FilmScene’s Refocus Film Festival returns to Iowa City Oct. 9-12 with a full platter of cinematic goodness. We asked our resident film scribes Ariana Martinez and Benji McElroy to share the shows they’re most excited to see. We also broke down the lineup by mood, with only a little fighting about what fit where. Click the headers to view each film’s trailer on YouTube.
Hedda
Directed by Nia DaCosta
Nia DaCosta triumphantly returns with her fourth feature, and is working with Tessa Thompson again, who starred in her 2018 debut Little Woods. I’m thrilled to get a chance to watch this on the big screen considering the film is an Amazon Prime original and will frustratingly only have a limited theatrical release before moving to streaming. Lame!
Romería
Directed by Carla Simón
The plot of this one, as someone who has also tried to piece together the fractured memory of a family member lost to AIDS, hits close to home. Director Carla Simón is adept at exploring grief from the eyes of a young girl, and Romería seems to be another special entry in her filmography.
Videoheaven
Directed by Alex Ross Perry
Coming off the success of Pavements, Alex Ross Perry pivots from music to movies to honor the video store; it goes without saying why this interests me. Ever the experimental documentarian, the three-hour runtime isn’t scaring me off. I’m always down for a walk down 1980s memory lane.
Saïd Effendi
Directed by Kameran Hosni
One of the retrospective selections of the fest, this Iraqi film from 1957 follows a teacher who experiences tension with his distrusting neighbors. The educator has and continues to remain a contentious figure in society, and as a teacher myself, I’m eager to see the chilling truth within this familiar tale.
She’s the He
Directed by Siobhan McCarthy
Surprise surprise, this nonbinary critic is excited for a film about trans identity featuring so many queer people in front of and behind the camera! I can’t wait for something so gay to flip weird heterosexual comedy on its head, a gift in the vein of Bottoms for genderqueer folk!
Peter Hujar’s Day
Directed by Ira Sachs
With two heavy hitters at his disposal, Ben Wishaw and Rebecca Hall, I’m curious to see what Passages director Ira Sachs creates. The subgenre “conversation-heavy films set in a single day” is particularly delightful to me, and the photographer-writer dynamic here adds an interesting layer.
The Ice Tower
Directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic
A young woman watching, studying and becoming infatuated with a beautiful older woman will always be an intriguingly complex process. Add a classic Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale to the picture and I’m lured in even further. Marion Cotillard as the Snow Queen herself doesn’t hurt either.
Fucktoys
Directed by Annapurna Sriram
A colorful and sexed up odyssey modeled after my favorite tarot card — I would be a fool not to see it. Set in the fictional city of Trashtown, USA, it’s gonna be surreal, it’s gonna be camp, and it’s certainly gonna be delicious!
Ariel
Directed by Lois Patiño
Reimagining Shakespeare’s The Tempest in the archipelago of Azores, Ariel’s cinematography is clearly just as magical as its story. The coastal mysticism of this timeless play alongside the Spanish lore has already mesmerized me.
— Ariana Martinez
Train Dreams
Directed by Clint Bentley
This will be the third time Denis Johnson, former resident of Hillcrest Dormitory and winner of the National Book Award, has been adapted for the big screen (Stars at Noon, Jesus’ Son). Train Dreams, Johnson’s sorta-frontier myth, is about one man and the sometimes-transcendent things that happen to him between working and dying on the railroad. I hope the film rings trippy and true, too.
No Other Choice
Directed by Park Chan-wook
Park Chan-wook’s films (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) have suspiciously juicy setups — the kind of loglines other directors seem content to coast on — but Park always does them better than the picture in my head. I can’t wait to see what he’s done with this Donald E. Westlake story about a laid-off professional who turns his job hunt into a headhunt.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
Directed by Ivan Dixon
Though the genre hook will get you in the door — the first Black man in the CIA takes what he learns from the foremost experts in regime change and organizes a new American revolution — the real-life FBI provided the best possible endorsement back in 1973 when they, uh, advised theaters to stop showing the film and destroyed all the prints they could find.
Love & Pop
Directed by Hideaki Anno
Hideaki Anno, the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion, bought a camcorder for the making-of documentary about his anime’s alternate and actual ending. He stuck with off-the-shelf gear for his first live-action feature, Love & Pop, which would maybe pass for a documentary on teenage sugar babies during Japan’s “Lost Decade” if only the camera wasn’t bouncing off the walls.
Kontinental ’25
Directed by Radu Jude
If you, like me, engage in the shameful consumption of year-end lists, you’ll recognize Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World from 2024 best ofs. His follow up, a film about a bleeding-heart bailiff tormented by the bloodless, carnivorous complications of modern existence, may be more grounded but still makes sure to scorch what it stands on.
WTO/99
Directed by Ian Bell
This documentary, cut from 400+ hours of archival footage, is a high-dive cannonball into the “rather interesting hoopla,” as Bill Clinton put it, surrounding the 1999 World Trade Organization conference in Seattle. What Slick Willie meant, of course, was police tear-gassing the shit out of the right-left coalition of protesters for being 100 percent correct about his fuck-y’all trade deals.
Play It As It Lays
Directed by Frank Perry
I’ve had to hear tight and toned Angelenos talk about the stunning, revelatory, etc. 4K restoration of this Joan Didion adaptation — with a screenplay by Didion and her also-good-at-writing husband, John Gregory Dunne — for months. Now I finally get to see if Anthony Perkins, hotter than ever even in 480p, really is hotter than hotter than ever.
The Hips of J.W.
Directed by João César Monteiro
You should know two things about this Portuguese film: 1) J.C. Moneiro knew damn well how to shoot a film that would screen at modern art museums on the semi-regular, and 2) the “J.W.” in the title (which Variety translated as The Pelvis of J.W. in their 1997 review) is none other than John Wayne.
Zodiac Killer Project
Directed by Charlie Shackleton
When Charlie Shackleton lost the rights to The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up, a self-published theory from some crackpot highway patrolman, he Scotch-taped the pieces into this deconstruction of the true crime genre. The DIY anti-doc has at least one fan: Elijah Wood of Cedar Rapids, who gave it the NEXT Innovator Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s October 2025 issue.
