The 2025 Milwaukee Film Festival is set to run April 24 – May 8. It will feature approximately 200 short and feature-length documentary and fiction films from around the world (and Milwaukee, of course). Advance ticket packages and passes are available NOW. It’s gonna be great.
Want to know what some of the films will be? You’re in luck: On Tuesday, Milwaukee Film revealed the first batch of films for MFF25. A new Errol Morris documentary! That new Pavement documentary! A dark sci-fi comedy starring Chloë Sevigny and Alex Wolff! The Anvil Orchestra performing a live score to F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu!
“This year’s lineup is shaping up to deliver the rich depth and breadth that our audiences have come to expect from the Milwaukee Film Festival,” says Cara Ogburn, Artistic Director, in a press release. “So many alumni filmmakers want to return to Milwaukee and, of course, we still have literal days’ worth of local films to consider. We are hard at work on selections and invitations, and we are excited to offer this sneak peak of a few notable features coming to us fresh from the festival circuit.”
Oh, and it’s all gonna be at the Oriental and Downer theaters this year. The 2024 fest included screenings at Avalon Theater and Times Cinema; this year, things are being concentrated to the East Side to provide “a walkable footprint to make the festival experience richer for audiences and filmmakers alike.”
“With this, the 17th edition of the Festival, we are activating the full festival experience for cinemagoers,” says Susan Kerns, Milwaukee Film’s new Executive Director. “Audiences love the great films, talkbacks with filmmakers, and panel discussions at the film festival, and these are the cornerstones of what we do. We know festival-goers also love talking to each other in the lobby about the films, continuing that conversation over a snack across the street between screenings, and browsing nearby businesses along the way. We are inviting all of our neighboring businesses into the Milwaukee Film Festival party while making it easier for audiences to maximize their own experiences.”
And yes, Milwaukee Record will once again be the sole sponsor of the fest’s Cinema Hooligante program. (Yay!) And yes, we have a really cool live/virtual event that we’re cooking up for the fest’s 15-day run. (More on that soon!)
Here’s the first batch of films. More films will be announced in March, and the full MFF25 lineup and schedule will be released online April 4.
40 Acres (dir. R.T. Thorne, 2024, Canada)
After thrilling audiences at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, Thorne’s debut feature stars Danielle Deadwyler as a mother who risks mutiny protecting her family farm after a civil war.
DJ Ahmet (dir. Georgi M. Unkovski, 2025, North Macedonia, Czech Republic, Serbia, Croatia)
This coming-of-age charmer received the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision and Audience Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Free Leonard Peltier (dirs. Jesse Shortbull and David France, 2025, USA)
The most timely documentary at the 2025 Sundance Film festival, premiering just days after Peltier’s sentence commutation, comes from two acclaimed MFF alumni (Lakota Nation vs. United States; How to Survive a Plague).
La Infiltrada (Undercover) (dir. Arantxa Echevarría, 2024, Spain)
This Spanish-language psychological thriller, which is based on a true story, won best film and best actress awards at the 2025 Goya Awards.
Magic Farm (dir. Amalia Ulman, 2025, USA, Argentina)
This Sundance and Berlinale selection is a deliberately awkward and dark sci-fi comedy starring Chloë Sevigny and Alex Wolff.
Pavements (dir. Alex Ross Perry, 2024, USA)
From prolific independent filmmaker Alex Ross Perry comes an experimental hybrid concert documentary about the iconic band, Pavement, which incorporates scripted scenes with archival footage of the band and a musical stage play consisting of songs from their discography.
Separated (dir. Errol Morris, 2024, USA)
This urgent documentary about 2017 and 2018 family separation policies and practices at the border, based on the book by Jacob Soboroff, is essential viewing and demonstrates Morris’ quintessential style.
• Also returning this year is a fan-favorite Festival tradition: Anvil Orchestra’s annual live in-theatre performance of musical accompaniment to a classic silent film. This year, hot off the tails of Roger Eggers’ successful 2024 Nosferatu adaptation, Anvil Orchestra will be performing alongside a special screening of F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror from 1922.
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