Traveling through Marin County’s photographic landscape can feel like you are on a movie set. However, beyond its big views, Marin’s rich and diverse arts community, award-winning schools, desirable weather, and culture savvy population are the reasons we feel there is “No place like home.”
Let us take you on a tour.
The Parting Glass
Joel Edgerton
Amandla Stenberg
MVFF respects the planet and is working to be a net-zero waste event by 2020. There are many ways you can help:
• Select Print-at-Home Tickets when buying online, then get your e-tickets scanned from your phone at the theater.
• Share and recycle this program.
• Bring your own reusable water bottle.
• Carpool to screenings and events.
• Recycle your Festival badge.
Rarely has the adage “May you live in interesting times” seemed as sinister and as tantalizing as in our own. In the year since MVFF put its 40 th anniversary year to bed, in cinema, we’ve seen the rise of #MeToo and #TimesUp, movements that have met head on the film industry’s long history of sexual harassment and gender inequality. We’ve seen families separated at our own southern border and refugees struggle worldwide. We’ve seen the earth’s changing climate continue to wreak havoc and the spread of authoritarian movements. These are situations that could lead to despair, but they are also a call to artists, particularly filmmakers, to try and effect change through their work. And it is a call to the MVFF to celebrate those films, and beyond that, to celebrate what is good in the world. It is not all doom and gloom.
Film can help us make sense of our moment or distract us from it. At times, it can do both at once. For me, I love these films that deal with the most remote possible subject matter that is so alien to your individual life, yet resonate universally and have a powerful impact, emotionally and intellectually. These are the stories that not only entertain us, but inspire us, and cause us to reflect our own lives. That’s what we do. That’s what these stories are about.
There are so many themes that we can talk about: race, immigration. Three intriguing and very different programs put our own country’s race relations into perspective. George Tillman, Jr. The Hate U Give, featuring a breakout performance by one of the actors in this year’s spotlights, Amandla Stenberg, confronts our current moment in its story of a young woman who witnesses a police shooting. With its true story of African American musician Don Shirley (Oscar ® winner and Oakland native Mahershala Ali) and his white driver (Viggo Mortensen) touring the Deep South in 1962, opening night co-feature Green Book offers a snapshot of conditions only a few years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Then the special event, Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait—directed by Bay Area filmmaker Finn Taylor from footage shot during the Depression by photographer H. Lee Waters with a score composed by singer and violinist Jenny Scheinman, and performed live—observes the culture and segregation of southern mill towns in the Jim Crow era.
Other US films that speak to our times include our other opening night feature A Private War, which views war through the eyes of correspondent Marie Colvin (an amazing Rosamund Pike); Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner, examining political scandal through the experience of US Senator Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman); Australian director (and Spotlight tributee) Joel Edgerton’s Arkansas-set Boy Erased exposing the horrors of gay conversion therapy; and two films, Beautiful Boy (starring Timothée Chalamet, who will be attending with director Felix van Groeningen) and Ben Is Back, which both grapple with the horrors of addition.
I am equally proud of our international programming. At a time when fewer foreign-language films receive theatrical releases, MVFF strives to bring our audience the very best of what the world has to offer. This year we have an amazing line-up of titles, among them Capernaum, Nadine Labaki’s Cannes prize winner about a Syrian migrant boy living in horrific circumstances in Lebanon who sues his parents for giving him life; Ali Abbasi’s Border, an exhilarating blend of Scandinavian noir, magic realism, and romance in its tale of a customs agent with a special talent and a murky past; and spotlight honoree Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War, a Polish drama inspired by his own parents’ marriage.
This year MVFF also embraces Spanish-language and Latin American cinema with our ¡Viva el Cine! showcase that includes our centerpiece film, Alfonso Cuarón’s visually stunning, Golden Lion-winning Roma, which charts the lives of a Mexico City family over a year in the early 1970s. Among the other striking features in the 15-film program are Bay Area filmmaker Richard Levien’s, Collisions, about a 12-year-old San Francisco girl coping with her mother’s detention by ICE; Museo, featuring a fine comic performance by Gael Garc ía Bernal as one of the thieves in a notorious 1980s Mexico City art theft; and El á ngel, a black humor- and pop music-laced biopic of a notorious Argentinian teen criminal.
I hope I’ve whet your appetite for this 41st edition of MVFF. What has been consistent with the festival from its conception is our belief that film is not only the most popular medium in the world but the most powerful. Bringing you the best of what the world has to offer—in international film, independent film, documentary, and even Hollywood film—is what we strive to do year after year. I think we have tons of the most powerful stories in any given year.
Mark Fishkin MVFF Founder/Director
FOUNDER/ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Mark Fishkin
FOUNDING BOARD
Rita Cahill
Mark Fishkin
Lois Kohl Shore
EMERITUS BOARD
Rita Cahill
Sid Ganis
Bruce Katz
Gary Meyer
Gordon Radley
Christopher B. Smith
Henry Timnick
Barbara Boxer
Stewart Boxer
Drusie Davis
Jeff Fisher
Peter Flaxman
ADVISORY BOARD
Robert Greber
Linda Gruber
Peggy Haas
Jessica Igoe
Michael Klein
Roxanne Klein
KC Lauck
Andrew McGuire
Mary Poland
Eric Schwartz
Michael Schwartz
Skip Whitney
as it brings the best in independent filmmaking to our community.
GRUBER FAMILY FOUNDATION
GOVERNMENT SUPPORT
C hristopher B. and Jeannie Meg Smith
Jim Boyce Trust and Kris Otis
Jim and Drusie Davis
Gruber Family Foundation
Ken and Jackie Broad Family Fund
Kamala Geroux-Berry and David Berry
Nancy Abodeely
Brian and Nina Arellanes
Leslie Walker Burlock
Alice Corning
Stephanie DiMarco
Dennis P. Fisco and Pamela Polite Fisco
Lorrie and Mark Fishkin
The Gibbs Family Charitable Fund
Griswold Family Fund,
Bob and Alex Griswold
Lynne Hale
Tom and Barbara Harrison
Margaret E. Haas
V ickie Soulier
Resonance Philanthropies
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Family Foundation
Genuine Article Pictures
Vivian Kaufman Fund
Daniel Kenyon and Michelle Marchetta Kenyon
Larry and Carie Haimovitch
Robin Hauser
Andree and John Jansheski
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K.C. and Steve Lauck
Kenneth and Vera Meislin
Harrison Miller and Clare McCamy
Stephen and Mary Mizroch
Cathy and Robert Nourafshan
Gertrud Parker
Jonathan and Deborah Parker
Je nnifer Coslett MacCready
Christine A. Schantz
Michael and Susan Schwartz Fund
Maggie O’Donnell and Josh Floum
The Jay Pritzker Foundation
Monahan Parker, Inc.
Mary and Bill Poland
Gordon Radley
Ginger and Howard Robin
Eric Schwartz and Magda Wesslund
Susan and Joel Sklar
Jann Stanley and Soren Dalsager
Mona Steinberg
Marjorie A. Swig Fund
Patricia Tanoury
Henry O. Timnick
Sue and Steve Weinswig
Paul Zaentz
We thank this vital group of individuals who believe in the power of storytelling through film to inspire, educate and entertain. Their support advances the expression of independent voices of individuals and cultures from around the globe.
Anonymous (3)
Clara Basile
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Carol DiFeo
Gayle Donsky and Morton J. Stein
Joanne Dunn
Michael Dyett and Heidi Richardson
Julie Erickson and Art Rothstein
James G. Eyton
Catherine and Peter Flaxman
Janet Fox
Gerald L. and Sheree A. Friedman
Frank Gaipa
Deborah Goldman
Linda Gomez
Michelle Griffin and Tom Parker
Maureen Groper
Amy Miller Gross
Monica Heredia and Robert Nelson
Richard J. Idell and Susan Kornblatt Idell
Devorah Jacoby
Elisabeth and Howard Jaffe
Willa Jefferson-Stokes
Don and Donna Kelleher
Pat Kendall
Dr. Joe Keon
Margaret Keon
Amy Keroes and Jeff Fisher
Thomas Koegel and Anne La Follette
Theo Koffler
Letty Ledbetter
Cynthia Maram
Cindy and John McCauley
Catherine and Ted McKown
James Mochizuki
Linda Morgan
Suki and Russell Munsell
Zara and Dennis Muren
Roberta O’Neale
Lorne and Ilona Parker
Ramesh and Alison Patel
Jill and Alex Petrov
Tucky and John Pogue
Mark and Dorian Polite
Rocco and Athena
Carolyn Cavalier Rosenberg, Dr. Sanford Rosenberg and Media Research Associates
Karen and Harry Rosenbluth
Naomi Saunders
Jeffrey Sellon and Marilyn Burns
Jack and Judy Sherman
Elliott and Shayna Stein
Carol Tabb
Laura Tauber
Lucinda Watson
Karen Williams
Kate Wilson
Cameo Wood
Zach and Marlies Zeisler
Mel and Patricia Ziegler
Things look a little different from a woman’s perspective.
MCF is proud to be the Leadership Partner for Mind the Gap, the Mill Valley Film Festival’s gender equity initiative. Let’s make sure every story is told.
Proud supporter of the
Congratulations to the talented and inspiring filmmakers for your hard work and accomplishments. See you at the movies.
Serving our community for over 150 years
Proud Supporter of the Mill Valley Film Festival
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Cavallo Point Lodge, just minutes from San Francisco, offers historic and contemporary accommodations with stunning Golden Gate Bridge and bay views. Experience fine dining at Murray Circle restaurant with local, ingredient-driven cuisine by Executive Chef Justin Everett.
Refresh and renew at the Healing Arts Center & Spa and enjoy 20% OFF* a facial, massage or body treatment on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Marianne Kolb : I am Here
October 2 - October 31, 2018
Reception for the Artist Saturday, October 6, 5:30 - 7:30
DELIVERING WELLNESS TO YOUR DOORSTEP
WELLNESS TO YOUR DOORSTEP
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We are a Medical Cannabis Delivery Service serving Marin County and the surrounding areas. We offer the highest grade flowers, edibles, lotions, teas, and tinctures on the market.
Welcome to Nice Guys Delivery!
We are a Medical Cannabis Delivery Service serving Marin County and the surrounding areas. We offer the highest grade flowers, edibles, lotions, teas, and tinctures on the market.
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DELIVERING WELLNESS TO YOUR DOORSTEP
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{ GAP Factory & Talbots OPENING SOON! }
For avid moviegoers, a film festival is a momentous event. For filmmakers, it is a venue for captivating viewers with their creative vision.
We applaud the Mill Valley Film Festival and the films that capture our imagination.
Guests: ROSAMUND PIKE and MATTHEW HEINEMAN
Four years after her Oscar ® -nominated breakthrough role in Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike delivers a breathtaking, career-defining performance in A Private War, transforming herself into the gravel-voiced, eye patch-donning American war correspondent Marie Colvin. Spanning nearly two decades, this powerful drama, which marks the narrative feature debut from Oscar-nominated director Matthew Heineman ( Cartel Land ), showcases the fearless dedication that pushes Colvin to the top of her otherwise male-dominated field, reporting from the dangerous frontlines of the Sri Lankan civil war and the Arab Spring. But that hyper focused, singular passion isn’t without a price, taking a toll on Colvin’s personal relationships as well as putting her own safety in jeopardy. Co-starring Stanley Tucci, Tom Hollander ( In the Loop ), and Jamie Dornan as Colvin’s trusted photo journalist partner Paul Conroy, A Private War is a gripping testament to both Colvin’s tenaciousness and Pike’s dedication to her craft. US PREMIERE —Diane de Monx
US/UK 2018, 106 min Director Matthew Heineman
Thursday, October 4 | 7:00pm | Smith Rafael Film Center
Program & Gala | $125 general | $110 CFI members
Program Only | $60 general | $55 CFI members
OPENING NIGHT SPONSOR
OPENING NIGHT GALA
9:00pm–Midnight | Live music by Notorius Gala Only | $90 general | $75 CFI members
2257 Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur
Guests: MAHERSHALA ALI and PETER FARRELLY
For classically trained Black jazz piano prodigy Dr. Don Shirley and his white chauffeur and bodyguard Tony Lip, a 1962 concert tour of the American South proves an eye-opening experience in unanticipated ways. Peter Farrelly’s sharply observed drama, spiked with wry humor and inspired by real-life events, features the prodigiously gifted Oscar ® winner Mahershala Ali ( Moonlight, MVFF 2016) as the ultra-sophisticated, polylingual Shirley, an elegant, mannered outsider wherever he goes and a transformed Viggo Mortensen ( Captain Fantastic ) as his truculent, semi-illiterate lip. Tooling around rural roads in a highly conspicuous turquoise Cadillac and getting into—and barely out of—life-threatening encounters together, each starts to see the real man beyond the other’s surface. The period details are spot-on, and so are the hate and the horror that greet a Black man in the Jim Crow South. Ali and Mortensen are pitch-perfect as an improbably matched pair, often at loggerheads, whose journey reaps unexpected and enduring rewards. US PREMIERE —Pam Grady US 2018, 130 min Director Peter Farrelly
Thursday, October 4 | 7:00pm | CinéArts Sequoia
Program & Gala | $125 general | $110 CFI members
Program Only | $60 general | $55 CFI members
OPENING NIGHT SPONSOR
OPENING NIGHT GALA
9:00pm–Midnight | Live music by Notorius Gala Only | $90 general | $75 CFI members
2257 Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur
J eff v an h arte, cfa CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER
C HRIS B ONAVICO, CFA
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Guest: ALFONSO CUARÓN
Oscar ® winner Alfonso Cuarón ( Gravity, Children of Men) returns to his homeland in marvelous style with his first Mexican film since his breakout Y tu mamá también (MVFF 2001). Set in 1970, Roma centers on Cleo (a wonderful Yalitza Aparicio), the indigenous housekeeper to a large Mexico City family. With remarkable attention to detail, Cuarón lovingly captures the energy and textures of his youth, from the movie palaces and slums to the affluent rancheros and crowded hospitals. As Cleo faces her own personal crisis, we also see a country beset with natural disasters and civil unrest. But through it all is the bonding she experiences with three generations of women she works for in a story where compassion, loyalty, and love can transcend differences in class and culture. It’s an emotional epic, filmed (by Cuarón himself) in beautiful black and white with hat tips to Renoir and Fellini. Intensely personal and profoundly moving, Roma is a stunner and deservedly won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival. In Spanish with English subtitles —Sterling Hedgpeth Mexico 2018, 135 min Director Alfonso Cuarón
Our Centerpiece program features an onstage conversation with Alfonso Cuarón and a screening of Roma. Join us after the program for a celebratory reception at Elks Lodge in San Rafael.
Monday, October 8 | 6:00pm | Smith Rafael Film Center
Program & Party | $85 general | $75 CFI members
Program Only | $45 general | $40 CFI members
CENTERPIECE SPONSOR
RECEPTION SPONSORS
Guest: BARRY JENKINS
In arguably the year’s most anticipated film, Academy Award ® winner Barry Jenkins follows his iconic Moonlight (MVFF 2016) with a poetic, astonishingly realized adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel, If Beale Street Could Talk. Diving into the world of 1970s Harlem, Jenkins uses Baldwin’s profound and enlightened look at African American life in the US to express a universal tale of the strengths of love and family in an unjust, imperfect world. Newcomers KiKi Layne (in her first feature film) and Stephan James (Selma) play teenage lovers Tish and Fonny, whose lives are turned upside down when Tish discovers she’s pregnant and Fonny is thrown in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. With the help of her mother, played by multiple Emmy ® -winning actress Regina King ( American Crime), Tish begins a fight for justice, trying to free her innocent husband from prison. Aunjanue Ellis, Colman Domingo, Dave Franco, Diego Luna, and Pedro Pascal round out the impressive supporting cast. —Joe Bowman
US 2018, 117 min Director Barry Jenkins
Sunday, October 14 | 5:00pm | Smith Rafael Film Center Sunday, October 14 | 5:00pm | CinéArts Sequoia
Program & Party | $90 general | $80 CFI members
Program Only | $50 general | $45 CFI members
CLOSING NIGHT SPONSOR
CLOSING NIGHT PARTY
7:00–10:00pm | San Rafael Elk’s Lodge 1312 Mission Ave, San Rafael
The Mind the Gap Award honors creatives, leaders, and technistas whose work has helped close the gender gap in the film industry and in our lives. Recognizing talents both above and below the line, the Award celebrates their groundbreaking achievements and acknowledges their importance as role models.
The Mind the Gap Award is a custom-designed gold pendant with a moonstone and a diamond accent. Each pendant is individually cast, finished, and numbered. The moonstone symbolizes female power and bridges the gap in the design, the diamond represents aspirations, the chain honors suffragettes who chained themselves to railings as they fought for the right to vote.
Inaugurated in 2007, the Mill Valley Film Festival Award is a specially designed bronze sculpture created by Mill Valley artist Alice Corning, each one individually cast for the recipient in a numbered, limited edition. The MVFF Award is presented to the recipients of Tributes and Spotlights, our special programs honoring and celebrating the work of distinguished artists and innovators in the filmmaking community.
An MVFF Tribute program celebrates lifetime achievements in the career of a significant film artist.
2017 K ristin Scott Thomas
2017 Rose Marie
2017 Holly Hunter
2017 Todd Haynes
2017 Sean Penn
2016 Nicole Kidman
2016 Julie Dash
2015 C atherine Hardwicke
2015 Ian McKellen
2015 Marcel Ophüls
2014 L aura Dern
2014 Chuck Workman
2013 Geoffrey Rush
2013 Ben Stiller
2013 Costa-Gavras
2012 Dustin Hoffman
2012 Mira Nair
2011 Glenn Close
2011 Gaston Kaboré
2010 Annette Bening
2010 Edward Norton
2009 Anna Karina
2009 Uma Thurman
2009 Woody Harrelson
2008 Eric Roth
2008 Harriet Andersson
2008 Paul Schrader
2008 Alfre Woodard
2007 Ang Lee
“The purpose is to show the power and dignity of a human being… as it is with great work in film.” — Alice Corning
An MVFF Spotlight program celebrates exceptional work by a film artist in their most current work. Honorees may be in early, mid, or late career.
2017 Dee Rees (Mudbound )
2017 Margot Robbie (I, Tonya )
2017 Jason Clarke (Chappaquiddick )
2017 Andrew Garfield (Breathe)
2017 Greta Gerwig (Ladybird )
2016 Ewan McGregor ( American Pastoral )
2016 Gael García Bernal (Neruda)
2016 Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Lucas Jade Zumann, Mike Mills (20th Century Women )
2016 Aaron Eckhart (Bleed for This)
2015 Brie Larson (Room )
2015 C arey Mulligan (Suffragette)
2015 Sarah Silverman (I Smile Back )
2014 Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything )
2014 Elle Fanning (Low Down)
2013 Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
2013 Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave )
2013 Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave )
2012 John Hawkes (The Sessions)
2012 Billy Bob Thornton (Jayne Mansfield’s Car )
2011 Michelle Yeoh (The Lady )
2011 Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene )
2011 E zra Miller (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
2010 James Franco (127 Hours)
2010 Alejandro González Iñárritu (Biutiful )
2009 Clive Owen (The Boys Are Back )
2009 Jason Reitman (Up in the Air )
2008 Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky )
2007 Jennifer Jason Leigh (Margot at the Wedding )
2007 Terry George (Reservation Road )
A block away from the Rafael, visit Vin Antico for pre movie oysters, or small bites after the movie. Lunch and dinner. Happy Hour Mon-Fri, full bar, private dining space. The Loft is now open Upstairs
Carey Mulligan (MVFF Award 2015) exploded onto the independent film scene with her unforgettably tender and moving performance in Lone Scherfig’s An Education (MVFF 2009). and her career has gathered momentum ever since. A constantly in-demand actress, her work in the films Drive, Shame (MVFF 2011), The Great Gatsby, Mudbound (MVFF 2017), and Suffragette (MVFF 2015) has won praise from audiences and critics alike, a trend that has continued with her latest project, Wildlife
Paul Dano is the true Hollywood multihyphenate: actor-director-screenwriter-producer-musician. The extraordinarily talented Dano started out strong on the Broadway stage and won the 2002 Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance in L.I.E. His burgeoning career sky-rocketed in 2007 with back-to-back acclaimed performances in Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood. Dano continued to receive accolades for his performances in 12 Years a Slave (MVFF 2013), Love & Mercy, Swiss Army Man, and Okja, among several others. Based on the Robert Ford novel, Wildlife, adapted with life and work partner Zoe Kazan, marks Dano’s auspicious directorial debut.
Amid a trio of great performances in Paul Dano’s assured directorial debut, Carey Mulligan is a standout, brilliantly revealing a woman’s emergence from her husband’s shadow to find her own liberation, potentially wounding those she loves in the process. The focus is on a teenager growing up amid parental strife in small-town Montana in the early 1960s. Patriarch Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) has relocated his family again for a menial new job while dissatisfied wife Jeanette (Mulligan) feels trapped by her circumstances and son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) just hopes to stay long enough to make friends. Surely and delicately, the film depicts the growing rift between Jerry and Jeanette—he leaves to go fight fires while she becomes more forthright and impulsive—and how it forces Joe to find his own interests and allegiances. Dano and actor Zoe Kazan ( The Big Sick) collaborated on the screenplay of this evocative adaptation of Richard Ford’s acclaimed novel. —Rod Armstrong US 2018, 104 min Director Paul Dano
Our Spotlight program features an onstage conversation with Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano, a screening of Wildlife, and an Award presentation. Join us after the program for a celebratory reception at Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley.
Friday, October 5 | 6:30pm | CinéArts Sequoia Program & Reception | $85 general | $75 CFI members Program only | $45 general | $40 CFI members
SPOTLIGHT SPONSOR
RECEPTION SPONSOR
by Leah LoSchiavo
Born on opposite sides of the Atlantic almost exactly one year apart, actor-director Paul Dano and actress Carey Mulligan (MVFF Award, 2015) have aligned their considerable talents in harmonious collaboration to bring the film Wildlife vividly to life on the big screen.
The correlations between the careers of these future collaborators bear remarkable symmetry. Both Dano and Mulligan knew from an early age that they wanted to perform, and both began their careers as teenagers in theater. Dano first trod the boards at 12 in the 1996 National Actors Theatre Broadway production of Inherit the Wind, while Mulligan debuted at 19 in the Royal Court Theatre production of Forty Winks in London. Both built up strong résumés in television and theater, as well as in small film roles, before each took challenging lead roles in strongly reviewed and universally acclaimed independent films: Michael Cuesta’s L.I.E. for Dano in 2001 and Lone Scherfig’s An Education (MVFF 2008) for Mulligan. Alike as their career paths have been, variations in their trajectories mark distinct tracks uniquely their own.
Born in New York in 1984 and primarily raised in Wilton, Connecticut, Dano’s family encouraged his acting aspirations as he became involved in community theater. This road led to his early work on Broadway, and eventually his Independent Spirit Award win for Best Debut Performance in L.I.E. He maintained his career momentum, appearing in the TV movie Too Young to Be a Dad (2002) before garnering a small role in the Angelina Jolie-Ethan Hawke vehicle Taking Lives (2004) and playing key supporting roles opposite Gael García Bernal in James Marsh’s The King (2005) and Daniel Day-Lewis in Rebecca Miller’s The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005).
Dano’s consistently impressive approach came to great fruition in 2006, for the role of Dwayne, a voluntarily mute teenager in the Oscar ® -winning dark comedy Little Miss Sunshine. That same year, Dano’s previous work with Daniel Day-Lewis led to a dual role opposite him in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, playing identical twin brothers Eli and Paul Sunday. His outstanding work in the film earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor and brought him numerous accolades in addition to widespread recognition.
Dano continued to pursue challenging work in film and theater, attacking meaty roles in films Gigantic (2008), The Good Heart (2009), Knight and Day (2010), Meek’s Cutoff (2010), Cowboys and Aliens (2011), Ruby Sparks (2012), Looper (2012), Prisoners (2013), and 12 Years a Slave (MVFF 2013), and on stage in the Ethan Hawke-directed Off-Broadway play Things We Want (2007) and at Lincoln Center in A Free Man of Color (2011). His well-received performance as a young Brian Wilson in 2014’s Love & Mercy earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In recent years, Dano has appeared in a diverse array of films such as Youth (MVFF 2015), Swiss Army Man
(2016), and Okja (2017), on television in the BBC’s adaptation of War & Peace (2016) and Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora (2018). Next year, he returns to the stage opposite Ethan Hawke in the Roundabout Theatre’s revival of Sam Shepard’s True West. In addition to these accomplishments, Dano lives and works with his partner Zoe Kazan ( The Big Sick, Olive Kitteridge) and, until recently, performed in the indie rock outfit Mook, formed with friends from his Connecticut hometown.
Across the pond, Carey Mulligan was born in Westminster, London in 1985, and partially raised in Germany before settling into suburban family life in Surrey. Like Dano, her interest in acting began early, and she immersed herself in all aspects of theatrical performance and production, despite her parents’ concerns regarding the stability of her chosen profession. Mulligan’s determination and dedication to the craft led to a fortuitous audition for Joe Wright’s 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. She won the role of Kitty Bennet just one year after her stage debut at the Royal Court Theatre. This led to her subsequent television debut in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House (2005) as well as supporting roles in telefilms My Boy Jack (2007) and Northanger Abbey (2007) and a 2007 guest role on Doctor Who. She triumphantly concluded 2007 with her performance as Nina in Anton Chekov’s The Seagull opposite MVFF 2017 Tributee Kristin Scott Thomas and MVFF 2013 Spotlight recipient Chiwetel Ejiofor, which garnered her a Drama Desk Award nomination during its American staging on Broadway.
Mulligan took the independent film world by storm in 2008 with An Education, earning her nearly every major acting nomination and landing a BAFTA win. She carried on her promising career with dynamic performances in The Greatest (2009),
Never Let Me Go (2010), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), Drive (2011), Shame (MVFF 2011), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), The Great Gatsby (2013), Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), Suffragette (MVFF 2015), and Mudbound (MVFF 2017). She has also maintained her commanding stage career, earning raves for her performances in the Atlantic Theatre Company’s production of Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly (2011) and the Wyndham’s Theatre revival of David Hare’s Skylight (2015). Mulligan’s Tony-nominated performance was praised effusively by The New York Times’ Ben Brantley as “extraordinary” and “acting of the highest order.”
In addition to her acting career, Mulligan is raising a growing family with husband Marcus Mumford of the band Mumford and Sons and is actively engaged in charity work with the Safe Project, the Alzheimer’s Society, and the War Child organization.
In September 2016, Dano and Mulligan’s professional paths converged, with the announcement that Mulligan would star opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Dano’s feature directorial debut, an adaptation of Richard Ford’s novel Wildlife
Ford’s work was initially published in 1990 and didn’t find its way to Dano until 2011. But once arriving in the mind of the acclaimed actor, the match was set, and Dano couldn’t shake the 1960s-era family drama as the impetus for his first foray into directing. Dano states: “In Richard’s book, I saw myself and many others. I have always wanted to make films—and have always known I would make films about family.” Dano related to the novel’s sensitive exploration of intense familial dynamics, extending the close threads of the intertwining story through his writing collaboration with partner Kazan. Dano conceptualized the film over a course of a few years, daydreaming and making notes on subway rides, eventually pitching the adaptation to Ford, optioning the rights, and drafting the initial script, which was then polished into shape by Kazan. After several more passes—with the couple allowing the script to rest, be reworked, and take new directions—Dano felt his way forward to begin production and bring his cinematic subway daydreams to reality.
