With 54 feature films on offer (plus several showcases of shorts), this year’s Vermont International Film Festival is exciting — and daunting, as you wonder how to plan your personal 10 days of cinema. We’ve combed through the offerings and created a quick quiz to help you make your selections.
1. Your No. 1 reason for attending film festivals is…
“I want a leg up on my office’s Oscar pool.”
Seeking an advance peek at the movies likely to be nominated for awards this season? You’ll want to catch Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon (October 23), a period piece about the professional breakup of musical theater icons Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (played by Andrew Scott and Ethan Hawke, respectively). This one’s probably also a must for theater kids of all ages.
Wagner Moura is getting tons of buzz for his performance in The Secret Agent (October 26), a Brazilian espionage thriller set in 1977. So is Carmen Maura — beloved star of many early Pedro Almodóvar films — for her turn as an older woman facing a big move in Calle Malaga (October 25).
The trippy-sounding Spanish epic Sirât (October 21) received the Cannes Film Festival’s Jury Prize, as did Sound of Falling (October 20), which chronicles the 20th century in Germany through the stories of four women inhabiting the same farm in different eras. In another Cannes entry, Magellan (October 22), Filipino director Lav Diaz retells the story of the first European (Gael García Bernal) to cross the Pacific. The festival’s Palme d’Or went to It Was Just an Accident (October 18), from Jafar Panahi, who courageously continues to make films in Iran despite being under a government ban.
On the documentary side, Cover-Up (October 25), a profile of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh from Oscar winner Laura Poitras (Citizenfour), is a good awards bet. So is The Librarians (October 20 and 24), which tackles the all-too-timely subject of book banning.
“I want a window on what’s happening in the world.”
Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (October 21 and 26) chronicles a year of FaceTime conversations with a young photojournalist in Gaza. After history gave the documentary a tragic coda, 350 Cannes attendees signed a letter condemning the ongoing situation.
Khartoum (October 19 and 22) brings us into the lives of five people trying to rebuild in the wake of Sudan’s disastrous civil war. Timestamp (October 20 and 23) explores Ukrainian schools during wartime. Cutting Through Rocks (October 18 and 23) tells the unlikely yet true story of a motorcycle-riding feminist activist in rural Iran. Home Is the Ocean (October 20 and 25) takes us on a seven-year odyssey with an activist family that lives on shipboard.
On the fiction side, Living the Land (October 24) is a drama about the rhythms of Chinese farming life. My Father’s Shadow (October 17) offers a slice of Nigerian history in the form of a family drama. Yes! (October 23) is Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s fiercely satirical reckoning with his homeland’s invasion of Gaza.
“I want to see something too weird for any multiplex.”
With John Waters as a headliner, this year’s VTIFF unsurprisingly offers plenty for aficionados of the oddball, campy and outrageous. The program specifically notes the Waters vibe of Fucktoys (October 23), the story of a sex worker’s quest for a clean aura in a Southern burg called Trashtown. Director Annapurna Sriram is a Burlington native who spent time in the city doing preproduction work on Fucktoys during the pandemic.
Heads or Fails (October 19 and 24), a way-out-there comedy from Belgium, features a squatter protagonist who calls herself the Queen of Shenanigans. Spinal Tap fans should check out Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (October 18), an absurdist tale of how not to name a band. Despite its demure title, Colombian film A Poet (October 19) promises a mercilessly comic character study of a would-be bard. In By Design (October 24), Juliette Lewis sends her consciousness into a vintage chair.
For those celebrating spooky season, Dead Lover (October 24) is a low-fi “Bride of Frankenstein remix” from Canada. Reedland (October 24) is an unconventional Dutch murder mystery partially scored to the eerie rushing of wind through reeds. A Useful Ghost (October 21 and 26), from Thailand, addresses a pressing question: What if appliances could be haunted? So yes, you have your pick of two movies about human souls trapped inside objects.
2. Your least favorite thing about streaming services is…
“They offer too much slop, not enough true variety.”
Have you ever wanted to revisit a movie from your youth, only to learn it wasn’t streaming anywhere? Missing Movies is an organization devoted to tracking down those films. At a free October 25 talk called “How Movies Go Missing,” cofounders Nancy Savoca and Richard Guay discuss how movies fall through the cracks in the streaming landscape. VTIFF also screens two of Savoca’s own “lost” works, Dogfight (October 24), a 1991 gem starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor; and Household Saints (October 25), plus a documentary (October 25) by Savoca and Guay’s daughter about the making of the latter.
Cinephiles who thrive on callbacks to the history of film may not be well served by streaming algorithms, but they are the ideal audience for Bi Gan’s Resurrection (October 21). This visually sumptuous meta-movie prompted an IndieWire headline to ask, “Is This an Endurance Test or Imaginative, Boundary-Defying Cinema?” Defy the automated recommendations and find out for yourself.
“They make me feel disconnected from my community.”
If you missed VTIFF’s Made Here Film Festival in the spring, you can see “favorites” from the featured Vermont and Québec films on October 23 and 25. On October 24 and 26, the first of two programs of international shorts features Aditya Joshi’s “A West Side Story Story,” coproduced by locals Luis and Cemí Guzmán.
Part-time Stowe resident Heidi Levitt directed the partially Vermont-shot documentary Walk With Me (October 18 and 20), a moving portrait of her relationship with her husband, art director Charlie Hess, after his diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. A panel discussion with Levitt and representatives from community support organizations will follow the October 18 screening.
University of Vermont associate professor Angelo Madsen presents his latest documentary, A Body to Live In, with a Q&A on October 19. It profiles performance artist Fakir Musafar (1930-2018), who practiced body modification as a form of liberatory expression.
With Vignettes of Veiled Light (October 26), local filmmakers Alexandra and Myles Jewell give Burlingtonians a chance to revisit the once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse of April 8, 2024. Remember when we all stopped doomscrolling and gazed into the sky as one? Recapture that feeling, if only for an hour.
Vermont International Film Festival, Friday, October 17, to Sunday, October 26, at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington. Individual tickets $6-12; 10-pack $100; festival pass $150. Find full schedule and film descriptions at vtiff.org.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Flick Tips | A quiz to guide you through the weird and wonderful offerings of VTIFF”
This article appears in Oct 15-21 2025.
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