Lucrecia Martel’s award-winning documentary Our Land, American Agitators and the remastered rerelease of Barbara Kopple’s American Dream bow in limited release starting May 1, celebrated as Labor Day in much of the world. They’re flanked by a mix of wider indies from Damian McCarthy’s Hokum to Andy Serkis’ animated Animal Farm, Renny Harlin’s Deep Water and RZA’s One Spoon Of Chocolate.
Neon’s newest high-end scarefest Hokum launches on 1,850 screens. Adam Scott stars as a horror writer who visits an Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, unaware the property is said to be haunted by a witch. Premiered at SXSW earlier this year to excellent critical response. McCarthy’s Oddity launched at SXSW 2024 and won the Audience Award in the Midnighter Section, going on to gross $1.2 million domestic for IFC Films.
Hokum is Neon’s first release under a partnership with Spooky Pictures, which has a co-production partnership with global studio Image Nation. Additional titles under the deal include Alex Ullom’s 4×4: The Event and Mora, the feature adaptation of Sam Evenson’s viral short film the Neon is developing. The Irish folk tale also marks the latest release under Neon’s ongoing partnership slate with Waypoint’s Cweature Features after Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks and Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs (the highest grossing indie of 2024 with $75 million domestically) and Keeper. Cweature Features is also attached to Mora.
Scott was at Neon’s CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas in April talking up the film.
Animal Farm from Angel Studios, Andy Serkis’ animated adaptation of the iconic George Orwell novel, opens wide on 2,600 screens. The starry voice cast includes Seth Rogen, Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin and Woody Harrelson. Screenplay by Nicholas Stoller. A political allegory of farm animals led by Napoleon the pig overthrowing their human overlord to create a society of equality that is ultimately corrupted as the pigs become as tyrannical as the humans they replaced.
Deep Water, Renny Harlin’s shark thriller from Bob Yari’s Magenta Light Studios, debuts on 1,675 screens. Starring Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley and written by Pete Bridges and John Kim, it follows an eclectic group of international passengers whose plane is forced to make an emergency landing in shark-infested waters en route from LA to Shanghai.
Revenge thriller One Spoon Of Chocolate debuts as the first film under RZA’s 36 Cinema Distribution label, powered by Variance Films on 636 screens with a full theatrical window. The Wu-Tang Clan founder’s Kill Bill collaborator and mentor Quentin Tarantino is aboard to present the film, which follows an ex-military convict seeking redemption in a small town. RZA directed, wrote and produced. It will be presented in 35mm for select engagements, including a two-week run at LA’s Vista Theatre. Stars Shameik Moore, Blair Underwood, RJ Cyler, Paris Jackson, Emyri Crutchfield, Michael Harney and Harry Goodwins. Premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival.
Casa Grande from Seismic Releasing, ESX Entertainment’s feature version of its Freevee series, opens on 225 screens. Directed by Juan Pablo Arias Munoz, a prodigal daughter rejoins her family at their farm during a difficult time, as her ailing father faces both a terminal diagnosis and mounting pressure from rivals. Stars Lou Diamond Phillips, John Pyper-Ferguson, Madison Lawlor, Christina Moore, Javier Bolaños, Kate Mansi, Daniel Edward Mora, Loren Escandon, Bruce Davison, Shalim Ortiz and Charley Debenedetti. Amazon Freevee’s bilingual series followed the intertwining lives of various families in the farmlands of Northern California.
Lucrecia Martel’s documentary Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) from Strand Releasing launches at the Film Forum in NYC. Premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, going on to win the top award at the BFI London Film Festival, an award in international competition at Locarno, and a special award from the National Society of Film Critics. The story of Javier Chocobar, a member of the indigenous Chuchagasta community in northwest Argentina’s Tucumán Province, who in 2009 tried to defend himself and his people from being forcibly evicted from their land by a local landowner and two former police officers. The 68-year-old Chocobar was shot and killed. After years of protests, a court case opened in 2018. Features community voices and trial footage. Produced by Rei Pictures, Louverture Films and Piano, in co-production with Pio & Co., Lemming Film, and Snowglobe.
American Agitators, directed and produced by Raymond Telles (The Fight in the Fields) with executive producers John Heffernan and Margo Feinberg, opens at NYC’s Quad Cinema. The Abramorama documentary highlights historic movements led or inspired by labor organizer Fred Ross Sr., exploring how collective action can combat racism, bigotry and injustice. Narrated by playwright and filmmaker Luis Valdez (La Bamba), it features Fred Ross Jr., who carried on his father’s legacy of grassroots activism, civil rights leaders, organizers and advocates.
Janus Films is releasing a new 4K restoration of Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning documentary American Dream, timed to May Day and the film’s 35th anniversary, at New York’s IFC Center and another dozen screens nationwide. The 1990 doc follows the explosive 1985–86 labor strike against Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota. Fed up with dangerous plant conditions and drastic wage cuts, Austin’s Local P-9 went against the advice of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and, with the help of labor activist Ray Rogers, held a nearly yearlong walkout. But as the strike dragged on some workers were desperate to make ends meet and ready to cross the picket line, dividing a community already betrayed by a once progressive company and roiled by blockades, riots, and the intervention of the National Guard.
Janus is also out with 50th anniversary screenings of Kopple’s Harlan County, USA at many of the same venues, also in a new 4K restoration. Both films won Kopple the Best Documentary Feature Oscar and she will be in-person at IFC Center Friday and Saturday presenting both films.
Francesco Sossai’s The Last One For The Road from Music Box Films debuts at Film At Lincoln Center in New York, adding the Laemmle Roya in LA next week. Two middle-aged friends and small time crooks (Sergio Romano and Pierpaolo Capovilla), who swear each drink is their last, cross paths with a shy architecture student (Filippo Scotti) and take him under their wing on a free-flowing bender through the Venetian countryside in a scruffy intergenerational odyssey. Premiered at Cannes.
Kino Lorber opens drama Two Pianos by Arnaud Desplechin at the Angelika in NYC and the Laemmle Royal in LA. After years of self-imposed exile, pianist Mathias (François Civil) returns to France, where his former mentor, Eléna (Charlotte Rampling), has invited him to perform a series of concerts with her in his hometown of Lyon. Once a rising star of the French musical scene and Eléna’s prized pupil. A chance encounter throws Mathias into turmoil and leads him back to his first love, Claude (Nadia Tereszkiewicz). Screened in March at Film At Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.
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