What has emerged is a film nearly a decade in the making, a story centered on the perspective of a teenage boy who witnesses the disintegration of his parents’ marriage after an ill-fated move to Montana. Produced by June Pictures and Nine Stories Productions, Wildlife had its premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where it was picked up by IFC Films for release in the US in fall 2018. Garnering strong praise at the Cannes’ Semaine de la critique, it has been picking up steam and distinction on the festival circuit at the New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and, in due course, our own 41st Mill Valley Film Festival. At Cannes, the director of Critics Week, Charles Tesson, drew comparisons to the work of Jeff Nichols (Mud, Midnight Special ), noting in Variety that the film has “a timeless dimension, as well as a social
bent because it deals with the struggles of the white working class while also exploring the characters’ emotions with great sensibility.”
At Sundance, actors Mulligan and Gyllenhaal offered nothing but affection and great pride in the process of working with Dano. “Paul was kind of everything you wanted in a director,” Mulligan said. “He’s encouraging, challenging, and inquisitive about things, understands when you get stuck in a rut or have a moment of self-doubt and knows how to get you out of it because he’s been in those ruts. I just knew he was going to make a brilliant film because he makes brilliant choices in his own work, and I could only imagine he would narrow all those instincts in a film that he made. I think he has.”
For his part, Dano credits Ford’s original book as the inspiration for the film’s true power: “I think something he captured that I loved was the feeling that family is one of the greatest loves of our life, and because of that, it’s one of the greatest sources of struggle and possibly pain in our life.”
Dano plans to continue directing and sees Wildlife as the first in a series of films he wants to make examining all the unique ways in which dysfunctional families express themselves. For the initial enterprise of Wildlife, he seems quite pleased with the outcome and credits the joint effort of his team for crafting the finished work of art that Wildlife has become: “I couldn’t be happier to have such beautiful collaborators like Carey and Jake leading the way.”
Leah LoSchiavo is a marketing coordinator and writer. Between the two, she is pretty certain she’s on a deadline for something right now.
Paweł Pawlikowski has garnered a reputation for doing things his own way. He began his career in 1990, crafting BBC-commissioned documentaries around Eastern Europe. His first two breakthrough films received top accolades at the BAFTA Awards: Last Resort (2000) won the Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer, and My Summer of Love (2004) took home the prestigious Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film. Pawlikowski took a hiatus from filmmaking following My Summer of Love, but he resurfaced with the French production The Woman in the Fifth (2011), starring MVFF 2017 Tributee Kristin Scott Thomas. In 2013, Pawlikowski delved into his past with his first feature in his native Poland, Ida, which would go on to win awards across the globe, including the Oscar ® for Best Foreign Language Film. His latest film, Cold War, explores the dynamic of his parents’ star-crossed romance and won the Best Director prize at Cannes.
COLD WAR (ZIMNA WOJNA)
Based loosely on the lives of his parents—to whom the film is dedicated—Oscar® -winning director Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War paints a portrait of complicated love during a period of great peril. This bittersweet drama, shot in luminous black and white, traces the courtship of Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a composer, and Zula (Joanna Kulig), a singer and dancer, over several years, with their tempestuous relationship mirroring the fear and uncertainty of life during Communism. Much like Pawlikowski’s acclaimed Ida, Cold War examines mid-century Poland with somber specificity, but the actors’ performances bring a fire to this deceptively elegant romance. Pawlikowski tells his story in scattered vignettes, like a faded scrapbook with pages missing, resulting in a dreamy, half-remembered reverie. Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Cold War ’s message of how love ebbs and flows—and also how it’s shaped by the trauma of its times—will speak to audiences all over the world. In Polish, French, and German with English subtitles —Tim Grierson Poland/France/UK 2018, 88 min Director Paweł Pawlikowski
Our Tribute program features an onstage conversation with Paweł Pawlikowski, a screening of Cold War, and the presentation of the MVFF Award. Join us after the program for a celebratory reception at Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley.
Friday, October 5 | 7:00pm | Smith Rafael Film Center
Program & Reception | $85 general | $75 CFI members
Program only | $45 general | $40 CFI members
TRIBUTE SPONSOR
RECEPTION SPONSOR GRUBER FAMILY
by Joe Bowman
“In France, crimes of passion are forgiven,” Tamsin (Emily Blunt) tells Mona (Natalie Press) in Paweł Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love (2004). Tamsin, posh and privileged, utters this line to her less worldly companion while taking liberties in recounting the life of French chanteuse, Édith Piaf, but that single line echoes through not only his exquisite feature—which would go on to win the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the BAFTAs—but nearly all of the Polish-born director’s work in some regard. Passion, destiny, and romantic displacement, intertwined with music and occasionally a bit of danger, are the common threads that run through Pawlikowski’s oeuvre, all of which come together with breathtaking elegance in his latest, Cold War ( Zimna wojna).
Born in Warsaw in 1957, the young Pawlikowski only spent his first 14 years in communist Poland before relocating to Germany and the UK with his mother. Eventually, he’d settle in London and study literature, before his filmmaking career would begin in British television in the late 1980s. Through the first part of the 1990s, Pawlikowski (then going by the name Paul Pawlikowski) directed a series of hour-long documentaries for the BBC, mostly focused on Eastern Europe. From Moscow to Pietushki: A Journey with Benedict Yerofeyev (1990), Dostoevsky’s Travels (1991), and Tripping with Zhirinovsky (1995) would focus on Russia and the former Soviet Union, while Serbian Epics (1992) took an unorthodox approach to war reporting in the early years of the Bosnian War.
Pawlikowski’s background in documentary filmmaking would inform his approach to narrative cinema in a number of ways. The director’s first major breakthrough in narrative cinema came in
2000 with Last Resort, a vérité kitchen sink drama about a Russian woman and her son seeking asylum in England. With the sort of naturalistic style that would define the works of British masters Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, Last Resort would set Pawlikowski on an impressive award trajectory, claiming prizes at the London Film Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the Thessaloniki Film Festival before winning the Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer at the BAFTAs (a prize that would also be awarded to such other talents in British cinema as Lynne Ramsay, Andrea Arnold, and Joe Wright).
His subsequent feature, My Summer of Love, would cement Paweł Pawlikowski’s name on the international film circuit and would explore many of the director’s themes and obsessions, as well as crafting his unmistakable visual style. On one level, My Summer of Love depicts a coming-of-age tale alongside the blossoming romance between two young women in the Yorkshire countryside, but like all of his other features, these elements merely provide the basework for a complex and astonishing examination of character, setting, and self-exploration. Again taking from his years working as a documentarian for the BBC, Pawlikowski began shooting My Summer of Love without a complete script, using Helen Cross’ novel of the same name simply as a jumping off point. Re-enlisting Paddy Considine from Last Resort to play the protagonist Mona’s born-again Christian brother, Pawlikowski cast Press—who had previously appeared in Andrea Arnold’s Oscar ® -winning short Wasp —and Blunt in their first major screen roles, allowing the actors to improvise with one another and shaping the narrative around their exquisite chemistry.
Where Last Resort dealt with immigrants immediately landing in a new country, My Summer of Love concerned local Brits with their eyes on the horizon. Romanticizing the pain and art of Édith Piaf while dancing to “La foule,” gawking at the local townsfolk at a dance hall, and lamenting the quietness and stillness of their country setting, Mona and Tamsin fuel one another’s dreams of the future, while nursing the wounds of their own past. With a dreamlike score by the band Goldfrapp, My Summer of Love would also reteam Pawlikowski with Polish cinematographer Ryszard Lenczewski following Last Resort, and together they would craft a sumptuous, sunkissed visual landscape that would move the director’s work into an almost magical realism. In addition to the Best British Film Award at the BAFTAs and other film festival prizes, My Summer of Love would also win the Best European Film category at the Polish Film Awards.
Personal tragedy would prevent Pawlikowski from making his next feature for nearly seven years. When his wife fell ill in 2006,
Pawlikowski abandoned an adaptation of Magnus Mills’ novel The Restraint of Beasts starring Rhys Ifans and Ben Whishaw, to care for his wife and children; she died several months later. His return to the director’s chair in 2011 would take him from the UK to Paris for his first French production, a loose adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s novel The Woman in the Fifth, entitled La femme du Vème. Moody and with an unshakable sense of melancholy, the film centered around a defamed American professor, played by Ethan Hawke, who relocates to the City of Lights to reconnect with his young daughter, crossing paths with a mysterious English woman (Kristin Scott Thomas) and a Polish barmaid (Joanna Kulig). Cryptic and a bit unsettling, The Woman in the Fifth wouldn’t achieve the sort of widespread acclaim and success that his previous and subsequent features would, but it’s still essential viewing for Pawlikowski fans. “It left audiences baffled,” Pawlikowski admitted in an interview in support of Cold War. “It had no cultural identity: a French film, American, British, French actors, a Polish director. Although it came from a book, I ignored the book’s plot and put a lot of my confused self into it.”
After over 25 years of working in both the UK and France, Pawlikowski would return to his native Poland to make his first feature there, giving the country its very first Academy Award ® for Best Foreign Language Film for Ida (not to mention other top prizes at the European Film Awards, the BAFTAs, the Film Independent Spirit Awards, and the Polish Film Awards). Poland hadn’t been a communist nation for almost the entire duration of Pawlikowski’s filmmaking career, but in a sense, destiny would take Pawlikowski in the footsteps of the generation of great Polish filmmakers who self-exiled during the communist regime. Andrzej Žuławski, Agnieszka Holland, and Andrzej Wajda each found themselves back in Poland after achieving success and acclaim making films in France and Germany.
With Ida, he would take the story of a young Catholic nun, Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), on the verge of taking her vows in 1960s Poland, and use it as the tool for an exploration of identity and history—for both Poland and Pawlikowski himself. An orphan raised in the convent, Anna is forced to meet her only living relative, her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), where she discovers her family’s Jewish heritage, and the two women set out on a journey to find out what really happened to her parents during the Nazi occupation. Pawlikowski was shocked to discover in his teen years that his paternal grandmother was Jewish and died in a concentration camp at Auschwitz.
With little interest in a history lesson of Poland during and after WWII, Pawlikowski foregoes unnecessary exposition as Ida pushed him to the heights of visual storytelling and narrative. With his regular cinematographer Lenczewski and Łukasz Žal (who would take over the production when Lenczewski fell ill), every frame of Ida looks like it belongs mounted in a museum. Though the director would cite functional and budgetary needs when discussing the visual style of Ida and subsequently Cold War—both are shot in black and white in a 4:3 aspect ratio that was commonplace in cinema before the advent of television— these artistic decisions don’t just place the films in the cinematic
timeline of when they’re set, but harken back to the visual storytelling of the silent era... though with a key difference: the infusion of music within the films.
In Cold War, Tamsin’s anecdote comes fully to life, combining all of that simple phrase’s elements—France, passion, crime, music, and forgiveness—into a truly spellbinding work of cinema. It’s easily his most ambitious work, spanning several decades and numerous countries (France playing a key role), but it retains the sort of intimacy that defined his earlier films. In essence, it’s the story of his parents’ explosive, star-crossed love affair. The characters, Zula (Joanna Kulig in her third feature with Pawlikowski) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), share the names and the dynamic of his parents, though several key details—namely their professions in the music industry—were changed to fit the narrative. The two meet while Wiktor and his then-wife begin a talent search for a folk music and dance ensemble.
Bolstered by dynamic performances from Kulig and Kot, Cold War crackles with fire and passion onscreen, showcasing Pawlikowski at the height of his artistic talents. His first film to screen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Cold War garnered Pawlikowski the coveted Best Director prize, which will surely be the start of a series of festival and industry awards for the film. The Mill Valley Film Festival is proud to present a tribute to the distinguished director and bestow him with the MVFF Award.
Joe Bowman is the publications managing editor for MVFF and based in San Francisco.
Kaiser Permanente is a proud sponsor of the Mill Valley Film Festival
Guests: TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET, AMY RYAN, and FELIX VAN GROENINGEN
Culling from the bestselling memoirs of both father and son David and Nic Sheff, Oscar ® -nominated director Felix van Groeningen’s ( The Broken Circle Breakdown) English-language debut is a kaleidoscopic and moving portrait of an American family coping with addiction. Frequent Rolling Stone contributor David (Steve Carell) sees his teenage son Nic’s (an unforgettable Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name, MVFF 2017) marijuana use as harmless experimentation until he begins to spiral out of control on heroin and crystal meth. What follows is a alternately inspiring and unflinching look at a family begins the long cycle of rehab and relapse, hope and dread. Filmed in San Francisco and Marin County, Beautiful Boy features a diverse soundtrack which includes John Lennon, Nirvana, and Sigur Rós and outstanding supporting performances from Maura Tierney and Amy Ryan as Nic’s maternal figures. —Joe Bowman US 2018, 111 min Director Felix van Groeningen
Saturday, October 6 | 3:00pm | Smith Rafael Film Center
Program | $45 general | $40 CFI members
SPECIAL PRESENTATION SPONSORS
JENNIFER COSLETT MACCREADY
WITH SUPPORT FROM INTREPID STUDIOS
Guests: ANNA PAQUIN, DENIS O’HARE, and STEPHEN MOYER
An unexpected death. A family struggling with grief. An apprehensive cross-country road trip in winter. These events set the stage for a powerful, nuanced, and emotionally resonant drama centering on a family pilgrimage to the apartment of Colleen (Anna Paquin) after her demise. The Parting Glass follows siblings Dan (Denis O’Hare), Mare (Cynthia Nixon), and Ally (Melissa Leo) as they reunite with their father (Ed Asner) and Colleen’s estranged husband (Rhys Ifans). The wonderful rapport of the stellar powerhouse cast makes them instantly believable as family—talking over each other, or bickering about something as simple as ordering breakfast, imbuing the film with an aura of honesty and tenderness in a deeply moving portrait of loss. This impressive directorial debut from acclaimed actor Stephen Moyer reunites him with fellow True Blood stars Paquin, who also co-produced, and O’Hare, who wrote the screenplay based on his own experience coping with his sister’s suicide. NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE —Elliott Breeden
US 2018, 95 min Director Stephen Moyer
Join us after the screening to celebrate the North American Premiere of The Parting Glass.
Saturday, October 6 | 5:00pm | CinéArts Sequoia
Program & Party | $85 general | $75 CFI members
Program Only | $45 general | $40 CFI members
Outdoor Art Club
1 W Blithdale Ave, Mill Valley
Intrepid
Actor-director-writer-producer Joel Edgerton has been slowly burning up big and small screens since 1995 in a range of diverse projects (Star Wars: Episodes II and III, Warrior, Zero Dark Thirty, Animal Kingdom, Black Mass, Midnight Special) building to leading man status in recent projects Loving (MVFF 2016), It Comes at Night, and Red Sparrow His first foray into directing, The Gift, landed him a nomination by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directing. Boy Erased is his second feature as director, already a certain shoo-in for accolades this awards season.
Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, and Russell Crowe deliver astonishing performances as a devoted Baptist family whose lives are turned upside down after a malicious phone call outs their teenage son, prompting them to send him to a church-sponsored gay conversion camp. Seventeen-year-old Jared reluctantly agrees to his preacher father’s ultimatum: Fix your same-sex attraction or leave the family. Quickly, Jared realizes that the camp’s aggressive, manipulative methods are doing little to shift his own sexual proclivities or those of his peers (which include Canadian auteur Xavier Dolan and pop superstar Troye Sivan), bringing him to a crossroads that will forever alter his life. In his second directorial outing, actor Joel Edgerton ( Loving , MVFF 2016) takes the role of the fiery camp leader. Edgerton’s adaptation of Garrard Conley’s harrowing memoir is a sensitive, elliptical coming-of-age tale that depicts a universal story of personal struggles that threaten to dissolve familial bonds. —Joe Bowman US 2018, 114 min Director Joel Edgerton
Our Spotlight program features an onstage conversation with Joel Edgerton, a screening of Boy Erased , and the presentation of the MVFF Award. Join us after the program for a celebratory reception at the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley.
Sunday, October 7 | 6:00pm | CinéArts Sequoia
Program & Reception | $85 general | $75 CFI members
Program only | $45 general | $40 CFI members
SPOTLIGHT SPONSOR
RECEPTION SPONSOR
by Pam Grady
Joel Edgerton steps into the Mill Valley Film Festival spotlight this year with his new drama Boy Erased, adapted from Garrard Conley’s memoir. The actor and filmmaker avails himself of all his talents in this story of a teenager (Lucas Hedges) sent to a gay conversion camp by his parents: It is his second feature directorial effort. He wrote the screenplay. He is a producer of the movie. And he costars as the head of the camp.
Two years ago, Edgerton attended MVFF Closing Night in support of Jeff Nichols’ Loving (MVFF 2016). He ultimately would be nominated for a Golden Globe® for his performance as Richard Loving opposite Ruth Negga as his wife Mildred, the plaintiffs in the landmark Supreme Court case that made mixed-race marriage legal throughout the United States. That he would be back so soon with another film dealing with a hot-button social issue is probably not a coincidence. That he cares about such things was evident when he was promoting Loving and making the parallel between Richard and Mildred’s situation and that of the situation in his home country of Australia where gay marriage was still illegal. (The law has since been amended.)
hiding behind God knows what and other people’s opinions, and they’re preventing themselves from allowing the rights and freedoms of two men or two women to be married to each other… You can’t stop change. Flow with it. Don’t put your name on the other side of the river. Love will find a way.”
Edgerton’s fate was probably sealed in 1982, when he was just eight years old. That was the year his father brought home a video camera. Joel and his older brother Nash quickly turned the family home and its five acres of surroundings in the Sydney suburb of Dural into their first movie set, spending their childhood and adolescence in their first baby steps toward their eventual career as filmmakers. While Nash began his professional life as a stuntman, Joel turned to acting, studying drama at the University of Western Sydney Nepean Drama School.
“You can’t stop change. Flow with it. Don’t put your name on the other side of the river. Love will find a way.”
His career launched almost simultaneously in theater, film, and television. He made his debut with the Sydney Theatre Company in 1995 in Nick Enright’s drama Blackrock, playing one of three young men who commit a gang rape. That same year he made his first TV appearances with guest roles on the Australian series Police Rescue and Spellbinders. In 1996, Edgerton’s first film was a Halle Berry vehicle shot largely in Australia entitled Race the Sun
“Loving reaches out with sort of a vicious grip,” Edgerton said during the Toronto International Film Festival. “It’s a gentle movie, but it has a real vice-like grip on very, very important current topics, the two big ones being questions of racial tension and otherness and the other big one, which can almost be under the same banner in some regards, is the otherness in regard to marriage equality. That is currently a hot debate, still, in Australia, sadly. It’s still not approved, the government is still
Two things happened shortly after the turn of the century. In 2000, Edgerton received his first Australian Film Institute award nomination for Best Lead Actor in a Television Drama for his role in the series The Secret Life of Us, winning the award for the role two years later. Then in 2002 came a big break when George Lucas cast him as Owen Lars in Star Wars: Episode II –Attack of the Clones, a role he reprised three years later in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. He was still building his
career in his native Australia, earning another Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 2002 for his turn as a bank robber in The Hard Word, appearing opposite Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom in the Oz oater Ned Kelly (2003), and playing a promoter who books Frank Sinatra (Dennis Hopper) for an Australian tour in The Night We Called It a Day (2003). But Edgerton’s international career was just about to take off.
Among Edgerton’s most valuable tools as an actor is his facility with accents, essaying an English knight Gawain in King Arthur (2004), a Northampton lad (complete with regional accent) and shoe manufacturer Charlie in 2005’s Kinky Boots (where he got into the spirit of the piece about the unlikely friendship between a straitlaced yuppie and a drag performer by donning thighhigh stiletto boots at the climax), American Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (2013), and soft-spoken Virginian working man Richard Loving. For Black Mass (2015), the story of gangster Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp), Edgerton accepted the challenge of learning not just a Boston accent—one of the most notoriously difficult to get right—but the particular South Boston accent of a living person, former FBI agent John Connolly. He nailed it.
“There’s something special about the specificity of different accents, I realized a while ago, if I had one source,” Edgerton said in an interview in Zimbio. “It starts with that for me. I take a passage of someone’s voice—I had all these court conversations of John Connolly (in Black Mass) and daytime TV interviews. I’d literally write them down, have a piece of paper with a minute and a half of John Connolly stuff, listen to it, listen to it, mimic it, mimic it, until it goes beyond.”
While Edgerton was building his acting career, he was on a parallel track as a filmmaker. He, Nash Edgerton, and a group of their Australian contemporaries started a collective, BlueTongue Films, to push along their own projects. In an interview in the San Francisco Chronicle, Joel said the name of the company came from the reptiles he and Nash turned into pets when they were children—and also for the amount of swearing in their earliest films.
In the first years of Blue-Tongue Films, Joel Edgerton worked on shorts, writing scripts, producing, and acting. In 2010, he won his second Australian Film Institute Award, for Best Supporting Actor, for his turn in the thriller Animal Kingdom, a Blue-Tongue project. But prior to that, in 2008, Nash Edgerton, by now an award-winning filmmaker of shorts, made his feature film directing debut with The Square. The neo-noir about a pair of lovers who steal a gangster’s cash in a bid to start a new life was written by Joel Edgerton with Matthew Dabney, from a story by Joel. In addition to serving as an executive producer, Joel also played the supporting role of an arsonist pulled into the couple’s unraveling world. The Square was nominated for seven Australian Film Institute awards, including Best Film and Best Original Screenplay. Joel Edgerton also received a Best Supporting Actor nod. The collaboration was also a reflection of the Edgerton siblings’ relationship.
“Because of what we’d done with our short films and stuff and I love my brother, I just thought it would be cool to make the first one something he wrote,” Nash Edgerton told the San Francisco Chronicle
Joel Edgerton wrote and directed a couple of shorts, The List (2008) and Monkeys (2011), and wrote screenplays for the features Felony (2013) and Jane Got a Gun (2015). Then in 2015, he penned the script for his feature directing debut The Gift. In this smart, critically acclaimed psychological thriller, Edgerton takes the role of Gordo, a bullied kid in high school whose nickname was “Gordo the Weirdo.”
“It’s a daily struggle for a lot of people,” Edgerton told the Wall Street Journal of Gordo’s dual nature of victim and victimizer. “I know I have it—an oscillation between ‘Am I a good person?’ or ‘Am I a bad person?’ and the times that you stumble and feel you’ve gone backward. Apart from serial killers and the odd dictator, human beings are fallible, but I don’t think we’re born into the world villains.”
Boy Erased made its introductory bow in September at the Telluride Film Festival. Once again, Edgerton has written a story where the characters have dimension and depth. There are no cardboard villains. At the same time, he uses his young protagonist’s story to dramatize the horror of gay conversion therapy.
“Edgerton’s career as a filmmaker rises to a whole new level with this sophomore effort,” writes critic Stephen Farber in the Hollywood Reporte r. “Boy Erased aims to influence the debate on gay conversion therapy that is still unresolved in many parts of the country, but it deserves praise not as a polemic but as a richly humanistic, emotionally searing drama that sticks in the memory.”
For this, and a career beginning with a young boy’s dreams in a Sydney suburb that has risen to the heights of artistic success as a director, writer, and actor, the Mill Valley Film Festival salutes Joel Edgerton.
Pam Grady is a San Francisco freelance writer and editor. She is a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.
Actress and activist Amandla Stenberg has been on the rise since her impressive turn as Rue in The Hunger Games
All of 19 years, Stenberg has made her mark in movies (Colombiana; Rio 2; As You Are; Everything, Everything ), television (Sleepy Hollow, Mr. Robinson ), and music (she’s released two albums as half of the group Honeywater and made a cameo in Beyoncé’s Lemonade ). This Most Influential Teen, as reported by Time Magazine, is ready to launch with back-to-back performances in The Hate U Give, The Darkest Minds , and Where Hands Touch
Starr Carter (a sensational Amandla Stenberg) is the queen of code switching: living one version of herself with her tightknit family and neighbors in their Black community of Garden Heights, and another with her classmates at a predominantly white private high school across town. When she becomes the sole witness to the shooting death of her childhood friend, Khalil, by a white policeman, the two Starrs have no choice but to collide—often explosively. Does she stand up for Khalil and speak her truth? Or does she keep quiet and protect herself from the violent forces within her own community? Based on the bestselling young adult novel by Angie Thomas, George Tillman, Jr.’s (Notorious) powerful drama addresses not just police brutality but the root causes of the racial inequity and injustice that permeates American society. Stenberg ( The Hunger Games) leads a stellar cast that also includes Common, Issa Rae, Anthony Mackie, and Russell Hornsby and Regina Hall as Starr’s devoted parents. —Joanne Parsont US 2018, 130 min Director George Tillman, Jr.
Our Spotlight program features an onstage conversation with Amandla Stenberg, a screening of The Hate U Give, and the presentation of the MVFF Award. Join us after the program for a celebratory reception at the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley.
Sunday, October 7 | 5:30pm | CinéArts Sequoia
Program & Reception | $85 general | $75 CFI members
Program only | $45 general | $40 CFI members
SPOTLIGHT SPONSOR
RECEPTION SPONSOR
by Laura Berger
Amandla Stenberg broke out in 2012 with her supporting role in The Hunger Games, but the actress takes the lead in another dystopian YA adaptation in theaters now. She toplines Jennifer Yuh Nelson’s take on Alexandra Bracken’s The Darkest Minds, which opened August 3.
“The character was written white,” she tells Variety in a new interview. “It was exciting for me to have a Black girl at the helm, because we’ve seen these with Jennifer Lawrence and Shailene Woodley, and they’ve done a fantastic job. But we’ve never gotten diverse representation.”
Diverse representation is important to Stenberg—so important that she chose not to pursue the role of Shuri in Black Panther, because she believed a darker-skinned actress should play the character.
“That was not a space that I should have taken up,” the 19-year-old observes. “And it was so exhilarating to see it fulfilled by people who should have been a part of it and who deserved it and who were right for it. I just wasn’t.”
been afforded to us otherwise,” Stenberg acknowledges. “Me and Yara and Zendaya are perceived in the same way, I guess, because we are lighter-skinned Black girls, and we fill this interesting place of being accessible to Hollywood and accessible to white people in a way that darker-skinned girls are not afforded the same privilege.”
Heartened by the success of Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asian s, Stenberg is hopeful about the future of Hollywood.
“As a kid, it was nearly impossible for me to find roles that felt empowered, that were not victim roles, that were fully dimensional, that didn’t serve any white male plotline.”
Stenberg is biracial, and as the source notes, she’s often lumped together with two other rising biracial stars, Yara Shahidi (Grownish) and Zendaya (Spider-Man: Homecoming).
“Something interesting has happened with me and Yara and Zendaya—there is a level of accessibility of being biracial that has afforded us attention in a way that I don’t think would have
“As a kid, it was nearly impossible for me to find roles that felt empowered, that were not victim roles, that were fully dimensional, that didn’t serve any white male plotline,” she recalls.
“So, I worked less because I had no interest in doing something that would force me to compromise my own power or just make myself subservient to something I didn’t necessarily mesh with.
“I’ve been acting since I was a very little kid, so I have been aware of how the industry works. We’re at a turning point,” she emphasizes, “but we have by no means fixed the misogyny of Hollywood or white patriarchy. But in terms of how we diversify our sets and diversify our on-screen narratives, I definitely think it’s a great time of change.”
