’s feature debut “At Night” is a transfixing, magical experience — for 87 minutes, you wander the dimly lit Parisian streets, popping in and out of sparsely populated bars and Metro stations, observing the nocturnal conversations among a community of women. Women who are poets, academics, sex workers, intellectuals and artists, who are open and frank with each other, who muse on the texts of feminist literary figures like June Jordan and Alice Notley and in the same breath chat about their sexual insecurities. Recalling Akerman’s late-70s output, its analog ambiance and melancholy, almost Lynchian in its quiet liminality, and its languid drift in a unique autofiction form, I never wanted the night to end.
Travis Weedon, Associate Programmer
“Forever Your Maternal Animal”
Valentina Maurel’s tempestuous sophomore feature was the discovery of Cannes for me. I left the theater vibrating, coming down from more than just a well-placed Alice Coltrane needle drop. The three leads rightly received Best Actress honors in the Un Certain Regard section for their raw portrayal of the headstrong women at the center of an unraveling middle-class family in San José, Costa Rica. Fractured families are hardly untrodden cinematic ground, but Maurel manages a rare and transporting feat of performance, perspective and poetry, as she fleetly wends her way through the family’s knotty dynamic with lyrical direction and an empathy that never shortchanges the humanity of her characters.
Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and screenwriter Valentina Maurel.
Natalia Ames, Associate Programmer
“The Meltdown”
Can a country undergo an authentic transformation in the name of modernity and openness, or is its forced rebranding merely a whitewash, concealing its most painful truths? “The Meltdown,” Manuela Martelli’s follow-up to “Chile ’76” and her country’s Oscar submission for Best International Feature, explores these questions about Chile in the early 1990s, in the aftermath of Pinochet’s era. The film follows a young girl (stunning newcomer Maya O’Rourke) who, much like the audience, must piece together a puzzle of scattered information, covered-up truths and blatant lies in order to make sense of a new reality.
Screening to be followed by a conversation with director and screenwriter Manuela Martelli and producer Alejandra García.
Eli Prysant, Assistant Programmer
“Goodbye Cruel World”
As a fan of 2014’s “Eden,” my interest was immediately piqued when I heard its lead Félix de Givry would be making his directorial debut, and “Goodbye Cruel World” did not disappoint. Capturing the magic of young love where the connection between you seems to create your own special world, Givry’s film is keenly observed and a promising sign of hopefully more films to come.
Shorts
Nichole Young, Short Film Programmer & Programming Coordinator
“Chuuraa”
Screens as part of Shorts Program: Documentary 2
Descend into the icy depths of the Siberian underworld in Oscar-nominated Evgenia Arbugaeva’s latest documentary, “Churraa.” Guided by Indigenous Sakha paleontologist Aisin, we traverse through the labyrinthine permafrost in search of an ancient creature. Plunge into this immersive epic, uncovering what chilling relics risk escaping the thawing ice. Arbugaeva’s haunting soundscape and claustrophobic cinematography transcend the mythological realm and natural world; illuminated by a single torch, we rediscover just how minuscule and fragile the human race is. Don’t miss this cinematic marvel that must be experienced on the big screen!
Payton Ewalt, Associate Programmer, Short Films
“Trading Cards”
Screens as part of Shorts Program: Animation 1
Would you steal away the innocence of your childhood for a moment of peace in your present? Visionary Radheya Jang centers the conversation of self-discovery and mental health around the media we surrounded ourselves with as children. Here, the richness of color, sound and narration coalesce into a poetic introspection that can only be described as divine. Swelling with magic and atmosphere, “Trading Cards” aims directly at the young heart and pierces through the warmth of nostalgia to haunt it with the omnipresent anxieties of the future.
Daniel Crooke, Associate Programmer, Short Films
“The Bovine Comedy”
Screens as part of Shorts Program: After Dark
Words will fail to capture the unexpected essence which director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke spills into being with this follow-up work to his breakout feature debut “A Useful Ghost”(AFI Fest 2025). This is a filmmaker fully in command of where to place his camera and what to put inside of his frame, balancing a confrontational hook with a gentle human touch. The plainspoken ways he brings his futuristic setting to life are remarkable, given how unremarkable they may seem to his characters, who are simply living their ordinary lives in a world that, at first glance, may feel unordinary to the viewer. If it seems like I’m avoiding a description of the plot, it’s because I am!