October is quietly one of the best cinema months of the year: the summer blockbusters have cleared out, the awards contenders are arriving, and the most interesting screens are the ones nobody is talking about yet. This month’s lineup is especially rich in Black, Asian, Indigenous and Latin stories — new releases sitting happily alongside two beloved classics returning to the big screen for anniversary runs. Here are seven films in theaters this October that deserve a place on your list, in the spirit of celebrating the storytellers our actors who walked away coverage loves to follow — people betting on the roles that matter.
1. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
In theaters now. Mahershala Ali leads this action drama as a Muslim hitman, with John Cho alongside him and Bassam Tariq directing. There is a famous near-miss behind it: Tariq and Ali were once set to make Marvel’s Blade together before that project fell apart, and the fight training built for it found a second life here. Expect a hitman story with a spiritual weight most action films never attempt.
2. Forgotten Island
In theaters now. An animated fantasy-adventure voiced by H.E.R., Liza Soberano, Dave Franco, Jenny Slate, Lea Salonga and Jo Koy. Two childhood friends in the Philippines step through a portal onto a mythical island — and the price of the adventure is their memories of each other. Filipino mythology, a stacked voice cast and a story about friendship itself: this is the month’s family pick with real heart.
3. Pan’s Labyrinth — 20th Anniversary Rerelease
Limited theatrical run this month. Twenty years on, Guillermo del Toro’s dark fairy tale returns to the big screen, where its practical creatures and candlelit dread belong. In 1944 Spain, a young girl (Ivana Baquero) escapes a brutal household into a labyrinth, a faun, and three tasks — with Sergi López’s unforgettable captain waiting back in the real world. If you have only seen it on a television, this is your correction.
4. Street Fighter
Released October 16. The World Warrior Tournament comes back to cinemas with an early-’90s setting and a cast built for fight fans: Andrew Koji, Noah Centineo and Callina Liang, plus David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes and Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i. Game adaptations live or die on whether the fights feel like the game — everything about this one’s casting says they understood the assignment.
5. La Bola Negra
Released October 16 in New York and Los Angeles, expanding through November. A Spanish drama with Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close and Lola Dueñas, built from an extraordinary source: an unfinished 1936 play by Federico García Lorca. The story moves across three timelines — 1932, 1937 and 2017 — tracing what one suppressed work carried through a century. The month’s pick for anyone who loves theatre, history and Cruz in full command of a frame.
6. Klara And The Sun
Released October 23. Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams lead, with Steve Buscemi and Natasha Lyonne, in Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel. Klara is an “Artificial Friend” — a solar-powered robot girl — who joins a household carrying grief, and sees it with clearer eyes than the humans do. Ishiguro wrote the book that broke a generation’s heart with Never Let Me Go; expect this one to work quietly and then all at once. (Book-first readers: our East Of Eden reading list has your next shelf sorted.)
7. Spirited Away — 25th Anniversary Rerelease
Back in theaters from October 17 (and streaming). A quarter-century after Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli changed animation forever, Chihiro’s journey returns to the big screen: a girl trapped in a bathhouse for spirits, working to free her parents from a witch’s curse. Every frame is hand-drawn wonder, and the train ride across the water remains one of the most beautiful scenes ever animated. Newcomers, prepare yourselves; veterans, bring tissues.
Your October Watchlist, Sorted
Action with a soul: Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. Family magic: Forgotten Island and Spirited Away. Big-screen history lessons: Pan’s Labyrinth and La Bola Negra. Pure popcorn: Street Fighter. The one that will make you sit quietly in the car afterwards: Klara And The Sun. Seven films, four weekends, zero excuses — and if the month has you nostalgic for the era that raised us, our trip through things from the 2000s that quietly vanished is waiting when the credits roll. Which of the seven tops your list?
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