Five Films to See at Tribeca 2025
Written by: Christopher Llewellyn Reed | June 4th, 2025
This year, as always at the Tribeca Festival (formerly the “Tribeca Film Festival”), I will have feet on site and coverage to follow. The 2025 event is the 24th iteration, so far, and starts today, June 4, and runs through June 15. 188 feature films from all over the world will be screened, and there are additional special events and many shorts, as well. Below, I offer my usual recommendations of five films to see (two of which I have already seen via advance screener). All titles are hyperlinked to the movie’s page on the Tribeca website.
Boy George & Culture Club (Alison Ellwood, 2025)
Though it never really probes much beyond a surface-level examination of its protagonists, the documentary Boy George & Culture Club offers a wealth of entertaining information and archival clips all the same. George O’Dowd (aka, “Boy George”) and his Culture Club bandmates Mikey Craig (bass), Roy Hay (guitar and keyboards), and Jon Moss (drums and percussion), are all present on screen to discuss the highs and lows of their hits and misses. They prove thoughtful, and are more than willing to analyze their own flaws, yet director Ellwood (The Go-Go’s) nevertheless leaves us wanting deeper insights and introspection. It is still a rousing good time, however.
Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print (Cecilia Aldarondo/Alice Gu/Salima Koroma, 2025)
Irene Lusztig’s fascinating 2018 documentary Yours in Sisterhood presented never-published letters to the editor of the seminal feminist magazine, Ms.—founded in 1971—providing a moving portrait of the women’s movement during the early days of its second wave. Now comes Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print, which promises to tell the complete tale of the publication’s history and legacy. Directors Cecilia Aldarondo (Landfall), Alice Gu (The Donut King), and Salima Koroma (Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street) enter the narrative by focusing initially on three noted issues and then expanding from there. I can’t wait to see the result.
The End of Quiet (Kasper Bisgaard/Mikael Lypinski, 2025)
The Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia is home to the world’s biggest totally steerable radio telescope. It is also surrounded by a “quiet zone” to help the astronomers receive signals from beyond Earth’s atmosphere without interference from nearby noises. The area around the observatory is therefore devoid of Wi-Fi or cell-phone signals; in theory, anyway. Unfortunately, the attempt to reduce the static faces increasing obstacles every year. In The End of Quiet, documentarians Kasper Bisgaard and Mikael Lypinski (Unpaved) deliver a meditative study on the challenges of everyday living, especially when one takes our ubiquitous smart devices away (again, in theory). They also mix in thoughts on our place in the universe and what we lose when we blot out more and more incoming frequencies. If the sum total doesn’t quite all hang together, the result remains fascinating (and often quite visually arresting) to behold.
The Last Dive (Cody Sheehy, 2025)
Well-photographed nature documentaries are a wonder (and the ongoing popularity of my interview with Billy & Molly filmmakers Charlie Hamilton James and Jeff Wilson shows I am not the only one who feels this way). In The Last Dive, documentary director Cody Sheehy (Make People Better) profiles former Hell’s Angel Terry Kennedy, whose enduring friendship with a manta ray—whom he named Willy Wow—in Baja California’s Sea of Cortez is the stuff of legend. Now an octogenarian, Kennedy returns to his old haunts to see if he can find his erstwhile swimming buddy for one final reunion. I expect nothing short of stunning images and profound emotions.
Re-Creation (David Merriman/Jim Sheridan, 2025)
French filmmaker Sophie Toscan Du Plantier was murdered in 1996 in West Cork, Ireland, outside a vacation home she had purchased a few years prior. The case remains unsolved, though there was a primary suspect (who died in 2024, twice arrested, with the charges dismissed each time). In Re-Creation, directors David Merriman (Rock Against Homelessness) and Jim Sheridan (Peter O’Toole: Along the Sky Road to Aqaba) imagine what might have happened if that suspect—journalist Ian Bailey—had faced trial in Ireland (he was tried and convicted in absentia in France). Starring Vicky Krieps (The Dead Don’t Hurt) and Colm Meaney (Unwelcome), among others, this lone fictional treatment among my five choices sends shivers down my spine via its description alone.
Christopher Llewellyn Reed
Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.