What’s Streaming On MUBI This July: New Premieres Meet Cult And Classic Cinema
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Carl Roberts 
With Alpha, A Useful Ghost, American Indie Comedies, and more, there’s plenty of movie entertainment this July on MUBI.
July on MUBI brings together a bold mix of new voices and rediscovered classics. These span intimate coming-of-age drama, surreal comedy, and politically charged cinema. Leading the month’s premieres is Julia Ducournau’s Alpha (2025). This film is a quieter but no less unsettling follow-up to Titane. It traces adolescence, illness, and inherited trauma in a virus-stricken near future. Alongside it, Ratchaphoom Boonbunchachoke’s Cannes-winning debut A Useful Ghost turns grief into something strange and darkly funny. In addition, it blends supernatural absurdity with reflections on love and memory.
The program also dives into curated collections and iconic works. These range from offbeat American indie comedies and Julian Radlmaier’s wry, politically inflected films to Stephanie Rothman’s subversive 1970s genre cinema. Classic titles like Brian De Palma’s Blow Out and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate round out the selection. They revisit paranoia, history, and the uneasy intersections of truth and myth. Together, July’s lineup moves between the playful and the profound. It spotlights cinema that challenges, surprises, and lingers.
LATEST & GREATEST: ALPHA
Julia Ducournau’s Alpha (2025) marks a more restrained turn after her Palme d’Or-winning Titane (2021). The film exchanges overt body-horror spectacle for a subdued, near-future tale of contamination and fear. It is set in a French city gripped by an unnamed virus. It follows 13-year-old Alpha as she navigates stigma and fractured family ties as an adolescent. Though unsettling in its imagery of bodily decay, the film is a compelling and human study of the tensions of family life. It also considers the emotional weight that is passed down between generations.
Alpha (Ducournau, 2025) – July 17
LATEST & GREATEST: A USEFUL GHOST
A Useful Ghost (2025) from Ratchaphoom Boonbunchachoke is a surreal and politically charged debut that transforms grief into something offbeat, funny, and delightfully strange. Following the death of his pregnant wife, March finds himself reunited with her in an unexpected form: a vacuum cleaner possessed by her spirit.
Deploying absurdist humor and vibrant visual invention, the film uses its fantastical premise to explore love, collective memory, and the ghosts of Thailand’s past. Premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, it became the first Thai film to compete in Critics’ Week and won the section’s Grand Prize. A Useful Ghost announces a bold and singular new filmmaking voice.
A Useful Ghost (Boonbunchachoke, 2025) – July 24
OUTCASTS, MISFITS, DREAMERS: AMERICAN INDIE COMEDIES
Outcasts, Misfits, Dreamers: American Indie Comedies brings together an offbeat and hilarious collection of films that capture the awkwardness and unexpected tenderness of everyday life in America. From teenage aimlessness in Dazed and Confused (1993) and the suburban absurdity of Ghost World (1999), to the sardonic bite of Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), these cult favorites showcase the singular voices that helped redefine American independent cinema.
Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993) – July 1
Drop Dead Gorgeous (Jann, 1999) – July 10
Ghost World (Zwigoff, 2001) – July 10
Lars and the Real Girl (Gillespie, 2007) – July 10
The Myth of the American Sleepover (Mitchell, 2010) – July 10
Shithouse (Raiff, 2020) – July 10
Dogma (Smith, 1999) – Now Streaming
MARXISM AT PLAY: THREE BY JULIAN RADLMAIER
Marxism at Play: Three by Julian Radlmaier gathers together the German filmmaker’s witty and unmistakably eccentric explorations of class and political idealism. With her dry and absurd sense of humor, Radlmaier’s films drift between romance and revolution. They also find unexpected comedy in capitalism’s contradictions and the people trying to live through them.
Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog (Radlmaier, 2017) – July 3
Phantoms of July (Radlmaier, 2025) – July 3
Bloodsuckers (Radlmaier, 2021) – Now Streaming
STEPHANIE ROTHMAN’S FEMINIST EXPLOITATIONS
Stephanie Rothman’s Feminist Exploitations brings together a trio of 1970s genre films where exploitation cinema becomes a space for sharp ideas about sexual politics. Moving between communes, prisons, and urban margins, Rothman uses the conventions of low-budget genre filmmaking to question who gets freedom, who pays for it, and what independence looks like for women inside systems built to contain them.
Group Marriage (Rothman, 1973) – July 10
Terminal Island (Rothman, 1973) – July 10
The Working Girls (Rothman, 1974) – July 10
BLOW OUT
In Blow Out (1981), Brian De Palma’s reimagining of Michelangelo Antonioni’s swinging Blow-Up (1966), foley artist Jack (John Travolta), accidentally records evidence of what may or may not be a political assassination. What begins as a virtuoso exercise in sound design quickly becomes an obsessive search for the truth. As he attempts to uncover what really happened, he is pulled into a world where images can be manipulated, institutions can’t be trusted, and doing the right thing can come at a devastating cost.
Blow Out (De Palma, 1981) – July 1
HEAVEN’S GATE
Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) revisits the American Western at a moment when the genre had grown deliberately harsh and disillusioned. Set against the Johnson County War, it follows immigrants, land barons, and lawmen as competing versions of the American dream collide.
Instead of leaning into the ugliness of revisionist Westerns, Cimino stages the violence with a hazy distance that allows the romance and brutality to coexist. The result is a film less interested in cynicism than in memory and the overwhelming weight of history.
Heaven’s Gate (Cimino, 1980) – July 1
NEW ON MUBI UK & IRELAND JULY 2026
01/07/2026 | Dazed & Confused | Richard Linklater | Outcasts, Misfits, Dreamers: American Indie Comedies
01/07/2026 | Heaven’s Gate | Michael Cimino
01/07/2026 | Blow Out | Brian De Palma
01/07/2026 | Not a Pretty Picture | Martha Coolidge | Rediscovered
03/07/2026 | Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog | Julian Radlmaier | Marxism at Play: Three by Julian Radlmaier
03/07/2026 | The President’s Cake | Hasan Hadi
03/07/2026 | Phantoms of July | Julian Radlmaier | Marxism at Play: Three by Julian Radlmaier
10/07/2026 | Ghost World | Terry Zwigoff | Outcasts, Misfits, Dreamers: American Indie Comedies
10/07/2026 | Drop Dead Gorgeous | Michael Patrick Jann | Outcasts, Misfits, Dreamers: American Indie Comedies
10/07/2026 | Lars and the Real Girl | Craig Gillespie | Outcasts, Misfits, Dreamers: American Indie Comedies
10/07/2026 | The Myth of the American Sleepover | David Robert Mitchell | Outcasts, Misfits, Dreamers: American Indie Comedies
10/07/2026 | Shithouse | Cooper Raiff | Outcasts, Misfits, Dreamers: American Indie Comedies
10/07/2026 | The Non-Actor | Eliza Callahan | Brief Encounters
17/07/2026 | Alpha | Julia Ducournau | Latest & Greatest
24/07/2026 | A Useful Ghost | Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke | Latest & Greatest
31/07/2026 | Terminal Island | Stephanie Rothman | Stephanie Rothman’s Feminist Exploitations
31/07/2026 | Group Marriage | Stephanie Rothman | Stephanie Rothman’s Feminist Exploitations
31/07/2026 | The Working Girls | Stephanie Rothman | Stephanie Rothman’s Feminist Exploitations
Plan your alternative monthly viewing 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.
