The Oldenburg Film Festival has long been the place to find the strange, the overlooked and the unapologetically unconventional in indie cinema. The Hollywood Reporter has picked five unmissable features from this year’s typically eclectic lineup, ranging from a Belgian punk-music satire to a Mexican cartel thriller to a horror movie told entirely from the perspective of a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever.

The Irish drama Horseshoe centers on four siblings forced back to their childhood home after the death of their father, only to discover his ghost isn’t ready to let them go. With just 24 hours to decide the fate of the house, old resentments bubble up, secrets are exposed, and shifting alliances test whatever bonds remain. Darkly funny and deeply melancholic, the film turns the family estate into a pressure cooker of grief, grudges, and reluctant affection.

Yun Xie’s Slamdance breakout Under the Burning Sun follows Mowanza, a young woman pregnant after an assault in a country where abortion is forbidden. Armed with little more than a car and a bottle of water, she heads into the desert toward a neighboring state where the procedure is legal. A microbudget gem that channels its feminist outrage into a harrowing and haunting epic.

Oldenburg regular Jerome Vandewattyne (2023 Audacity Award winner for The Belgian Wave) returns to the festival with another music satire, inspired by his years behind the scenes filming the Jon Spencer-produced boogie punk band The Experimental Tropic Blues Band. In Summer Hit Machine, a band is locked in a studio to record a cover song that their eccentric label boss believes will win him a coveted Summer Hit Machine Award. But as his grip on reality begins to fracture, the recording session spirals out of control.

Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy, which comes to Oldenburg from SXSW, is a supernatural horror told entirely from the perspective of Indy, a loyal Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who senses there are forces lurking in the dark shadows of his owner’s home. As dark forces threaten his master, the brave pup must fight to protect him. A fresh, canine perspective on the haunted house trope.

J. Xavier Velasco’s Cocodrilos, which premiered at the Guadalajara Film Festival and will have its European premiere in Oldenburg, follows Santiago, a young photojournalist in Veracruz who dreams of exposing injustice. When his mentor is murdered and the investigation is buried, he decides to go public despite warnings that doing so could cost him his life. Drawing on the real dangers faced by Mexican reporters, the film builds a tense thriller around the courage it takes to keep digging for the truth when silence is the safer choice.

The 2025 Oldenburg Film Festival runs Sept. 10–14.