An accessibly human exploration of artificial intelligence, a high-end coven at the mall and the latest from French directors Julia Ducournau (Alpha) and Sylvain Chomet (A Magnificent Life) are among indie offerings this weekend in an eclectic market peppered with the serious, the funny, the dark and the literary. Matthew Shear and Oscar Boyson make their respective directorial debuts with Fantasy Life and Our Hero, Balthazar.
Focus Features’ The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, Oscar-winning director Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell’s exploration of one of humanity’s most significant and riskiest advances, materializes at 782 theaters after lively debuts at Sundance and SXSW with critics and audiences joining the intense global conversation around artificial intelligence.
“An ‘apocaloptimist’ is someone who does not give into binary,” Roher said in a conversation at Deadline’s Sundance Studio. “When being asked to choose between a perspective of apocalyptic doom or unbridled optimism, the apocaloptimist seeks the third way, the narrow path, recognizing that both of these things exist simultaneously and what we’re advocating for and needing is a very cautious optimism because we have the intelligence to build this technology, but we need to have the wisdom to deploy it and incorporate it into our world.” The doc follows Roher, a father-to-be, as he tries to make sense of the existential dangers and stunning promise of this technology that humanity has created.
Produced by filmmakers behind Everything Everywhere All at Once and Navalny — Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang, Shane Boris, Diane Becker and Ted Tremper.
“One of the things our film hopes to do is to give people ownership of basically their agency to learn about this in an entertaining and comprehensive way,” Tremper told Deadline.
IFC Entertainment Group’s campy coven comedy Forbidden Fruits flies onto 1,562 screens with a viral campaign anchored by a buzzy cast. Director Meredith Alloway’s feature debut stars Lilly Reinhart as Apple, leader of a group of witches operating out of an upscale mall boutique called Free Eden. She and her minions Cherry (Pedretti) and Fig (Shipp) bring in Pumpkin (Tung) as the fourth member of their coven. Each fruit represents a season of the retail cycle.
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Co-written by Alloway and Lily Houghton based on the latter’s 2019 play Of the Woman Came the Beginning of Sin, and Through Her We All Die. Deadline’s review said the sendup of millennial, Gen Z and mall culture has “all the makings of an instant cult classic.” It also has a similar release footprint to IFC’s viral box office hit Good Boy last year.
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Julia Ducournau’s Alpha from Neon opens in moderate release on 225 screens. The French director’s follow-up to her 2021 Palme d’Or-winning Titane also premiered on the Croisette, see Deadline review. Stars Mélissa Boros as Alpha, a troubled 13-year-old living with her doctor single mother (Golshifteh Farahani). Their world collapses one day when the girl returns from school with a tattoo on her arm in a family drama that unfolds against an apocalyptic backdrop of addict-infested clubs as a deadly virus circulates. With Tahar Rahim, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield and Louai El Amrousy.
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Sony Pictures Classics is out with animated A Magnificent Life written and directed by Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville, The Illusionist) at 334 locations. This is a fully animated biopic of the life of the late novelist, playwright and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol, including clips from his films. An actor plays Pagnol in voice-over. Chomet’s first animated film in 15 years debuted at Cannes and played at the Annecy Animation Film Festival (Deadline review here), where he debuted short The Old Lady and the Pigeons in 1997.
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In 1955, 60-year-old Pagnol is an acclaimed playwright and filmmaker when Elle magazine commissions a weekly column about his childhood. He grabs the opportunity to return to his roots. But, realizing his memory is failing and badly shaken by the disappointing results of his last two plays, Pagnol is wracked by doubt until his younger self, Little Marcel, appears. Together, they explore the writer’s life.
Greenwich Entertainment presents romance-comedy-drama Fantasy Life at the Angelika Film Center in NYC. The debut feature of actor-turned-writer/director Matthew Shear won multiple prizes, including the Narrative Feature Audience Award at SXSW 2025, see Deadline’s review. Stars Shear as an anxious law school dropout who stumbles into a job babysitting his psychiatrist’s three granddaughters and falls for the girls’ mother (Amanda Peet), an actress in a rocky marriage. With Alessandro Nivola, Judd Hirsch, Bob Balaban, Andrea Martin, Zosia Mamet and Holland Taylor.
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Picturehouse debuts Our Hero, Balthazar at Regal Union Square in NYC. The feature debut of writer-director Oscar Boyson, whose producer credits include films with the Safdies (Uncut Gems, Good Time) and Frances Ha. Stars Asa Butterfield (Sex Education) and Jaeden Martell lead an ensemble including Chris Bauer, Jennifer Ehle, Anna Baryshnikov, Noah Centineo, Becky Ann Baker, Avan Jogia and Pippa Knowles.
Eager to impress his activist crush, a wealthy New York teenager follows an online connection to Texas, where he’s convinced he can stop an act of extreme violence. Premiered at Tribeca. Deadline review says the film “impressively mixes black comedy with real-life consequences for two mismatched teens.” Expands to L.A. next weekend.