The 2025 Hamptons International Film Festival has continued to raise the curtain on its 33rd season with the disclosure of its closing night and Centerpiece films as well as 18 Spotlight films.
The festival, which will run from Oct. 3 through Oct. 13, will close with the world premiere of the filmed stage version of the 2023 Broadway revival of "Merrily We Roll Along," with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by George Furth, and direction by Maria Friedman, who also directs the film of the revival.
While the show was panned when it first opened in 1981, of the revival, the New York Times critic Jesse Green praised "Maria Friedman's unsparing direction and a thrillingly fierce central performance by Jonathan Groff." Also starring Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, the musical, which was filmed across multiple performances in July 2024, is told in reverse, beginning in adulthood and traveling back to the optimism of youth. Ms. Friedman will attend the screening on Oct. 12 in East Hampton.
The Centerpiece, set for Oct. 4 here, will feature the U.S. premiere of David Michod's "Christy," which stars Sydney Sweeney, Ben Foster, Merritt Wever, Katy O'Brian, and Ethan Embry. The biographical sports drama stars Ms. Sweeney as Christy Martin, who rose from small-town roots in West Virginia to become America's best-known female boxer in the 1990s. Ms. Sweeney's performance earned her the festival's 2025 Achievement in Acting award.
Among the Spotlight films is "After the Hunt," Luca Guadagnino's psychological drama starring Julia Roberts as a college professor who makes an accusation against one of her colleagues. The film caused a stir at the recent Venice Film Festival, with at least one critic suggesting it might be seen as a setback for feminism.
Having its world premiere and inspired by true events is Ari Selinger's "On the End," in which Tim Blake Nelson plays a down-on-his-luck Montauk mechanic on the verge of being removed from his beachfront home and auto repair shop.
Nicholas Hytner's "The Choral," starring Ralph Fiennes as a chorus master during World War I, is having its U.S. premiere, as is James Vanderbilt's "Nuremberg," which features Russell Crowe as the imprisoned Nazi leader Hermann Goring, who awaits the Nuremberg trials.
Other U.S. premieres include "Rental Family," in which Brendan Fraser plays an American actor in Tokyo trying to find purpose until he lands an unusual job in a Japanese "family rental" agency, and Rian Johnson's "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery," with Daniel Craig as the detective Benoit Blanc.
Among the East Coast premieres are Nia DaCosta's "Hedda," which stars Tessa Thompson in a modernized reimagining of Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler," Max Walker-Silverman's "Rebuilding," a drama starring Josh O'Connor as a southern Colorado rancher living in a trailer community after his ranch burned down in a wildfire, and Clint Bentley's "Train Dreams," set in the Pacific Northwest in the first decades of the 20th century, based on a Denis Johnson story about a laborer (Joel Edgerton) immersed in a rapidly changing world of beauty and voracious industry.
Jessica Chastain stars in Michael Franco's "Dreams" as an American philanthropist who begins a dangerous affair with a Mexican ballet dancer (Isaac Hernandez). It is having its New York premiere, as is Matthew Shear's "Fantasy Life," the story of an out-of-work man, played by Mr. Shear, who joins his psychiatrist's family as a babysitter for the summer on Martha's Vineyard. It co-stars Alessandro Nivola and Amanda Peet.
Other Spotlight films include "Bugonia," Yorgos Lanthimos's psychological thriller starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons; Chloe Zhao's "Hamnet," a historical drama based on the novel of the same name about Shakespeare's domestic life; "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You," Mary Bronstein's drama starring Rose Byrne as a Montauk therapist whose life is falling apart, and Bradley Cooper's "Is This Thing On?" A comedy-drama about an unraveling marriage, it stars Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Amy Sedaris, and Mr. Cooper.
Rounding out the Spotlight selections are Ira Sachs's "Peter Hujar's Day," which reimagines a 1974 interview between the writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) and the photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw); Rebecca Zlotowski's "A Private Life," starring Jodie Foster as a renowned American psychiatrist living in Paris, and "Sentimental Value," Joachim Trier's family drama starring Stellan Skarsgard as a once-renowned filmmaker and Renate Reinsve as his actress daughter.
Passes and packages are now on sale. Tickets for members will become available on Sept. 20 at noon; for the general public, Sept. 22 at noon. Screenings and events will take place at the East Hampton Cinema, the Sag Harbor Cinema, the East Hampton Middle School, Guild Hall, the Southampton Playhouse, and Village Bistro.
