Wrapping Up the 2025 Wisconsin Film Festival

Reflections on Starship Troopers, an infamous Rolling Stones doc, and other WFF 2025 selections.

A-hoy hoy, MTWZ scholars.

Before I extol the Wisconsin Film Festival, which concluded on Thursday, I wish to acknowledge the good feelings from another film-related event from the previous week: the Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, held last weekend in Chicago. Despite being unable to purchase a fresh coffee anywhere near the conference hotel at one point last Saturday, I enjoyed my brief SCMS experience. I actually spent little time attending panels, but I presented alongside three longtime mentors/friends.¹ Intentionally or not, I dedicated most of my 30 hours in Chicago to catching up with those dear to me. I highly recommend this “conference hack.”

Moving on to today, the Wisconsin Film Festival ended on Thursday, and here is my wrap-up as promised. As acknowledged above, other commitments prevented me from seeing as many films as I would have liked. I attended only seven screenings—a fraction of what I have in the past. But, similar to my SCMS experience, I cherished all the time I spent with other people, above all the festival staff and enthusiasts whom I feel privileged to know. For this reason, the WFF 2025 was a big win in my books, regardless of how many movies I saw!

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Here at Movie Time With Zach, I’ve already raved about two 2025 Wisconsin Film Festival selections: Afternoons of Solitude (dir. Albert Serra, 2024) and Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (dir. Julian Castronovo, 2025). For the festival guide, I also wrote blurbs for two other selections I really loved: Shanghai Blues (dir. Tsui Hark, 1984) and By the Stream (dir. Hong Sang-soo, 2024).²

I dedicate most of the newsletter below to discussing two WFF titles I feel most inspired to write about. But before I get there, I’d like to take notice of a few other screenings I attended over the last week: