15 Movies to Watch in March

      After a rather sparse February and with the awards season thankfully behind us, March finally delivers some exciting offerings. This month features a collection of festival premieres, dating back to those from Berlinale and Rotterdam last year, alongside fresh documentaries and thrillers from renowned directors. Here’s a diverse selection of recommendations below.

      15. The Empire (Bruno Dumont; March 7)

      Following its Berlinale premiere last year, where it won the Silver Bear Jury Prize, Bruno Dumont’s sci-fi film The Empire is making its way to the U.S. Rory O’Connor commented in his review, “With his hallmark rural French absurdity set against the grand scale of a space opera, Bruno Dumont presents The Empire: both a Barbarella-style culinary adventure and a dijionnaise Dune. The Empire narrates the conflict between two factions: one whose mothership mirrors the palace of Versailles, and another resembling a jumble of Notre Dames, crypt to crypt. It tracks their envoys on Earth, who, now in human guise, aim to capture a toddler they believe to be the Chosen One—whose presence compels them to bow as if frozen in rigor mortis. Highlights include casual beheadings with lightsabers, and a band of men on Boulonnais horses calling themselves the Knights of Wain, along with an out-of-place commandant (Bernard Pruvost) and lieutenant (Philippe Jore) from P’tit Quinquin.”

      14. The Heirloom (Ben Petrie; March 21)

      A standout from last year's International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ben Petrie’s The Heirloom is a rom-com psychodrama featuring him and Grace Glowicki as a couple who adopt a dog and discover what it means to become a family. Rory O’Connor stated in his review, “It’s often very humorous, even as Eric’s tendency to narrativize threatens to complicate their relationship. Petrie allows Eric’s obsession to bleed into scenes that feel genuinely Kaufmanesque (a term often overused, but fitting here). In one instance, from Eric’s perspective, Allie excitedly informs him that Milly has urinated; Eric begins to see the moment replaying as if in multiple takes, with Allie’s delivery striving to hit the right tone. Whether these repeats are real or imagined isn’t clarified, yet they appear as a figment of Eric’s lockdown-induced psyche. In another moment, a boom mic operator intrudes the shot without disrupting the characters’ flow, a jarring yet effective directorial choice that both diffuses the tension and emphasizes its source.”

      13. The Woman in the Yard (Jaume Collet-Serra; March 28)

      After making a splash this holiday season with the electrifying Carry-On, one of Netflix’s most popular films, Jaume Collet-Serra is gearing up for two features in 2025. Before diving into his Cliffhanger reboot, he is returning to horror with The Woman in the Yard, which reunites him with Danielle Deadwyler. Though it has yet to premiere, fans hope Collet-Serra’s post-Dwayne Johnson era continues to yield impressive results.

      12. Secret Mall Apartment (Jeremy Workman; March 21)

      One of our favorite films from last year’s SXSW is set to debut next month. Secret Mall Apartment recounts the bizarre true story of a group of friends who created a hidden apartment in the bustling Providence Place Mall in the early 2000s, reuniting the participants after nearly two decades. John Fink remarked in his review, “Highlighting a quirky 2007 episode that captured national attention, Secret Mall Apartment takes us deep within the Providence Place Mall, the focal point of Rhode Island’s capital city renaissance led by convict mayor Buddy Cianci. (Interestingly, a few months before the secret apartment was uncovered, I was right above it watching Cherry Arnold’s Buddy, an insightful film about the mayor's transformation of Providence, but that’s another story.) The apartment residents enjoyed the perk of having private access to the theater at any time.”

      11. Chaos: The Manson Murders (Errol Morris; March 7 on Netflix)

      Decades later, what new insights can emerge about the nights of August 9 and 10, 1969, in Los Angeles? Tom O’Neill and Dan Piepenbring’s captivating, albeit complex, book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties—released in June 2019, alongside the Cannes premiere and theatrical release of Quentin Tarantino’s reimagining of that history—explores how, while all evidence from the murders is known, a complicated web of conspiracies surrounds motivations, some more credible than others. To condense the 528-page book to its core theory, it postulates that Manson might have been allowed (and possibly even directed