Welcome to the new era of the Traverse City Film Festival, founded and curated by Oscar-winner Michael Moore. 52 great movies in 52 weeks! A year-round festival of powerful, subversive, indie masterpieces made with the belief that cinema can save the world — and that one great movie can change your life.
TCFF 2025
FALL SCHEDULE
All films show at 1pm & 7pm unless otherwise noted
FILM GUIDE
OPENING NIGHT FILM!
OCT 7
1pm, 7pm
ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU
For our Opening Film, we are proud to present the gorgeous & devastating intergenerational Palestinian drama, ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU. Written and directed by Cherien Dabis, who also stars, ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and is Jordan’s submission for the 2026 Oscars. The film examines how a 1980 crime against one Palestinian young man protesting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank forces his family to relive the horrific ethnic cleansing they experienced in the 1948 Nakba. Through the lens of his mother’s grief, we are transported through time to the source of the family’s – and Palestine’s – trauma, but also to the everyday innocence and lush orchards in the great “before.” Yet hate and violence do not get the last word, and the film’s emotional gut-punch will leave you changed – and inspired to interrogate your own idea of what it means to leave a legacy. TCFF Founder & President Michael Moore says, “ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU may just be the best film I’ve seen so far this year. It’s that powerful. And everyone who sees this movie will feel the better for it.”
Director: Cherien Dabis
Starring: Cherien Dabis, Saleh Bakri, Mohammad Bakri
Drama
Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jordan, Germany, Cyprus, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia
2h 25m
OCT 14
1pm, 7pm
THE MARCHING BAND
It’s easy to see why this winning French dramedy from France became a box office hit when it debuted last year. Possibly one of the sweetest true “bro”-mances you will ever see, THE MARCHING BAND introduces us to two biological brothers who meet as adults, decades after they were placed for adoption without knowing the other existed. The reason they’re finally meeting? The older brother is in need of a bone marrow donor, and the family he thought was blood related isn’t. With the help of modern-day genealogy, he’s soon face-to-face with his little brother – and genetic match – in the small working class town where he lives. The brothers are worlds apart – the older is a famous Parisian orchestral conductor; the younger works in a local factory and moonlights in a marching band. The allure of instant brotherhood seems to melt away class strictures, yet when the question of who needs whom is reversed – as the factory shuts down & the marching band flounders – the brothers’ newfound kinship is tested. THE MARCHING BAND is a cinematic cri de coeur to all our long-lost or disappearing brothers. A wonderful, heartfelt film.
Director: Emmanuel Courcol
Comedy, Drama
France
1h 43m
OCT 21
1pm, 7pm
NIGHT CALL
What happens when a locksmith opens the wrong door? This French-Belgian noir thriller seeks to find out – as it introduces you to Mady, a young Black college student in Brussels who moonlights as a locksmith during a summer gripped by protests against police brutality. He’s working from his van one night when he decides to help a young white woman who claims her cash is locked inside her apartment; however, the real tenant – a neo-Nazi – emerges thinking he’s being robbed. What happens next drags Mady into a criminal underbelly of Belgian gangsters who force Mady to look within himself to discover a Marvel-level flair for keeping trouble he didn’t ask for at bay – the whole time dodging police he can’t trust. NIGHT CALL is a thrilling, breathless journey through the grittier side of a European tourist’s post card.
Director: Michiel Blanchart
Action, Thriller
Belgium, France
1h 37m
OCT 28
1pm, 7pm
FREAKY TALES
FREAKY TALES is a wildly fun period anthology thriller and a neon-sign love letter to 1980s Oakland, CA (with a wink to grindhouse). Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (the team behind HALF NELSON) & starring Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn (HBO’s The Outsider), Jay Ellis (TOP GUN: MAVERICK) – with a Tom Hanks cameo! – FREAKY TALES threads together four interconnected stories – all based on real-life Bay Area events, but reimagined with a fantastical twist. It’s a rollicking, kaleidoscopic ride that pivots from stylized, pulpy vignettes about punk rockers then hip-hop artists then neo-Nazis and NBA players. Whether it’s a send-up of the entire exploitation genre or another addition to it, everyone involved in FREAKY TALES is clearly having a lot of fun. And the bad guys get what’s coming for them! Or, as the New York Times put it in their review, “Misogyny and racism get their butts spanked.”
