From a new film by Lukas Dhont to Aaron Sorkin’s return to the world of Facebook, these are the films worth adding to your watchlist over the coming months.
Autumn is traditionally when the cinema calendar becomes interesting again. The summer blockbusters begin to give way to awards contenders, literary adaptations, ambitious dramas and the films studios hope we’ll still be talking about months later.
This year is particularly varied. Tom Cruise has teamed up with one of the world’s most acclaimed directors, Aaron Sorkin is revisiting the world of The Social Network, and Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont returns with his most ambitious film yet. Then November brings another journey into Panem before two enormous franchises collide at the box office in December.
Rather than attempting to include everything arriving in cinemas, we’ve selected eight films worth having on your radar.
Digger
Belgian cinema release: 30 September
Tom Cruise and Birdman and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu isn’t an obvious combination—which is precisely what makes Digger so intriguing.
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an immensely powerful man desperately trying to convince the world that he can save humanity from a catastrophe he helped create. The supporting cast is unusually strong, with Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, John Goodman and Michael Stuhlbarg joining Cruise.
Shot in VistaVision by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the film marks Iñárritu’s return to English-language feature filmmaking and promises something rather different from the action franchises with which Cruise has become synonymous.
Why it’s on our watchlist: Cruise taking a creative risk with Iñárritu is enough to make this one of autumn’s most interesting propositions.
Verity
Belgian cinema release: 30 September
Colleen Hoover’s bestselling psychological thriller makes the inevitable move to the big screen.
Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer offered an extraordinary assignment: complete the unfinished books of hugely successful author Verity Crawford, played by Anne Hathaway, after an accident leaves Crawford unable to finish them herself.
Lowen moves into the Crawford home to work through the author’s notes and material. Inevitably, what she finds there suggests that the family’s story is rather more disturbing than it first appears. Josh Hartnett also stars as Verity’s husband, Jeremy.
Whether you love Hoover’s novels or have somehow avoided the phenomenon entirely, the combination of Hathaway, Johnson and a deliciously dark premise should make Verity one of the autumn’s biggest conversation starters.
Why it’s on our watchlist: A hugely popular novel, Anne Hathaway in psychological-thriller territory and a story almost designed to generate post-cinema debate.
The Social Reckoning
Belgian cinema release: 7 October
Sixteen years after The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin is returning to Facebook—but the world surrounding the company has changed considerably.
The Social Reckoning isn’t a conventional sequel. Instead, it takes inspiration from the events surrounding whistleblower Frances Haugen and The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files investigation.
Mikey Madison plays Haugen, while Jeremy Allen White takes on the role of journalist Jeff Horwitz. Perhaps the most fascinating piece of casting, however, is Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg.
Sorkin both writes and directs this time, revisiting questions about technology, power and responsibility that have only become more complicated since the original film appeared in 2010.
Why it’s on our watchlist: Few films this autumn feel quite as connected to the world we’re actually living in.
Coward
Belgian cinema release: 21 October
This is the Belgian film we’d particularly recommend watching.
Lukas Dhont, the filmmaker behind Girl and the Oscar-nominated Close, moves onto a much larger canvas with Coward, a First World War drama set on the Belgian front.
The story follows Pierre, a young soldier who arrives eager to prove himself. Behind the lines he encounters Francis, who stages theatrical performances to provide the soldiers with moments of escape from the brutality surrounding them.
Dhont uses that setting to explore masculinity, intimacy, identity and what courage actually means. The film competed at Cannes earlier this year, where its two leads, Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, shared the festival’s Best Actor award.
It also has the honour of opening Film Fest Gent on 7 October before its wider Belgian cinema release.
Why it’s on our watchlist: One of Belgium’s most internationally recognised young filmmakers taking a significant creative step forward—and doing it with a story rooted in Belgian history.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping
Belgian cinema release: 18 November
Panem isn’t finished with us yet.
Sunrise on the Reaping travels back decades before Katniss Everdeen’s rebellion to tell the story of a young Haymitch Abernathy and the 50th Hunger Games—the infamous Second Quarter Quell in which twice the usual number of tributes were forced into the arena.
Based on Suzanne Collins’s 2025 novel, the film is again directed by Francis Lawrence, who has become the defining filmmaker of the franchise.
The cast is enormous. Joseph Zada takes the central role of Haymitch, while Ralph Fiennes plays President Snow and Elle Fanning appears as Effie Trinket. Jesse Plemons, Glenn Close, Maya Hawke and Kieran Culkin are among the supporting names.
Even for viewers who thought they had left The Hunger Games behind, the political history of Panem has proved surprisingly fertile territory for the franchise.
Why it’s on our watchlist: The previous prequel showed that The Hunger Games universe still has stories worth telling beyond Katniss.
Heysel 85
Belgian cinema release: 18 November
Another Belgian production, but one dealing with a considerably more recent and painful chapter of history.
Heysel 85 returns to the events surrounding the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus at Brussels’ Heysel Stadium, where 39 people died before the match.
Rather than approaching the disaster purely as a football story, the film follows characters caught between their professional responsibilities, families and the unfolding human tragedy, including the daughter of Brussels’ mayor and an Italian journalist.
The international co-production features Matteo Simoni, Ben Segers, Josse De Pauw, Bobby Schofield and Violet Braeckman.
Given both the subject and the Brussels setting, this is likely to be one of the autumn releases of particular interest to Belgian audiences.
Why it’s on our watchlist: A major Belgian production revisiting an event that remains deeply embedded in Brussels and European football history.
Dune: Part Three
Belgian cinema release: 16 December
Denis Villeneuve returns to Arrakis.
After the extraordinary scale of the first two Dune films, the third instalment moves the story forward again, continuing Paul Atreides’ journey with Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya returning at the centre of Villeneuve’s universe.
Anyone familiar with Frank Herbert’s novels will know that what comes after Paul’s victory is considerably more complicated than a conventional heroic ending. That gives the third film an opportunity to explore the consequences of power rather than simply the battle to obtain it.
Villeneuve has already turned material once considered almost impossible to adapt into one of contemporary cinema’s defining science-fiction series. Expectations for his return are understandably enormous.
Why it’s on our watchlist: Whatever you think of blockbuster franchises, Villeneuve’s Dune films remain genuine big-screen cinema.
Avengers: Doomsday
Belgian cinema release: 16 December
Yes, the same day as Dune: Part Three.
Marvel’s next enormous ensemble film arrives just before Christmas, with the Russo brothers returning to direct after Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.
The biggest talking point has been Robert Downey Jr.’s return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this time connected to Doctor Doom rather than Tony Stark. The film also brings together characters from several corners of Marvel’s increasingly sprawling universe.
For Marvel, Doomsday carries more weight than another superhero release. The studio is attempting to recreate the sense of occasion that once made an Avengers film a genuine cultural event.
Whether it succeeds may tell us quite a lot about the future of the superhero era.
Why it’s on our watchlist: Robert Downey Jr.’s return alone guarantees curiosity—and its head-to-head December release with Dune should make for an unusually interesting cinema weekend.
What we’ll be watching
If you’re only choosing a few, the autumn calendar offers very different reasons to return to the cinema.
Digger has perhaps the season’s most unexpected director-star combination. The Social Reckoning brings one of the defining films about the internet age into the present. Verity provides the glossy psychological thriller, while Sunrise on the Reaping offers the major franchise return.
Closer to home, Coward and Heysel 85 make this an unusually interesting season for Belgian cinema.
And then December presents an almost absurd choice: Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday arriving in Belgian cinemas on the same day.
For once, the problem may not be finding something worth watching.
It may be deciding what to see first.
Further Reading
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