Stenberg is determined to play a role in making that change happen. “She recently lobbied her agents, successfully demanding that the projects that she signs on to are supported by 50/50 by 2020. That’s the idea that within two years, 50 percent of crew members on sets will be female and nonwhite,” Deadline writes.
Up next for Stenberg is The Hate U Give, another adaptation of a YA novel. The Black Lives Matter-inspired drama centers on Starr, a teen who becomes an activist after witnessing a police officer shoot her friend. Stenberg collaborated with screenwriter Audrey Wells on the project.
“I would go to sessions with Audrey in order to provide my experience as a Black girl because Audrey is white,” she explains. “Anything that struck me as inauthentic or not accurate to me and Starr’s experience, I would communicate it. From early on, the nature of the project was collaborative. I didn’t feel like I was just fulfilling the role of an actor. I felt like I was doing a lot more.”
The resulting film is “a really rich and deep Black contemporary experience,” according to its star.
The Hate U Give is just one of two films Stenberg is premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. She also toplines Amma Asante’s Where Hands Touch, a coming-of-age story about a biracial teen living in Nazi Germany.
Stenberg tells Variety that she’s interested in writing, directing, and a music career, and refuses to be boxed in by the media or her industry.
“I think the media placed a certain label on me,” she says. “It was around the time the word ‘woke’ started being used a lot, and I think the media jumped to placing this label or image on me of being this young, woke activist. Sometimes people act like it’s a self-titled label that I gave to myself, but it’s not. I’m only one person and don’t want to claim to be any sort of savior or representation of all of Black womanhood, which I think the white media has a tendency to oversimplify, when it’s really a complicated experience.”
According to research about the top-grossing films of 2017 from Dr. Martha Lauzen and the Center for the Study of Women in
Television and Film, just 16 percent of female characters with speaking roles were Black.
Originally published on Women and Hollywood on August 28, 2018. Reproduced with permission.
With a résumé totaling over 80 films and television programs, there’s very little South African-British actor, screenwriter, director, author, and perfumier Richard E. Grant hasn’t accomplished in his nearly 40-year career. Coming to focus in the public eye in the cult hit Withnail and I in 1987, Grant’s career as a go-to character actor has continued apace in a wide array of both studio and independent films: Henry & June, L.A. Story, The Player, The Age of Innocence, The Portrait of a Lady, Spice World, Gosford Park, Jackie, Logan, Game of Thrones , to name but a few. Can You Ever Forgive Me? is Grant’s most recent release before taking up a lightsaber in the next episode of Star Wars
When her once-lucrative career as a journalist and celebrity biographer hits hard times, Lee Israel (a marvelous Melissa McCarthy) discovers a new avenue for her literary skills that will help pay her mounting bills: the specialized art form (and criminal enterprise) of forging witty and salacious personal letters from the likes of Noël Coward and Dorothy Parker and selling them to collectors. With a penchant for rubbing people the wrong way and an unmistakable preference for cats over humans, Israel finds kinship in fellow outsider and streetwise British dandy Jack (a resplendently reprobate Richard E. Grant), and together they become partners in crime. Adapted from Israel’s memoir of the same name and co-scripted by Nicole Holofcener ( Enough Said ), the sophomore feature from Marielle Heller ( The Diary of a Teenage Girl ) offers a humorous and moving portrait of a dynamic oddball couple and their engaging misadventures in early 1990s New York City. —Joe Bowman US 2018, 107 min Director Marielle Heller
Our Spotlight program features an onstage conversation with Richard E. Grant, a screening of Can You Ever Forgive Me?, and the presentation of the MVFF Award. Join us after the program for a celebratory reception at the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley.
Wednesday, October 10 | 6:30pm | Smith Rafael Film Center
Program & Reception | $85 general | $75 CFI members Program only | $45 general | $40 CFI members
SPOTLIGHT SPONSOR
RECEPTION SPONSOR
By Pam Grady
Richard E. Grant, in the Spotlight at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival, cites luck as one of the reasons behind his success. At the Toronto International Film Festival to promote his latest triumph, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, in which he plays dissolute rake Jack Hock, friend to curmudgeonly celebrity biographer (and forger) Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy), he credits his success to Daniel Day-Lewis having turned down Withnail & I (1987). Grant took the titular role of unemployed actor for his screen debut and a star was born. But luck had little to do with it, his tremendous talent shining through in that breakthrough and, over the next 30-plus years, in such films as How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989), Henry & June (1990), L.A. Story (1990), The Player (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), Gosford Park (2001), Bright Young Things (2003), Dom Hemingway (2013), Their Finest (2016), and Logan (2017). As MVFF gets set to celebrate Grant’s illustrious career, he looks back over it.
Q: In Can You Forgive Me?, Lee asks Jack what his life plan was, and has it gone the way he thought it would? I’m going to ask Richard E. Grant that same question.
A: Well, my best answer that I can give is to quote the late, great John Lennon before he was murdered, where he quipped, “Life is what happens in between your plans.” And I think that considering I grew up in the smallest country in the southern hemisphere [Swaziland], which had a population, when I lived there, of half a million people, and the capital city that I lived in was 15,000 people. There was no television. So, the idea of somebody in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s wanting to become an actor professionally was as pie in the sky as when we were 12 in 1969 and Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, and all of us wanted to be astronauts. It seemed as fantastical as that.
The fact that I’ve been able to earn a living and become a professional actor and writer/director is so beyond the remit of how people thought you could earn a living. That was something that happened in other countries and to other people.
Q: Two of your first three movies, Withnail & I and How to Get Ahead in Advertising were made by writer/director Bruce Robinson. Withnail clearly launched you.
A: Yeah, and it has this ongoing cult following, 32 years later, which has astonished all of us. And trying to understand why it is so… Everybody has had somebody in their life who’s been a Withnail. You love them, but a combination of self-loathing and self-destruction finally ends the friendship, but they go through a sort of comet-like thing in people’s lives.
How to Get Ahead in Advertising was Bruce Robinson’s anti-Thatcherite diatribe, presaging the corporate and advertising-led lives that we’re saturated by. It presaged that by a good two decades. It was the only time I’ve had that, where you work with the same person and the second film he wrote and con-
toured around what he saw as me being capable of giving voice to his particular political biliousness.
Q: You wrote and directed a film Wah-Wah, inspired by your own youth. How did that come about?
A: That was a situation where Bruce Robinson said to me, “Your childhood is so particular and has enough drama in it, and comedy, that you should write about it.” It took me a long time to get around to the conviction that that was true. He gave me one rule. He said, “Tell it from the 11- and then the 14-year-old boy’s point of view as the discipline of how you shoot everything. And secondly, begin your story with the old script adage of what has happened today has never happened before.”
And I knew that witnessing my mother’s adultery while apparently asleep on the backseat of a car, which unraveled my parents’ marriage and plunged my father into alcoholism as a result, that was the beginning of the story, and I knew that my father’s death would be the end of it.
Q: And then you had a very fruitful relationship with Robert Altman. What was it like working on those projects?
A: He had seen Withnail & I, and I met him in Paris in 1988 when I was doing Henry & June for Philip Kaufman, about Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller. And he asked me to play the young Toscanini. That collapsed because they couldn’t get all the finance. I thought the chance of my working with somebody who I’d admired so much as a teenager and a drama student [was gone]. I’d seen Nashville 27 times, so if you consider that was pre-video or DVD or cable television, that means you’ve gone to the movies 27 times in repertory cinema to see something, which I so loved. And I told him that, and I thought, well, the age that he was, and he was so out of critical and box-office favor, that I
thought my chances of working with him would be nonexistent. Then, I was at the premiere of Hudson Hawk, and when I saw the movie, I genuinely believed I would never ever get another job, because it was Hudson Hawk. And just as the movie was beginning, as the lights went down, there was a tap on my shoulder, Altman was sitting with Tim Robbins, and said, “What are you doing next month, E. Grant?” He always called me E. Grant.
I said, “I’m never gonna work again, Bob, and when you see this movie, you will know why.” And he said, “Well, I want you to be in a movie called The Player.” True to his word, I was, and we became great friends. He was so loyal to actors and so clearly loved actors. He said, “Would you be in Ready to Wear?” It was right after he’d just had heart transplant surgery, so he was very, very ill, very in bad health, and the movie was pretty much completely unscripted, so as a result, was what it was. And then I got a third time lucky by working on Gosford Park in 2001 with him.
Q: And you bought up Henry & June, San Francisco director Philip Kaufman’s Henry Miller/Anaïs Nin drama, in which you play Nin’s husband, Hugo, and that was controversial at the time for its NC-17 rating.
A: He’d seen me in Withnail & I, and when I met him in London, he said, “I want you to play this man like Jimmy Stewart. You have to be kind and loving and unthreatening and unmanic, and all that I’ve seen you [not be] in your first movie.” So, I did as best I could. And I loved his wife, Rose. She was incredibly generous and kind, and they were such an extraordinary, creative husband-and-wife writing/directing team.
Q: You worked with Scorsese in one of the most un-Scorseselike projects, The Age of Innocence
A: Yes. I knew, as an English actor, it would be the only opportunity that I might get to be in a Scorsese movie, because it was set in the la-di-dah upper echelons of New York society at the turn of the century. Edith Wharton. He was intense and private and worked in almost monastic silence, compared to Robert Altman, who is like the circus has come to town, it’s very social. And then Francis Ford Coppola (on 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula), again… I talked to him about his cooking skills, and he said he doesn’t know how to cook for two people, he can only cook for 30 people. And that’s essentially a metaphor for how he directs, that family, friends, and the whole panoply of life come to the table when he is directing and making a movie. He’s collaborative and wants everybody’s opinion. Whereas, you feel that Martin Scorsese the auteur, who has a very clear and precise vision, and, again, he’s almost monastic in the way that he worked, which I was very surprised by. And he speaks at bullet speed.
Q: You’re in Star Wars: Episode IX. What’s it like to step into something has become part of the cultural fabric of the Western world?
A: If you appreciate that when I saw the first one in 1977, when I was still training to be an actor at drama school and university college, the idea that 41 years later, I would be in one and walk onto a set that was amazingly recognizable, or sets, has been literally an out-of-body experience. Every day I’ve worked, I’ve said to J.J. Abrams, “Please pinch me.” So, he ritually just pinches me on the arm, and he said, “I feel the same way too, directing these.” So, that’s what it feels like. It’s extraordinary..
Pam Grady is a San Francisco freelance writer and editor. She is a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.
Director-writer-producer Karyn Kusama has steadfastly built a compelling career of remarkable films since she burst on to the festival scene with Girlfight in 2000, taking both the Director’s Prize and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Prix de la jeunesse at Cannes. Since her breakout, she has gone on to explore rich genre territory in sci-fi ( Æon Flux ) and horror (Jennifer’s Body, The Invitation ) and helm many episodes of popular television series (Halt and Catch Fire, Casual, Billions, The L Word ). Her new film Destroyer, starring Nicole Kidman, is already setting the festival circuit abuzz.
DESTROYER
Karyn Kusama and Nicole Kidman are a match made in cinema heaven: Where Kusama ups the ante on genre, Kidman matches her by delivering one of her most extraordinary, transformative performances to date. Director Kusama ( Girlfight, Jennifer’s Body, The Invitation) has a knack for looking genre in the eye and twisting it so we will never quite see it in the same way. In Destroyer, it’s the LA noir cop thriller. And it’s Erin Bell (Kidman) who breaks the mold of our expectations. When we first see Bell, she is gaunt, haggard, haunted. She is at a murder scene that recalls the past, when she and her then-partner Chris (Sebastian Stan, I, Tonya, MVFF 2017) had worked underground amongst a ring of young, violent criminals that ended badly, leaving her scarred and traumatized. In a plot that plays with time and memory, Bell is forced to confront the personal and professional demons that destroyed her past while struggling to, perhaps, right some wrongs.
—Zoë Elton
US 2018, 123 min Director Karyn Kusama
Our Spotlight program features an onstage conversation with Karyn Kusama, a screening of Destroyer, and the presentation of the MVFF Award. Join us after the program for a celebratory reception at the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley.
Wednesday, October 10 | 6:30pm | CinéArts Sequoia
Program & Reception | $85 general | $75 CFI members Program only | $45 general | $40 CFI members
RECEPTION SPONSOR
By Joe Bowman
With just five features to her name, director Karyn Kusama has taken audiences to a lot of different places in a lot of surprising ways. Over the past two decades, few directors have explored genre in a more deft, fascinating way than Kusama. Turning both a feminine and fiercely independent lens on the often male-dominated Hollywood genre pool, Kusama has emerged as one of most striking and consistently unpredictable voices in American cinema. From the Brooklyn boxing rings of her debut splash Girlfight to the grimy underbelly of Los Angeles in her latest triumph Destroyer, Kusama has tackled the sports film, teenage horror, big budget science fiction, claustrophobic thriller, and now the neo-noir with an uncompromising eye and a persistent, resilient vision.
For Destroyer, Kusama turns the traditionally masculine noir-cop-bank robbery genres on their head, subverting our expectations while remaining faithful to its themes and style. Casting an almost unrecognizable Nicole Kidman as weathered, unglamorous LAPD officer Erin Bell, she’s found her perfect muse and offered the versatile Academy Award ® winner one of her meatiest, most challenging roles to date… and as she always does, Kidman delivers. “Nothing Nicole Kidman has done in her career can prepare you for Destroyer,” Variety ’s Peter Debruge states in the opening line of his review.
“There’s a kind of particular American madness to thinking you’ll be the one who gets away clean. We were really focusing on characters who weren’t criminal masterminds, but fringe dwellers of American society.”
Working again from a script by screenwriting team Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay—the latter being Kusama’s husband and the father of her son—Kusama found something remarkable in Erin Bell. “When I read the script, I just felt like I hadn’t seen that character before,” the director told Deadline at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. “I was really excited to kind of dive in with her.” And once Kidman was attached to the project, she had a clear image of how she was going to transform her actress— who is in every scene in the film—into this compelling, unique antiheroine.
“We always knew that what we wanted her to look like was a real middle-aged woman with a past that she wears on her face with sun damage and sleep deprivation and stress and rage, just in her whole physical body,” Kusama stated in an interview with Vanity Fair Destroyer at its core is a character study of an uncompromising, unrelenting protagonist, and Kusama threads this through familiar genre tropes and a narrative that she perceived to be uniquely American.
“We’ve all loved bank robbery stories as a place to start, because they almost never go well,” Kusama stated, speaking for herself, Manfredi, and Hay. “There’s a kind of particular American madness to thinking you’ll be the one who gets away clean. We were really focusing on characters who weren’t criminal masterminds, but fringe dwellers of American society. Yet they still hold out the hope that they’d beat the system.”
The sort of resilience we see in Erin Bell and the criminals of Destroyer can easily be found in the director herself. Her feature debut Girlfight certainly put her on the map, after she became the only director to win both the Grand Jury Prize and the Directing Award at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival (not to mention later winning the Prix de la jeunesse a few months later at Cannes). But these accomplishments were hard-fought for a young female director fresh out of film school at New York University, especially one who was unwilling to compromise her vision; several producers wanted her to turn her Latinx protagonist—who would eventually be played with a raw vitality by Michelle Rodriguez in her screen debut—into a star vehicle for a young, white Hollywood starlet. Working as an assistant to the great American director John Sayles on his 1996 feature Lone Star, Kusama found a mentor and a champion in Sayles, who played a vital role in getting Kusama’s first feature off the ground.
Following the critical success of Girlfight, Kusama knew she wanted to go in a totally different direction with her sophomore feature. Initially, she had written her own science fiction project about a man who finds himself being turned into a woman, but investors balked. Eventually, she took a meeting with Paramount after the screenplay for Æon Flux (2005), a big budget adaptation of the surreal cult MTV TV series co-written by Manfredi and Hay, fell into her lap and was hired to bring the sci-fi action feature to life. With Charlize Theron onboard fresh off her Oscar ® win for Monster, Kusama was given full support by Paramount’s then-studio chief Sherry Lansing, but when Lansing left the studio prior to the film’s release, the new regime retooled and recut Kusama’s work into something she no longer recognized as her own. Audiences stayed away, and Kusama, in a sense, was back to square one.
It would take her four years for her next feature to hit theaters. Knowing what it felt like to see your fully-realized vision taken away from you, Kusama demanded final creative control on Jennifer’s Body (2009), a sly, witty comedy-horror written by Diablo Cody (Juno) about the complex and volatile friendship between
two teenage girls (played by Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox). Though she retained control over the final cut of the film, she again saw interference being run by the studio who marketed the feature as something it clearly wasn’t. While eliciting some critical praise and a modest box office return, Jennifer’s Body has recently received something of a cult status, with the success of her next feature—one produced outside the Hollywood studio system—compelling fans to go back and reassess the film.
After two trying experiences with the studios, Kusama made a conscious decision to turn away from Hollywood. It wasn’t until a few years later when her husband asked her to read one of his scripts that Kusama finally found something that piqued her interest enough to make another feature. Shot in just 20 days with a small budget and a single location, The Invitation —a taut horror-thriller about a dinner party that takes a sinister turn— revitalized not only Kusama’s filmmaking passion but also the film industry’s interest in her smart, assured approach to directing. Kusama would contribute a short to the all female-directed horror anthology XX before making her mark on Destroyer
Much can be said about Kusama’s “independent cinema” approach to genre films (not to mention her perseverance and commitment to her own vision), but there’s another key ingredient to the director’s talents and her success. She has the skill and the craft to remain faithful to the genres at hand. Whether it’s explosive action, a boxing match, unnerving suspense, or gruesome horror, Kusama has proven time and again that she has the chops (and the range) to stand with some of cinema’s greatest genre auteurs, like Kathryn Bigelow or Paul Verhoeven. And all of this is on full display in her latest marvel, Destroyer Kusama’s clear instinct and assuredness has always made her an artist of precision and a director to watch, and we’ll be waiting with bated breath to see where she takes us next.
Joe Bowman is the publications managing editor for MVFF and based in San Francisco.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s commanding body of work, including over 30 films and 11 televised movies and series, can be considered nothing less than fearless. Ever since her sexy and outrageous breakout role in 2002’s Secretary, Gyllenhaal has crafted singular and unforgettable characters in Adaptation., Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Mona Lisa Smile, Happy Endings, Sherrybaby, The Dark Knight , her Academy Award ® -nominated turn in Crazy Heart, as well as Hysteria, Frank , HBO’s The Deuce, and many more. Her latest work in Sara Colangelo’s The Kindergarten Teacher is already drawing raves for the actress’s gusty and daring skill.
In one of her finest turns to date, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lisa Spinelli, an engaged, slightly bohemian kindergarten teacher who notices an uncanny knack for poetry in Jimmy, one of her young students, in this arresting drama that took home the directing prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Perfectly inhabiting ankle-length skirts, flat shoes, and oversized jewelry, Gyllenhaal taps into fathomless wells of empathy (which border on pathological obsession) as Lisa, whose attempts to nurture and capture on paper Jimmy’s rare gift are met with concern from the child’s family as well as her own. Inspired by Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s 2014 film of the same name, Sara Colangelo’s beautifully realized second feature makes some noteworthy pivots from Lapid’s, while still asking a complex question without easy answers: How do we preserve the natural talents of our generation’s Mozarts amid the spoils of our modern world? —Joe Bowman
US 2018, 97 min Director Sara Colangelo
Our Spotlight program features an onstage conversation with Maggie Gyllenhaal, a screening of The Kindergarten Teacher, and an Award presentation.
Friday, October 12 | 6:45pm | Smith Rafael Film Center
$75 general | $65 CFI members
SPOTLIGHT SPONSOR
By Charles Dickey
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s emergence as one of cinema’s most thoughtful and dedicated actors is commonly tied to the Sundance premiere of director Steven Shainberg’s Secretary (2002), a romantic dramedy exploring a BDSM relationship between E. Edward Grey (James Spader), a prickly lawyer, and Lee Holloway (Gyllenhaal), a secretary with extreme self-discipline. Prior to her starring role in that audacious indie hit, she had already appeared in three films helmed by her father Stephen Gyllenhaal (Waterland, A Dangerous Woman, and Homegrown) and played instantly memorable characters like the Kenneth Anger-tattooed Satanist in John Waters’ cinephilic satire Cecil B. Demented (2000), the third and oldest portrayal of Amelia in Penny Marshall’s Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and, in a bit of sibling verisimilitude, the clever Dukakis-supporting older sister of Jake Gyllenhaal’s time-troubled teen in Donnie Darko (2001).
But it was, indeed, Gyllenhaal’s extraordinary work in Secretary, aided by what she describes in an interview with playwright Tony Kushner as a beat-for-beat examination of the screenplay’s finest points with the film’s director, that resulted in her first nominations at the Golden Globes® and Independent Spirit Awards, an award for Best Breakthrough Performance from the National Board of Review, and a bright new position as a star in filmdom’s celestial firmament.
Following those breakthrough roles, Maggie Gyllenhaal has worked in top-of-the-line productions in independent cinema, such as her Oscar ® -nominated performance as journalist and single mother Jean Craddock in the 2009 musical drama Crazy Heart. But she is just as comfortable in large-scale blockbusters, such as White House Down (2013) and, most famously, The Dark Knight (2008). While observing the real dynamics of kindergarten classrooms for The Kindergarten Teacher, Gyllenhaal was quickly recognized by students as Batman’s childhood friend from the Christopher Nolan film.
To examine some of her most acclaimed starring work since Secretary is to see works pertaining to long-silenced feminine dilemmas. In Laurie Collyer’s 2006 vérité drama Sherrybaby, Gyllenhaal plays Sherry Swanson, a recently released prisoner battling drug addiction, familial alienation, and a failing system of rehabilitation. Sherry’s potentially irreparable relationship with her young daughter allegorizes the violent wedge driven between generations of women in an increasingly unforgiving America. Sherry’s spontaneity and perceived immaturity clashes with the surrounding, street-level punitive culture; her self-destructive behaviors speak to long-unmet needs of the human spirit. Gyllenhaal earned her second Golden Globe nomination for an uncompromising portrayal of a particularly embattled woman striving for the balance, love, and human connectivity denied her.
Similarly pinned by a circumstance is Gyllenhaal’s Charlotte Dalrymple in the 2011 Victorian comedy Hysteria from Tanya
Wexler. A touching work about the history of hysteria diagnoses and the invention of the mechanical vibrator, the film speaks to enduring, harmful encroachment on women’s agency by male power structures and the alliances built to resist such injustices. Gyllenhaal’s characters never fail to exhibit a nuanced outlook—sometimes naïve, sometimes cunning—regarding their perceived circumstances. Her performances offer a keen sense of humor and psychological complexity still rarely attended to by Hollywood’s predetermined spaces for women. Gyllenhaal explains in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “We’ve gotten used to, as women, going to see a movie or a television show and if we’re lucky, if we’re really lucky, 30 percent of it maybe speaks to our real feminine experience. And we’re pretty good with that often—we’ve gotten used to using our imaginations and twisting ourselves into that 30 percent and taking it to feed us as much as we possibly can.” Gyllenhaal’s most recent work, The Kindergarten Teacher, amplifies the suffocated qualities of her striving, complex (anti)heroines. She was impressed
by how even on the page the story “demanded 100 percent of my feminine experience.”
More than a simple remake, The Kindergarten Teacher provides audiences with a contemporary feminine exploration of artistic striving, suffering, and nurturing. Sara Colangelo’s sophomore film, her first since the 2014 West Virginia drama Little Accidents, takes inspiration from Nadav Lapid’s partially autobiographical 2014 Israeli feature. (Lapid was himself a child poet.) Here, the filmic emphasis is on the teacher rather than the pupil. Lisa Spinelli, the titular character, lives at a dizzying remove from self-actualization. She strives to take creative breaths in a toxic, antagonistic atmosphere. Blocked by various forces from becoming conscious with the world and herself, her own writing (provided by poet and Bard College professor Dominique Townsend) fails to garner much acclaim in an evening poetry course overseen by an alluring professor (Gael García Bernal), while a numbing cultural gloom threatens to snuff the last hot embers of artistic education in deference to the cool glow of technological distraction.
When one of her students, five-year-old Jimmy (Parker Sevak), begins reciting extemporaneous verses with sensitivity and nuance (poets Ocean Vuong and Kaveh Akbar wrote much of Jimmy’s recitations), Lisa takes it upon herself to mentor the boy she sees as a prodigy of Mozart-level importance. Despite Jimmy’s father’s objection to any specialized treatment, Lisa folds herself further into the young boy’s development. When social norms threaten Lisa’s reframed sense of artistic connectivity, she makes decisions that skirt dangerous lines and—no spoilers here—provided audiences from Sundance to Toronto with plenty to discuss.
As Colangelo says of Gyllenhaal’s Lisa in an interview with Monica Castillo of RogertEbert.com, “I think women approach her in
a particular way, that perhaps men don’t, and that’s interesting to me... This is really a film about a woman who is an artist, and who is hungry to create and the only way that she could really do it, is through this boy. She makes a lot of missteps and does it in a completely wrong way, but it’s a woman who is trying to be awakened in the world.”
The awakened women in Gyllenhaal’s career have expanded recently and remarkably to the realm of television. Empowered with several hours to tweak and reposition the audience’s understanding of a character, she has delivered a pair of unparalleled performances for television. As Nessa Stein, a philanthropist and inheritor of an arms business pushing for global commitments to Middle Eastern peace in the miniseries The Honourable Woman (2014), she won a Golden Globe. Recently returned to HBO for its second season, The Deuce, created by George Pelecanos and David Simon (The Wire, Tremé) and co-produced by Gyllenhaal, follows a network of characters in the sex industries of 1970s New York. As Eileen “Candy” Merrell, a Manhattan sex worker ascending through the ranks of the pornographic film industry, Gyllenhaal portrays the awakening of a genuine filmmaker resolute in her mission to produce work on her own terms.
As a producer on The Kindergarten Teacher and The Deuce, Gyllenhaal has emerged as a mindful creator of stories that empower women to be more complex. In interviews, she has recently broached the topic of adapting written works for a debut directorial project, which, if manifested, would certainly be an invigorating event for screen culture: a new awakening in a time that demands it..
Charles Dickey is a writer and Music Programmer for MVFF. He is based in Pacifica.
Experience the best of contemporary and classic independent film, world cinema, and special event screenings with filmmakers in attendance at Marin’s premier non-profit art house venue.
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THE CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE CELEBRATES FILM YEAR-ROUND AT THE NONPROFIT CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER, THROUGH CFI EDUCATION, AND DURING THE ANNUAL MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL.
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PROMO CODE X2018
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CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE
MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL | SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER | DOCLANDS CFI EDUCATION | CFI RELEASING
KWMR is REAL FM RADiO for West Marin: building and sustaining community, standing ready to serve in times of emergency, airing locally relevant information and entertainment to listeners, and providing a forum through which every voice can be heard. Our station offers instruction and experience in radio production and broadcasting skills to members of all ages.
KWMR is REAL FM RADiO
for West Marin: building and sustaining community, standing ready to serve in times of emergency, airing locally relevant information and entertainment to listeners, and providing a forum through which every voice can be heard. Our station offers instruction and experience in radio production and broadcasting skills to members of all ages.
KWMR is REAL FM RADiO for West Marin: building and sustaining community, standing ready to serve in times of emergency, airing locally relevant information and entertainment to listeners, and providing a forum through which every voice can be heard. Our station offers instruction and experience in radio production and broadcasting skills to members of all ages.
MVFF Music returns for a fourth year with a diverse series of concerts at the Sweetwater Music Hall. Nine nights of live music include performances by artists featured in MVFF films, as well as local, national, and international musicians. Drop in and discover your new favorite act, or make a night of it and pair a screening about an artist with their corresponding live show!
