Familiar Touch, Friedland’s debut, which won three top prizes in the 2024 Venice Film Festival Orizzonti Competition and showcases an astonishing performance by Kathleen Chalfant.

Russell’s feature debut Lurker, is a tense thriller about the darker side of pop-star worship.

Films in the ND/NF program probe a diverse array of themes, including community and co-existence, family histories, the lives of artists, global political issues, and the complexities of youth and coming of age. A number of works experiment with hybrid forms, blurring the lines between fiction and documentary. The lineup features works by emerging filmmakers from 22 countries with award winners from festivals including Cannes, Venice, Locarno, CPH:DOX, Sundance, Rotterdam and Berlin.​​

Highlights include reflections on family and family histories in Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s Listen to the Voices; Tato Kotetishvili’s Holy Electricity; Courtney Stephens’s Invention; and Drowning Dry by Laurynas Bareiša, all Locarno Film Festival prize recipients.

Political realities are observed through the lens of history and present-day events in Lorena Alvarado’s Lost Chapters; Igor Bezinović’s Fiume o morte! (winner of the top prize at Rotterdam); Bálint Szimler’s Lesson Learned; and Kateryna Gornostai’s documentary about life during wartime in Ukraine, Timestamp (Eurimages New Lab Outreach Award at CPH:DOX).

Constance Tsang’s Blue Sun Palace (French Touch Prize at Cannes Critics’ Week), features the celebrated actor, director and screenwriter Lee Kang-sheng. Suhel Banerjee’s CycleMahesh is an experimentation on the fiction/nonfiction hybrid form.

The lineup “inevitably reflects the uncertainties and tragedies of our global situation in 2025, yet it also evinces the sheer resilience of cinema and the continued emergence of important new talents working within it,” said Dan Sullivan, 2025 ND/NF co-chair and FLC programmer.

La Frances Hui, co-chair and curator at MoMA’s film department said, “Cinema dazzles in the hands of this remarkable class of new directors, who bring astonishing creativity to exploring and interpreting the vast spectrum of human experience. Their films abound with surprising, magical touches, weaving stories of love, family, and anguish, while also delving into themes of identity, history, and conflict. These filmmakers reaffirm the boundless potential of the moving image to regenerate, create meaning, and expand our horizons.”

New Directors/New Films has highlighted new and emerging filmmakers at over 54 festivals since it launched in 1974. Directors showcased in past festivals include Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kelly Reichardt, Pedro Almodóvar, Souleymane Cissé, Jia Zhangke, Spike Lee, Lynne Ramsay, Michael Haneke, Wong Kar-wai, Agnieszka Holland, Denis Villeneuve and Luca Guadagnino.

The fest is organized by La Frances Hui, Dan Sullivan (co-chair, Film at Lincoln Center), Sophie Cavoulacos (MoMA), Rajendra Roy (MoMA), Francisco Valente (MoMA), Madeline Whittle (Film at Lincoln Center), Tyler Wilson (Film at Lincoln Center) and Katie Zwick (Film at Lincoln Center).

Tickets will go on sale to the general public March 13.

The complete 2025 New Directors/New Films lineup:

Features

The Assistant dir. Wilhelm Sasnal, Anka Sasnal
Blue Sun Palace dir. Constance Tsang
Cactus Pears dir. Rohan Parashuram Kanawade
CycleMahesh dir. Suhel Banerjee
Drowning Dry dir. Laurynas Bareiša
Familiar Touch dir. Sarah Friedland
Fiume o morte! dir. Igor Bezinović
Grand Me dir. Atiye Zare Arandi
The Height of the Coconut Trees dir. Du Jie
Holy Electricity dir. Tato Kotetishvili
Invention dir. Courtney Stephens
Kyuka Before Summer’s End dir. Kostis Charamountanis
Lesson Learned dir. Bálint Szimler
Listen to the Voices dir. Maxime Jean-Baptiste
Lost Chapters dir. Lorena Alvarado
Lurker dir. Alex Russell
Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) dir. Joel Alfonso Vargas
No Sleep Till dir. Alexandra Simpson
Sad Jokes dir. Fabian Stumm
Stranger dir. Zhengfan Yang
Two Times João Liberada dir. Paula Marques
The Village Next to Paradise dir. Mo Harawe
The Virgin of the Quarry Lake dir. Laura Casabé

Shorts Program I
Landscapes of Longing dir. Alisha Tejpal, Mireya Martinez, Anoushka Mirchandani
You Can’t See It From Here dir. Enrique Pedráza-Botero

Shorts Program II
Life Story dir. Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
Crushed dir. Camille Vigny
Maidenhair dir. Julia Sipowicz
In Retrospect, dir. Daniel Asadi Faezi, Mila Zhlutenko
The Inhabitants dir. Maureen Fazendeiro
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World dir. Kevin Walker, Irene Zahariadis
What We Ask of a Statue Is That It Doesn’t Move dir. Daphné Hérétakis