For the first screening of 2025, The Future of Film is Female presents an essential documentary about motherhood, witches, and mental health by Elizabeth Sankey. To make a $10 donation to Baby2Baby, supporting children and families affected by the LA fires, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.

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Witches are figures of solace in this intimate documentary, which unravels the social stigmas that women have endured across centuries. Between affecting interviews and vividly illustrative film clips, Elizabeth Sankey concocts a potion that brims with courage, compassion, and healing insight.

“Ushering her own long-standing obsession with movies to the fore, Sankey draws on a wealth of footage spanning the entirety of film history- with clips as far ranging as THE WIZARD OF OZ , GIRL, INTERRUPTED, and ROSEMARY’S BABY – to make that point that our shared cultural representation of witches says a lot more about how we view women, motherhood, and mental health. Sankey places her own personal experiences alongside interviews with academics and other women with shared experiences within a larger historical context that relates back to the witch hunts of past centuries and up to the way contemporary cultural norms continue to fail women. Witches functions simultaneously as stirring personal testimony, critical ode to cinephilia, and a vital feminist history lesson” .––Cara Cusumano, Tribeca Festival

Before Witches, we’ll screen a short written and directed by FOFIF filmmaker Richa Rudola:
COW HEAVY AND FLORAL (2024)
A postpartum writer struggles to make a deadline as she experiences an identity crisis between her various personas. (15 min)

We’re calling on a pair of franchise players to lead Anime After Dark into 2025 with a secret double feature of small screen icons making a splashy leap to the big screen. We can’t tell you the titles we’re playing, but you know the names of these two after-school superheroes – beyond the hundreds of episodes of television and thousands of comic book pages, they’ve starred in a total of 18 feature films.

Franchise anime films are a mixed bag at best – especially ones from this era (we’re in the 90s this month), but these two outings represent the form at its best: punchy standalones with blockbuster spectacle, dazzling animation and loads of non-canonical whozwhatery.

Clues
❓Feature One is Movie 1.
❓Feature Two is Movie 12.
❓This is the second Anime After Dark feature for the director of Feature One, who went on from this project to create a magical girl franchise of his own.
❓Feature Two comes from a journeyman who first brought Saint Seiya to film and later Street Fighter Alpha and Digimon. He directed 93 episodes of this franchise’s TV series (bulk of the series, dude).
❓Keywords: Flowers, bubbles, magic, muscles, fusion, lost loves, Hitler

Starring: Kyle Gallner, Emily Skeggs, Pat Healy, Griffin Gluck, Mary Lynn Rajskub

An on-the-lam punk rocker and a young woman obsessed with his band embark on a series of misadventures through the decaying suburbs of the American Midwest.

Starring: Angela Featherstone, Daniel Markel, Cristina Stoica, Charlotte Stewart

Ridiculous <> Sublime sets 2025 on fire right out of the gate with this fantastical depiction of hell and the demented world above it.

Veronica, a demoness in a surprisingly pious hell, is constantly at odds with those around her because of her rebellious spirit. Yearning to explore the world above, she challenges her elders who are all just trying to go about their duty of torturing landlords and bankers. When she does find her way to the surface, she is appalled to find it brimming with injustice, save for the handsome and kind-hearted doctor who takes her in. With the aid of her dog Hellraiser, she targets the evildoers, setting her sights ultimately on the mayor.

A Full Moon Entertainment production directed by a woman (Linda Hassani) and filmed in Romania, Dark Angel: The Ascent is better than it has any right to be, helped by an outrageous script by Matthew Bright (Forbidden Zone, Freeway) and (we kid you not) stunning cinematography.

Starring: Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista, Billie Lourd, Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song

A seasoned showgirl must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run.

Starring: Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot, Patrick Page, Andrew Burnap, Ansu Kabia, Colin Michael Carmichael

A live-action musical reimagining of the classic 1937 film. The magical music adventure journeys back to the timeless story with beloved characters Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy.

Starring: Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson, Willem Dafoe

A young girl learns to never go outside after dark because of reclusive forest creatures known as the ochi. However, when a baby ochi is left behind by its pack, she embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to reunite it with its family.

Starring: Theo James, Elijah Wood, Osgood Perkins, Tatiana Maslany

When twin brothers Hal and Bill discover their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths start occurring all around them.

Starring: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, John Morris

Woody (Tom Hanks), a good-hearted cowboy doll who belongs to a young boy named Andy (John Morris), sees his position as Andy’s favorite toy jeopardized when his parents buy him a Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) action figure. Even worse, the arrogant Buzz thinks he’s a real spaceman on a mission to return to his home planet. When Andy’s family moves to a new house, Woody and Buzz must escape the clutches of maladjusted neighbor Sid Phillips (Erik von Detten) and reunite with their boy.

Starring: Pia Zadora, Craig Sheffer, Tom Nolan, Ruth Gordon, Michael Berryman

Alien ABCD (Tom Nolan) and his band land in a guitar-shaped spaceship and give a beach girl (Pia Zadora) a chance to sing.