One of America’s premiere roots rock acts, Freddy Jones Band is fronted by founding member, guitarist, and singer/songwriter Marty Lloyd, joined by bassist Rich Ross, guitarist Stu Miller, and drummer Goose LaPoint. Known for its number-one hits “In a Daydream” and “Take the Time,” this long-running act is back with a new release, Never Change
FRIDAY, OCT 5 • DOORS 8:00PM | SHOW 9:00PM
ADVANCE TICKETS $27 | DAY OF SHOW $32
JARVIS COCKER INTRODUCING JARV IS...
Best known as the frontman for acclaimed Britpop act Pulp (Common People, Razzmatazz), musician, actor, and author Jarvis Cocker has been making music for two-thirds of his life, journeying from being the quintessential outsider to being one of the most recognized and cherished figures in British music. He has brought a rare, bookish wit to the pop charts, and cut an original dash in a rock’n’roll world often dominated by reductive cliché.
SATURDAY, OCT 6 • DOORS 7:30PM | SHOW 8:30PM ADVANCE TICKETS $37 | DAY OF SHOW $39
with TAMMY HALL and JAN MARTINELLI
Holly Near has been singing for a more equitable world for well over 50 creative years, releasing her 31st album in 2018. One of the most powerful, consistent, and outspoken singers of our time, her concerts elevate spirits and foster activism. An inspiring performer, Holly is an ambassador for peace who brings to the stage a unique integration of world consciousness, spiritual discovery, and theatricality.
Holly appears at MVFF in conjunction with the documentary film HOLLY NEAR: SINGING FOR OUR LIVES (see page 140).
SUNDAY, OCT 7 • DOORS 5:30PM | SHOW 6:30PM
ADVANCE TICKETS $35 | DAY OF SHOW $40
BENEFIT PERFORMANCE for CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE | DO IT FOR THE LOVE FOUNDATION
Michael Franti is a musician, humanitarian, and filmmaker who is recognized as a pioneering force in the music industry. Franti believes in using music as a vehicle for positive change and is revered for his energetic live shows, inspiring music, worldwide philanthropy efforts, and connection to his global fanbase. Through his socially conscious work in Spearhead, Bay Area artist Franti has dedicated his life to speaking up for the underrepresented by creating positive energy during chaotic times
Michael Franti appears at MVFF in conjunction with the documentary film STAY HUMAN (see page 152).
MONDAY, OCT 8 • DOORS 8:00PM | SHOW 9:00PM
ADVANCE TICKETS $125
VIP MEET & GREET with MICHAEL FRANTI $225 (includes film)
Since 2005, Black Zeppelin has been rocking the Bay Area with classic ‘70s and ‘80s hard rock tunes from the catalogues of Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Black Sabbath, Free, Aerosmith, Ozzy Osborne, Queen, Rush, Ted Nugent, ZZ Top, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, and more! These seasoned musicians bring more than 20 years of experience to create live performances that sound just like the originals you know love.
TUESDAY, OCT 9 • DOORS 7:00PM | SHOW 8:00PM ADVANCE TICKETS $14 | DAY OF SHOW $16
Founded in 1986, the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir was born out of a gospel music workshop led by the exuberant Terrance Kelly at Living Jazz’s Jazz Camp West and became an independent nonprofit organization in 1991. Since then, the awardwinning Choir’s exquisite harmonies and stirring gospel repertoire have led to performances with a wide variety of esteemed groups, such as Joshua Nelson, the Prince of Kosher Gospel; the Blind Boys of Alabama; and the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The Choir also appears on Grammy ® -winning albums by Linda Ronstadt, MC Hammer, Tramaine Hawkins, and others.
OIGC appears in conjuction with the documentary film ONE VOICE (see page 146).
WEDNESDAY, OCT 10 • DOORS 8:00PM | SHOW 8:30PM ADVANCE TICKETS $37 | DAY OF SHOW $42
Half Pint’s diminutive stature belies not only his vocal capabilities but also his huge on-stage presence, often described as both explosive and dynamic. Born Lindon Roberts, but affectionately called Half Pint, he is a product of the West Kingston enclave of Rose Lane, a community in adjacent proximity to Trenchtown, which has produced the likes of Bob Marley, Dennis Brown, Peter Tosh, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Toots Hibbert, and a host of other international Reggae superstars.
FRIDAY, OCT 12 • DOORS 8:00PM | SHOW 8:30PM ADVANCE TICKETS $32 | DAY OF SHOW $37
Out of the multi-instrumental experimental pop experience of Man Man rises Honus Honus, aka front man Ryan Kattner, on the road as a solo artist with his latest project, Use Your Delusion. Self-described as ‘dystopian pop,’ Honus’ summery avant-synth-rock is upbeat and carefree, even when the lyrics may run against the grain into darker territory. Inspired collaborators on the album range from comedian Jon Daly, actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, drummer Joe Plummer (Cold War Kids, Modest Mouse) and Oakland’s own Shannon and the Clams.
Honus Honus appears in conjuction with the documentary film USE YOUR DELUSION (see page 155).
SATURDAY, OCT 13 • DOORS 8:30PM | SHOW 9:00PM ADVANCE TICKETS $32 | DAY OF SHOW $37
19 Corte Madera Ave, Mill Valley
Tickets for all MVFF Music shows are available online at mvff.com/music and in person at the Sweetwater Music Hall box office.
MVFF Bronze, Silver, Select, Platinum, Investor / Leadership badges have access to MVFF Music shows with advance RSVP per availability (Michael Franti benefit show not included).
THURSDAY, OCT 11 • TBA SEE MVFF.COM/MUSIC FOR UPDATES
CONSCIOUS INCLUSION IN FILM AND TECH
Saturday, October 6, 10:00am–6:00pm I Outdoor Art Club
$75 full day, includes networking lunch and happy hour
$40 morning, includes lunch | $40 afternoon, includes happy hour Registration required* | To register, visit mvff.com/mind-the-gap
*Limited number of scholarships available
Join an extraordinary line-up of thought leaders and creatives in the film and tech industries for a full-day intensive session of presentations, discussions, master classes, and networking. During the Summit, guest of honor Dr. Stacy Smith will be presented with the Mind the Gap Award for her groundbreaking research and inspiring advocacy for gender equity in film. Register early as space is limited! Sign up for a morning (lunch included) or afternoon session (includes cocktail reception) or the full day.
See page 109 for more info, and visit mvff.com/mind-the-gap for full schedule and speakers.
Sunday, October 7, 11:00am | Outdoor Art Club | FREE
In 2001 and again in 2008, we discussed the demise of intelligent films for adults. Fortunately for us, smart films continue to be made. Challenges and disruptions still exist, however, and new platforms create fear for theatrical exhibitors; there is a dearth of art house theaters in major markets like New York and San Francisco, and with ancillary markets in flux, sustainability is a challenge. Join our panel of industry experts who will discuss ways to ensure independent cinema’s continued productivity. Please check website mvff.com for updated times for this panel.
Invited Guests to date:
JONATHAN KING, President, Narrative Film & Television, Participant Media
CHAZ EBERT, Producer; President, Ebert Company and Ebert Digital, LLC
ED ARENTZ, Co-Managing Director, Greenwich Entertainment (Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist)
FROM SCENE TO SCREEN FOR TEENS
ACTING & DIRECTING FILM ADAPTATIONS WITH BOY ERASED
Sunday, October 7, 2:00-5:00pm
The Hivery, 38 Miller Ave. #20, Mill Valley | $50 Ticket to the workshop includes a ticket to the Boy Erased Spotlight program on actor/director Joel Edgerton (see page 63)
Scholarships available; to apply, go to mvff.com/behind-the-screens Ages 14–18 only | Limited to 20 students
Participants will workshop scenes from Garrard Conley’s memoir Boy Erased, playing the roles of actors and directors to adapt the scenes as they would envision them represented on film. Following the workshop, they will attend the screening of the film adaptation of Boy Erased at the Sequoia Theatre to see how the films were actually shot.
Facilitators:
TOM FRANCO, Producer, (Metamorphosis: Junior Year)
IRIS TORRES, Producer, (In Dubious Battle, King Cobra)
WORKSHOP
CROWDFUNDING TO BUILD INDEPENDENCE
Sunday, October 7, 2:15pm I Rafael FREE | Ticket required
The Crowdfunding to Build Independence course teaches filmmakers the essentials for engaging their audience at every stage of their project, and how to leverage that for distribution and their next project. This course is taught by Gerry Maravilla, head of crowdfunding for Seed & Spark. Gerry has presented this class at dozens of film festivals, organizations and schools for a reason: class attendees have a 90% success rate funding on Seed & Spark
ACTIVE CINEMA HIKE NETWORKING IN NATURE
Saturday, October 13, 10:00am | Tennessee Valley | FREE
See page 107 for details
THE HEROINE’S JOURNEY ONSCREEN DRAMEDY
WEAVING COMEDY INTO DRAMA
Saturday, October 13, NOON | Rafael $16.50 general | $14.00 CFI member s
What do these renowned films— Lady Bird, Toni Erdmann, and Little Miss Sunshine —have in common? They are all internationally successful Heroine’s Journey screen stories that weave comedy into drama. In this master class, you will learn how to utilize The Heroine’s Journey creative approach; gain storytelling strategies for your projects; connect emotionally to your audience; orchestrate your characters to reveal compelling themes. For writers, directors, producers, editors, film lovers, industry professionals.
Facilitator: TOM SCHLESINGER is writing and co-producing two feature length dramedies—Thief River and Second Line West for Sunrise Films in Toronto, and is co-writing and producing the documentary, The Beatles in India. He has taught storytelling workshops at Pixar Animations Studios, Lucasfilm, the International Film School, the AFI, the DGA, and the WGA
MEDICAL MARIJUANA
Saturday, October 13, 3:00pm I Sweetwater | $16.50
PANEL SPONSORED BY
Sunday, October 14, 2:00-4:00pm | Outdoor Art Club | $20 Ages 14–18 only | Limited to 20 students | Students are encouraged to attend the screening of Virus Tropical (page 156) prior to the workshop (separate ticket required)
This hands-on workshop for teens follows the screening of the film Virus Tropical, based on the graphic memoir by Colombian-Ecuadorian cartoonist Powerpaola, who will introduce students to the work of several cartoonists and guide them through the process of making their own autobiographical cartoon through a series of writing, drawing, and inking exercises.
Instructor : POWERPAOLA , author ( Virus Tropical )
The MVFF41 Canna-Pass allows access to all of the programs listed below and to the Netflix Filmmaker Lounges
Friday and Saturday, October 12-13 | $59
Friday, October 12
HALF PINT | Concert
8:00pm Sweetwater
WEED THE PEOPLE | Screening
Following a screening of Weed the People, this panel will focus on the medicinal uses of marijuana and the many benefits to utilizing cannabis to treat a host of ailments and conditions. In keeping with Weed the People’s focus on alleviating the symptoms of cancer in afflicted children, the director, producer, and main subject of the film will be featured on the panel—as well as industry experts—touching on the hotly contested accessibility, legalities, and burgeoning business opportunities surrounding this controversial approach to healthcare.
Facilitator: MITCH MYERS, Variety
420:
Saturday, October 13, 4:20pm I Sweetwater | $16.50
Widely acknowledged as the coiners of the term ‘420’ back in 1971, San Rafael High’s own The Waldos will illuminate the story behind the origin, popularity, and mythology of generations of canna-philes’ main refrain on this panel podcast.
Followed by FREE mixer at Julie Zener Gallery, 23 Sunnyside, Mill Valley
Moderator: SHIRLEY HALPERIN, Variety
9:00pm Sequoia
5@5 DAISY SUMMER PIPER SHORTS | Screening 9:00pm Rafael
Saturday, October 13
WEED THE PEOPLE | Screening 12:15pm Sequoia
5@5 DAISY SUMMER PIPER | Screening 3:00pm Sequoia
MEDICINAL CANNABIS | Panel
3:00pm Sweetwater
420 WITH THE WALDOS | Panel 4:20pm Sweetwater
420 MIXER | Reception
4:20pm Julie Zener Gallery, Mill Valley
HONUS HONUS | Concert 8:30pm Sweetwater
We believe everyone should know who grows their cannabis, including where and how it is grown.
Flow Kana partners with independent multi-generational farmers who cultivate under full sun, sustainably, and in small batches. Using only organic methods, these stewards of the land have spent their lives balancing a unique and harmonious relationship between the farm, the genetics and the terroir. The result is an unparalleled product that simply cannot be found anywhere else.
FlowKana.com
MVFF’s ¡Viva el Cine! initiative showcases prize-winning Spanish-language and Latin American films that seek to engage and embrace our Spanish-speaking and -loving audiences. These screenings create a unique community where history, culture, and identity can be explored through the magic of movies. This year, we kick off the program with extra fanfare on Sunday, October 7 with our first ¡Viva el Cine! Launch Day, featuring a packed day of films for all ages, including a special family-friendly fiesta and screening of Coco in Spanish (with English subtitles).
LOS ADIOSES (Mexico)
AMALIA THE SECRETARY (Colombia)
EL ÁNGEL (Argentina/Spain)
BIRDS OF PASSAGE (Colombia)
COCO (US)
COLLISIONS (US)
ERNESTO (Cuba)
FROM MEXICO, CON AMOUR (Mexico) (Shorts Program)
HARVEST SEASON (US)
MUSEO (Mexico)
ROMA (Mexico)
SERGIO AND SERGEI (Cuba/Spain)
THE SILENCE OF OTHERS (Spain)
TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG (Chile)
VIRUS TROPICAL (Colombia/Ecuador)
Cecelia Zamora, Chairperson
Jorge Almaguer | Rafael Barragan | Claudia Mendoza-Carruth Isis Gonzalez | Maribel Guevara | Michele Harris Catalina Lozano | Jaime Ortiz | Diana Putterman
Rodrigo Reyes | Jose Valera | Delfin Vigil
MUSEO
A forum for films that inspire people to take action to create positive change, MVFF’s Active Cinema films are united in their commitment to explore the world and its issues (both local and global), engage audiences, and transform ideas into action. Join us for screenings throughout the Festival, support grassroots activism of the filmmakers, and engage with the admirable work of special guests, co-presenters, and partners.
CHARM CITY
In association with Ritter Center
FROM BAGHDAD TO THE BAY
In association with International Rescue Committee | Horizons Foundation | LGBT Asylum Project | Human Rights Watch
HARVEST SEASON
In association with La Luz Center and ALMA-Association of Latiino Lawyers Marin
STAY HUMAN
In association with Do It For The Love
TIME FOR ILHAN
In association with Marin County Young Democrats
WHO KILLED LT. VAN DORN?
In association with Investigative Reporting Program at the Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley | The Center for Investigative Reporting
WILD DAZE
In association with Wildlife Works
ACTIVE CINEMA HIKE: Networking in Nature
Saturday, October 13 | 10:00am | FREE
Come enjoy some fresh air and fresh ideas with filmmakers, friends, Festival staff, and cinephiles during this hourlong hike to the ocean through beautiful terrain. Exchange ideas on filmmaking, filmmaker resources, activism, and strategies for action. Bring water and sunblock, and wear good hiking shoes. All welcome! Meet at Tennessee Valley trailhead parking lot. Info: nps.gov/goga/ planyourvisit/tennessee_valley
TIME FOR ILHAN
Mind the Gap, our gender equity initiative, amplifies and champions work by women filmmakers, changing the narrative that shapes our culture. We are committed to the goal of 50/50 by 2020—50% women directors across all Festival sections by 2020. We found no shortage of amazing women making terrific films, and incredible female-forward storytelling for this year’s festival: MVFF41 showcases 44% women directors. You’ll find more details at mindthegapinfilm.com.
Mind the Gap Award for Visionary Leadership
Stacy L. Smith, Ph.D., is a visionary leader in the movement towards gender equity in the film industry. She is an Associate Professor at USC Annenberg and Founder and Director of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the leading think tank globally studying issues of inequality in entertainment. Her work has set the national conversation on employment practices on screen and behind the camera and has inspired the drive towards palpable, solution-driven change. It was Dr. Smith who introduced the idea of the Inclusion Rider, famously invoked by Frances McDormand at the 2018 Academy Awards ® and since adopted by many in the film industry. And it was her participation at Mill Valley Film Festival in 2013 that helped inspire the launch of Mind the Gap. We are grateful for her leadership, inspiration, and brilliance.
Dr. Smith will receive the Mind the Gap Award during the Mind the Gap Summit on Saturday, October 6, where she will also present some of her most recent work.
Conscious Inclusion in Film and Tech
Saturday, October 6 10:00am–6:00pm Outdoor Art Club
This full-day intensive session of presentations, discussions, master classes, and networking will be led by an extraordinary line-up of thought leaders and creatives in the film and tech industries. Addressing tangible ways to engage in change, speakers include Dr. Stacy Smith, singer/activist Holly Near, Chaz Ebert (publisher, RogerEbert.com), Shakti Butler (founder, World Trust), Robin Hauser (filmmaker, bias), and presenters from ReFrame, Seed and Spark, Google, and Lucasfilm. Examining the intersections between film and tech and what each can learn from the other, this is an amazing opportunity to engage, connect—and be inspired.
Register early as space is limited! Sign up for a morning (lunch included) or afternoon session (includes cocktail reception) or the full day.
See mvff.com/mind-the-gap for full schedule and speakers.
ABOVE: CATHERINE HARDWICKE | MIND THE GAP SUMMIT | MVFF 2017
MVFF IS GRATEFUL FOR THE WISDOM AND SUPPORT OF OUR MIND THE GAP
EXECUTIVE ADVISORS: Lisa Carmel | Sherri Tull
ADVISORS: Barbara Boxer | Girija Brilliant | Larry Brilliant | Susan Brown | Brenda Chapman | Blye Faust Josh Felser | Robin Hauser | Dawn Lyon | Tiffany Shlain | Osnat Shurer | Valerie Weiss AND OUR ALLIES: Maida Brankman | Louann Brizendine | Jessamy Ross | Sheri Sobrato
LEADERSHIP PARTNER
CHRISTINE A. SCHANTZ
OFFICIAL AIRLINE MVFF & MIND THE GAP
Look for this icon to identify Mind the Gap programs.
AND MVFF40.
THE EACH FOUNDATION IS PROUD TO SPONSOR THE CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE AND MVFF40.
THE EACH FOUNDATION IS PROUD TO SPONSOR THE CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE AND MVFF40.
EACH FOUNDATION IS PROUD TO SPONSOR THE CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE AND MVFF40.
THE EACH FOUNDATION IS PROUD TO SPONSOR THE CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE AND MVFF40.
We at the EACH Foundation strive to be trailblazers in private foundation philanthropy, employing a maximally efficient business model to effectively target our eight giving areas.
We at the EACH Foundation strive to be trailblazers in private foundation philanthropy, employing a maximally efficient business model to effectively target our eight giving areas.
We at the EACH Foundation strive to be trailblazers in private foundation philanthropy, employing a maximally efficient business model to effectively target our eight giving areas.
We at the EACH Foundation strive to be trailblazers in private foundation philanthropy, employing a maximally efficient business model to effectively target our eight giving areas.
We at the EACH Foundation strive to be trailblazers in private foundation philanthropy, employing a maximally efficient business model to effectively target our eight giving areas.
We at the EACH Foundation strive to be trailblazers in private foundation philanthropy, employing a maximally efficient business model to effectively target our eight giving areas.
WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO
30 socio-economically diverse, civic-minded philanthropic advisors.
WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO
30 socio-economically diverse, civic-minded philanthropic advisors.
30 socio-economically diverse, civic-minded philanthropic advisors.
30 socio-economically diverse, civic-minded philanthropic advisors.
E.A.C.H.: Environment, Education, Art, Animals, Children, Community, Health, and Homelessness.
30 socio-economically diverse, civic-minded philanthropic advisors.
30 socio-economically diverse, civic-minded philanthropic advisors.
E.A.C.H.: Environment, Education, Art, Animals, Children, Community, Health, and Homelessness.
E.A.C.H.: Environment, Education, Art, Animals, Children, Community, Health, and Homelessness.
E.A.C.H.: Environment, Education, Art, Animals, Children, Community, Health, and Homelessness.
100% volunteer, fully discretionary grant-making.
E.A.C.H.: Environment, Education, Art, Animals, Children, Community, Health, and Homelessness.
100% volunteer, fully discretionary grant-making.
E.A.C.H.: Environment, Education, Art, Animals, Children, Community, Health, and Homelessness.
100% volunteer, fully discretionary grant-making.
100% volunteer, fully discretionary grant-making.
$1.25 million given out to 214 distinct charities (since inception, June 2016).
100% volunteer, fully discretionary grant-making.
100% volunteer, fully discretionary grant-making.
$1.25 million given out to 214 distinct charities (since inception, June 2016).
$1.25 million given out to 214 distinct charities (since inception, June 2016).
$1.25 million given out to 214 distinct charities (since inception, June 2016).
$1.25 million given out to 214 distinct charities (since inception, June 2016).
Serving non-profits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii.
Serving non-profits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii.
$1.25 million given out to 214 distinct charities (since inception, June 2016).
Serving non-profits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii.
Serving non-profits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii.
Come to our 2nd annual Four Charities Fundraiser, December 14th, 2017 in San Francisco, benefiting CFI.
Come to our 2nd annual Four Charities Fundraiser, December 14th, 2017 in San Francisco, benefiting CFI. THE EACH FOUNDATION IS PROUD TO SPONSOR THE CALIFORNIA FILM INSTITUTE AND MVFF40.
Come to our 2nd annual Four Charities Fundraiser, December 14th, 2017 in San Francisco, benefiting CFI.
Serving non-profits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii.
Serving non-profits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii.
Come to our 2nd annual Four Charities Fundraiser, December 14th, 2017 in San Francisco, benefiting CFI.
Come to our 2nd annual Four Charities Fundraiser, December 14th, 2017 in San Francisco, benefiting CFI.
Come to our 2nd annual Four Charities Fundraiser, December 14th, 2017 in San Francisco, benefiting CFI.
CFI Education turns the Festival into a classroom, bringing thousands of Bay Area students to the theater and sending dozens of filmmakers out to local schools.
MVFF EDUCATION SCREENINGS feature weekday matinees of narrative features, documentaries, and shorts programs selected from the general Festival program for school-age audiences, with special guests for post-screening Q&A’s and accompanying curriculum guides. This year’s programs include:
5@5 THE WAY IT IS BIAS
THE BIG BAD FOX AND OTHER TALES COLLISIONS
EARTH, OUR HOME: THE NEW ENVIRONMENTALISTS
FROM MEXICO, CON AMOR
THE HATE U GIVE
IT’S A GIRLS’ WORLD MOVING STORIES
SUPA MODO
TIME FOR ILHAN
A TON O’ TOONS
FILMMAKERS GO TO SCHOOLS takes local and visiting filmmakers from around the world into Bay Area classrooms to show their films and talk to students about the art, craft and business filmmaking.
If you are interested in having your school take part in either of these programs, please contact us at education@cafilm.org
SUPPORTED BY
MVFF41’s selections for family audiences include an abundance of animation, a slew of shorts, a gaggle of girls’ stories, screenings for Spanish speakers—and a party for all!
FEATURE FILMS:
THE BIG BAD FOX AND OTHER TALES – Special screening followed by The Hoopla! (see below)
COCO – Presented in Spanish for ¡Viva el Cine! Launch Day (see page 107)
SUPA MODO
ZOOTOPIA – Free outdoor screening in Old Mill Park (see page 162)
SHORTS PROGRAMS:
5@5 THE WAY IT IS – Films by youth filmmakers
FROM MEXICO, CON AMOR – A ¡Viva el Cine! program presented in collaboration with the Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia
IT’S A GIRLS’ WORLD – Part of our Mind the Gap gender equity initiative (see page 109)
A TON O’ TOONS –Animation for our youngest audience
NEW FOR 2018 THE HOOPLA!
Saturday, October 13 | 2:00–4:00pm | Marin Country Mart
FREE admission with a ticket to the October 13 screenings of THE BIG BAD FOX AND OTHER TALES or IT’S A GIRLS’ WORLD
Join us for family friendly pre- and post-screening festivities, featuring live music, games, crafts, photo booth, bubbles, balloons, henna, and (of course) hula hooping. Plus beverages and food from, Fisher’s Cheese, El Huarache Loco, Three Twins, Johnny Doughnuts, and much more!
Sponsored by MARIN COUNTRY MART
FAMILY FILMS SPONSORED BY
Emotionally and socially resonant films that explore what it means to be Black in the contempory world
GREEN BOOK
THE HATE U GIVE
IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK LITTLE WOODS
LONG TIME COMING: A 1955 BASEBALL STORY
OBEY
Young adult films about that defining—and sometimes challenging—post-adolescent/pre-adult time of our lives
5@5 THE WAY IT IS ANGST
BEAUTIFUL BOY
BEN IS BACK
BOY ERASED
THE HATE U GIVE RAFIKI
THE SILENT REVOLUTION
TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG
VIRUS TROPICAL
Diverse stories of queer representation found in a wide, genre-twisting array of films
ALIFU THE PRINCE/SS EL ÁNGEL
BORDER
BOY ERASED
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?
THE FAVOURITE
FROM BAGHDAD TO THE BAY
HOLLY NEAR: SINGING FOR OUR LIVES
THE PARTING GLASS
RAFIKI
An assemblage of gorgeous, entertaining, and occasionally kooky animated fiction and non-fiction films from around the globe
5@5 CIRCLE GAME
THE BIG BAD FOX AND OTHER TALES CHRIS THE SWISS COCO
SEDER MASOCHISM
A TON O’ TOONS
VIRUS TROPICAL
ZOOTOPIA
Stories from six continents that foster a new understanding of our global neighbors and ourselves
A showcase of new films by master and emerging American filmmakers who share a talent for independent storytelling
The latest in documentary filmmaking, from heartfelt stories of activism to historical profiles, current events, and more
A sampling of stories, cultures, and adventures for new generations and old that inspire and nurture a love of film
Collections of short cinematic gems from every genre including narratives, documentaries, animation, family films, and youth works
The Festival’s playlist of cinematic portraits of musical artists, featuring internationally renowned musicians and Bay Area favorites
JIM BOYCE TRUST and KRIS OTIS
ART PAUL OF PLAYBOY: THE MAN BEHIND THE BUNNY …AS IF THEY WERE ANGELS
BUSHWICK BEATS COLLISIONS
HARVEST SEASON
HOLLY NEAR: SINGING FOR OUR LIVES
JOSEPH PULITZER: VOICE OF THE PEOPLE ONE VOICE
WHO KILLED LT. VAN DORN? WILD DAZE
EFFORTLESS FRENCH THE PARTING GLASS SOMETHING IS HAPPENING THE WHISTLEBLOWER OF MY LAI US
BECOMING ASTRID
BEN IS BACK CHRIS THE SWISS GREEN BOOK THE GUARDIANS
THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD NORTHERN WIND A PRIVATE WAR
SEDER MASOCHISM
SIR THE SWEET REQUIEM WORKING WOMAN
5@5 SHORTS
Total Program 79 min
M “A camera pans the cocktail hour behind a blind of potted palms and finds a lady in a Paris dress with runs in her nylons.” Join us for these tales of fierce and fallible women, told by a fabulous international collection of female storytellers. In Melanie Zoey Weinstein’s soulful Spanko (US 2018, 12 min), a woman finds a new portal of sexual expression. Two young women find their longtime friendship at a crossroads in Emma Weinstein’s poignant Candace (US 2017, 9 min). While on an urban jog, a woman is confronted with a shocking discovery and a dangerous choice in Clare Cooney’s Runner (US 2017, 13 min). In Oskar Rosetti’s Tsar Bomba (Switzerland 2018, 14 min), a single mother is forced to confront the latent toxic masculinity that is under her own roof. On the verge of moving to the west, a wife must confront her personal demons in Nasim Kiani and Mostafa Mostafavi’s disturbing and heartbreaking Oculus (Iran 2018, 18 min). And, finally, in Giovana Olmos’ very sweet and sensitive Silvia in the Waves (Canada 2017, 13 min), a mother and son discuss the funeral details of their husband/father who had transitioned to her female identity. Topical and touching, it’s an assembly of shorts that are all standouts.
