Tom Delonge sang back in the day that “no one likes you when you’re 22.” That, friends, is a maxim reserved exclusively for scene kid Instagram birthday announcements (the cool kids will always default to Prince or The Smiths), and it’s not true. We can think of a lot of great people and institutions that were, in fact, well liked when they were that age, like our subject for today: The Independent Film Festival Boston, better known as IFFBoston. They’re turning 22 years old in 2025, and to help ring in the first fest after they’ve become keenly aware of how a night of free drinking and open access to liquors of all colors can turn into one hell of a hangover or financial hole, they’ve assembled one absurdly stacked line-up for their annual celebration of cinema.
Unless you’re a true hedonist, birthday parties typically don’t last for a week. Yet IFFBoston is here to kick out the motherfucking jams, so it’ll run from April 23 to April 30 at three of the area’s premier theaters: Somerville, Brattle and Coolidge. As always, you can grab your passes and/or individual tickets from the festival’s website, and also peruse the complete line-up of features and shorts there. For our purposes, five films stood out to us (out of a genuinely fantastic selection! Go to the website!) as particularly interesting and exciting, so here’s our five must-see features at this year’s IFFBoston.
OBEX
Jared Leto might be starring in a canon-official Tron movie later this year, but for our money, Albert Birney’s bizarre fable might be the true successor to Disney’s computer world. Cue the Kraftwerk. Anyway, Birney, who stole critics’ hearts with Silvio and Strawberry Mansion takes us back to the heady days of ’87, before the internet came along and ruined everything, in this film about a state-of-the-art video game that has some unexpected consequences for the nerd that bought it. Namely, it’s a dognapper, and our protagonist has to venture into the film’s gloriously realized low-fi wonderland to save his pup. No, it isn’t a John Wick-themed Doom rom, but it does sound like a trip worth taking.
‘OBEX’ :: Friday, April 25 at 9:45 p.m. at The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: Advance tickets
Pavements
Director Alex Ross Perry (Christopher Robin) returns to the musical era he portrayed in Her Smell with this hybrid narrative feature-documentary blend about the Red Guard of the Slacker Revolution: Pavement. Yes, that’s right: Stephen Malkmus and his band of brothers have an entire metatextual feature dedicated to them, documenting the production of a Pavement stage play, the creation of a Pavement museum, Pavement’s 2022 reunion tour, and even some faux-biopic Perry made about them to hammer the point home to everyone born past 2000 that this meant something, dammit. It’s an intriguing concept about one of indie’s most enigmatic bunch of philosopher-king losers, and we hope that Perry takes Butt-Head’s advice: “If you’re gonna be horrible, at least kick ass, like, you know, Jesus Lizard.” These are words we should all live by.
‘PAVEMENTS’ :: Saturday, April 26 at 7:15 p.m. at The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: Advance tickets
Stolen Kingdom
Are we really passing over a Jia Zhangke film to recommend a documentary about the Disney adult? You bet your ass we are. We don’t need to tell you that Zhangke’s a great filmmaker and that his shit is worth seeing, because everyone else will do that for us. What they might not tell you is that Joshua Bailey’s doc about the darker side of the Magic Kingdom seems like a grand old time: it’s the happiest place on Earth, at least until you go looking for what happens when you let adults lose in a giant play-pretend land for children. The answer? They steal stuff or dump ashes in the water at Splash Mountain or any number of chaotic things, and we’re down to check out any feature that will tell us more.
‘Stolen Kingdom’ :: Sunday, April 27 at 4:45 p.m. at The Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square in Somerville, MA :: Advance tickets
Friendship
We’re all looking for the guy who programmed Tim Robinson’s foray into feature-length comedy for this year’s festival (and it was most likely Brian Tamm – Hi Brian!), because we want to give them some big props. We missed out on this bizarro comedy co-starring Paul Rudd and Kate Mara when it premiered last year at TIFF, but the fact that we get to experience a tale of psychedelics, friendship and bromance with a Boston audience is even better than that (sorry, Canada). How do you describe something like Friendship without reverting to calling it “Fucked Up I Love You, Man?” We’re not totally sure, but we do know that this will be a straight-up laugh riot from beginning to end, so go ahead and grab a ticket (if they aren’t sold out yet). They’re even showing it twice, which we’ve never seen at an IFFBoston before. So yeah, this is a big fucking deal.
‘FRIENDSHIP’ :: Monday, April 28 at 7 p.m. at The Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square in Somerville, MA and Tuesday, April 29 at The Brattle, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: Advance tickets
Sorry, Baby
Unless you’ve watched Billions, you might not know the name “Eva Victor,” but after you see her debut feature, you’ll want to tell everyone who she is. Victor, a writer/director/actor, leads an impressive cast in a story about a young woman recovering from a traumatic event – and the messiness that the healing process can create along the way. It’s all about how completely consuming pain can be, especially when the world around you is going on as if things were totally normal. Sorry, Baby was a massive hit at this year’s Sundance, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, and if you want to end the festival with a good, healing cry, make sure you check this out. Victor will be in attendance too, so try not to trauma-dump during the Q&A when you get absolutely fucking wrecked by this one.
‘SORRY, BABY’ :: Wednesday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. at Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St. in Brookline, MA :: Advance tickets