Festival favorites Musk, Misty Green and Fjord debut in limited release in a crowded indie market with awards season rolling along.
Bleecker Street’s documentary by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney opens in four theaters in New York (Angelika and Lincoln Square, and LA (AMC Century City and Burbank). The buzzy portrait of Tesla, X and SpaceX chief Elon Musk premiered at Venice to critical acclaim, currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (off 28 reviews, see Deadline’s here). The world’s richest person, MAGA donor, chainsaw waver, baby daddy and would-be Mars colonizer takes a thrashing. He didn’t participate in the doc and has trashed it on X but wanders across the frames as CGI avatar speaking words that Musk has spoken.
Weekend Q&A screenings with Gibney were sold out in NYC and selling fast in Los Angeles, featuring producer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Ronan Farrow, journalist Zoe Schiffer, and former conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, who shares a child with Musk and appears in the film. She refused to accept a financial settlement after her split with the multi-billionaire that would have required her to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
The doc, which also screened at fests from TIFF to Zurich, Hamptons, Mill Valley Film Festival, Beyondfest and more, is a hefty 225 minutes long – plus a ten-minute intermission – which limits showtimes. Expands to about 300 screens next week.
Musk has converged with Sony’s wide release this weekend of Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, a sequel to The Social Network focused on the dangerous, sordid side of Facebook under founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. And Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, a damning look at OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman isn’t coming out until December but has been making headlines since its world premiere at the New York Film Festival this week.
Filmmakers clearly have big tech on their minds, especially AI, which is everywhere in the national conversation heading into the mid-term elections.
Neon launches Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning drama Fjord starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve at four theaters in NY and LA. A devout Romanian Norwegian couple named Gheorghius resettle in a village in a distant fjord where they become close to their neighbors, the Halbergs. Their children bond. When adolescent Elia Gheorghiu shows up at school with bruises, the community questions the traditional education the Gheorghiu children are getting from their parents. Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh at 91%. Deadline’s review here.
The film reps the second Palme d’Or for Mungiu and the seventh consecutive win for Neon. The film also took the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes and is Romania’s Oscar entry for Best International Feature.
A24 debuts Chris Rock’s Misty Green at six theaters across New York (Lincoln Square, Alamo, Union Square) and LA (Grove, Burbank, Century City). The TIFF-premiering original indie drama has a first-time lead in Rosalind Eleazar and sees Rock as a filmmaker returning to the director’s chair after more than a decade. Eleazar stars as a talented actress whose career has stalled fighting for a second act years after her Hollywood breakthrough. See Deadline review.
Cohen Media Group is out with Winter Of The Crow starring Lesley Manville in 30+ markets and 63 screens, a mix of AMCs, Landmarks and arthouses. Manville’s U.K. professor Dr. Joan Andrews is invited to Warsaw to give a lecture in 1981 just as martial law is being imposed. As chaos engulfs the city, she witnesses a murder by the secret police and becomes a fugitive on the run fighting for her life and those of the students with whom she has allied. Directed and co-written by Kasia Adamik from a short story by Nobel and Booker Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk. Premiered at TIFF 2025. Agnieszka Holland (Adamik’s mother) is an executive producer. At RT 94% off 16 reviews.
Adventure drama The North from Picturehouse, written and directed by Bart Schrijver, opens at 17 locations including the Angelika and Empire in NYC and Laemmle’s Monica Film Center and Glendale in LA. Debut follows a preview early this week at 75 AMC Dolby cinemas. Stars Bart Harder and Carles Pulido as two friends in their early thirties – one Dutch, one Spanish – who reunite after a decade apart to hike Scotland’s grueling 330-mile West Highland Way and Cape Wrath Trail on a journey of unexpected self-discovery.