Directors: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck
Starring: Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Jay Ellis
Action, Comedy, Drama
USA, Canada
1h 47m
NOV 4
1pm, 7pm
LEAVE ONE DAY
LEAVE ONE DAY is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food: it’s a romantic comedy that makes no apologies for also being a musical – and it’s easy to see why it was selected as the Opening Film for this year’s Cannes Festival Festival (the first time a female-directed debut opened the festival!). LEAVE ONE DAY stars French pop star Juliette Amanet as Cecilé, a rising culinary star and reality TV alum who returns to her rural hometown to help care for her father after another heart attack. While bumming around her old high school haunts – and stopping to break into song – Cecilé finds herself falling for an old crush, and must decide what to do about it (as well as what to cook & sing to match that feeling). LEAVE ONE DAY is a wonderfully revelrous film about how to make sense of the “undigested” past – and the joy of embracing what sweetness is still available if we dare to accept it.
Director: Amélie Bonnin
Drama, Musical, Comedy
France
1h 38m
NOV 11
1pm, 7pm
IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT
We are thrilled to present this year’s Palme d’Or winner from acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi, a brilliant filmmaker who continues to live & make movies in Iran despite being banned from doing so. IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT is a powerhouse political thriller and revenge fantasy that’s also, as RogerEbert.com says, “actually surprisingly funny.” Set in contemporary Tehran, the film’s protagonist is an ex-political prisoner who kidnaps a man he suspects is his former prison interrogator – but to be sure, he sets out to confirm the man’s identity through friends and fellow ex-prisoners who have all processed their trauma uniquely. The film is inspired by Panahi’s own imprisonment and psychological torture at the hands of one particularly haunting interrogator, and the result is a nuanced character study that isn’t just a revenge fantasy but an indictment of the injustices that lead us to imagine these retributions in the first place.
Director: Jafar Panahi
Drama, Action, Thriller
Iran, France, Luxembourg
1h 45m
NOV 18
I, DANIEL BLAKE @ 1pm & 7pm
This Palme d’Or-winning British drama from legendary British director Ken Loach (THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY) was the Opening Film of TCFF ‘17. I, DANIEL BLAKE is a luminous feature film about the impact one individual can have in an indifferent world. Self-reliant Daniel Blake, a 59-year-old carpenter in England, suddenly finds himself in need of government assistance after suffering a job-ending heart attack; however, he quickly discovers the dehumanizing welfare system is set up to deter people from receiving aid, rather than to help them. With the assistance of a single mother he meets during his ordeal, Daniel attempts to fight the bureaucratic forces stifling his dignity. Brimming with deep humanity, warmth & compassion — along with sadness & fury — I, DANIEL BLAKE is a triumphant social drama, and one of the very best films we’ve had the honor of presenting over the past two decades of TCFF.
Director: Ken Loach
Drama
UK, France, Belgium
1h 40m
KENNY @ 4pm
A comedic treat from TCFF ‘08 that won The Bamboozler Award for Funniest Fiction Feature, KENNY is a hilarious mockumentary framed as a character study about – ready for it? – a port-a-potty deliveryman named Kenny. The film starts with a tour of Kenny’s professional life, where he works for Splashdown, a company that supplies portable toilets to major events in Melbourne. Clever toilet humor aside (and there’s quite a bit to wade through), Jacobson shows Kenny to be a decent chap as we follow his troubled relationship with his disapproving father (who calls him “a glorified turd burglar”) and his charming courting of an airline stewardess on the way to the port-a-john convention in Nashville. A huge success in its native Australia and one of the funniest films we’ve had the pleasure of screening at TCFF, KENNY is an endearing, upbeat portrait of a truly uncommon common man.
Director: Clayton Jacobson
Comedy
Australia
1h 39m
NOV 25
1pm, 7pm
THE GLASSWORKER
THE GLASSWORKER is the first hand-drawn animated feature film from Pakistan, and was the country’s 2025 Oscar entry. Set in an unspecified but fantastical land inspired by colonial-era Karachi, THE GLASSWORKER centers the plight of pacifist father-son glassworkers as they struggle to remain morally & commercially divorced from the encroaching war. When the father finally allows his son to attend the local school, the son falls in love – with a colonel’s daughter; the families are mutually appalled by the courtship, and then war arrives at their doorsteps, interrupting everyone’s fates. With its Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli-inspired aesthetic and anti-war message, THE GLASSWORKER is a gorgeous escape and moving meditation on the depths – and demands – of love and why it’s always an act of resistance against war.
