Here are a few art house films that came out in 2025, some of which are now available to rent and stream.
Cloud original title Kuraudo ▲▲▲ (VOD, Criterion Channel)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s feature feels like two separate movies. The first part is a slowburn drama about a electronic reseller, a man who purchases products on the cheap and unloads them at a profit. He seems to not make much of a living and never cares whether what he sells is authentic, and it frequently isn’t. He’s got a girlfriend who seems to want a future with him, and he has big ambitions. The second half of the picture is a full-on crime thriller, where everyone around our hapless antihero, and many of his customers, is seeking revenge on him for ripping them off. The build-up is a little dry, but the payoff entirely entertaining. An undercurrent of male rage fuelled by the internet feeds this thing, it’s what makes it feel modern, but then the final act shootout is a total throwback to ’70s action cinema. If the motivations of the girlfriend feel a bit opaque, she also provides shades of femme fatale, adding noir genre notes to this unusual melange.
My Fathers’ Daughter original title, Biru Unjárga ▲▲ (not available online)
A coming-of-age comedy set in a Sami village in Northern Norway, where 15-year-old Elvira (Sarah Olaussen Eira) dreams that her father is Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays himself in the film. It turns out her father is actually a Sami guy who suddenly comes back into her life, despite her mother’s insistence that he’s big trouble. It turns out he is. The comedic writing is sharp — especially how it satirizes influencer culture via one of Elvira’s classmates. The drama with Elvira’s father and mother feels a lot more clumsy, and unfortunately it takes over the latter half of the film. While this is not nearly as effective as the only other film I’ve seen from the region, the 2017 drama Sami Blood, it has a charm in the performances and provides a vivid window into the culture.
Magic Farm ▲1/2 (VOD, MUBI)
I haven’t seen Amalia Ulman’s well-reviewed first film, El Planeta, but I really liked the visual storytelling in this picture. Her bonkers choice in lenses, camerawork and editing that keeps this comedy hopping. It’s about a group of New Yorkers working for a Vice-like media company who visit small-town Argentina hoping to get a story about the cult around a pop star, but the producer makes an incredibly stupid mistake so they have to make something up. Interesting that Ulman herself plays the interpreter, a big part of the ensemble. I struggled with the rambling narrative, and the unpleasant and clueless American characters, the humour around them either dryly charming or annoying. The film seeds the subtext of agricultural toxins that the “journalists” simply don’t clue into, but I found my patience tested by obnoxious characters, despite the presence of the always welcome Chloë Sevigny.
Vulcanizadora ▲▲1/2 (VOD, Prime)
It’s rare that I’ve felt such a shift between the first half of a film and the second — though there’s an example up above in Cloud. This film’s two main characters go wandering through the woods with no obvious intent, it tests the patience over 40 or so minutes. Both the Waiting For Godot and Beavis and Butthead comparisons are real. Then, in a powerful and tragic mid-movie scene we finally understand what’s at stake here, and the picture gets unexpectedly poignant and emotional over the second half. Vulcanizadora mines a depth that truly surprises, with full marks to writer-director-actor Joel Potrykus and actor Joshua Burge.
