What to Watch at the Calgary International Film Festival 2025
The Alberta Premiere of Dark Match at the Calgary International Film Festival in 2024. Photo credit: Shannon Johnson.
The Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) is back for its 26th year. Over the course of the ten day festival, CIFF will screen over 200 films across the city. Since, their first festival in 2000, CIFF has now nearly quadrupled in size, seeing approximately 30,000 attendees across their ten days of showings.
From horror comedies to wrestling documentaries to Cannes-winning premieres, there really is something for everyone this year. REVERIE has your watchlist recommendations below.
AFTER THE HUNT, directed by Luca Guadagnino
There is no one else quite like Luca Guadagnino. He is always creating, he is always pushing forward with multiple projects in the works at the same time. Last year saw the release of Challengers and Queer, two polar opposite films, that were filled with thorny ideas and sensational performances. They are two films that you might have varying opinions on, but you can’t argue that both weren’t fun to discuss and weren’t run-of-the-mill.
This year, Luca Guadagnino is back with After The Hunt, a #MeToo thriller set in the world of academia, centred on professors and students from an Ivy League university played by Julia Roberts, Ayo Edeberi and Andrew Garfield. It promises to be a provocative experience that should lead to plenty of debates once the film is over. Given the subject matter, it almost certainly will be one of the most talked about films this fall around the world, so be sure to check out its Canadian premiere as part of CIFF, so you can get ahead of the conversation and formulate your own takes ahead of its wide release in October. — Ben Goodman
BLAZING FISTS, directed by Takashi Miike
A Takashi Miike Film! The veteran director of Audition and Ichi the Killer comes swinging at us with a genre hybrid sports-prison film. While his name alone gets my blood pressure going (in a positive sense), I’m curious to see how a man deep into his career can still to rivet an audience to the screen. — Flora Bews
DEAD LOVER, directed by Grace Glowicki
While at SXSW with REVERIE earlier this year, I beelined directly from our flight touching down, to pass pick-up, to AFS Cinema to catch Dead Lover and I’m excited that CIFF landed its Alberta premiere. This bizarrely theatrical midnight movie follows a lonely gravedigger in her attempts to bring her dead lover back to life. Directed, starring, and co-written by Toronto’s Grace Glowicki, this gem of a movie is perfect for lovers of body horror, Frankenstein and the U.S Girls (Meg Remy handled the score and it’s phenomenal). — Kenn Enns
DEATHSTALKER, directed by Steven Kostanski
Steven Kostanski is the director of one of my favourite films ever, PG: Psycho Goreman, and his combination of comedy alongside his incredible use of practical effects, has made me a lifelong fan. His filmography includes a few of my favourite recent watches from the Calgary Underground Film Festival, Frankie Freako and In A Violent Nature, but Deathstalker promises an exciting new direction for the filmmaker with a sword and sorcery flick. Fear not creature fans! This film promises another ambitious bestiary of fiends. — Kenn Enns
FOLLIES, directed by Éric K. Boulianne
A Québécois awkward sex-comedy about a middle-aged couple keeping their mojo in the bedroom by opening their relationship. Will raising kids or ethical non-monogamy prove to be the greater challenge to their love? The trailer gives the impression of a sort of 2000’s indie-flavored parody of Eyes Wide Shut, complete with a Kubrick spoof of that infamous shot from The Shining involving a tuxedo clad man and his fur-suited fellatio partner. A specific line also won me over right away: Francois (played by director Eric K. Boulianne) buying a chain for kink purposes at a tool shop instead of a sex shop because “you can find the same stuff at hardware stores for a fraction of the price.” — Flora Bews
IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU, directed by Mary Bronstein
Conan O’Brien plays a psychologist to Sara Murphy in this psychological thriller. Apparently he’s mean! I look forward to the stickiness of the plot and the neck breaking stakes I’m sensing. I’ve also been interested in movies exploring women’s fraught and ambivalent relationship to motherhood, especially after I saw Huesera: The Bone Woman at the Globe this summer. This is Mary Bronstein’s second feature, after 2008’s Yeast, so I’m curious about a mumblecore director turning to the thriller genre after 17 years. A$AP Rocky stars also! — Flora Bews
KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, directed by Bill Condon
Bill Condon directs this film adaptation, of the 1993 musical adaptation, of Argentine writer Micheal Puig’s novel. The metatextual layers don’t stop there, since this tale exists on multiple planes of reality — the real world of prison, and the fantasy world of an old Hollywood musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman. I can’t say I’m stoked to see JLo star, yet with just glimpses, I am amped to see her here. I am never not excited to see Diego Luna, who’s been in my heart since Y Tu Mama Tambien (and everyone should watch his show, Todo Va a Estar Bien). Given the success of Chicago and its own metatextual slipperiness, I think Condon is the right director for this story. — Flora Bews
MILE END KICKS, directed by Chandler Levack
Chandler Levack’s feature I Like Movies, perfectly captured for me the awkwardness of adolescence and I’m looking forward to her take on insular music scene drama. Set in Montreal, Barbie Ferreira stars as a young music critic writing the next great book in the 33 1/3 series, before she then falls for multiple members of a local indie rock band. I’m sold! — Kenn Enns
NIRVANNA: THE BAND - THE SHOW - THE MOVIE, directed by Matt Johnson
I want to answer a question upfront: no, you do not need to watch Nirvanna the Band the Show to watch Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. This film, which got rave reviews during its world premiere at SXSW earlier this year, is a self-contained piece of comedic work. It’s a time travel movie! That said? The show in its entirety (which is two seasons, eight episodes a piece) will take you only six hours to watch, which is shorter than whichever true crime documentary you were going to watch on Netflix this weekend, so to get even more out of the film when it screens at CIFF, to get every tiny easter egg, treat yourself to one of the best cult comedies of the 2010s.