—Sterling Hedgpeth
Thur O ct 11 9:15pm Rafael Fri O ct 12 6:15pm L arkspur
5@5 SHORTS
Total Program 67 min
FOCUS: ANIMATION NATION “And the seasons they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down. We’re captive on the carousel of time.” This year’s animated shorts program contains a diverse set of subjects and whimsical, macabre stories. Tupelo (US 2018, 4 min) and Good Advice (US 2018, 4 min), a pair of shorts from the ever-astounding and prolific Bill Plympton’s latest collection, The Modern Lives , offer the director’s signature animation style set to the music of former Black Crowes member Jackie Greene. Alexandra Lemay’s Freaks of Nurture (Canada 2017, 7 min) dives into the complex, overlooked struggle of mother versus daughter, while Héctor Dávila Cabrera’s Last Stop ( Última estación ) (Mexico 2017, 6 min) travels by bus to find chili-spiced chicken parts. Ri Crawford’s The Moon’s Milk (US 2018, 14 min) plunders the skies via a motley crew voiced by Tom Waits. Alexandra Castellanos Solís’ Poliangular (Mexico 2017, 8 min) morphs characters and shapes through a surreal spectrum, and in Sofia Carrillo’s Cerulia (Mexico 2017, 13 min), personalities duel through a miniature sweet-yet-sinister landscape. Master animator and Oscar ® winner Phil Tippett rounds out the program by carrying us through his grotesquely gorgeous, monster-laden landscape in the much anticipated third installment of his series, Mad God (US, 2018, 11 min).
—Amanda Todd
Fri O ct 5 6:15pm L arkspur Thur O ct 11 6:15pm L arkspur
5@5 COME TO THE SUNSHINE
5@5 SHORTS
Total Program 67 min
“Share in the quiet of knowing. No need for telling you sometimes, when all the answers are so plainly showing.” Indulge in these real-life stories of the human spirit on display in all its marvelous variety. Brett Marty’s The Fiddler (US 2017, 10 min) introduces us to a Silicon Valley engineer whose medical diagnosis forces him to reshape his priorities. Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan’s Skip Day (US/UK 2018, 17 min) is an elegiac look at African American high schoolers reveling in their youth in the Florida Everglades. Amy Hill and Chris Riess’ Hula Girl (US 2018, 11 min) offers the inside scoop on one of the 1950s most enduring fads. In Ivan Cash’s Agent of Connection (US 2017, 4 min), one BART employee takes pride in being an ambassador of personal outreach. Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan’s Mothers and Daughters: 8 True Stories (US 2018, 6 min) offers a set of intimate portraits of that special family dynamic through all stages of life. Sara Newens’ Footprint (US 2018, 19 min) is a lyrical meditation on The National September 11 Memorial in New York and the people who visit it.
—Sterling Hedgpeth
Fri O ct 5 9:00pm Rafael Mon O ct 8 6:15pm L arkspur
5@5 SHORTS
Total Program 69 min
“There’s no comprehending just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes and the lips you can get, and still feel so alone.” In these powerful shorts, lone protagonists navigate treacherous emotional terrain as they reconcile their need for connection with the world around them. In Andrew Zox’s touching I Am My Own Mother (US 2018, 23 min), an African American woman seeks out her original birth mother, with some unexpected results. Animator Bill Plympton’s The Modern Lives (US 2018, 3 min) uses a Jackie Greene song to depict a man beset by pressures to conform. In Andrés Gallegos’ Shoe Shiner ( El limpia botas ) (Chile 2018, 17 min), a young street orphan loses his shoeshine business and must prove his resourcefulness in a world of duplicitous adults. In Teal Greyhavens’ creepy Special Day (US 2018, 7 min), a bizarre family secret is revealed to a woman celebrating her 18th birthday. Tatiana Maslany ( Orphan Black ) stars in Richard Raymond’s Souls of Totality (US 2018, 19 min) as a member of an apocalyptic cult who spends her last day before “ascension” preparing for a momentous eclipse. The ending is a knockout and a perfect close to this unforgettable collection.
—Sterling Hedgpeth
Tue O ct 9 9:15pm Rafael Wed O ct 10 6:15pm L arkspur
5@5 SHORTS
Total Program 72 min
“Stare into a mirror pool and laugh so princely vain. The skies become kaleidoscopes with no two turns the same.” Don’t miss this set of hilarious comedic shorts, ranging from broad hijinks to a little ham on wry. In Sharon Everitt’s Brentwood (US 2018, 12 min), Brent Spiner (aka Data) lampoons himself and his post- Star Trek legacy. Did we mention it’s a musical co-starring Peri Gilpin, LeVar Burton, and Doug Benson? A hotly-contested local election proves that sometimes every vote really does count in Fernand-Philippe Morin-Vargas’ Heads or Tails ( Pile ou face ) (Canada 2018, 15 min). Craig claims he can handle his weed but Craig’s Pathetic Freakout (US 2018, 7 min), directed by Graham Parkes, proves he really, really can’t. In Gillian Barnes’ Are You Still Singing? (US 2018, 12 min), a struggling millennial/singing telegram artist is having a very bad day. Two film noir characters navigate a new landscape of socially conscious behavior in Ilyse Mimoun’s clever homage #metoo gumshoe (US 2018, 6 min). In Timothy Keeling’s surreal Two Puddles (UK 2018, 6 min), a family discovers an incredibly strange phenomenon while on a nature hike. And finally, Emily Mortimer stars as a Hungarian transplant reaching out to help Vietnam war refugees in A.M. Lukas’ warmly funny One Cambodian Family Please for My Pleasure (US 2018, 14 min). Be prepared for a lot of laughs and a lot of heart.
—Sterling Hedgpeth
Fri O ct 12 9:00pm Rafael Sat O ct 13 3:00pm Sequoia
5@5
Total Program 76 min
“Shadows by the fire slowly climb and fall. Kisses fade and leave no trace. Whispers vanish into space.” Tales of love highlight these shorts as each one depicts families facing a major turning point. An elderly couple lives a quiet existence, until the husband takes on one major project in Lucas H. Rossi’s The Dress of Myriam ( O Vestido de Myriam) (Brazil 2017, 15 min), filmed in stark, stunning black and white. Dorian Tocker’s beautiful The Day That (US 2017, 26 min) is a poetic meditation on grief as the film follows an Islamic family in the US facing a terrible loss. In Machu Latorre’s sweet The Loss ( La perdida ) (Spain 2018, 16 min), a widower confronts the new challenges of domesticity. Dark humor suffuses a tale of a family united—and fragmented—by the passing of the matriarch in Elizabeth Rose’s The Law of Averages (Canada 2017, 14 min). And Jenna Sofia’s Break the Camera (US 2018, 5 min) is a visually dynamic tribute to the filmmaker’s grandfather, using found photos, home movies, and audio interviews. This incredibly moving collection proves that the emotional underpinnings of the ties that bind us by blood are universal.
—Sterling Hedgpeth
Mon O ct 8 9:15pm Rafael Tue O ct 9 6:00pm L arkspur
5@5 THE WAY IT IS
5@5 SHORTS/FAMILY FILMS
Total Program 95 min
FOCUS: TEENS&20s “I will show you what I know. Sometimes we will disagree. If we learn at all to grow. Then I have done my small duty.” In this peer-reviewed collection of youth-made films, today’s teen filmmakers show us just how much they know about cinema, storytelling, and the world as they see it. The Look (Max Retik, US 2018, 6 min), Goodbye Sam (Theo Taplitz, US 2017, 5 min), Backyard Bees (Will Noyce, US 2018, 4 min), Ā mrik ā (Nicole Bahar, US 2017, 4 min), Dance with Me (Isaac Karliner-Li, US 2018, 5 min), Perception (Lola Duenyas, US 2018, 2 min), The Last Straw (Julian Jordan, US 2018, 12 min), Experimenting with Animation (Paige Flaming, US 2018, 1 min), Why, God? (Nathan Ginter, US 2018, 8 min), Davy Jones Can’t Fly (Grant Anderson-Smith, US 2018, 7 min), Censored (Maggie Budzyna, US 2018, 3 min), One in Thirty: The Story of Henry Oster (Sarah Antabli, Tiffany Chang, Stephanie Cho, Sara Lowin, Gracie Sandman, India Spencer, & Juliet Wiener, US 2017, 6 min), Gray Areas (Kat Swander & Jack Safir, US 2018, 7 min), The Rat (Miranda Autumn Lewis, US 2018, 5 min), The Light of My Life (Erina McSweeny, US 2018, 4 min), The Redwood Grove (Will Noyce & August Mesarchik, US 2018, 10 min), Pop (Ishaan Parmar, US 2018, 6 min). Age 11+ —Joanne Parsont
Sun O ct 7 11:00am Sequoia Fri O ct 12 12:00pm L arkspur*
*CFI Education screening open to school groups and general public
Iran 2018 • 100 min
Director/Producer Jafar Panahi
Screenwriters Jafar Panahi, Nader Saeivar
Cinematographer Amin Jafari Editors
Mastaneh Mohajer, Panah Panahi Cast
Behnaz Jafari, Jafar Panahi, Marziyeh
Rezaei Print Source Kino Lorber
M In Persian with English subtitles In this fascinating, tender-hearted road movie, famed Iranian actress Behnaz Jafari, playing herself, journeys from her latest film set to a remote village. She’s responding to a desperate video from a young woman who dreams of becoming an actress, but whose family won’t let her leave home. Encounters that are both whimsical and delightfully curious—an old woman who’s trying out her grave for size; a stud bull, the ultimate symbol of virility, that’s fallen and broken his leg—provide a thematic backdrop for this exploration of women and men, tradition and freedom of choice. And at the helm on this journey is Behnaz’s driver, director Jafar Pahani who, as he did in Taxi (MVFF 2015), takes the wheel as a character in his fourth film since Iran banned him from making movies in 2011. In storytelling that’s deceptively simple, Panahi creates a richly layered and eloquent journey—right down to the last image.
—Zoë Elton
Fri O ct 5 6:30pm Rafael Sat O ct 6 8:15pm L arkspur
IN ASSOCIATION WITH PERSIAN CENTER
Norway/Iceland 2018 • 137 min
Director/Screenwriter Paul Greengrass
Producers Gregory Goodman, Paul Greengrass, Scott Rudin
Cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth
Editor William Goldenberg Cast Anders
Danielsen Lie, Jonas Strand Gravli, Jon Øigarden, Isak Bakli Aglen Print Source Netflix
Recreating the sweep of history is familiar territory for Oscar ® -nominated director Paul Greengrass, who previously made the riveting United 93 and Bloody Sunday (MVFF 2002). This time he applies his visceral immediacy to the aftermath of an attack—that of July 22, 2011, when a right-wing terrorist killed 77 Norwegians, bombing a government building in Oslo before going on a horrific murder spree at a summer youth camp. Democracy steels its resolve to follow the rule of law while reeling from the terrible loss in this drama told in the director’s signature style of naturalistic intimacy. Greengrass follows a recovering youth’s therapy and PTSD, a prime minister urging transparency, and the defense attorney committed to his client’s rights (but not his cause), meticulously entwining these threads to a powerful climax in a story about a nation dedicated to progress in the face of fear and hope in the shadow of hate.
—Sterling Hedgpeth
Sat O ct 6 7:00pm Rafael Tue O ct 9 8:45pm Sequoia
Added pre-MVFF program:
TRIBUTE to Paul Greengrass on Tuesday, October 2 at 7:00pm at the Smith Rafael Film Center. The program includes a screening of 22 July, an onstage conversation with Paul Greengrass, and presentation of the MVFF Award. 22 JULY
WORLD CINEMA
Mexico 2017 • 85 min
Director/Screenwriter Natalia Beristáin Producers Rafael Ley, Maria José Córdova, Gerardo Morán Cinematographer Dariela Ludlow Editor Miguel Schverdfinger Cast Karina Gidi, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Tessa Ia, Pedro de Tavira Egurrola Print Source Lux Box Films
M V In Spanish with English subtitles From Mexican filmmaker Natalia Beristáin ( She Doesn’t Want to Sleep Alone ) comes this riveting biopic of Rosario Castellanos, one of the most important literary voices to emerge from 20th century Mexico. As a young woman in postwar Mexico City, wellread university student Rosario (Tessa Ia, The Burning Plain ) transcends the era’s patriarchal society to grow into an influential poet and author. A volatile romance with her college sweetheart, Ricardo Guerra (Daniel Giménez Cacho, Zama ), provides a personal avenue for her explorations of feminism and femininity, but the relationship grows tense as Rosario’s career blossoms, leaving her with a difficult choice. Beautifully shot, superbly acted, and immensely thoughtful, Los adioses is an engrossing drama and an insightful portrait of a writer’s life. Actress Karina Gidi ( Abel ), who plays the older Rosario, deservedly took home the Best Actress trophy at the Ariel Awards, Mexico’s equivalent of the Academy Awards ®, for her astonishing performance.
—Nadia Ismail
Tue O ct 9 8:45pm L ark
Thur O ct 11 12:00pm Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF MEXICO
US CINEMA
Total Program 90 min
ANY WEDNESDAY
US 2018 • 36 min
Director Allie Light & Patrick Stark
M Bay Area filmmaker Allie Light wrote and co-directed this sensitive, delicate drama of disparate souls reaching for connection. An octogenarian with dementia, Agnes (Mary Black) meets PTSD-afflicted homeless vet C’Mo (Shane Dean) after choir practice and gives him a ride instead of going home. While her family frets, these two people— separated by age, race, class, and even diagnoses—bond in their frail humanity.
TWO FOR DINNER
US 2017 • 22 min
Director Eleanor Coppola
M Separated by work, a couple arranges a video chat date night in Eleanor Coppola’s bittersweet drama. While Lainie (Joanne Whalley) dines at their favorite LA bistro, film director Jack (Chris Messina), on location, makes do at a rustic Montana eatery. Throughout the effervescent, romantic evening, they flirt, eat, toast, and Jack begs Lainie to join him—but does he mean it?
—Pam Grady
PRECEDED BY
CAROLEE, BARBARA & GUNVOR BY LYNNE SACHS
US 2018 • 8 min
Director Lynne Sachs
Traveling from New York to Sweden, director Lynne Sachs visits with cinematic luminaries Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer, and Gunvor Nelson in this compelling portrait.
Sat O ct 13 4:30pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH SFFILM
Taiwan 2017 • 96 min
Director Wang Yu-Lin Screenwriters Wang Yu-Lin, Hsu Hua Chien, Hua Bo Rong, Chen Hui Ling Producers Gene Yao, Liu Ji Gang, Wang Yu-Lin Cinematographer Wang Pan Yun Editors Hong Dong Ren, Chang Yi Nian Cast Utjon Tjakivalid, Zhao Yilan, Wu Pengfeng, Chen Zhusheng, Zheng Renshuo Print Source Reel Suspects
M FOCUS: QUEER-ISH In Taiwanese with English subtitles The struggle between upholding tradition and moving forward in the modern world is beautifully depicted in this heartfelt tale of the only son of an indigenous tribal leader in present day Taiwan. Alifu (newcomer Utjung Tjakivalid, who won a Best New Talent award at the Taipei Film Festival) lives in two worlds: In Taipei, she’s a hairdresser with a chosen family saving up to have sexual reassignment surgery; in rural Taitung, she’s still known as the son of the ailing tribal leader who is unaware of Alifu’s other life and wishes to pass the reigns onto his only son. With high production values and a number of sensational drag performances, Alifu, the Prince/ss intercuts the title character’s story with intersecting tales of romance among her chosen family, painting a diverse portrait of LGBTQ life in Taiwan and capturing the universal feeling of longing for love and connection, whether those feelings are reciprocated or not.
—Diane de Monx
Sat O ct 13 4:45pm Rafael Sun O ct 14 2:15pm L ark
IN ASSOCIATION WITH FRAMELINE
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 93 min
Director John Hyams Screenwriter
Timothy Brady Producers Michael Kelly, Ben Cornwell, Yeardley Smith
Cinematographer Yaron Levy Editor Neil Fazzari Cast Michael Kelly, Jesse Ray Sheps, Pamela Adlon, Josh Lucas, Harris Yulin Print Source Mill House Motion Pictures
John (Michael Kelly, House of Cards ) is on the skids. A former pro baseball pitcher who washed out of the majors, he now spends his days as a two-bit bookie chasing down deadbeats who don’t pay up and taking care of his infirm dad (Harris Yulin). Business is not what you’d call good, until John hooks up with an old high school flame (Pamela Adlon, Better Things ). It turns out she has a son in Little League, whom he takes under his wing—and suddenly discovers that underage ball games are an untapped market for the degenerate gambling crowd. Part sad-sack character study and part outrageous, hysterical social satire, director John Hyams’ sports gem, which won the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival, plays like gangbusters—think Bad Santa meets The Bad News Bears . It’s the sort of beautifully warped father-figure comedy that leaves folks laughing and cringing in equal measures. You can bet on it. —David Fear
Sun O ct 7 8:15pm Rafael
Mon O ct 8 3:30pm Rafael
Director/Screenwriter Melissa Miller Costanzo Producers Lauren Avinoam, Katie Leary, Jed Mellick Cinematographer Adam Bricker Editors Russell Costanzo, Matt Garner Cast Brendan Meyer, Jemima Kirke, Molly Ringwald, Brian d’Arcy James, Sam McCarthy, Harley Quinn Smith Print Source Orion Classics
M Howie Sheffield’s road to adulthood is off to a rocky start. His arm is in a cast. His parent’s growing tension hangs heavy in their New York brownstone. And he’s infatuated with an alluring mystery woman who rides the same bus as him. As the title suggests, All These Small Moments carefully curates episodes from Howie’s turbulent family life, his precarious dealings at school, and the interactions he manages with the mysterious blonde on the bus. These moments feel innately human and fresh thanks to an understated approach from first-time director Melissa Miller Costanzo. Working from her own script, Costanzo creates an engrossing tale of tumultuous adolescence and self-discovery, aided by a talented cast that includes Molly Ringwald ( Riverdale ), Jemima Kirke ( Girls ), Brian d’Arcy James ( Spotlight , MVFF 2014), and Brendan Meyer ( The OA ) as Howie.
—Elliott Breeden
PRECEDED BY RAINBOW BRIDGE
US 2018 • 8 min
Director Rivkah Beth Medow
A beloved family member is the center of a poignant ceremony.
Sat O ct 6 8:15pm L ark Sun O ct 7 8:45pm L ark
WORLD CINEMA
Colombia 2017 • 91 min
Director/Screenwriter Andrés Burgos Producer Andrea Marulanda Cinematographer Manuel Castañeda
Editor María Vásquez Cast Marcela Benjumea, Enrique Carriazo, Ana María Arango, Patricia Tamayo, Diego León Hoyos, Fabio Rubiano Print Source Habanero Film Sales
M V In Spanish with English subtitles At the crossroads of stoicism and paranoia, a rigid, rather cranky, Type A secretary named Amalia (the hilarious Marcela Benjumea) begins to unravel as carefree repairman Lázaro (Enrique Carriazo) waltzes into her life, introducing her (and effectively filling up her meticulous daily planner) to a world of cumbia, yoga, and spontaneous flirtation. As the CEO she loyally serves weighs the pros and cons of suicide versus reporting failing numbers at an impending board meeting, Amalia must choose whether to invest her high-functioning administrative energy into saving the company or launching a joie de vivre startup for herself and Lázaro, instead. With a close eye for detail, director Andrés Burgos captures the universal language of awkward office passive aggression, complete with clinking pens and shuffling paperwork, while juxtaposing the quotidian Colombian life of caring for elderly parents, commuting to work, and frequenting the local discoteca.
—Delfin Vigil
Thur O ct 11 6:15pm Rafael Fri O ct 12 3:00pm L arkspur
Argentina/Spain 2018 • 126 min
Director Luis Ortega Screenwriters
Sergio Olguín, Luis Ortega, Rodolfo Palacios Producers Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar, Hugo Sigman
Cinematographer Julián Apezteguia
Editor Guille Gatti Cast Lorenzo Ferro, Chino Darín, Mercedes Morán, Daniel Fanego, Cecilia Roth Print Source The Orchard
V FOCUS: QUEER-ISH In Spanish with English subtitles On the cusp of a sexual awakening, 19-year-old Carlitos (Lorenzo Ferro) meets a handsome classmate (Chino Darín), the son of a gun-toting father, and quickly graduates from adorable burglar to fullon sociopath. The titular “ángel” of Luis Ortega’s fourth feature, a box office smash in its native Argentina, is Carlos Robledo Puch, appearing barely post-pubescent with a soft white belly, golden ringlets, and a ruby-tinged pout—looking at odds with his starring role in a notorious 1970s crime spree. Bearing the artistic mark of Pedro Almodóvar (who co-produced the film), this true-crime tale deploys black humor, exuberant pop music, perfect period details, and some anachronistic art, providing subtle historical context in Argentina’s dictatorship and repressive machismo culture without excusing Carlitos’ behavior. Ferro and Darín deliver sensational turns as the criminal duo, with added support from the great Cecilia Roth ( All About My Mother ) and Mercedes Morán ( La ciénaga, MVFF 2001) as their respective mothers.
—Shari Kizirian
Sun O ct 7 9:00pm Rafael Mon O ct 8 8:45pm L arkspur
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF SPAIN
US/UK 2017 • Total Program 100 min
Director Matt Skerritt Producers Scilla Andreen, Karin Gornick Cinematographer Ryan Purcell Editors Christopher S. Johnson, Matt Skerritt Print Source IndieFlix
FOCUS: TEENS&20s Anxiety in teenagers and adolescents is an epidemic on the rise, affecting more youth and families than ever before, yet it is still deeply misunderstood and too often disregarded. Angst is the timely and powerful resource we need to spark important conversations about what we can do about it. Deeply personal interviews with children and young adults facing the challenges of managing their own anxiety—and its effects on their physical, emotional, and social lives—provide critical insight for adults to better understand how to help. Additional perspectives from mental health experts and researchers shed light on the causes and damaging cycles of stress. Eye-opening and empowering, Angst is a must-see documentary that gives voice to those suffering and shares tools for parents, teachers, siblings, medical professionals—truly everyone in the community— to address the anxiety affecting so many people we love.
—Deanna Quinones
The screening is followed by a community discussion featuring a panel of filmmakers, film subjects, and mental health professionals. This is the first program in CFI Education’s new year-round Teen Wellness Film Series, presented in partnership with Tamalpais Union High School District Wellness.
Tue O ct 9 6:30pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH TAMALPAIS UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT WELLNESS
US 2018 • 73 min
Director Jennifer Hou Kwong (Jian Ping) Screenwriters Jamie Ceaser, Jennifer Hou Kwong (Jian Ping) Producer Jamie Ceaser Cinematographer Paul Chen Editor Brent Hannigan Cast Art Paul, Hugh Hefner, Christie Hefner, George Lois, Steven Heller, Brand Holland Print Source MoraQuest Media
M For its first 30 years of publication, Playboy magazine’s eye-popping design and illustrations were the work of Art Paul, the graphic artist and trendsetter whose sketch of the iconic tuxedoed bunny came to define the brand. As Playboy ’s founding art director, Paul’s visionary ideas and dedication to creative freedom were radical in the conservative 1950s, mixing fine art and pop art, and even experimenting with interactive graphics. Prolific in multiple art forms until his passing in 2018 at age 93, Paul was a renaissance man who, at the height of his influence, commissioned works from the likes of Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí. Director Jian Ping’s exuberant and heartfelt documentary peels back the curtain on the unsung innovator and visual architect of a national institution, whose creative contributions not only elevated the magazine’s caliber and reputation but helped usher in a new cultural revolution. WORLD PREMIERE —Jesse Knight
Fri O ct 5 9:00pm Sequoia Sat O ct 6 5:00pm Rafael Tue O ct 9 12:00pm Sequoia
SPONSORED BY YELP
VALLEY OF THE DOCS
US 2018 • 87 min
Director/Screenwriter/Producer
Terry Strauss Cinematographer Barry Schienberg Editor Lou Wirth Cast Peter Coyote Print Source Health, Education & Videotape Inc.
M Two months after Pearl Harbor and the US entry into World War II, a pair of destroyers escorted a supply ship through the treacherous North Atlantic to a base in Newfoundland. A nasty storm, combined with an officer’s reluctance to trust his experienced navigator and newfangled radar, ran two of the ships aground on the rocks of adjacent coves. More than 200 sailors on the Pollux and the Truxton lost their lives, but nearly as many were rescued by local miners and townspeople. Director Terry Strauss, whose father was one of the survivors, plumbs a trove of photographs, documents, drawings, and interviews to recount a moving story of sacrifice, endurance, and heroism. The film hits an emotional peak with footage of the 1988 reunion between the American survivors and the Canadian townspeople who saved and cared for them. Peter Coyote narrates this remarkable saga with a blend of tender empathy and palpable amazement. WORLD PREMIERE
—Michael Fox
Sat O ct 6 2:00pm Sequoia Thur O ct 11 2:30pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH CONSULATE GENERAL OF CANADA, SAN FRANCISCO
WORLD CINEMA
China/France 2018 • 150 min
Director/Screenwriter Jia
Zhangke Producer Shozo Ichiyama
Cinematographer Eric Gautier Editors
Matthieu Laclau, Xin Xudong Cast Zhao
Tao, Liao Fan, Xu Zheng, Casper Liang
Print Source Cohen Media Group
M In Mandarin with English subtitles Revered Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke ( Mountains May Depart ) often chronicles the seismic cultural and political shifts in his homeland through his thoughtful, meticulous dramas. Ash Is Purest White is no different, blending a rich character study with a gangster epic while examining how the passage of time asserts itself on both individuals and societies. The film focuses on Qiao (Zhao Tao, the director’s wife and frequent collaborator), who’s devoted to her gangster boyfriend—so much so that she takes the rap for him on a gun charge. Five years later, Qiao is released from prison and tries to pick up the pieces of her old life, only to discover that much of the outside world has changed. Zhao is superb in the lead, bringing emotional shading and a quiet steeliness to a gangster epic that veers brilliantly from the surreal to the melancholy. You may never hear “Y.M.C.A.” the same way again.
