LOS ANGELES FESTIVAL OF MOVIES 2025 LINEUP: Amalia Ulman’s ‘Magic Farm’ to Open the Second Edition

After breaking out on the West Coast last year, the Los Angeles Festival of Movies is coming back for its second edition! Presented by MUBI and Mezzanine, the festival will take place April 3 – 6 It will host both world and West Coast premieres of new innovative indie-arthouse titles from breakout voices.

Kicking off the festival on April 3 is Amalia Ulman’s south-of-the-border satire Magic Farm, fresh off its glowy Sundance premiere. Chloë Sevigny, Alex Wolff, and Simox Rex star as a film crew working for an edgy media company traveling to Argentina to profile a local musician whose ineptitude leads them into the wrong country. MUBI picked up the film ahead of Sundance and will release it in theaters later this year.

The festival will feature the world premiere of Room Temperature from novelist and poet Dennis Cooper along with Zac Farley; the U.S. premiere of Alexandra Simpson’s Venice breakout No Sleep Till produced by Omnes Films (Eephus, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point); Charlie Shackleton’s Sundance NEXT Innovator Award winner Zodiac Killer Project; director and actor Grace Glowicki’s Sundance midnight stunner Dead Lover; Courtney Stephen’s Locarno breakout Invention, starring Callie Hernandez; and more features and shorts.

More selections, like the Closing Night screening, are to be announced.

“After a devastating start to the year for Los Angeles, we feel more inspired than ever about bringing our community together to watch, discuss, and celebrate great movies,” said LAFM founders Micah Gottlieb and Sarah Winshall. “We’re thrilled to host a variety of incredibly stirring and original films from some of the finest emerging international filmmakers, multidisciplinary artists, and top talents. It’s our pleasure to provide a holistic view of independent cinema today.”

As with last year’s edition, the screenings will be held at Vidiots, 2220 Arts + Archives, and Now Instant Image Hall. A conversation series, which includes a talk between writers Dennis Cooper and Tony Tulathimutte, will be held at the Philosophical Research Society, a new venue for the festival. Passes are currently on sale, while single tickets will be on sale March 10.

See the current festival lineup below (with additional titles to be announced):

OPENING NIGHT FILM

Magic Farm | Amalia Ulman, Argentina, USA, 2025, 93m

West Coast Premiere

A film crew working for an edgy media company travels to Argentina to profile a local musician, but their ineptitude leads them into the wrong country. As the crew collaborates with locals to fabricate a trend, unexpected connections blossom while a pervasive health crisis looms unacknowledged in the background. Narrative.

Cent Mille Milliards | Virgil Vernier, France, 2024, 77m

West Coast Premiere

Drifting through an ethereal Monaco during the eerie, emptied-out limbo of the Christmas holidays, a diffident young sex worker named Afine goes about his rounds with seeming indifference, while gradually forming a strange, tentative bond with preadolescent Julia, whose parents, Chinese real estate developers, have left her in the charge of her Serbian babysitter Vesna. Narrative.

Dead Lover | Grace Glowicki, Canada, 2025, 79m

Los Angeles Premiere

A lonely gravedigger who stinks of corpses finally meets her dream man, but their whirlwind affair is cut short when he tragically drowns at sea. Grief-stricken, she goes to morbid lengths to resurrect him through madcap scientific experiments, resulting in grave consequences and unlikely love. Narrative.

Debut, Or, Objects Of The Field Of Debris As Currently Catalogued | Julian Castronovo, USA, 2025, 78m
West Coast Premiere

The first feature-length film by Julian Castronovo follows a young filmmaker named Julian Castronovo who discovers a trail of clues related to the disappearance of a skilled art forger known as Fawn Ma. Documentary-fiction hybrid.

Invention | Courtney Stephens, USA, 2024, 72m

Los Angeles Premiere

In the aftermath of a conspiracy-minded father’s unexpected death, his daughter receives his patent for an experimental healing device. Featuring archival material from actress and filmmaker Callie Hernandez’s actual late father, INVENTION explores the process of grieving a complicated parent, and the filmmaking itself becomes a part of the process. Documentary-fiction hybrid.

No Sleep Till | Alexandra Simpson, USA, Switzerland, 93m

US Premiere

When a coastal Floridian town is threatened by an impending hurricane, a handful of locals feel strangely compelled to stay put in spite of a mandatory evacuation order. Narrative.

Room Temperature | Dennis Cooper & Zac Farley, USA, 92m

World Premiere

One night every year, a family transforms their home and yard into a haunted house and invites their neighbors to walk through it. What used to be a group effort has increasingly become the dad’s obsessive fantasy that his family is expected to enact. Narrative.

