Lillian Carrier and a hobby horse in Horsegirls.Image via Sumerian Pictures
The struggles of autistic adults aren’t often seen on the big screen, but a new indie drama is about to change that. Gretchen Mol and Tony Hale star in Horsegirls, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2025 and will debut in theaters next month. Today, Collider is proud to exclusively present the first trailer and poster for Horsegirls.
In the trailer, Lillian Carrier plays Margarita — so named because her parents were drunk on margaritas during her conception, as she explains to befuddled shopkeeper Iqbal Theba — a young woman with autism. She lives with her mother (Mol), who’s dealing with some serious health problems, and is worried that Margarita may soon have to make her way in the world on her own. Margarita soon finds a creative outlet in the world of hobby horsing (a sport with gymnastic components that involves participants “riding” on a hobbyhorse), thanks to a class taught by Coach (Jerod Haynes). Can hobby horsing give Margarita the confidence and life experience she needs? You’ll have to find out when Horsegirls debuts in theaters on July 17, courtesy of Sumerian Pictures.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
Advertisement
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
Advertisement
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
Advertisement
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
Advertisement
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
Advertisement
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
Advertisement
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
Advertisement
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
Advertisement
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
Advertisement
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
Advertisement
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
Advertisement
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
Advertisement
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Advertisement
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Advertisement
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Advertisement
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Advertisement
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
Advertisement
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Who Are the Stars of ‘Horsegirls’?
Carrier is a relative newcomer to Hollywood; she starred as Drea in the Freeform series Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, and guest-starred on As We See It and NCIS: New Orleans. Mol was once famously dubbed the “It Girl of the Nineties” by Vanity Fair magazine; she has starred in the films Rounders, The Notorious Bettie Page, and Manchester by the Sea, and on the series Boardwalk Empire and Life on Mars. She recently recurred on HBO’s reboot of Perry Mason. Haynes has appeared on the series Project Blue Book and Good Girls, and recently starred on the Nicole Kidman crime thriller series Scarpetta. Hale is best known for playing slow-witted Buster Bluth on Arrested Development, and won an Emmy for his work on Veep; he will reprise his role as Forky in this summer’s Toy Story 5. Theba played PrincipalFiggins on Glee; he will star in Super Troopers 3 this summer.
Horsegirls was written and directed by Lauren Meyering in her feature film debut; her script for Horsegirls made the 2020 Black List of best unproduced scripts. She based the film on her friend Mackenzie Breeden‘s life; Breeden is a producer on the film, and it is dedicated in memory of her mother, Sandra. Also producing the film are Alix Madigan (Winter’s Bone) and Michael Sherman (Native Son).
Horsegirls will premiere in theaters on July 17. Check out our exclusive trailer above and an exclusive poster below; stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login