—Tim Grierson
Sun O ct 7 7:30pm L arkspur
Sun O ct 14 11:00am Sequoia
IN ASSOCIATION WITH CENTER FOR ASIAN AMERICAN CINEMA
US 2018 • 87 min
Director Dava Whisenant Screenwriters Ozzy Inguanzo, Dava Whisenant
Producers Amanda Spain, Dava Whisenant, Susan Littenberg
Cinematographers Natalie Kingston, Nick Higgins Editor Dava Whisenant Cast Steve Young, David Letterman, Martin Short, Chita Rivera, Susan Stroman, Jello Biafra Print Source Impact Partners
M This joyous romp through a musical history you never knew existed will have you singing along to discarded musical masterpieces that were, in their time, even bigger than Broadway. Comedy writer Steve Young rarely felt compelled to pursue hobbies outside of his happy 25-year career on The Late Show with David Letterman . Little did he know that the Late Show segment “Dave’s Record Collection” would lead him to discover an almost entirely secret golden age of mid-20th century industrial musicals, an entertaining and engaging world of lavish Broadway-style shows. Dava Whisenant’s directorial debut accompanies Young in his quest to not only build the definitive record collection of these eccentric gems, but also to connect with equally obsessive collectors (Sport Murphy, Jello Biafra, Don Bolles), as well as the talented collaborators, both known (Martin Short, Chita Rivera, Florence Henderson) and unknown, who provided their ample talents to these idiosyncratic theatrical delights.
—Leah LoSchiavo
Thur O ct 11 2:30pm Sequoia* Sat O ct 13 5:30pm L ark
IN ASSOCIATION WITH MARIN THEATRE COMPANY
*This screening is fee to CFI members. Reception to follow. Get your complimentary tickets at mvff.com
SPONSORED BY XFINITY
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 111 min
Director Felix van Groeningen Screenwriters Luke Davies, Felix van Groeningen Producers Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner Cinematographer Ruben Impens Editor Nico Leunen Cast Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan, Timothy Hutton Print Source Amazon Studios
SPECIAL PRESENTATION
FOCUS: TEENS&20s Culling from the bestselling memoirs of both father and son David and Nic Sheff, Oscar ® -nominated director Felix van Groeningen’s ( The Broken Circle Breakdown ) English-language debut is a kaleidoscopic and moving portrait of an American family coping with addiction. Frequent Rolling Stone contributor David (Steve Carell) sees his teenage son Nic’s (an unforgettable Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name , MVFF 2017) marijuana use as harmless experimentation until he begins to spiral out of control on heroin and crystal meth. What follows is a alternately inspiring and unflinching look at a family begins the long cycle of rehab and relapse, hope and dread. Filmed in San Francisco and Marin County, Beautiful Boy features a diverse soundtrack which includes John Lennon, Nirvana, and Sigur Rós and outstanding supporting performances from Maura Tierney and Amy Ryan as Nic’s maternal figures. —Joe Bowman
Sat O ct 6 3:00pm Rafael Mon O ct 8 2:00pm Sequoia
(UNGA ASTRID)
WORLD CINEMA
Sweden/Germany/Denmark 2018 • 123 min
Director Pernille Fischer Christensen Screenwriters Kim Fupz Aakeson, Pernille Fischer Christensen Producers Anna Anthony, Maria Dahlin, Lars G. Lindström Cinematographer Erik Molberg Hansen Editors Kasper Leick, Åsa Mossberg Cast Alba August, Maria Bonnevie, Magnus Krepper, Trine Dyrholm, Henrik Rafaelsen Print Source Music Box Films
M In Swedish and Danish with English subtitles Before there was Pippi (Longstocking), there was the talented journalist and aspiring writer, Astrid Lindgren. And prior to her emergence as a beloved, worldrenowned children’s author, there was the free-spirited Astrid Ericsson (Alba August, A Serious Game , MVFF 2016), a small-town teenager bursting with anarchic energy, doing the Charleston by herself at the village dance. This superb coming-of-age narrative connects the dots between Lindgren’s most famous character, Pippi, and her own remarkable defiance of social norms, as a fiercely independent-minded career woman and unwed mother, by choice. Astrid’s restless curiosity leads her into, and out of, an affair with her married boss—and the resulting pregnancy left-turns the film from biopic territory into a taut drama about the struggles of single motherhood in 1920s Sweden. Gorgeously shot (the camera is always hurrying after Astrid, trying to catch up), the storytelling is swift and understated, perfectly suited to the pioneering author and her unforgettable legacy. US PREMIERE
—Monica Nolan
Thur O ct 11 6:00pm L ark
Fri O ct 12 2:00pm L ark Sat O ct 13 2:30pm Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF SWEDEN AND THE BARBRO OSHER PRO SUECIA FOUNDATION
IN ASSOCIATION WITH MILL VALLEY BOOK DEPOT & CAFE
US 2018 • 103 min
SPONSORED BY KAISER PERMANENTE AND JENNIFER COSLETT MACCREADY
Director/Screenwriter Peter Hedges
Producers Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Teddy Schwarzman Cinematographer
Stuart Dryburgh Editor Ian Blume Cast
Julia Roberts, Lucas Hedges, Courtney B. Vance, Kathryn Newton Print Source Roadside Attractions
DIRECTORS NIGHT
M FOCUS: TEENS&20s Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges command the screen in this riveting new film from Oscar ® -nominated writer-director Peter Hedges ( Dan in Real Life ). As Holly Burns (Roberts) drives home with her children from a Christmas pageant recital, she’s moved to tears at the sight of her eldest child, Ben (Hedges), standing in their driveway. It’s the Christmas present she’s been hoping for, but the return of her prodigal son from his sober living home is met with concern from both her teenage daughter Ivy (Kathryn Newton) and her new husband Neal (Courtney B. Vance). Ben’s unexpected appearance isn’t what it appears to be, which could also be said of the film itself. Unlike his excellent Pieces of April, Hedges isn’t interested in a straight family holiday drama, layering Ben Is Back with its share of surprises and suspense. Lucas Hedges, the director’s own son, continues his streak of stellar performances following Lady Bird (MVFF 2017) and Boy Erased (MVFF 2018), and he’s perfectly matched by a sensational Julia Roberts in her best role in years.
—Joe Bowman
Fri O ct 12 6:00pm Sequoia Sun O ct 14 8:00pm Sequoia BEN IS BACK
OF THE DOCS
US 2018 • 88 min
Director Robin Hauser Producers Robin Hauser, Christie Herring Cinematographer John Behrens Editor Christie Herring Print Source Finish Line Features, LLC
M A thought-provoking (and blood-pressurespiking) documentary precisely matched to this moment of political and social upheaval, bias takes an incisive look at the nature of unconscious human bias and its long-reaching effects on social, professional, and cultural norms. Filmmaker Robin Hauser ( CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap , MVFF 2015, Audience Award) dives deep into the science and sociology around implicit bias and searches for answers as to how we can de-bias our brains. Beginning with the personal, Hauser takes—and is stunned by the results of— the Harvard-based Implicit Association Test (IAT). She then casts a wide net to explore how modern science, technology, and woke individuals and businesses are working to reveal, understand, and reshape the forces of bias that have ruled for too long. An energetic mix of interviews, experiments, data, and pop culture clips shed light on a fascinating topic that touches everyone, no matter how free of bias we believe ourselves to be.
—Deanna Quinones
Sun O ct 7 2:30pm Sequoia Sat O ct 13 2:00pm L ark
IN ASSOCIATION WITH DRAKE STUDENTS ORGANIZED FOR ANTI-RACISM
France 2017 • 83 min
Directors Benjamin Renner, Patrick Imbert Screenwriters Benjamin Renner, Jean Regnaud Producers Damien Brunner, Didier Brunner, Vincent Tavier
Editor Benjamin Massoubre Cast Bill Bailey, Adrian Edmondson, Justin Edwards, Matthew Goode, Celia Imrie, Phill Jupitus Print Source GKids
FOCUS: ANIMATION NATION A warmhearted, French charmer with Looney Tunes flair from members of the Oscar ® -nominated team behind Ernest & Célestine (presented here in English and featuring a stellar British vocal cast), The Big Bad Fox delivers a trio of winning comedic tales set on an idyllic country farm. Well, it would be idyllic except for its quirky, perfectly inept assemblage of bickering animals who never met a plan that didn’t go awry. In “Baby Delivery,” Pig, Rabbit, and Duck must deliver a newborn after Stork falls down on the job (literally). The tables also turn—not once or twice but constantly—in “The Big Bad Fox” and “Saving Christmas,” where Fox is the Rodney Dangerfield of predators, and Christmas doesn’t really need saving… until it does. Beneath all the hijinks in The Big Bad Fox lies a heartfelt message: Love and good intentions always triumph over our inevitable limitations and dim-bulb pratfalls. Age 6+ —Jeff Campbell
Tue O ct 9 10:15am Rafael* Sat O ct 13 12:30pm L arkspur**
WITH SUPPORT FROM THE CULTURAL SERVICES OF THE FRENCH EMBASSY IN THE UNITED STATES
*CFI Education screening open to school groups and general public
**Followed by The Hoopla! (see page 115)
(PÁJAROS DE VERANO)
Colombia/Denmark/Mexico • 125 min
Directors Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra Screenwriters Maria Camila Arias, Jacques Toulemonde Vidal Producers Katrin Pors, Cristina Gallego Cinematographer David Gallego Editor Miguel Schverdfinger Cast Carmiña Martínez, Jhon Narváez, José Acosta, Natalia Reyes, José Vicente Cotes Print Source The Orchard
M V In Wayuu, Spanish, and English with English subtitles Directors Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (the luminous, Academy Award ® -nominated Embrace of the Serpent , MVFF 2015) seamlessly blend gorgeous cinematography in the breathtaking wilderness of the Guajira desert and an atmospheric soundtrack to depict the escalating power struggle between two Wayuu clans in this drama based on an incredible and surprising true story that feels as timeless as a Shakespearean tragedy. During Colombia’s marijuana boom in the 1970s, a Wayuu family is torn between upholding indigenous values of aligned word and deed and amassing money, guns, and power. Prodigal son Rapayet (José Acosta) and seer matriarch Ursula (Carmiña Martínez) try to have it both ways, teetering back and forth between tradition and profits. As the feud escalates and the families grow away from their customs—honoring their ancestors and living a spiritual life—in the increasingly modern world, the film barrels toward an explosive, surprising climax.
—Carol Harada
Wed O ct 10 3:30pm Sequoia Thur O ct 11 8:30pm L arkspur
SPONSORED BY BELLAM SELF STORAGE & BOXES
BORDER (GRÄNS)
WORLD CINEMA
Sweden/Denmark 2018 • 111 min
Director Ali Abbasi Screenwriters Ali Abbasi, Isabella Eklöf, John Ajvide Lindqvist Producers Nina Bisgaard, Piodor Gustafsson, Petra Jonsson Cinematographer Nadim Carlsen Editors Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Anders Skov Cast Eva Melander, Ereo Milonoff, Viktor Åkerblom, Matti Boustedt, Jörgen Thorsson Print Source Neon
FOCUS: QUEER-ISH In Swedish with English subtitles Customs agent Tina has a special talent for sniffing out all manner of malfeasance using her extraordinary sense of smell. Subjected to crude comments from co-workers and cruel treatment at home from her sponger boyfriend, Tina has become a target—for all the ways she is different from everyone else. But when she meets the mysterious Vore, the foundations of her universe begin to crumble. Based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist ( Let the Right One In , MVFF 2008), Border is a gender- and genre-bending love story combining equal parts magical realism, dark humor, and spoton contemporary social critique, whirled into a jaw-dropping tale in which absolutely nothing—and no one—is who, or what, they seem. Featuring the prodigious acting talents of Eva Melander ( Sebbe , MVFF 2010) and Eero Milonoff ( The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki , MVFF 2016), director Ali Abbasi won the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes for this unforgettable film.
—K.D. Davis
Wed O ct 10 6:00pm Rafael Thur O ct 11 9:15pm L ark
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF SWEDEN AND THE BARBRO OSHER PRO SUECIA FOUNDATION
US 2018 • 114 min
Director/Screenwriter Joel Edgerton
Producers Joel Edgerton, Steve
Golin, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts
Cinematographer Eduard Grau Editor Jay Rabinowitz Cast Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Joel Edgerton, Russell Crowe, Xavier Dolan Print Source Focus Features
SPOTLIGHT: JOEL EDGERTON
FOCUS: QUEER-ISH | TEENS&20s Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, and Russell Crowe deliver astonishing performances as a devoted Baptist family whose lives are turned upside down after a malicious phone call outs their teenage son, prompting them to send him to a church-sponsored gay conversion camp. Seventeen-year-old Jared reluctantly agrees to his preacher father’s ultimatum: Fix your same-sex attraction or leave the family. Quickly, Jared realizes that the camp’s aggressive, manipulative methods are doing little to shift his own sexual proclivities or those of his peers (which include Canadian auteur Xavier Dolan and pop superstar Troye Sivan), bringing him to a crossroads that will forever alter his life. In his second directorial outing, actor Joel Edgerton ( Loving , MVFF 2016) takes the role of the fiery camp leader. Edgerton’s adaptation of Garrard Conley’s harrowing memoir is a sensitive, elliptical coming-ofage tale that depicts a universal story of personal struggles that threaten to dissolve familial bonds.
—Joe Bowman
Sun O ct 7 6:00pm Sequoia Tue O ct 9 3:00pm Sequoia
(BEONING)
WORLD CINEMA
South Korea 2018 • 148 min
Director Lee Chang-dong Screenwriters Oh Jung-mi, Lee Chang-dong Producers Lee Chang-dong, Ok Gwang-hee
Cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo
Editors Kim Hyun, Kim Da-won Cast Yoo Ah-in, Jun Jong-seo, Steven Yeun Print Source Well Go USA
In Korean with English subtitles A brittle romantic triangle powers revered Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s ( Poetry ) exquisite adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning.” A relationship blossoms between deliveryman Jong-su and his former classmate Hae-mi when they run into each other after many years. Then Haemi returns from a trip to Africa with a new friend, handsome playboy Ben ( The Walking Dead ’s Steven Yeun). A critical darling at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Burning expertly explores class, identity, and love as it concocts a mesmerizing mystery. The characters’ motivations are often oblique in a film that blends genres so deftly that it is almost impossible to know exactly where it’s headed. Burning ’s ensemble is a master class of nuance, and Lee takes his time revealing his story’s surprises, resulting in a devastating examination of the secrets and lies we all carry around with us.
—Tim Grierson
Wed O ct 10 2:30pm Rafael Thur O ct 11 11:15am Sequoia
IN ASSOCIATION WITH KOREAN CENTER, INC.
SPONSORED
SPONSORED
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 83 min
Directors A. Sayeeda Moreno, Chloe Sarbib, Brian Shoaf, Sonejuhi Sinha, James Sweeney, Anu Valia Screenwriters A. Sayeeda Moreno, Chloe Sarbib, Brian Shoaf, Sonejuhi Sinha, James Sweeney, Susan Soon He Stanton Producers Aleksey Ageyev, Julie Christeas, Katya Yarotskaya Cinematographers Greg Cotton, Shlomo Godder, Edward Herrera, Gaul Porat, Shane Sigler, Ryan Wick Editor Arielle Sherman Cast Henny Russell, Britt Baron, Ronen Rubinstein, Melanie Nicholls-King, Nadia Dajani, Britne Oldford Print Source Aleksey Ageyev
M What do a single mother with ALS, a vampire, and two lovers stuck in separate timelines have in common? What about an aspiring young graffiti artist, a middle-aged widow, and a teenage poet? Though their paths don’t always cross, their lives unfold in Brooklyn’s vibrantly multicultural neighborhood of Bushwick, which becomes a distinctive character that ties these six diverse shorts together. The street art, cramped apartment quarters, and sprawling rooftop views characteristic of Bushwick help give these otherwise stylistically disparate stories a sense of visual continuity, as the characters take on challenges that may otherwise be insurmountable if it weren’t for the power of unconditional love. At times poignant and at others absurd and comical, Bushwick Beats speaks to the resilience of the human spirit. This thrilling omnibus feature boasts a roster of distinct, up-andcoming NYC filmmakers, including Sundance Film Festival award winner Anu Valia ( Lucia, Before and After ) and Cannes and Tribeca Film Festival alum Sonejuhi Sinha ( Love Comes Later ). WORLD PREMIERE
—Esther Liner
Sun O ct 7 4:30pm L arkspur Mon O ct 8 9:00pm Sequoia
US 2018 • 107 min
Director Marielle Heller Screenwriters
Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty Producers
Anne Carey, Amy Nauiokas, David Yarnell
Cinematographer Brandon Trost Editor
Anne McCabe Cast Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells, Jane Curtin, Anna Deavere Smith Print Source Fox Searchlight Pictures
SPOTLIGHT: RICHARD E. GRANT
M FOCUS: QUEER-ISH When her oncelucrative career as a journalist and celebrity biographer hits hard times, Lee Israel (a marvelous Melissa McCarthy) discovers a new avenue for her literary skills that will help pay her mounting bills: the specialized art form (and criminal enterprise) of forging witty and salacious personal letters from the likes of Noël Coward and Dorothy Parker and selling them to collectors. With a penchant for rubbing people the wrong way and an unmistakable preference for cats over humans, Israel finds kinship in fellow outsider and streetwise British dandy Jack (a resplendently reprobate Richard E. Grant), and together they become partners in crime. Adapted from Israel’s memoir of the same name and co-scripted by Nicole Holofcener ( Enough Said ), the sophomore feature from Marielle Heller ( The Diary of a Teenage Girl ) offers a humorous and moving portrait of a dynamic oddball couple and their engaging misadventures in early 1990s New York City.
—Joe Bowman
Wed O ct 10 6:30pm Rafael Sat O ct 13 11:30am Rafael
WORLD CINEMA
Lebanon 2018 • 121 min
Director Nadine Labaki Screenwriters Jihad Hojeily, Michelle Keserwany, Nadine Labaki, Khaled Mouzanar Producers Michel Merkt, Khaled Mouzanar Cinematographer Christopher Aoun Editor Konstantin Bock Cast Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Fadi Yousef, Nadine Labaki Print Source Sony Picture Classics
M In Arabic and Amharic with English subtitles A 12-year-old boy, Zain, sues his parents in court: Asked why, he replies, “For giving me life.” Director Nadine Labaki’s ( Caramel , MVFF 2007) deeply moving film opens our eyes—and our hearts—to the plight of the dispossessed, notably children. Zain runs away when his parents sell his beloved sister into marriage; life on the street pushes his resourcefulness to the limits. Meeting Rahil, an Ethiopian woman without papers, he babysits her (adorable) toddler while she works. Until, one day, she doesn’t return. As Zain, real-life Syrian refugee Zain Al Rafeea is extraordinary, an old soul in a wise-child body. Using nonprofessional actors whose personal backgrounds mirror what we see onscreen (think, Salaam Bombay! ), Labaki is “trying to understand how the system fails these kids.” In doing so, she addresses one of the most pressing humanitarian issues worldwide, doing so with compassion rather than blame. It’s a profound achievement that received a Jury Prize at Cannes.
—Zoë Elton
Sat O ct 13 8:15pm Sequoia Sun O ct 14 1:30pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH CINEFEMME
SPONSORED BY ANDALOU NATURALS
SPONSORED BY GORDON RADLEY
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 92 min
Director/Screenwriter Aaron Schimberg
Producers Daniel Patrick Carbone, Vanessa McDonnell, Matthew Petock
Cinematographer Adam J. Minnick
Editor Sofi Marshall Cast Jess Weixler, Adam Pearson, Charlie Korsmo, Stephen Plunkett, Sari Lennick Print Source Aaron Schimberg
M “Actors and actresses who are beautiful start with an enormous advantage, because we love to look at them.” Pauline Kael’s quote opens Chained for Life , which takes place on the set of a campy exploitation flick. In the film-within-a-film, Mabel (Jess Weixler, Teeth ) plays the beautiful, blind protagonist who falls in love with a disfigured man ( Under the Skin ’s Adam Pearson, who himself has neurofibromatosis) while they both await life-changing surgery from a mad scientist. When the director yells “cut,” the exploitation melts away, and we see the film’s cast (made up of actors with a wide variety of genetic physical differences) in circumstances that allow them to be in charge of their own narratives. This deeply original dark comedy, ripe with film references cinephiles will delight in, satirizes the film industry without cynicism; it’s ultimately about inclusion and the power in telling one’s own story—a refreshing rebuttal to Kael’s statement.
—Celeste Wong
Tue O ct 9 6:00pm Rafael Wed O ct 10 9:15pm Rafael
US 2018 • 106 min
Director Marilyn Ness Producers Katy Chevigny, Marilyn Ness Cinematographer Andre Lambertson Editor Don Bernier Cast Clayton “Mr. C” Guyton, Alex Long, Captain Monique Brown, Officer
Eric Winston, Officer John Gregorio, Councilman Brandon Scott Print Source
PBS Distribution
A M Baltimore’s Eastern District is best known as the setting of HBO’s fictional series The Wire , but to its inhabitants, high unemployment, drug use, and poverty are all too real. In Marilyn Ness’ intimate, often heart-wrenching documentary, we meet the community leaders, police officers, and city council members who are trying to stem the tide of violence that has engulfed the city in recent years. Clayton “Mr. C” Guyton runs the Rose Street Community Center, providing services the city can’t (or won’t), while his protégé Alex Long coaches kickboxing for kids. Although Alex calls the community a place with “too much police and not enough justice,” the police officers we meet act as social workers, marriage counselors, and more, while Councilman Brandon Scott advocates a holistic approach to the “disease” of gun violence. The humanity of these individuals, who clearly care deeply about their community, offers hope in a place that has little to spare.
—Victoria Jaschob
Fri O ct 5 8:45pm L arkspur Sat O ct 6 12:00pm Sequoia
Switzerland/Croatia/Germany/Finland 2018 • 90 min
Director/Screenwriter Anja Kofmel
Producers Heino Deckert, Sinisa Juricic, Samir Cinematographer Simon Guy Fässler Editor Stefan Kälin Cast Megan Gay, Joel Basman Print Source Urban Distribution International
M FOCUS: ANIMATION NATION In Swiss German, German, English, and Spanish with English subtitles After a Swiss journalist is found dead wearing the uniform of a rightwing paramilitary unit during the Balkan Wars in the early 1990s, more questions than answers surface about his murder. Using leftover notebooks, archival news footage, and recollections of colleagues and family members, Anja Kofmel traces her cousin Christian Würtenberg’s mysterious transformation from idealistic war correspondent to doomed mercenary. Animated black-andwhite drawings are cut expertly into the documentary footage, providing a heartfelt portrait of the adventurous young man Kofmel remembers from childhood as well as filling in visuals for the unknowable parts of his story. Kofmel does not flinch from the intensity of the conflagration nor Würtenberg’s dubious role in it, but with deft direction, she pulls her lens wide enough to reveal the hazards of front-line journalism and the irrevocable price of getting too deeply involved in the story. US PREMIERE
—Shari Kizirian
Fri O ct 12 2:45pm Sequoia Sat O ct 13 7:30pm Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF SWITZERLAND
WORLD CINEMA
US 2017 • 105 min
Directors Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina
Screenwriters Adrian Molina, Matthew Aldrich Producer Darla K. Anderson
Cinematographers Matt Aspbury, Danielle Feinberg Editors Steve Bloom, Lee Unkrich Cast Luis Ángel Gómez Jaramillo, Gael García Bernal, Marco Antonio Solís, Angélica Vale, Angélica María Print Source Walt Disney Pictures
V FOCUS: ANIMATION NATION Únete a nosotros para una gran fiesta para dar comienzo al programa especial de ¡Viva el Cine! del MVFF41 con la primera proyección en Marin de Coco , uno de los favoritos de la familia Pixar en español (con subtítulos en inglés). Ven temprano, habrá: pintura facial del Día de Muertos, churros frescos y chocolate, y un mariachi en vivo. Luego acomódate para disfrutar de la colorida historia de un niño mexicano que viaja a la Tierra de los Muertos para encontrar a sus antepasados y la fuente de su profundo amor—y la razón del desdén de su familia—por la música. Join us for a special fiesta to kick off MVFF41’s ¡Viva el Cine! program, with the first Marin screening of this Oscar ® -winning Pixar family favorite in Spanish (with English subtitles). Come early for Day of the Dead face painting, fresh churros and chocolate, and live mariachi music. Then settle in to enjoy the colorful story of a young Mexican boy’s journey to the Land of the Dead to find his ancestors and the source of his deep love—and his family’s disdain—for music.
—Joanne Parsont
Sun O ct 7 11:00am Rafael*
IN ASSOCIATION WITH MARINARTS
*Festivities begin at 10:00am
Poland/France/UK 2018 • 88 min
Director Paweł Pawlikowski Screenwriters Paweł Pawlikowski, Janusz Głowacki, Piotr Borkowski Producers Ewa Puszczy ń ska, Tanya Seghatchian Cinematographer Łukasz Ż al Editor
Jarosław Kami ń ski Cast Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Jeanne Balibar, Borys Szyc, Cédric Kahn Print Source Amazon Studios
SPOTLIGHT: PAWEŁ PAWLIKOWSKI
In Polish, French, and German with English subtitles Based loosely on the lives of his parents—to whom the film is dedicated— Oscar ® -winning director Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War paints a portrait of complicated love during a period of great peril. This bittersweet drama, shot in luminous black and white, traces the courtship of Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a composer, and Zula (Joanna Kulig), a singer and dancer, over several years, with their tempestuous relationship mirroring the fear and uncertainty of life during Communism. Much like Pawlikowski’s acclaimed Ida , Cold War examines midcentury Poland with somber specificity, but the actors’ performances bring a fire to this deceptively elegant romance. Pawlikowski tells his story in scattered vignettes, like a faded scrapbook with pages missing, resulting in a dreamy, half-remembered reverie. Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Cold War ’s message of how love ebbs and flows—and also how it’s shaped by the trauma of its times—will speak to audiences all over the world.
—Tim Grierson
Fri O ct 5 7:00pm Rafael Mon O ct 8 3:00pm Sequoia
IN ASSOCIATION WITH POLISH CULTURAL INSTITUTE NEW YORK
US 2018 • 82 min
Director/Screenwriter/Editor Richard Levien Producers Jesse Garcia, Vincent Cortez, Frazer Bradshaw Cinematographer Frazer Bradshaw Cast Jesse Garcia, Izabella Alvarez, Ana de la Reguera, Jason Garcia Print Source Richard Levien
M V The devastating impact of the United States’ increasingly draconian immigration policy falls on one family in this breathtaking and timely first feature. With her passion for science and going to the mall, Itan Bautista is a typical San Francisco 12-year-old. But she is also responsible for caring for her little brother, Neto, while her mother, Yoana, works one of her four jobs—until the day the children return home to discover their mother missing after an ICE raid. The siblings end up on the doorstep of their estranged uncle Evencio (Jesse Garcia, Quinceñera ), a hard-drinking truck driver with little interest in them. As ICE shuffles Yoana between detention centers, Itan is left with the burden of finding her mother, managing Evencio and Neto, and keeping up with her studies. Local writer-director Richard Levien puts the weight of his film in the hands of young Izabella Alvarez as Itan to mesmerizing effect. WORLD PREMIERE —Alexis Whitman
Fri O ct 12 8:45pm Sequoia Sun O ct 14 12:00pm L arkspur
IN ASSOCIATION WITH CANAL ALLIANCE
SPONSORED BY BANK OF MARIN
SPONSORED BY GRUBER FAMILY FOUNDATION
(FIGLIA MIA)
WORLD CINEMA
Italy/Germany/Switzerland 2018 • 97 min
Director Laura Bispuri Screenwriters Francesca Manieri, Laura Bispuri Producers Marta Donzelli, Gregorio Paonessa Cinematographer Vladan Radovic Editor Carlotta Cristiani Cast Valeria Golino, Alba Rohrwacher, Sara Casu, Udo Kier, Michele Carboni Print
Source Strand Releasing
M In Italian with English subtitles In a dusty, isolated village in Sardinia, two vastly different women and one 10-year-old girl share a secret that threatens to unmoor the family relationships anchoring their lives. Tina (Valeria Golino) is the serious, devoted mother of young blonde Botticellian Vittoria; but when her daughter starts spending more time in the company of reckless Angelica—whom the town dismisses as a boozy tramp—Tina is both wary of and resigned to the unspoken bond that draws her daughter towards this magnetic lost soul. As she weaves the complex loyalties of motherhood, director Laura Bispuri leans again (as in her marvelous debut feature Sworn Virgin ) on actor Alba Rohrbacher, who captivates as the dissipated Angelica; and on cinematographer Vladan Radovic, whose intimate, handheld view into these women’s lives reveals a world of emotions hiding behind hardened exteriors, much as their village hides its human dramas from the oblivious tourists basking on its sundrenched beaches.