Also one last thing: comedy nerds around the world love Nirvanna the Band the Show. It’s a real cult favourite amongst my group of friends, both from America and England. Internationally, there is no set release date in sight. How often does that happen for us Canadians? Often we are the ones who have to wait for the movie or TV show to hit our country! This is one example where we have the cool, hip thing that people all over the world would love to see, but we get it first, so make it your patriotic duty to support the film at CIFF! — Ben Goodman
NO OTHER CHOICE, directed by Park Chan-wook
The newest film from the GOAT, Park Chan-wook! Oddball plots and asymmetrical pacing? Yes please! Tales of frustrated and aimless desire? Yes please! Park is a surgeon in the world of filmmaking, knowing exactly where to cut you and make you bleed. This is his second adaptation of a Western novel, and with the success of The Handmaiden (Adapted from the novel “Fingersmith”), we can expect Park to play with the space between tellings of the same story. I’m also still living off the high of the creative filmmaking of his prior feature, Decision to Leave, which had some of the most inventive shot transitions and use of cell phones I’ve ever seen. — Flora Bews
SENTIMENTAL VALUE, directed by Joachim Trier
Could 2025 finally be the year for 74-year-old Stellan Skarsgard? If starring on Disney+’s Emmy-nominated critical sensation Andor (as Luthen Rael) wasn’t enough, the word on Sentimental Value from its Grand Prix-winning Cannes bow is that Skarsgard might be an early Oscar frontrunner. It is not surprising, given this is Joachim Trier’s follow-up to the remarkable 2021 film The Worst Person in the World, which shares a lead in Renate Reinsve (who last was seen in CIFF 2024 breakout A Different Man).
The film, which combines estranged family dynamics and the world of showbiz ego in an acting family, is said to be an equally hilarious and heartfelt film. As the closing night film at CIFF 2025, screening at the historic THE GRAND theater, I can’t think of a better way to wrap up the festival this year. I know myself for one thing I have been deeply looking forward to Sentimental Value, so the opportunity to get to see it not only as part of CIFF but at The Grand theatre? Plenty of people will be seeing the film over the upcoming award season, but I doubt many of them will have a better experience than this. — Ben Goodman
SINGHS IN THE RING, directed by Akash Sherman
As a story of pro-wrestling’s history, Singhs in the Ring is essential, focusing on the Great Gama Singh and his son Raj Singh’s parallel paths as pro-wrestlers, which are both rooted in Calgary. As a story of a loving family, Singhs in the Ring is also essential, as you will not see a more loving family on screen this year than the Singhs. Equal parts educational, moving and just plain fun (with reenactments done with action figures!!), this is a documentary on pro-wrestling that transcends the sport, but if you are a fan, especially a wrestling fan from Calgary? Singhs in the Ring will be your next favourite film.
— Ben Goodman
THE MASTERMIND, directed by Kelly Reichardt
Kelly Reichardt has been on my list of my five favourite directors alive since I first encountered Wendy and Lucy in 2008. She makes meditative, slice-of-life films, where relatable anxieties and hardships are painted in such vivid minimalist tones. Her films have such a wonderfully slow pace, where if you really lock in to what is on screen, you will be deeply rewarded with some of the best acting and most nuanced character moments found in 21st century film.
The Mastermind, her latest, is being described partially as an art heist film, a thriller, terms you would not come to expect from the work of Kelly Reichardt (in her own words, her last two films, First Cow and Showing Up, were “a film about a guy stealing milk and another one about a hurt bird and a ceramicist” respectively). Speaking as someone who is avoiding the trailer due to wanting to experience the film as pure as I can during its Alberta Premiere as part of CIFF on September 18th, I cannot wait to see what Kelly Reichardt’s version of a heist movie looks like. Knowing her work, I am sure the focus will be as much on what happens internally to the character, as opposed to any sort of twisty plot machinations, which to me, are the best kind of films. — Ben Goodman
The Calgary International Film Festival runs from September 18 to 28, 2025. Ticket bundles and passes are on sale now at ciffcalgary.ca.