Tribeca Film Festival 2025: The 13 Most Anticipated Film Premieres

Sundance owns Park City in January, Cannes owns the South of France in May, and Tribeca owns New York City in the summer. This year’s installment of the Robert De Niro co-founded film festival begins on June 4 with the premiere of a documentary about another tri-state icon, Billy Joel. The movie kicks off 10 days of programming that includes a surprising number of music-focused films, including ones about Culture Club, Metallica, Depeche Mode, the Counting Crows, Becky G, Billy Idol, and the splashy premiere of Miley Cyrus’s new visual album, Something Beautiful. There are plenty of other documentaries, too, including one examining Barbara Walters’s legacy of provocative journalism, and another in which Mariska Hargitay uncovers the truth about her late mother, Jayne Mansfield. In the narrative feature space, films starring familiar names like Bryan Cranston, Lucy Liu, Kevin Bacon, and Kyra Sedgwick offer something for everyone. Below, the buzziest entries at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival that you won’t want to miss:

Something Beautiful (Miley Cyrus, Jacob Bixenman & Brendan Walter)

The world premiere of Miley Cyrus’s 55-minute visual album, Something Beautiful, is a highlight of this year’s festival. The musical film, described as a “one-of-a-kind pop opera,” features 13 original songs from Cyrus’s upcoming ninth studio album of the same name and was co-directed by Jacob Bixenman, Brendan Walter, and Cyrus herself. In a statement, Cyrus called Something Beautiful her “dream project come true—fashion, film, and original music coexisting in harmony.” To tease Something Beautiful, Cyrus wore three larger-than-life looks from Mugler’s spring 1997 couture collection on her press tour—an enticing promise for what the rest of the visuals have to offer. After the Tribeca premiere, Cyrus will sit down for a moderated Q&A.

Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything (Jackie Jesko)

Last year, Tribeca kicked off with a documentary about the life and career of Diane Von Furstenberg. This year, the festival follows up with another doc about a trailblazing woman breaking the glass ceiling with Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything. Two years after her death, the film examines the legacy of the feather-ruffling broadcast icon, and features both talking head interviews and archival footage from a wide array of her pop culture and political contemporaries—including everyone from Vladimir Putin to Taylor Swift.

Billy Joel: And So It Goes (Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin)

The festival will open with And So It Goes, a documentary tribute to legendary New Yorker Billy Joel, who sadly will no longer be attending the premiere (or performing any more shows for the time being) after getting diagnosed with a serious brain disorder. The film weaves together never-before-seen archival footage of Joel with revealing interviews in which the artist discusses growing up on Long Island to becoming one of the most successful singer-songwriters of his generation.

She Dances (Rick Gomez)

Steve Zahn and his daughter, newcomer Audrey, star in this family drama about a father struggling to reconnect with himself and his family following his divorce and the loss of his son. Band of Brothers actor Rick Gomez makes his directorial debut in this heartfelt feature, whose cast includes Ethan Hawke and Mackenzie Ziegler.

Nobu (Matt Tyrnauer)

Nobu may be best-known as a place to spot celebrities out for date night, but behind the global restaurant empire is one man, Nobu Matsuhisa. His rise to the top of luxury dining began when he was a young man in Japan with humble dreams of becoming a sushi chef. Nobu traces his journey—full of hard work, creativity, and good timing—to becoming one of the most successful chefs in the world. It features an appearance from his founding partner (and co-founder of the festival) Robert De Niro, as well as interviews with Cindy Crawford, Wolfgang Puck, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print (Salima Koroma, Alice Gu, and Cecilia Aldarondo)

After its launch in 1971, Ms. Magazine rode the second wave of feminism, eventually becoming a prominent voice in a sea of male-focused magazines. This documentary catalogues the highs and lows—from iconic cover stories to out-of-step mistakes—that the Gloria Steinem-led staff made along the way. This is an especially timely moment to examine the evolving role and function of journalism.

A Tree Fell in the Woods (Nora Kirkpatrick)

Josh Gad, Alexandra Daddario, Ashley Park, and Daveed Diggs star in A Tree Fell in the Woods, a dramedy about a group of childhood friends whose ill-fated, chaotic New Year’s Eve trip to a cabin in the woods makes them re-evaluate their life decisions and their relationships. It sounds like classic millennial midlife crisis fare (in a good way), and given its director, Nora Kirkpatrick, used to play the accordion for mid-aughts icons Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, it’s bound to be authentic.

My Mom Jayne (Mariska Hargitay)

We may know Mariska Hargitay as Detective Olivia Benson, protector of the innocent in Law & Order’s Special Victims Unit, but in real life, the actress has had a complicated and dramatic backstory of her own. She’s the daughter of 1950s cinema icon and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield, who died in 1967 at just 34 in a car accident. Hargitay and her siblings were in the back seat of that car. In My Mom Jayne, they revisit both that tragic night and the fraught experience of growing up with a young mother whose very public career was largely defined by the male gaze. In the doc, Hargitay also reveals the truth about her biological father, and reckons with her mother’s legacy.

In Cold Light (Maxime Giroux)

Last year, Maika Monroe cemented her scream queen status in the Nicholas Cage movie Longlegs. This year, she’s taking on another gritty film, In Cold Light, which also stars Helen Hunt and Troy Kotsur. Monroe plays Ava, a former drug kingpin who tries to reclaim her throne after being released from prison. When her brother is brutally murdered, she’s forced to flee from his killers. The plot is described as “relentless,” and In Cold Light sounds like exactly the kind of heart-pounding thriller Monroe thrives in.

Everything’s Going to Be Great (Chase Marcus)

Bryan Cranston and Allison Janney star in this dramedy about a family forced to rethink its future when tragedy hits. Cranston and Janney play the parents (who are also regional theater managers) while Scream star Jack Champion and 16-year-old Benjamin Evan Ainsworth play their children. It’ll be nice to see Cranston as a father on the brink of chaos who doesn’t become a drug smuggling super villain.

Rosemead (Eric Lin)

Fresh off her return to horror in Steven Soderbergh’s Presence, Lucy Liu stars in another gripping story about a mother struggling to handle her teenage children. In Rosemead, she plays a terminally ill Chinese immigrant whose son’s disturbing fascination with mass shootings forces her to try and protect him from himself, even as her own health declines.

The Best You Can (Michael J. Weithorn)

For the first time in 20 years (since 2005’s Loverboy), Hollywood golden couple Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick co-star together in a rom-com. There’s plenty of darker material to dig into on this list, but The Best You Can promises to bring back the light comedy that dominated the aughts, featuring two of the most beloved actors of that era.

Yanuni (Richard Ladkani)

The festival closes out with Yanuni, a documentary from producer Leonardo DiCaprio and director Richard Ladkani about Indigenous leader Juma Xipaia, a young woman fighting against corporate environmental destruction in Brazil. Juma has survived no less than six assassination attempts for her fearless dedication to advocating for her community and protecting Indigenous land. The documentary follows her fight, especially as the political climate has become more extreme in Brazil, and the film serves as just one example of similar stories unfolding all over the world.