—Peter L. Stein
Sun O ct 7 6:15pm Rafael Tue O ct 9 9:15pm Sequoia
IN ASSOCIATION WITH MUSEO ITALO AMERICANO
US 2018 • 123 min
Director Karyn Kusama Screenwriters
Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi Producers
Fred Berger, Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi
Cinematographer Julie Kirkwood Editor
Plummy Tucker Cast Nicole Kidman, Sebastian Stan, Bradley Whitford, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany Print Source Annapurna Pictures
SPOTLIGHT: KARYN KUSAMA
M Karyn Kusama and Nicole Kidman are a match made in cinema heaven: Where Kusama ups the ante on genre, Kidman matches her by delivering one of her most extraordinary, transformative performances to date. Director Kusama ( Girlfight , Jennifer’s Body, The Invitation ) has a knack for looking genre in the eye and twisting it so we will never quite see it in the same way. In Destroyer, it’s the LA noir cop thriller. And it’s Erin Bell (Kidman) who breaks the mold of our expectations. When we first see Bell, she is gaunt, haggard, haunted. She is at a murder scene that recalls the past, when she and her then-partner Chris (Sebastian Stan, I, Tonya , MVFF 2017) had worked underground amongst a ring of young, violent criminals that ended badly, leaving her scarred and traumatized. In a plot that plays with time and memory, Bell is forced to confront the personal and professional demons that destroyed her past while struggling to, perhaps, right some wrongs.
—Zoë Elton
Wed O ct 10 6:30pm Sequoia Sun O ct 14 1:45pm Rafael
EARTH, OUR HOME: THE NEW ENVIRONMENTALISTS
VALLEY OF THE DOCS
Total Program 91 min
A WORD TO THE WISE
Spain 2017 • 27 min
Director Jordi Esgleas Marroi
Stunning photography highlights a view of the Solomon Islands and its inhabitants who are forced to confront the dangerous compromises they make in the name of progress that threaten their idyllic landscape and culture.
EARTHRISE
US 2017 • 31 min
Director Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
A wealth of wonderful archival footage accompanies the reminiscences of all three Apollo 8 astronauts as they contemplate their groundbreaking voyage, the philosophical impact the trip had on them, and one very special iconic photograph.
THE NEW ENVIRONMENTALISTS: FROM HANOI TO PARIS
US 2018 • 32 min
Directors Will Parrinello, John Antonelli, Matt Yamashita
Robert Redford narrates the most recent edition of this Emmy ® -winning series: an annual tribute to six dedicated environmental activists from around the world who take heroic measures to safeguard our precious natural resources.
—Sterling Hedgpeth
Tue O ct 9 6:45pm Rafael Wed O ct 10 10:30am Rafael*
IN ASSOCIATION WITH GOLDMAN ENVIRONMENTAL PRIZE
*CFI Education screening open to school groups and general public
(BITCOIN BIG BANG, L’IMPROBABLE ÉPOPÉE DE MARK KARPELÈS)
VALLEY OF THE DOCS
France 2018 • 104 min
Directors/Screenwriters Xavier Sayanoff, Vincent Gonon Producers Thierry Tripod, Cédric Delport, Damien Le Boucher
Cinematographers Raphaël Aupy, Stefano Forlini, Vincent Gonon, Jean-François Lesellier, Xavier Sayanoff Editor Dorian Tabone Print Source Xavier Sayanoff
In English, French, and Japanese with English subtitles The rise and spectacular fall of Mark Karpelès, CEO of the bitcoin digital currency exchange Mt. Gox, is a lesson in how easily the digital universe can be manipulated and how quickly its promises can come crashing down. This engrossing documentary examines Karpelès’ life and career, providing a fascinating look at a cryptic personality. Often hailed as the future of money, bitcoin became a worldwide sensation, and Mt. Gox, launched in 2010, became the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange. But by early 2014, the company reported the loss of 850,000 bitcoins (currently valued at more than $800 million), “seemingly out of nowhere.” Is Karpelès—a Frenchman living in Tokyo—a con artist or victim, clueless or cunning? Directors Vincent Gonon and Xavier Sayanoff interview the impassive Karpelès (on trial in Japan for embezzlement and other charges), Mt. Gox clients, and financial and tech experts, in a riveting attempt to get to the bottom of the scandal.
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
—Margarita Landazuri
Sun O ct 7 12:45pm L ark Wed O ct 10 12:30pm Sequoia
WITH SUPPORT FROM THE CULTURAL SERVICES OF THE FRENCH EMBASSY IN THE UNITED STATES
CFI FRENCH CINEMA SPONSOR TV5MONDE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE DE SAN FRANCISCO
Japan/Cuba 2018 • 125 min
Director/Screenwriter Junji Sakamoto
Producers Naoya Kinoshita, Yukiko Shii
Cinematographer Shingo Gima Editor
Shin’ichi Fushima Cast Joe Odagiri, Juan
Miguel Valero Acosta, Giselle Lominchar
Print Source mk2 Films
V In Spanish with English subtitles Japanese-Bolivian medical student Freddy Maemura Hurtado (Japanese superstar Joe Odagiri) travels to Cuba in 1962 to become a doctor, but instead joins Che Guevara’s guerrilla army to fight alongside his hero in this powerful, anti-war biopic. A fascinating Cold War footnote, Freddy’s story resonates with themes that speak sharply to today: from the ongoing threat of nuclear war to the perpetual injustice of poverty, proxy wars, and illegitimate foreign-backed governments. An unusual Japanese-Cuban co-production, shot largely (and evocatively) in Cuba, the film personalizes its politics through Freddy’s transformation from serious, idealistic student into an unlikely revolutionary who idolizes Che and quietly burns with moral outrage. Anger at America is a pulsing vein throughout the drama, but the pointed question the film asks is: What should one do? Is the struggle for freedom, peace, and justice worth risking one’s life?
The earnest, uncynical answer is yes.
—Jeff Campbell
Thur O ct 11 6:00pm Rafael Fri O ct 12 8:45pm L ark
IN ASSOCIATION WITH PLAZACUBA
(TODOS LO SABEN)
WORLD CINEMA
Spain/France/Italy 2018 • 132 min
Director/Screenwriter Asghar Farhadi Producers Álvaro Longoria, Alexandre Mallet-Guy Cinematographer José Luis Alcaine Editor Hayedeh Safiyari Cast Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darín, Bárbara Lennie, Eduard Fernández Print Source Focus Features
In Spanish, English, and Catalan with English subtitles Two-time Oscar ® winner Asghar Farhadi ( The Salesman , MVFF 2016) delivers another powerful portrait of family secrets and complicated moral questions with Everybody Knows . Set in Spain, married Laura (Penélope Cruz) has returned to her hometown for the first time in years for her sister’s wedding, only to be reunited with her former lover Paco (Javier Bardem). But when her daughter goes missing, Laura faces a terrible dilemma: Did she run off… or has she been kidnapped? Everybody Knows is a gripping thriller with more than one mystery at its core, investigating not just the disappearance of the daughter but also the unspoken tensions coursing through Laura. Oscar-winning real-life husband and wife Bardem and Cruz give performances full of anguish and regret. But the film’s secret weapon is Bárbara Lennie ( The Skin I Live In ), who is dynamite as Paco’s wife, and who only slowly comes to understand how little about her spouse she truly knows.
—Tim Grierson
Fri O ct 5 6:00pm Sequoia Sat O ct 6 9:30pm Sequoia
SPONSORED BY KATZ FAMILY
WORLD CINEMA
Ireland/UK/US 2018 • 121 min
Director Yorgos Lanthimos Screenwriters
Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara
Producers Yorgos Lanthimos, Deborah Davis, Lee Magiday Cinematographer Robbie Ryan Editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis
Cast Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn, James Smith Print Source Fox Searchlight Pictures
M FOCUS: QUEER-ISH In the latest audacious offering from world cinema’s leading provocateur Yorgos Lanthimos ( The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer ), Oscar ® winners Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone vie for the affections of—and influence over— sickly Queen Anne (a gloriously unhinged Olivia Colman, winner of the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival) as England engages in the War of the Spanish Succession. Hardened and loyal Sarah Churchill (Weisz), the Duchess of Marlborough, rests easy knowing her favor with the Queen, but the arrival of her distant cousin Abigail (Stone)—an affable, spirited servant whose ladyship was gambled away by her father— in the castle creates a dangerous triad of lust, jealousy, and power plays. With nods to Peter Greenaway, Lanthimos infuses The Favourite , which also won the Grand Prix at Venice, with his signature brand of hilariously deadpan humor, with the three leads perfectly matched to his bawdy wit in yet another truly unforgettable dissection of the darker side of human nature.
—Joe Bowman
Sat O ct 6 4:00pm Sequoia
Wed O ct 10 2:15pm Sequoia
US 2018 • 97 min
Directors/Producers Jimmy
Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Cinematographer Jimmy Chin Editor
Bob Eisenhardt Cast Alex Honnold Print
Source National Geographic
M Free climbing, the mountain climbing subculture which involves scaling sheer vertical walls without the use of ropes or harnesses, has one monolithic goal nobody has ever achieved: ascending the 3200-foot face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Sacramento native Alex Honnold wants to be the first, and so begins this hairraising documentary as Alex trains methodically, analyzing every foot in a climb where death is always a fraction of an inch away. But what happens when, beset by injuries and relationship pressures, someone with such phenomenal focus starts to psych himself out? And how does a perfectionist find a semblance of normalcy in his life while still in the thrall of such a dangerous obsession? Using his support system of climber friends and a touch of gallows humor, Honnold must decide if he’s up to the challenge of accomplishing an unbelievable physical feat of mind-blowing intensity. What happens next, you’ll never forget. —Sterling Hedgpeth
Sat O ct 6 12:00pm Rafael Mon O ct 8 11:30am Sequoia
IN ASSOCIATION WITH BAY AREA CLIMBERS COALITION AND PLANET GRANITE SAN FRANCISCO
OF THE DOCS
US 2018 • 68 min
Director/Cinematographer Erin Palmquist
Producers Erin Palmquist, Frances Reid
Editors Eli Olson, Andrew Gersh Print
Source Erin Palmquist
A M FOCUS: QUEER-ISH Wrongfully accused of being a double agent due to his family ties to the Ba’ath Party, Ghazwan Alsharif, an Iraqi translator for the US Army, winds up detained, tortured, and interrogated by US Military Police. Under great duress, Alsharif confesses to a truth that has been hiding in plain sight for his entire life: He is gay. Unable to stay in Iraq due to the danger his position brings upon himself and his family, he seeks political asylum in the US and lands in San Francisco. Despite newfound liberation and an exciting career as a chef, he acutely feels the loss of his family and his homeland. Utilizing nearly a decade of footage that is vulnerable, candid, intimate, and at times humorous, From Bagdad to The Bay touches upon themes easily recognizable to those who have had to flee their homes to save themselves: alienation, post-traumatic stress, despair, hope, and rebirth.
—Esther Liner
Sat O ct 13 2:00pm Rafael Sun O ct 14 2:15pm Sequoia
IN ASSOCIATION WITH HORIZONS FOUNDATION AND INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE AND THE LGBT ASYLUM PROJECT AND HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
FAMILY FILMS
Total Program 72 min
V Nonverbal and in Spanish with English subtitles As part of our ¡Viva el Cine! initiative, this eclectic collection of short films is brought to us by our friends and neighbors in Mexico, in collaboration with the Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia. Join us for a lively medley of animation and live action, curated for audiences of all ages— and for both Spanish and English speakers alike—to enjoy. From music-loving mosquitoes to a boy who loves to draw, it is a lively celebration of curiosity and creativity. A Hole ( El agujero ) (Maribel Suárez, 2016, 5 min), Lucy vs. the Limits of Voice ( Lucy contra los límites de la voz ) (Mónica Herrera, 2014, 10 min), Bzzz (Anna Cetti & Guicho Nuñez, 2016, 4 min), Stardust ( Polvo de estrellas ) (Aldo Sotelo Lázaro, 2017, 14 min), Mateo and the Cinema ( Mateo y el cine ) (Luis Felipe Hernández Alanis, 2015, 4 min), Tintico’s Afternoons ( Las tardes de Tintico ) (Alejandro García Caballero, 2016, 11 min), The Teacher and the Flower ( El maestro y la flor ) (Daniel Irabién, 2014, 9 min), Waves from the Sky ( Olas del cielo ) (Gildardo Santoyo del Castillo, 2015, 9 min), Ricotta ( Requesón ) (Luis Téllez, 2015, 6 min). Age 8+
—Joanne Parsont
Sun O ct 7 1:30pm Rafael Thur O ct 11 10:30am L arkspur*
IN ASSOCIATION WITH FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE CINE DE MORELIA
*CFI Education screening open to school groups and general public
Director Jason Reitman Screenwriters Jason Reitman, Matt Bai, Jay Carson Producers Jason Reitman, Matt Bai, Helen Estabrook Cinematographer Eric Steelberg Editor Stefan Grube Cast Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons, Alfred Molina, Sara Paxton Print Source Sony Pictures Classics
When the winsome, youthful, and cameraready Senator Gary Hart—the favorite to win the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination—suddenly dropped out of the race, he wasn’t the first US politician to take a nosedive following the bombshell revelation of an extramarital affair. But the Colorado pol’s meteoric descent would set the course for the ongoing media obsession with public officials’ private lives, focused on salacious details rather than policy and public service. More of a thought-provoking and nuanced ensemble drama than a time capsule, writer-director Jason Reitman’s ( Up in the Air, MVFF 2009) latest depicts the sometimes surprising, often poignant, and always compelling ripple effects of the scandal upon the people closest to Hart (a superb Hugh Jackman), including his independent-minded wife (a quietly magnetic Vera Farmiga), his flinty campaign manager (Oscar ® winner J.K. Simmons), and the scrambling clutch of journalists who dredged up and disclosed the details.
—Joe Bowman
Tue O ct 9 6:00pm Sequoia Wed O ct 10 11:15am Sequoia
US 2018 • 102 min
Director Peter Bogdanovich Producers
Charles S. Cohen, Peter Bogdanovich, Louise Stratton Editor Bill Berg-Hillinger Cast Mel Brooks, Quentin Tarantino, Johnny Knoxville, Carl Reiner, Cybill Shepard, Bill Hader Print Source Cohen Media Group
At the age of four, Buster Keaton became a vaudeville star working as a human projectile in his parents’ act. Over the course of his career, he directed 39 films and starred in over 100, becoming an innovator and visionary not just in comedy but in the cinematic arts as well. In The Great Buster, acclaimed director Peter Bogdanovich ( Paper Moon , The Last Picture Show ) explores Keaton’s legacy, from his prodigious early silent work ( Sherlock Jr. , The General ), his transition to talkies, his disastrous signing to MGM, to his eventual descent into alcoholism. Bogdanovich puts his extensive knowledge of film to use here, utilizing tons of archival footage and conducting a wide-ranging collection of interviews with family, friends, and artists who have been deeply influenced by Keaton. Cybill Shepherd, Richard Lewis, Quentin Tarantino, Mel Brooks, and Johnny Knoxville are among those who offer personal reflections on the cinema legend that is “The Great Stone Face.”
—Elliott Breeden
Sat O ct 6 2:30pm Rafael Sun O ct 7 5:00pm Rafael
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 130 min
Director Peter Farrelly Screenwriters
Peter Farrelly, Brian Currie, Nick Vallelonga Producers Jim Burke, Charles B. Wessler, Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga Cinematographer Sean Porter Editor Patrick J. Don Vito Cast Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini, Sebastian Maniscalco, Dimiter D. Marinov, P.J. Byrne Print Source Universal Pictures
OPENING NIGHT
FOCUS: BLACK IS For classically trained Black jazz piano prodigy Dr. Don Shirley and his white chauffeur and bodyguard Tony Lip, a 1962 concert tour of the American South proves an eye-opening experience in unanticipated ways. Peter Farrelly’s sharply observed drama, spiked with wry humor and inspired by real-life events, features the prodigiously gifted Oscar ® winner Mahershala Ali ( Moonlight , MVFF 2016) as the ultra-sophisticated, polylingual Shirley, an elegant, mannered outsider wherever he goes and a transformed Viggo Mortensen ( Captain Fantastic ) as his truculent, semi-illiterate lip. Tooling around rural roads in a highly conspicuous turquoise Cadillac and getting into—and barely out of—life-threatening encounters together, each starts to see the real man beyond the other’s surface. The period details are spot-on, and so are the hate and the horror that greet a Black man in the Jim Crow South. Ali and Mortensen are pitch-perfect as an improbably matched pair, often at loggerheads, whose journey reaps unexpected and enduring rewards.
US PREMIERE
—Pam Grady
Thur O ct 4 7:00pm Sequoia
Thur O ct 4 7:30pm L arkspur
Denmark/Indonesia/US 2018 • 80 min
Directors/Screenwriters Cynthia Wade, Sasha Friedlander Producers Sasha Friedlander, Cynthia Wade, Tracie Holder Cinematographers Boaz Freund, Axel Baumann, Bao Nguyen, Peter Mychalchewyz, Alex Ginting Editor Sasha Friedlander Print Source Cynthia Wade Productions, Inc.
M In Indonesian with English subtitles How to radicalize a teenage girl and fire her ambition to become a human-rights lawyer? Destroy her family’s home and over a dozen neighboring villages in a 2006 mud volcano that killed 16 and displaced 60,000 in East Java, Indonesia. Expected to continue until at least 2030, this ongoing eruption was probably caused by faulty drilling for natural gas by the Lapindo Company. But the corporation’s own paid researchers cast the blame on an earthquake 180 miles away, absolving Lapindo of responsibility, along with the obligation to compensate victims for their losses. In response, teenage Dian studies diligently, determined to win compensation for her buried village and her father, a Lapindo employee who died a year after the explosion from cancer linked to toxins in the mud. This grandly poetic documentary serves both as a memorial to the disaster’s victims and as the story of a young activist battling a formidable alliance of big business and corrupt politicians.
—Frako Loden
Sun O ct 7 8:00pm Rafael Mon O ct 8 6:00pm L arkspur
IN ASSOCIATION WITH SAN FRANCISCO GREEN FILM FESTIVAL
Canada 2018 • 104 min
Director/Screenwriter Billie Mintz Producers Billie Mintz, J.B. Sugar Cinematographer Sasha Moric Editor Michele Francis Print Source Billie Mintz
A society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members, including its elders. Investigative filmmaker Billie Mintz joins family members, activists, and journalists in Las Vegas to expose a nefarious system designed to defraud and abuse senior citizens—and get away with it. A scheme targets wealthy retirees, coercing them into leaving their homes and surrendering to the custody of rigged, for-profit, court-appointed guardians. The victims lose control of their finances, living situations, medical records, and healthcare. Their very lives are stolen. Exhausted families who want to care for and protect their kin are desperately trying to stop this waking nightmare. Despite continual stonewalling by corrupt judges, doctors, and guardians, the families win some small justice. Yet this Vegas-style racketeering is just the tip of the iceberg, a cautionary tale. Be informed, be enraged, and keep your elders close. US PREMIERE —Carol Harada
Fri O ct 5 3:00pm Sequoia Sat O ct 6 5:15pm L arkspur
IN ASSOCIATION WITH JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF SAN FRANCISCO AND WHISTLESTOP
SPONSORED BY WELLS FARGO
VALLEY OF THE DOCS
US 2018 • 82 min
Director/Screenwriter Bernardo Ruiz
Producers Lauren Rosenfeld Capps, Bernardo Ruiz Cinematographer Victor Tadashi Suarez Editor Fiona Otway Cast
N/A Print Source Quiet Pictures
A M V In English and Spanish with English subtitles Meet the people who prune, bud, harvest, sample, press, and blend grapes from wood vine to bottle and bring together the extraordinary tastes of some of the world’s great wines produced in our neighboring Napa Valley. Director Bernardo Ruiz explores all the stages of wine production as seen and sensed by the individuals who contribute to the journey of these grapes from vine to vintage. Three storylines illustrate the passions of harvesters and winemakers in search of “the heart of the grape:” A migrant worker travels to Napa from Mexico to work the fields; Sonoma-born Vanessa Robledo embodies a proud heritage of three generations of Latino viticulturists through her leadership of Robledo, Black Coyote, and Mi Sueno wineries; and veteran winemaker Gustavo Brambila—whose story, in part, inspired the film Bottle Shock —produces his own label. Their stories converge during the all-important harvest season, dramatically affected by the 2017 wildfires in Napa and Sonoma counties. WORLD PREMIERE
—Leah LoSchiavo
PRECEDED BY LUCINA
US 2018 • 5 min
Director Gerardo Rueda
The day in the life of a woman who’s worked 28 years in farm labor in California’s Central Valley.
Sat O ct 13 2:00pm Sequoia Sun O ct 14 2:45pm L arkspur
IN ASSOCIATION WITH LA LUZ CENTER AND ALMA - ASSOCIATION OF LATINO LAWYERS MARIN
Director George Tillman, Jr. Screenwriter
Audrey Wells Producers Marty Bowen, George Tillman, Jr., Angie Thomas
Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare, Jr.
Editors Alex Blatt, Craig Hayes Ca,st Amandla Stenberg, Anthony Mackie, Regina Hall, Common, Issa Rae Print
Source Twentieth Century Fox
SPOTLIGHT: AMANDLA STENBERG
M FOCUS: BLACK IS | TEENS&20s Starr Carter (a sensational Amandla Stenberg) is the queen of code switching: living one version of herself with her tight-knit family and neighbors in their Black community of Garden Heights, and another with her classmates at a predominantly white private high school across town. When she becomes the sole witness to the shooting death of her childhood friend, Khalil, by a white policeman, the two Starrs have no choice but to collide—often explosively. Does she stand up for Khalil and speak her truth? Or does she keep quiet and protect herself from the violent forces within her own community? Based on the bestselling young adult novel by Angie Thomas, George Tillman, Jr.’s ( Notorious ) powerful drama addresses not just police brutality but the root causes of the racial inequity and injustice that permeates American society. Stenberg ( The Hunger Games ) leads a stellar cast that also includes Common, Issa Rae, Anthony Mackie, and Russell Hornsby and Regina Hall as Starr’s devoted parents.
—Joanne Parsont
Sun O ct 7 5:30pm Sequoia
Thur O ct 11 2:00pm Rafael
Director John Goddard
Swing, swing, swing, swing: John Goddard’s personally curated, impeccably hosted foray into the annals of popular music this year lands on the greats of the Swing Era. Tapping into his earliest memories—and proving that it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing—Goddard will veejay his way through the ’30s and ’40s, that time of remarkable orchestrations and unforgettable lyrics that launched some of the greatest talents of American popular music. He’ll explore the sonorous sophistication of youngster Frank Sinatra, honing his pipes as frontman for Tommy Dorsey; the highfalutin’ harmonizing of the inimitable Andrews Sisters; the soulful innovation of Billie Holiday; the foot-tapping orchestravaganzas (sic!) from the likes of Cab, Duke, and Benny—all of which will be sure to have you dancing in the aisles. Whether your preference is hi de hi or ho de ho, just know t’ain’t watcha do, it’s the way that you do it: And be prepared for some stompin’ at the Sequoia.
—Zoë Elton
Sun O ct 7 9:15pm Sequoia Sat O ct 13 8:30pm Rafael
SPONSORED BY COLDWELL BANKER
MUSIC
US 2018 • 70 min
Director Jim Brown Producers Donna Korones, Jim Brown, Heather A. Smith
Cinematographers Peter Pilafian, Jenni Morello, Gabriel Caso, Jim Brown
Editors Pat Murphy, Bruce Connors, Ryan Kupchik, Alexander Tolmachyov Cast Holly Near Print Source Jim Brown Productions
M FOCUS: QUEER-ISH Singer, songwriter, and social activist Holly Near has been performing for well over 40 years and in the process created what Gloria Steinem called, “the first soundtrack of the women’s movement.” From small-town Northern California to sold-out shows on some of the most iconic stages to million-person peace marches, Singing for Our Lives documents the story of the activist and her art. It also serves as an important testament to a time—a time of protest and coalition building, and the weaving of a multicultural consciousness always rooted in contemporary activism. Featuring Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Ronnie Gilbert, and Tom Hayden with appearances by Pete Seeger and others, this film, directed by Jim Brown ( The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time ), elevates Near to her deserved status of iconic artist and activist, and speaks to anyone who believes in peace, justice, feminism, and humanity.
WORLD PREMIERE
—Melissa Howden
Sun O ct 7 3:00pm Sequoia* Mon O ct 8 3:15pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH FRAMELINE
*Live music event to follow at Sweetwater. Separate ticket required. See page 98 for details.
US 2018 • 54 min
Director/Cinematographer Laura VanZee
Taylor Producers Ariana Garfinkel, Laura VanZee Taylor Editors Laura VanZee
Taylor, Eli Olson Print Source ro*co films
M Finding herself instantly drawn to the healing power of yoga, teenage Maris finds ways to combat the once-crippling mental health issues that defined her adolescence as she begins her studies to become a yoga instructor at only 16 years old. After a childhood of mounting anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, Maris’ parents check her into a hospital to help her confront her illness. Still struggling to cope after being released, Maris begins exploring various methods of therapy, beginning with art and poetry before discovering the life-changing effects that yoga has on both her body and mind. Through her teaching and her blog, Maris strives to inspire others by speaking openly about her struggles and promoting self-acceptance.
—Cindy Lou Peeples
PRECEDED BY
PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE.
US 2018 • 25 mins
Director Rayka Zehtabchi
Banding together to help destigmatize menstruation, a number of determined women and girls install a sanitary pad machine in their rural village in India. Manufacturing and selling the pads, they work to help educate and to improve feminine hygiene in a country where the subject is still incredibly taboo.
