What’s Streaming On MUBI This July: Are Ready To Rock Out With Pavement?
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Carl Roberts 
MUBI reveals its July 2025 highlights. From Pavements and Parthenope to Super Happy Forever, find it all in July on the streaming service.
MUBI has revealed details of new titles and themed collections coming to the platform throughout July 2025. MUBI’s Latest & Greatest strand welcomes Paolo Sorrentino’s evocative return to Naples with Parthenope. Alongside Igarashi Kohei’s gentle and melancholic Super Happy Forever. The Tides of Youth collection shines a spotlight on Shinji Sômai, showcasing his poignant coming-of-age works, Moving and The Friends.
Following her striking debut, Sun (2022), Kurdwin Ayub unveils Moon (2024) on July 18 – another bold, deeply personal exploration of identity. Then, on 25 July, Toxic (2024) marks the arrival of a fearless new talent in Lithuanian director Saulė Bliuvaitė. Elsewhere, MUBI revisits the radical 1960s with Michael Powell’s once-scandalous Peeping Tom and the documentary portrait of the Chilean city… à Valparaiso by Joris Ivens and Chris Marker. Finally, on 11 July, American indie auteur Alex Ross Perry brings a double hit: the electric Her Smell, starring Elisabeth Moss, and the much-anticipated Pavements, a witty, genre-defying tribute to the legendary ’90s slacker-rock band.
MUBI RELEASES: PAVEMENTS
American indie auteur Alex Ross Perry returns with Pavements (2024). A witty, genre-defying tribute to the legendary ’90s slacker-rock band Pavement. Premiering at Venice, the film blurs the lines between documentary, fiction, and parody as it weaves together real tour footage. Surreal reinterpretations and industry satire. The result is a layered, self-aware collage that is as inventive as it is affectionate.
As Pavement reunites for their sold-out 2022 tour, their legacy takes on strange new shapes. A Broadway-style jukebox musical, a museum exhibition, and a slick Hollywood biopic starring Joe Keery and Alex Wolff. At once intimate and irreverent, Pavements captures the absurdity of cultural memory. And the enduring charm of a band that never asked to be iconic.
Pavements (Perry, 2024) – July 11
LATEST & GREATEST: PARTHENOPE
In Parthenope (2023), Paolo Sorrentino returns to his native Naples with a sun-drenched portrait of a young woman whose life unfolds across the backdrop of the city’s postwar transformation. Named after the mythological siren associated with Naples, Parthenope is born at sea and comes of age in a world defined by beauty. Melancholy and the constant search for purpose.
Parthenope unfolds more like a dream than a conventional narrative. Where luminous cinematography and surreal flourishes conjure a world suspended between memory and myth. At its heart, Parthenope is an ode to Naples. Mythic, chaotic, and tenderly observed through the eyes of a woman and the filmmaker who created her.
Parthenope (Sorrentino, 2024) – July 4
LATEST & GREATEST: SUPER HAPPY FOREVER
With his fourth feature, Super Happy Forever (2024), director Igarashi Kohei crafts a gentle, melancholic meditation on grief. Memory and time set against the peaceful backdrop of a Japanese seaside resort. Premiering at Venice, the film unfolds in two subtle chapters. Delicately shifting between past and present with warmth and clarity.
Grieving the loss of his late wife, Sano returns to the seaside town of Izu, where they once fell in love, joined by his friend Miyata. As memories surface amid quiet landscapes and soft pastels, Super Happy Forever evokes a soulful, drifting sense of loss. Tender, contemplative, and underscored by the wistful refrain of ‘Beyond the Sea’.
Super Happy Forever (Igarashi, 2024) – July 4
TIDES OF YOUTH: TWO BY SHINJI SÔMAI
Shinji Sômai focuses on the delicate, emotional transitions of youth caught between innocence and the demands of a changing world. In Moving (1993), an 11-year-old girl struggles with her parents’ separation, as Somai’s trademark long takes and striking visual metaphors reveal her inner life with quiet intensity.
The Friends (1994) tells of three bullied boys who form an unlikely bond with a reclusive old man during a summer that becomes a poignant rite of passage, exploring themes of loss, family, and the cycle of nature. Our Tides of Youth: Two by Shinji Sômai collection highlights his gentle and expressive style, blending naturalistic performances and evocative imagery that examines the fragile moments that shape youth and our memories of it.
Moving (Sômai, 1993) – July 1
The Friends (Sômai, 1994) – July 1
MOON
Following her acclaimed debut, Sun (2022), Kurdwin Ayub delivers her fittingly titled second feature, Moon (2024). A taut and provocative blend of realism and digital media that garnered three prizes at Locarno, including the Special Jury Prize. Unfolding between rural Austria and the gilded confines of the Jordanian elite, Moon studies female autonomy, cultural tension, and the illusions of empowerment.
Sarah, a former martial artist, leaves Austria to train three sisters from a wealthy Middle Eastern family. But what begins as a dream job quickly turns sour. The girls show no interest in sport, are cut off from the world, and are constantly monitored. As Sarah questions her role, Moon bitingly probes white saviour tropes and shifting power dynamics in a world where freedom is anything but guaranteed.
