Sundance 2025: 11 New Films with the Best Shot at an Oscar Run

11. “Twinless”

The Audience Award winner of the U.S. Dramatic competition lineup caused such a stir online that it had to be taken off the Sundance platform due to piracy concerns. While a viral performance does not always ping on Oscar voters’ radars, Dylan O’Brien’s turn as twin brothers (one deceased, the other grieving him throughout the majority of the film) did earn the former “Teen Wolf” star a U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting, proving he has the chops.

In a different year, the twisted, youthful dramedy from filmmaker/star James Sweeney would not be on this list given the Academy’s vestigial staidness, but seeing how much online enthusiasm played a role in helping actors like Sebastian Stan and Demi Moore secure nominations for unconventional Oscar fare means O’Brien will at least be someone to consider while discussing general awards prospects. —MJ

Possible Nominations:
Best Actor for Dylan O’Brien

10. “Folktales”

With “Folktales,” established documentarians Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (“Jesus Camp”) focus on three teenagers who embark on a year away from the comforts of home at a venerable school in Norway that puts them through the rigors of the Arctic wilderness. There they learn how to nurture dogs and wield dogsleds and camp in the snow alone. This movie makes you smile, as these modern kids escape from their lonely phones and instead commune with dogs and each other. —AT

Possible Nominations: Best Documentary Feature

9. “The Things You Kill”

Something often lost in the discussion around Sundance films making it into the awards conversation is how features in the festival’s World competition sections often get chosen as a country’s Oscar submission (“Flee” serves as a recent example). This Turkish thriller, directed by American-Iranian filmmaker Alireza Khatami, has shades of current Oscar nominee “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in how it tackles issues of patriarchal trauma and toxic masculinity.

Good word of mouth, a Directing Award from the World Cinema Dramatic competition jury, and Turkey, France, Poland, and Canada all being involved in its production, give the film several avenues toward making it into the Oscar race. —MJ

Possible Nominations: Best International Feature

8. “Seeds”

Director Brittany Shyne’s feature debut, which won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, is a captivating look at the struggles Black American farmers are currently going through to maintain their land and legacy. Its cinéma vérité approach has the effect of inviting the audience into the families it follows, making the stakes of the farmer’s efforts to overcome discrimination all the more personal. Though it is quieter and a tad longer than the average Sundance film, the black-and-white picture has style, and a message that one could see the Documentary branch responding to. —MJ

Possible Nominations: Best Documentary Feature

7. “Sorry, Baby”

Eva Victor went from being one of the pioneers of front-facing comedy videos to writing, directing, and starring in the most talked-about debut at Sundance 2025. Though the film treads painfully familiar territory in its depiction of the aftermath of the “bad thing” that happens to grad student Agnes, it does so in such a unique, assured way that will linger in the minds of viewers. Though the film is not of the same scale as the average Oscar contender, its producers, Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski of Pastel, have made Oscar magic happen before with A24, which just acquired the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award winner (an honor that was given to current Academy Award nominee “A Real Pain” last year). —MJ

Possible Nominations: Best Original Screenplay for Eva Victor

6. “Cutting Through Rocks”

One element that often makes for a great documentary is a compelling figure at the center of the frame. It’s hard not to be hooked into watching whatever trailblazing Iranian councilwoman Sara Shahverdi, the subject of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize Documentary winner, is doing when one of the first things she does in the film is go straight over to her brother’s house to rip up a contract he had coerced their sisters into signing that would’ve given him and their brothers control over their family inheritance. Whether it is global politics, or stories of women fighting for their rights, the documentary, directed by Mohammad Reza Eyni and Sara Khaki, ticks many boxes for what the Documentary branch of the Academy seems to be looking for in an Oscar contender. —MJ

Possible Nominations: 
Best Documentary Feature

5. “Kiss of the Spider Woman”

Bill Condon’s adaptation of Manuel Puig’s classic about the growing rapport between straight Marxist activist Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna) and his gay window-dresser cellmate Luis Molina’ (Tonatiuh) in 1980s Argentina was one of Sundance’s highest-profile sales titles. Condon knows musicals: he wrote the Oscar winners “Chicago” and “Dreamgirls.”

In “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” the musical fantasy inside the hard-hitting prison drama stars the glamorous Jennifer Lopez, who couldn’t have been better cast to deliver the demanding Kander & Ebb song-and-dance numbers as movie star Ingrid Luna and her magazine editor character Aurora, as well as the terrifying Spider Woman. A legacy Oscar nomination could finally come her way. At festival’s end, distributors were still vying for a deal. —AT

Possible Nominations:
Best Actor for Tonatiuh
Best Supporting Actress for Jennifer Lopez
Best Costume Design for Colleen Atwood and Christine Cantella

4. “The Alabama Solution”

Andrew Jarecki has debuted four projects at Sundance: Oscar-nominated “Capturing the Friedmans” (2003), “Just a Clown” (2004), “Catfish” (2010), and Emmy-winning series “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” (2015). No stranger to controversy, this time Jarecki delivers a harsh exposé of the brutal Alabama state prison system, a six-year investigative documentary made with long-time producer-turned-co-director Charlotte Kaufman. The filmmakers leaned on prisoners throughout Alabama prisons to send them video footage taken on their contraband phones, as well as interviews with the inmates. —AT

Possible Nominations:
Best Documentary Feature

3. “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”

Critics raved about Rose Byrne’s performance as a beleaguered mom having the worst week of her life with an absent husband, afflicted child, and hostile therapist. This follow-up to writer/director Mary Bronstein’s “Yeast” (produced by her husband Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie) is “a horror movie about motherhood,” said IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio, that boasts a strong supporting cast including Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, and A$AP Rocky. —AT

Possible Nominations:
Best Actress for Rose Byrne
Best Original Screenplay for Mary Bronstein

2. “The Perfect Neighbor”

Emmy-winning non-fiction filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir, who started out as an editor, figured out that she could use footage from police cameras to tell the story of how one Florida neighbor shot another through her front door and killed her. Painstakingly, we watch the tension build as police are called in over and over by the single older white woman with a “No Trespassing” sign in her yard who cannot abide the noise made by the neighborhood kids playing. Gandghir and her gifted editor Viridiana Lieberman create a riveting narrative featuring surprisingly sympathetic law enforcement officers. —AT

Possible Nominations:
Best Documentary Feature

1. “Train Dreams”

One major Sundance buy was Clint Bentley’s sophomore magic-hour period drama “Train Dreams,” which went to Netflix. Oscar-nominated Bentley and his “Sing Sing” and “Jockey” co-writer Greg Kwedar adapted the tragic story of one man’s life from Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella. (The narration, by Will Patton, is hugely effective.) The movie stars an Oscar-worthy Joel Edgerton as a Northwestern logger forced to spend months away from his beloved wife, Felicity Jones. He says little but when he finally expresses himself, it’s heartbreaking. Think “Days of Heaven” meets “Sometimes a Great Notion.” —AT

Possible Nominations:
Best Picture
Best Director for Clint Bentley
Best Actor for Joel Edgerton
Best Adapted Screenplay for Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar
Best Cinematography for Adolpho Veloso