Director: Usman Riaz
Animation, Drama
Pakistan, USA
1h 38m
DEC 2
1pm, 7pm
REBEL WITH A CLAUSE
Do you need to vent? About gerunds, perhaps? Or participles? About the nagging fear that your participle might actually be a gerund? Or – could it also be a clause!? REBEL WITH A CLAUSE is a hilarious, didactic and wholly entertaining journey through America with bestselling author and grammar guru Ellen Jovin. Filmed by her husband, Brandt Johnson, Ms. Jovin traverses the country one grammar pop-up table at a time, patiently engaging with America’s most burning grammatical situations. The cinematic result is part vox pop, part grammatical aside – and all courageous embrace of how what & how we say what we say creates the world in which we live (or can we end with a preposition?!).
Bonus: the filmmakers – and The Grammar Table – will be in Traverse City for the screening & Q&A! Please bring your most vexing grammatical question. Diagramming sentences encouraged; oxford commas optional. “Non-mandatory grammar quizzes” will be provided!
Director: Brandt Johnson
Starring: Ellen Jovin, Brandt Johnson
Documentary
USA
1h 26m
DEC 9
1pm, 7pm
SOULEYMANE’S STORY
After watching this movie, you’ll never order Door Dash the same. This captivating French drama is about an asylum seeker from Guinea – Souleymane (the excellent first-time actor Abou Sangaré) – who’s busy dodging the workaday perils as a food delivery cyclist as he preps for his make-or-break interview to secure legal residency in France. Sangaré, who plays Soulemayne, is a real-life asylum seeker who won Best Performance in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard category, in which director Boris Lojkine also won Best Director. SOULEYMANE’S STORY is a stunning, edge-of-your-seat film about which the New York Times, in naming it a Critic’s Pick, hailed as “the rare character study that does not only build empathy with its hero’s pain but channels its sensation.”
Director: Boris Lojkine
Drama
France
1h 33m
DEC 16
1pm, 7pm
SUZE
A perimenopausal single mom takes in her college-age daughter’s crushed ex-boyfriend, whom she detests. With a premise like that, one wonders: is this comedy or horror? But Michaela Watkins (SNL, Hacks) absolutely shines as the relatable, codependent Susan – who is talked into letting Gage (the amazing Charlie Gillespie), her daughter Brooke’s grating ex-boyfriend, live with her while Brooke moves on at college. “Suze” – as Gage insists on calling Susan – eventually discovers she and her daughter’s ex have more in common than their stereotypical dynamic might allow, and their relationship spurs unexpected healing. Variety hails SUZE as “an understated delight” – and calls Gillespie a “secret weapon” for his turn as Gage: “There is something so honest and good-natured about the way he plays Gage that you always detect a hint of real sadness in his extreme glee, and something disarmingly sweet underneath the exasperating surplus.” A wonderful film about chosen families and the worthy project of loving oneself even after others declare they can’t.
Directors: Dane Clark, Linsey Stewart
Comedy, Drama
Canada
1h 33m
DEC 23
1pm, 7pm
GONDOLA
How do you say I love you? In this charming, beautiful – and wordless! – German-Georgian film, love arrives by gondola. Set in the Caucasus mountains of Western Georgia, GONDOLA begins when “the new girl” arrives in town to work as a cable car operator. Another young woman operates the nearby gondola, and through a series of getting-to-know you stunts (costumes, water fights), the two fall in love. And though their chemistry attracts the ire of their older male boss, GONDOLA is a film that can be trusted to turn even the most tired conventions into fodder for whimsy.
Directors: Jennifer Tiexiera & Guy Mossman
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Germany, Georgia
1h 22m
2024 Archive
2023 Archive
TICKETS
| Single: | $10 |
| Student: | $6 |
| Season Pass (13 films) |
$69 |
| Student Season Pass (13films) |
$48 |
VENUE
State theatre
Traverse City, MI
(231) 600-7272
SPONSORS
