The Oldenburg Movie Competition has lengthy been the place to seek out the unusual, the missed and the unapologetically unconventional in indie cinema. The Hollywood Reporter has picked 5 unmissable options from this yr’s usually eclectic lineup, starting from a Belgian punk-music satire to a Mexican cartel thriller to a horror film instructed solely from the angle of a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever.
Horseshoe
The Irish drama Horseshoe facilities on 4 siblings pressured again to their childhood dwelling after the dying of their father, solely to find his ghost isn’t able to allow them to go. With simply 24 hours to resolve the destiny of the home, outdated resentments bubble up, secrets and techniques are uncovered and shifting alliances take a look at no matter bonds stay. Darkly humorous and deeply melancholic, the movie turns the household property right into a strain cooker of grief, grudges and reluctant affection.
Horseshoe
Jaro-Waldeck
Underneath the Burning Solar
Yun Xie’s Slamdance breakout Underneath the Burning Solar follows Mowanza, a younger girl pregnant after an assault in a rustic the place abortion is forbidden. Armed with little greater than a automotive and a bottle of water, she heads into the desert towards a neighboring state the place the process is authorized. A microbudget gem that channels its feminist outrage right into a harrowing and haunting epic.
Underneath the Burning Solar
Courtesy of the Oldenburg Movie Competition
Summer time Hit Machine
Oldenburg common Jerome Vandewattyne (2023 Audacity Award winner for The Belgian Wave) returns to the competition with one other music satire, impressed by his years behind the scenes filming the Jon Spencer-produced boogie punk band The Experimental Tropic Blues Band. In Summer time Hit Machine, a band is locked in a studio to report a canopy music that their eccentric label boss believes will win him a coveted Summer time Hit Machine Award. However as his grip on actuality begins to fracture, the recording session spirals uncontrolled.
Summer time Hit Machine
Courtesy of the Oldenburg Movie Competition
Good Boy
Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy, which involves Oldenburg from SXSW, is a supernatural horror instructed solely from the angle of Indy, a loyal Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who senses there are forces lurking at the hours of darkness shadows of his proprietor’s dwelling. As darkish forces threaten his grasp, the courageous pup should struggle to guard him. A contemporary, canine perspective on the haunted home trope.
Good Boy
Courtesy of the Oldenburg Movie Competition
Cocodrilos
J. Xavier Velasco’s Cocodrilos, which premiered on the Guadalajara Movie Competition and can have its European premiere in Oldenburg, follows Santiago, a younger photojournalist in Veracruz who desires of exposing injustice. When his mentor is murdered and the investigation is buried, he decides to go public regardless of warnings that doing so might value him his life. Drawing on the true risks confronted by Mexican reporters, the movie builds a tense thriller across the braveness it takes to maintain digging for the reality when silence is the safer selection.
Cocodrilos
J.-Xavier-Velasco
The 2025 Oldenburg Movie Competition runs Sept. 10–14.