Moon (Ayub, 2024) – July 18
TOXIC
Saulė Bliuvaitė’s Toxic (2024) announces a fearless new voice in European cinema with an uncompromising debut that swept three major awards at Locarno, including the Golden Leopard and Swatch First Feature. Set in the modelling world of post-Soviet Lithuania, the film unfolds in a landscape as contaminated as the lives within it – visually arresting, emotionally raw, and grounded in the director’s own experience.
In a bleak industrial town, 13-year-olds Marija and Kristina forge an intense bond at a local modelling school. As the promise of escape lures them deeper, beauty becomes a weapon, and the line between ambition and self-destruction begins to blur. Toxic is a haunting portrait of adolescence shaped by brutal expectations.
Toxic (Bliuvaitė, 2024) – July 25
PEEPING TOM
In Michael Powell’s transgressive Peeping Tom (1960), reclusive cameraman Mark obsessively films women as he murders them. Hoping to capture their facial expressions in that exact moment of terror. Raised as a test subject in his father’s fear experiments, Mark now works at a British film studio by day and moonlights as a pornographer. While secretly pursuing his actual passion project. Filming death itself.
A queasy meditation on voyeurism and the violence of looking, Powell turns the camera into a literal weapon and casts himself as the source of Mark’s trauma. Saturated in Freudian symbolism and morbid irony, the film blurs the lines between cinema, fetish, and harm. In exposing the audience’s own compulsion to watch, Peeping Tom implicates both filmmaker and viewer in its quietly horrifying vision.
Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960) – July 7
HER SMELL
Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell (2018) follows the chaotic decline of fictional punk icon Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss) as her life unfolds like a five-act tragedy drenched in sweat, bile, and glitter. Once the magnetic frontwoman of the riot grrrl band Something She, Becky spirals through addiction, delusion, and self-sabotage, dragging her bandmates, manager, and young daughter along for the ride.
Becky’s journey and the chaos that propels it forward is less a standard portrait of a rock star than of a soul in purgatory, fighting its way out in search of serenity.
Her Smell (Perry, 2018) – July 11
…A VALPARAÍSO
Often seen as a peripheral work for Joris Ivens and Chris Marker, …à Valparaiso (1963) is a rich collaboration revealing their shared vision of travel and place. The film combines poetic commentary. And an attentive camera that captures Valparaiso’s unique geography and layered history.
Marker’s lyrical narration contrasts with Ivens’ focus on concrete observation and historical change. Together, they create a layered essay film that balances abstraction and reality. Inviting viewers to explore the Chilean city of Valparaiso from multiple angles.
…A Valparaíso (Ivens, 1963) – July 15
IRREVERSIBLE
From its first second, Gaspar Noé’s spiralling Irreversible (2002) plunges you into its dark and violent narrative as it rewinds through the aftermath of a brutal assault. Tracing the desperate journey of Marcus and Pierre as they seek to avenge the horrific attack of Alex, Marcus’s girlfriend.
Famed for its disorientating tone, Noé pushes cinematic artifice to its extremities to intentionally unsettle the viewer. At the same time, it matches the emotional severity of the film’s vicious events. From its frenetic camerawork, challenging sound design, and disorientating chronology, Irreversible challenges its audience to confront its unflinching portrayal of trauma. Yet, for those willing to engage, it offers a powerful and immersive experience that lingers long after the credits roll.
Irreversible (Noé, 2002) – July 25
MUBI UK & IRELAND JULY 2025
01/07/2025 | Ramen Shop | Eric Khoo
01/07/2025 | Babette’s Feast | Gabriel Axel
01/07/2025 | Flux Gourmet | Peter Strickland
01/07/2025 | Moving | Shinji Sômai | Tides of Youth: Two by Shinji Sômai
01/07/2025 | The Friends | Shinji Sômai | Tides of Youth: Two by Shinji Sômai
07/07/2025 | Super Happy Forever | Igarashi Kohei | Latest & Greatest
07/07/2025 | Parthenope | Paolo Sorrentino | Latest & Greatest
07/07/2025 | Peeping Tom | Michael Powell
11/07/2025 | Pavements | Alex Ross Perry | Latest & Greatest
11/07/2025 | Her Smell | Alex Ross Perry
15/07/2025 | …A Valparaíso | Joris Ivens
18/07/2025 | Moon | Kurdwin Ayub | Latest & Greatest
25/07/2025 | Toxic | Saulė Bliuvaitė | Latest & Greatest
25/07/2025 | Irreversible | Gaspar Noé
It is a film fan’s dream in July on MUBI.
Introducing Carl! As the News Editor at Future of the Force, Carl has been an invaluable member of our team since early 2016. His expertise and dedication have made him an integral part of our editorial staff. Beyond his professional role, Carl is a fervent supporter of Liverpool F.C. and an avid follower of pop culture. He has a deep passion for Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the iconic movie franchises Star Wars and Star Trek.
He can be found either at his neighborhood cinema, enjoying the latest releases on the big screen, or at home streaming the newest blockbuster movies.