Zodiac Killer Project | Charlie Shackleton, USA, UK, 2025, 92m

West Coast Premiere

The true crime genre’s ubiquity is driven by people’s endless fascination, disgust, and — bizarrely — search for comfort in genre conventions that still have the ability to generate complex emotions despite their predictability and familiarity. Having tried and failed to make a documentary about the infamous Zodiac Killer, filmmaker Charlie Shackleton walks the viewer through what his film would have been like and why, using Bay Area landscapes, reenactments, film and TV clips, and voice-over. In this wholly original, self-aware cinematic work, a filmmaker chews over what might have been and playfully probes the inner workings of a genre at saturation point. Documentary.

RESTORATIONS

To be announced

PART-TIME SHORTS in collaboration with Now Instant Image Hall

Now Instant and the Los Angeles Festival of Movies present PART-TIME, a collection of new moving image works drawn from the worlds of fine art, experimental film, and narrative cinema that impel the structural capacities of the form. 2025’s iteration of PART-TIME brings together artist/filmmakers Sara Cwynar, Valentin Noujaïm, Miranda Pennell, and Elisabeth Subrin in a suite of works that investigate—and push through—the political potency of enchantment.

Baby Blue Benzo | Sara Cwynar, USA, Germany, 2024, 20m

West Coast Premiere

A meditation on sleeplessness and its relationship to the perennially unfulfilled desire for luxury consumption. Narrative.

Man Number 4 | Miranda Pennell, UK, 2024, 10m

A confrontation with a disturbing photograph on social media triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker. Documentary.

Manal Issa, 2024 | Elisabeth Subrin, Lebanon, USA, 2025, 10m

West Coast Premiere

Filmed in Beirut on September 22, 2024, just hours before bombing escalated throughout the country, MANAL ISSA, 2024 presents a haunting interview with the acclaimed Lebanese French actress Manal Issa. Distilled from hours of long-distance conversations between Elisabeth in the U.S. and Manal in Lebanon over the past year, the film intimately considers the role of the actor during the unfolding global conflict. Documentary.

Oceania | Valentin Noujaïm, France, 2024, 24m

Los Angeles Premiere

During the summer, 16-year-old Najib spends his days gaming until his mother, Asma, informs him of their old neighbor’s passing. Intrigued, Najib takes the keys to the neighbor’s apartment, uncovering an unexpected world within. Narrative.

ANIMATION TODAY presented by Cartuna

A survey of the very best in international, independent animation. Featuring some of the most exceptional directors working today, these films represent distinct, daring artistic visions that both embody and transcend the animation medium. Some are narrative, some are experimental, some are sad, some are funny – after all, animation is not a genre.

An Ordinary Life | Yoriko Mizushiri, France, Japan, 2025, 10m

U.S. Premiere

Ordinary life repeats itself every day while the succession of moments that we repeat over and over again is never the same.

Hurikán | Jan Saska, France, Czechia, 2024, 13m

Los Angeles Premiere

Hurikán rushes out to save his favourite beer stand from closure by fetching a new keg to impress the bartender he has a crush on. In a wild Prague district, he faces robbers, cops, and his own thirst.

Margarethe ’89 | Lucas Malbrun, Germany, France, 2023, 18m

Los Angeles Premiere

Margarethe, a young punk opposed to the East German regime, is detained in a psychiatric hospital. She dreams of breaking out to join the man she loves – a punk musician named Heinrich. Though the regime’s days may well be numbered, the Stasi informants are more present than ever.

Mont Noir | Jean-Baptiste Peltier & Erika Haglund, France, Portugal, 2024, 15m

U.S. Premiere

In Mont Noir, Marguerite has been experiencing three severe losses : her mother, her dog, then her nanny. She grew up alone, animals and nature as main fellows. She has been setting herself to become a writer.

Retirement Plan | John Kelly, Ireland, 2024, 7m

West Coast Premiere

RETIREMENT PLAN tells the story of Ray (Domhnall Gleeson) as he fantasizes about everything he’d love to do in retirement, once he finally has the “time.”

Sans Voix | Samuel Patthey, Switzerland, 2024, 15m

West Coast Premiere

Disconnected from reality, Dan retreats into his apartment consumed by electronic music. Nightclubs provide a solace through techno soundscapes and mind-altering substances. A baby’s curious stare unexpectedly redefines his perception.

CLOSING NIGHT FILM

To be announced

FEATURED ARTIST TALKS

To expand the conversation about independent cinema, the festival presents talks between filmmakers and artists from a variety of disciplines, on some of the most relevant themes and artistic practices of today.

On Transgression: Dennis Cooper and Tony Tulathimutte

Sunday, April 6, Time TBC, Philosophical Research Society

One of America’s most influential underground novelists, Dennis Cooper (The Sluts) joins the acclaimed millennial satirist Tony Tulathimutte (Rejection) to discuss their respective approaches and inspirations in creating aberrant and transgressive depictions of obsession and desire in cinema and literature.

Additional artist talks to be announced.