Sat O ct 13 11:30am Sequoia
Sun O ct 14 11:30am L arkspur
US 2018 • 117 min
Director/Screenwriter Barry Jenkins
Producers Barry Jenkins, Brad Pitt, Megan Ellison Cinematographer James Laxton Editors Joi McMillon, Nat Sanders Cast KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King, Dave Franco, Diego Luna Print Source Annapurna Pictures
CLOSING NIGHT
FOCUS: BLACK IS In arguably the year’s most anticipated film, Academy Award ® winner Barry Jenkins follows his iconic Moonlight (MVFF 2016) with a poetic, astonishingly realized adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel, If Beale Street Could Talk Diving into the world of 1970s Harlem, Jenkins uses Baldwin’s profound and enlightened look at African American life in the US to express a universal tale of the strengths of love and family in an unjust, imperfect world. Newcomers KiKi Layne (in her first feature film) and Stephan James ( Selma ) play teenage lovers Tish and Fonny, whose lives are turned upside down when Tish discovers she’s pregnant and Fonny is thrown in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. With the help of her mother, played by multiple Emmy ® -winning actress Regina King ( American Crime ), Tish begins a fight for justice, trying to free her innocent husband from prison. Aunjanue Ellis, Colman Domingo, Dave Franco, Diego Luna, and Pedro Pascal round out the impressive supporting cast. —Joe Bowman
Sun O ct 14 5:00pm Rafael Sun O ct 14 5:00pm Sequoia
(IN DEN GANGEN)
WORLD CINEMA
Germany 2018 • 125 min
Director Thomas Stuber Screenwriters Clemens Meyer, Thomas Stuber
Producers Jochen Laube, Fabian Laubach Cinematographer Peter Matjasko Editor
Kaya Inan Cast Franz Rogowski, Sandra Hüller, Peter Kurth, Henning Peker, Matthias Brenner Print Source Music Box Films
In German with English subtitles Gentle comedy and touching melancholia suffuse this nuanced exploration of affection and camaraderie in the workplace. When the heavily tattooed Christian (Franz Rogowski, Transit , MVFF 2018) gets a job at the local warehouse supermarket, little does he know about the lessons in love, friendship, and forklift operation that will ensue. One day in the break room, he meets Marion (Sandra Hüller, the sublime star of Toni Erdmann , MVFF 2016) and is immediately smitten. But Marion has a complicated home life, and their romance progresses less smoothly than Christian’s aptitude with a forklift. Never rushing the plot, In the Aisles carefully tracks the couple’s relationship alongside a perfectly thought-out presentation of workplace life and personalities. Though the store itself is described as bereft of daylight, Stuber’s film offers an unforgettable group of characters who may not have found their dream job, but who nevertheless try to find ways to make each day brighter.
—Rod Armstrong
Tue O ct 9 8:45pm L arkspur Fri O ct 12 12:15pm Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF GERMANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH GOETHE-INSTITUT/ BERLIN & BEYOND FILM FESTIVAL
Director/Screenwriter Greg Naughton
Producers Dorottya Mathe, Greg Naughton, Jonathan Burkhart
Cinematographer Piero Basso Editor Jon Vesey Cast Rich Price, Brian Chartrand, Richard Kind, James Naughton, George Wendt, Kelli O’Hara Print Source RGB Film Inc.
Pulsing with musical goodness, this engaging, offbeat film asks the age-old question: When do you hang up the guitar and become an adult? Rich is a New York graduate student tormented by an unfinished dissertation. He’s happiest writing songs on his guitar. Life takes a turn for the weird when he meets Greg (played by director Greg Naughton), a free-spirited musician who urges Rich to follow his dreams. When brusque Brian wanders into the frame, a power trio is born. These three musicians, who are members of the real-life group The Sweet Remains, sputter through an unexpected and hilarious road trip in search of fame and fortune. Filled with gorgeous tunes, the journey leads them to where dreams go to die: Los Angeles. Will they make it? Can they get a record deal? Will the van start? Delving into the emotional realities of all struggling musicians, this funny, feel-good flick captures what it means to be an artist at a crossroad.
—Brendan Peterson
Fri O ct 5 3:00pm Rafael
Sat O ct 6 11:45am Rafael
Total Program 73 min
M In the spirit of MVFF’s Mind the Gap gender equity initiative, these short stories all feature fun, fascinating, and feisty young female characters—both real and fictional. For young Milly, in Natalie van den Dungen’s Sherbert Rosencrantz, You’re Beautiful (Australia 2018, 11 min), having a guinea pig as a best friend seems perfectly normal; her mother, however, begs to differ. In Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s Two Medusas (US 2017, 12 min), the ultimate Halloween horror unfolds when two girls both decide to dress as Medusa for the school costume contest. Some people think girls should not be boxers, but in Emily Sheskin’s documentary JessZilla (US 2017, 7 min), 10-year-old Jesselyn Silva is already proving them wrong. In Matthew Sandager’s live action/animation hybrid Dear Henri, (US 2017, 13 min), Henrietta finds an imaginative way to stay connected with her recently deceased namesake grandfather. In Tilda Cobham-Hervey’s A Field Guide to Being a 12-Year-Old Girl (Australia 2017, 20 min), a dozen titular pre-teens create a Wes Anderson-style performance to explain this critical juncture in female adolescence. After moving to a new town, homesick Maria finds friendship with the unlikely help of a chicken in João Pedro Pereira’s Galinha (US 2018, 12 min). The fear of her undocumented parents being deported is all too real for Sophie Cruz in Paola Mendoza’s timely documentary Free Like the Birds (US 2016, 10 min)—but this young girl is fearless in her fight for their freedom. And in Kerry Skinner’s action-packed The Bicycle Thief (UK 2018, 8 min), another spunky young girl takes chase to recover her stolen bike. Age 10+
—Joanne Parsont
Sat O ct 6 11:00am Sequoia
Wed O ct 10 11:00am L arkspur*
Sat O ct 13 3:45pm L arkspur**
*CFI Education screening open to school groups and general public
**Preceded by The Hoopla! (see page 115)
SPONSORED BY A PARTY CENTER
VALLEY OF THE DOCS
US 2018 • 84 min
Director Oren Rudavsky Screenwriters
Robert Seidman, Oren Rudavsky
Producers Oren Rudavsky, Andrea Miller
Cinematographer Wolfgang Held Editor Ramon Rivera Moret Cast Liev Schreiber, Adam Driver, Hugh Dancy, Lauren Ambrose, Tim Blake Nelson Print Source Oren Rudavsky Productions
If you’ve ever experienced history through a punchy headline or simply picked up a newspaper to find out about the world, you have Joseph Pulitzer to thank. A Hungarian immigrant, the young Pulitzer was hired as reporter in St. Louis in the late 1800s; he’d eventually move into publishing, purchase the New York World , and set the pace for covering news in the 20th century. Narrated by Adam Driver (and featuring Liev Schreiber as the voice of Pulitzer), this portrait from director Oren Rudavsky ( The Treatment , MVFF 2006) recounts the life and times of modern journalism’s founding father as he evolves into both a crusader for the common man and a wealthy, influential political donor. Voice of the People presages today’s fight for truth in the “fake news” era as seen through the eyes of an American legend who helped shape our nation, one 36-point headline at a time. WORLD PREMIERE
—David Fear
PRECEDED BY
THE CENTER OF A BOOK
US 2018 • 5 min
Directors Joshua Moore, Liz Payne
A wealth of creative devices are used in this vibrant short to celebrate the traditions of a beloved analog craft.
Fri O ct 5 3:30pm Rafael
Sat O ct 6 8:00pm L arkspur Tue O ct 9 12:15pm Sequoia
IN ASSOCIATION WITH JEWISH FILM INSTITUTE
US 2018 •
Director Finn Taylor Cinematographer H. Lee Waters Editor Rick LeCompte Cast Jenny Scheinman, Robbie Fulks, Robbie Gjersoe Print Source Bernstein Artists
In this remarkable visual and musical time capsule and collaborative work from Bay Area director Finn Taylor ( Unleashed , MVFF 2016) and multi-instrumentalist Jenny Scheinman, layers of historical footage, contemporary filmmaking, and accompanying live performance weave together a mesmerizing and vivid portrait of bygone community life, memorializing the resilience of extraordinary people during an uncompromising chapter of America’s 20th century past. At the height of the Great Depression, photographer and filmmaker H. Lee Waters traveled the textile factory boroughs of central North Carolina to record the lives of workers and families, bringing his cameras to black and white neighborhoods in segregated towns, documenting the humble dignity, vivacious joy, and gentle amusements of a place and people now much changed by the persistence of time. Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait , a one-of-a-kind multimedia event with live musical accompaniment, was commissioned by Duke Performances and premiered at the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
—Leah LoSchiavo
Wed O ct 10 6:30pm L ark
Wed O ct 10 8:45pm L ark
IN ASSOCIATION WITH SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL AND MARIN MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 97 min
Director Sara Colangelo Screenwriters
Sara Colangelo, Nadav Lapid Producers
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Celine Rattray, Trudie Styler Cinematographer Pepe Avila del Pino Editors Lee Percy, Marc Vives Cast Maggie Gyllenhaal, Parker Sevak, Gael García Bernal, Anna Baryshnikov, Michael Chernus Print Source Netflix
SPOTLIGHT: MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL
M In one of her finest turns to date, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Lisa Spinelli, an engaged, slightly bohemian kindergarten teacher who notices an uncanny knack for poetry in Jimmy, one of her young students, in this arresting drama that took home the directing prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Perfectly inhabiting ankle-length skirts, flat shoes, and oversized jewelry, Gyllenhaal taps into fathomless wells of empathy (which border on pathological obsession) as Lisa, whose attempts to nurture and capture on paper Jimmy’s rare gift are met with concern from the child’s family as well as her own. Inspired by Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s 2014 film of the same name, Sara Colangelo’s beautifully realized second feature makes some noteworthy pivots from Lapid’s, while still asking a complex question without easy answers: How do we preserve the natural talents of our generation’s Mozarts amid the spoils of our modern world?
—Joe Bowman
Fri O ct 12 6:45pm Rafael Sat O ct 13 11:30am L ark
SPONSORED BY
WORLD CINEMA
Romania/Canada/Germany/Sweden 2018
• 88 min
Director Ioana Uricaru Screenwriters
Tatiana Ionascu, Ioana Uricaru Producers
Eike Goreczka, Yanick Létourneau, Cristian Mungiu Cinematographer Friede Clausz Editor Mircea Olteanu Cast M ă lina Manovici, Steve Bacic, Dylan Scott Smith, Milan Hurduc, Ruxandra Maniu Print
Source Mongrel
M In English and Romanian with English subtitles Writer-director Ioana Uricaru gives voice to many that face the harsh and often unfair realities of the immigration process with this drama drawn from real-life events. Mara (M ă lina Manovici, Graduation ), an immigrant nurse from Romania waiting for her green card, is doing everything she can to live out her part of the American Dream. She’s working towards having a home, helping her new husband recuperate from illness, and teaching her son English so he can get a good education. But following the rules has only led to bitter setback after setback: The US immigration officer overseeing her case tries to exploit her, she is counting on insurance money that may never arrive to pay for her child’s education, and her spouse is a loose cannon. Feeling helpless as she tries to fight the system while still operating within it, Mara must navigate American culture while managing to save her dignity in the process.
—Angelique Smith
Fri O ct 12 8:45pm L arkspur
Sun O ct 14 2:00pm Rafael
US 2018 • 105 min
Director/Screenwriter Nia DaCosta Producers Rachael Fung, Gabrielle Nadig, Tim Headington Cinematographer Matt Mitchell Editor Catrin Hedstrom Cast Tessa Thompson, Lily James, Luke Kirby, James Badge Dale, Lance Reddick Print Source Neon
M FOCUS: BLACK IS She “forgot to be scared”—that’s how Ollie (rising superstar Tessa Thompson) got caught the first time, for being a drug dealer of Canadian meds in the North Dakota oil and gas boomtown she calls home. Since going straight and switching to dealing hot coffee, clean laundry, and quips with the lonely local roustabouts, Ollie’s gotten plenty scared—of losing the house her mother left her, about making it through her probation, of blowing a job interview. When her estranged sister Deb (a shape-shifting Lily James) comes to her with a desperate plea, Ollie talks herself into one last big score. First-time writer-director Nia DaCosta shapes a taut anti-western about sisterly bonds within a gray landscape of men and industry. Though the villains are intractable—opiate addiction, the broken US healthcare system, exploitation of the land and people—the performances of Thompson and James blaze through the bleakness.
—Lucy Laird
Fri O ct 5 4:00pm Sequoia
Sat O ct 6 8:00pm Rafael
Thur O ct 11 11:45am Sequoia
US 2018 • 87 min
Director/Cinematographer Jon Strong
Screenwriters Jon Strong, Ted Haddock, John King, Mike Quinn, Jr. Producers Ted Haddock, John King, Tighe Arnold Editors Jon Strong, Drew Walkup, Mike Quinn, Jr. Cast Hank Aaron, Cal Ripken, Jr., Gary Sheffield, Davey Johnson, Andrew Young, Stewart Hall Print Source Jon Strong
FOCUS: BLACK IS This stirring, deeply emotional documentary explores how one ball game transformed a group of kids and offered hope for a country struggling with racial tensions and inequality. In 1955, two Florida teams squared off in a contest with historic ramifications. One of the first integrated Little League games, the Pensacola Jaycees vs. the Orlando Kiwanis wasn’t just a simple battle on the diamond; it offered hope that a color-blind world might be right around the corner. Of course, that didn’t happen. Six decades later, players from both dugouts talk about the impact of that game and their complicated journeys, as filmmaker Jon Strong puts human faces on the festering problem of American racism. Beautiful, tragic, and optimistic, Long Time Coming features diverse voices of civil rights leaders; Hall of Fame ballplayers, including Hank Aaron and Cal Ripken, Jr.; and a handful of men who’ve lived through turbulent times and found hope.
—Brendan Peterson
Wed O ct 10 8:45pm L arkspur Fri O ct 12 3:00pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH MILL VALLEY LITTLE LEAGUE
SPONSORED BY CP i DEVELOPERS
VALLEY OF THE DOCS
Director Bill Benenson Screenwriters
Jenny Hollowell, Doug Preston Producers
Bill Benenson, Laurie Benenson
Cinematographer Lucian Read Editor Sam Lee Print Source Benenson Productions
For centuries, rumors of a lost ancient city in the jungles of Honduras have circulated, suffused in folklore and piquing the interest of anthropologists and adventurers alike. For decades, Steve Elkins has been one such explorer, whose efforts to unearth such a momentous find have been hampered time and again by politics, hurricanes, drug cartels, and finances. Will this mystery remain as impenetrable as that dense expanse of jungle terrain? Newly armed with a film crew and cutting-edge laser mapping technology, Elkin’s most recent attempt at uncovering this fabled Mayan kingdom is documented in director Bill Benenson’s real-life epic of relentless drive and elusive archeology. But the closer the team gets, the greater the stakes… and the bigger the snakes. Is this all in the name of academic inquiry, or are there heavier ethical implications at play? For every twist and turn, this tale is centuries in the making. US PREMIERE
—Sterling Hedgpeth
Mon O ct 8 8:45pm Sequoia Tue O ct 9 6:15pm L arkspur
France 2017 • 113 min
Director Tom Volf Producers Gaël Leiblang, Emma Lepers, Tom Volf Editor
Janice Jones Cast Maria Callas Print
Source Sony Pictures Classics
M In English, French, and Italian with English subtitles The story of Maria Callas, one of the 20th century’s greatest sopranos, is a revelation. Drawing on a lifetime of interviews, first-time director Tom Volf allows Callas to speak for herself, unencumbered by other perspectives or the gossip that painted her colorful life. The New York-born daughter of Greek immigrants, Callas says of her early days: “Children should have a wonderful childhood, and I didn’t.” In 1937, at 13, she moved to Greece, enrolling in the Conservatoire of Athens. Smiling, Callas says, “I was supposed to be 17. This was my first lie.” Soon, Maria became Callas, and that phenomenal voice inspired the world. She speaks of her struggles with exhaustion and depression, of canceled performances. Of love: “My affair with [Aristotle] Onassis was a failure, but my friendship with him was a success.” And, as much as the film is in her own words, it’s also in her own voice. And oh, that voice... Where words cease, music begins.
—Zoë Elton
Thur O ct 11 6:30pm Rafael
Sun O ct 14 8:15pm Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM THE CULTURAL SERVICES OF THE FRENCH EMBASSY IN THE UNITED STATES
IN ASSOCIATION WITH FRENCH HERITAGE SOCIETY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA AND MARINARTS
US 2018 • 85 min
Director Rob Fruchtman Screenwriter Cornelia Ravenal Producers Mikael Södersten, Cornelia Ravenal, Wendy Sax Cinematographers Lex Fletcher, Shakeb Ahmed Editors Rob Fruchtman, Mikael Södersten Print Source Argot Pictures
In English, Arabic, Hindi, Korean, and Romanian with English subtitles Six dancers break through culture and language barriers to inspire at-risk youth across the world in award-winning filmmaker Ron Fruchtman’s (Sweet Dreams , MVFF 2012) compelling documentary. “Dancing to Connect” is a project of New York’s Battery Dance Company that takes the universal language of dance to India, Romania, and South Korea. Week-long workshops culminate in heartfelt performances before the young students’ communities. Beyond the workshops, members of the dance company foster a potent mentorship with a hip hop dancer in Iraq, further testimony to the uplifting power of movement. Candid interviews in this well-paced documentary grant audiences an intimate view of the project through the eyes of teachers and students. In the current climate of world events, there is no more perfect prescription to soothe the soul than Moving Stories
—Jennie Adler
PRECEDED BY THE SCHOOL OF HONK US 2018 • 11 min
Director Patrick Johnson
Join the fun as this boisterous film profiles a lively community street band that has room for everyone.
Sun O ct 7 11:45am Sequoia Mon O ct 8 10:15am Rafael* Wed O ct 10 6:00pm L arkspur
IN ASSOCIATION WITH ROCO DANCE
*CFI Education screening open to school groups and general public
SPONSORED BY PIZZA ANTICA
SPONSORED BY JIM BOYCE TRUST AND KRIS OTIS
WORLD CINEMA
Poland 2018 • 91 min
Director Małgorzata Szumowska Screenwriters Michal Englert, Małgorzata Szumowska Producers Małgorzata Szumowska, Jacek Drosio, Michal Englert Cinematographer Michal Englert Editor Jacek Drosio Cast Mateusz Ko ś ciukiewicz, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Małgorzata Gorol, Roman Gancarczyk Print Source Memento Films
M In Polish with English subtitles A giant statue of Christ—”bigger than the one in Rio,” chortles the parish priest—serves as the symbolic lookout for the manifold smalltown hypocrisies on view in Małgorzata Szumowska’s Mug , winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Jacek (Mateusz Ko ś ciukiewicz, Walesa: Man of Hope , MVFF 2013), a cheerfully shaggy, Metallica-loving construction worker, has just proposed to his girlfriend when a devastating accident results in facial reconstruction that renders him almost unrecognizable, even to himself. Szumowska ( Body, MVFF 2015) uses this tragedy as the jumping-off point for exposing the shortcomings of the people who surround the suffering Jacek. Alongside a trenchant (and often darkly funny) cultural critique of a rapidly modernizing society that is only concerned with surface appearances, Mug offers a memorably iconoclastic protagonist who faces down the various indignities thrust upon him, refusing to let his altered appearance change who he is inside.
—Rod Armstrong
Sat O ct 13 8:00pm L ark
Sun O ct 14 8:15pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH POLISH CULTURAL INSTITUTE NEW YORK
Mexico 2018 • 115 min
Director Alonso Ruizpalacios
Screenwriters Manuel Alcalá, Alonso Ruizpalacios Producers Gael García Bernal, Brian Cox, Manuel Alcalá Cinematographer Damián García Editor Yibran Asuad Cast Gael García Bernal, Leonardo Ortizgris, Alfredo Castro, Simon Russell Beale Print Source Vitagraph Films
V In Spanish and English with English subtitles With choruses of charm and suspense, director Alonso Ruizpalacios ( Güeros ) steals the muse from museum in this mesmerizing thriller, the Best Screenplay award winner at the Berlin International Film Festival. Inspired by a notorious 1985 art heist that resulted in the theft of more than 100 Mesoamerican and Mayan artifacts from Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology, Museo follows perpetual students Juan (Gael García Bernal) and Wilson (Leonardo Ortizgris), the unlikely culprits behind the scandal that rocked a nation. Are they acting on behalf of the Mayan gods, or just acting out? Who gets to decide if it’s preservation or if it’s plundering? Clarity and objectivity are obscured with precision through Ruizpalacios’ lucid dreamlike camera as we hear the poetic reminiscing of a wiser Wilson’s narration and joyfully cringe at the magnetism of García Bernal at his most devilishly comedic as a moody bandito.
—Delfin Vigil
Sun O ct 7 2:00pm Rafael Mon O ct 8 8:30pm L ark
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF MEXICO
IN ASSOCIATION WITH ALMAASSOCIATION OF LATINO LAWYERS MARIN
(DOUBLES VIES)
WORLD CINEMA
France 2018 • 108 min
Director/Screenwriter Olivier Assayas Producer Charles Gillibert
Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux Editor Simon Jacquet Cast Juliette Binoche, Guillaume Canet, Vincent Macaigne, Christa Théret, Pascal Greggory Print Source IFC Films
In French with English subtitles The thorny relationship between art, literature, and commerce has never been more seductive than in French auteur Olivier Assayas’ latest comedy of manners. Having explored the worlds of stage and screen in Clouds of Sils Maria (MVFF 2014) and fashionista celebrity culture in Personal Shopper (MVFF 2016), Assayas turns his sly gaze to the fantasies and foibles of publishing in Non-Fiction As the bed-hopping, charmingly opinionated Parisians at the heart of the film analyze the future of digital media (often in flagrante ), they express their grief—in spirited (and spirit-drenched) discussion—over the death of the printed word. Featuring the ever-luminous Juliette Binoche, as a pasther-prime primetime TV star, alongside magnificent Guillaume Canet as a suave book publisher and philandering husband; and the show-stealer Vincent Macaigne as a hilariously obsequious has-been author whose self-pitying demeanor belies a rapscallion of the lowest order. Funny, wry, and sophisticated, Non-Fiction is essential viewing for bibliophiles and cinephiles of all stripes.
—Joe Bowman
Wed O ct 10 8:15pm Sequoia Fri O ct 12 3:30pm Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM THE CULTURAL SERVICES OF THE FRENCH EMBASSY IN THE UNITED STATES
CFI FRENCH CINEMA SPONSOR TV5MONDE
(VENT DU NORD)
WORLD CINEMA
France/Tunisia 2017 • 91 min
Director Walid Mattar Screenwriters Leyla Bouzid, Claude Le Pape, Walid Mattar Producers Saïd Hamich, Imed Marzouk, Anthony Rey Cinematographer Martin Rit Editor Lilian Corbeille Cast Philippe Rebbot, Mohamed Amine Hamzaoui, Corinne Masiero, Kacey Mottet Klein, Abir Bennani Zarouni, Khaled Brahni Print Source Be For Films
In French and Arabic with English subtitles A tale of two relatable working stiffs in the 21st century, this debut film breaks global capitalism down into its component human truths and consequences with lucid clarity and gentle humor. In France, hangdog Hervé loses his factory job when the work moves overseas. Young Foued in Tunisia nabs a spot stamping leather in the relocated factory, but quickly realizes the job is still just work—boring and underpaid. The narrative crisscrosses the ocean separating the two men, weaving patterns and parallels that bind them together. Hervé starts a fishing business with his son, but gets bogged down in French bureaucracy; Foued dreams of becoming shop manager, but finds the job’s real benefit is commuting with comely co-worker Karima. As the intercutting quickens, the two lives start to blend. The film backs up its ideas with strong performances and inventive camerawork, portraying bluecollar life without sentimentality. “It’s total crap,” Hervé exclaims in the opening scene; and yet he and Foued keep dreaming and trying nonetheless. US PREMIERE
—Monica Nolan
Thur O ct 11 6:00pm L arkspur Sat O ct 13 11:15am Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM THE CULTURAL SERVICES OF THE FRENCH EMBASSY IN THE UNITED STATES
CFI FRENCH CINEMA SPONSOR TV5MONDE
UK 2018 • 96 min
Director/Screenwriter Jamie Jones
Producers Emily Jones, Ross Williams
Cinematographer Albert Salas Editor
Agnieszka Liggett Cast Marcus
Rutherford, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Sam Gittens, T’Nia Miller, Jay Walker Print
Source Wide Management
FOCUS: BLACK IS Adjusting to life outside the foster care system proves challenging for 19-year-old East Londoner Leon, whose aimless friends are a toxic influence, while his tippler mum seems to need mothering even more than he does. Unable to find steady work, his sole comfort is time spent at the boxing gym. When he meets the free-spirited and high-minded Twiggy (Sophie Kennedy Clark, Nymphomaniac ), Leon sees a viable escape from his dead-end existence. But as tensions mount after an unarmed Black man is murdered by police, the streets descend into a war zone, and Leon must choose where his allegiances lie. In his first feature film, writer-director Jamie Jones balances a powerful coming-of-age story with a fiery recreation of the class and racial divide that led to the 2011 London riots. As Leon, newcomer Marcus Rutherford is a knockout, mixing imposing intensity with raw-nerve vulnerability in this unforgettable film.
—Jesse Knight
Fri O ct 5 6:00pm L arkspur Mon O ct 8 12:30pm Rafael
US 2018 • 64 min
Director/Cinematographer Spencer Wilkinson Producers Mark DeSaulnier, Jed Riffe Editors Jesse Andrew Clark, Angela Reginato Cast Terrance Kelly, Nicolia Gooding, Dan Strauss, Vernon Staggers, Isa Chu Print Source Jed Riffe Films
Black gospel singing lives at the heart of the church experience, an expression of spirit and the deliverance of a message of faith, hope, and joy. There is a place for everyone in the song, a place in which harmony is not just the simultaneous playing or singing of notes to produce chords, but also a place of concord, the sound of one. No place is this more evident than with the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. One Voice is a joyous expression of this oneness, exploring the lives of four members of the choir and its artistic director Terrance Kelly. In existence for three decades, the choir is composed of singers from diverse faiths, races, socioeconomic backgrounds, genders, and lifestyles, creating a place of inclusion and acceptance for singers and audience alike. The choir is a radiant manifestation of what is possible when people come together, a balm for our times. WORLD PREMIERE —Melissa Howden
Wed O ct 10 6:00pm Sequoia* Sat O ct 13 2:15pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH OAKLAND INTERFAITH GOSPEL CHOIR AND OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA
*Live music event to follow at Sweetwater. Separate ticket required. See page 99 for details.
SPONSORED BY FOUR POINTS BY SHERATON
US 2018 • 95 min
Director Stephen Moyer Screenwriter Denis O’Hare Producers Cerise Larkin, Stephen Moyer, Anna Paquin
Cinematographer Guy Godfree Editor Todd Sandler Cast Denis O’Hare, Melissa Leo, Cynthia Nixon, Anna Paquin, Ed Asner, Rhys Ifans Print Source Dark Star Pictures
SPECIAL PREMIERE
M FOCUS: QUEER-ISH An unexpected death. A family struggling with grief. An apprehensive cross-country road trip in winter. These events set the stage for a powerful, nuanced, and emotionally resonant drama centering on a family pilgrimage to the apartment of Colleen (Anna Paquin) after her demise. The Parting Glass follows siblings Dan (Denis O’Hare), Mare (Cynthia Nixon), and Ally (Melissa Leo) as they reunite with their father (Ed Asner) and Colleen’s estranged husband (Rhys Ifans). The wonderful rapport of the stellar powerhouse cast makes them instantly believable as family—talking over each other, or bickering about something as simple as ordering breakfast, imbuing the film with an aura of honesty and tenderness in a deeply moving portrait of loss. This impressive directorial debut from acclaimed actor Stephen Moyer reunites him with fellow True Blood stars Paquin, who also co-produced, and O’Hare, who wrote the screenplay based on his own experience coping with his sister’s suicide.
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
—Elliott Breeden
Sat O ct 6 6:45pm Sequoia
Sun O ct 7 3:30pm Rafael
Fri O ct 12 9:00pm L arkspur
US 2018 • 76 min
Director Carol Brandt Screenwriter Meredith Johnston Producers Carol Brandt, Suzanne Jurva, Chris James Thompson Cinematographer Dana Shihadah Editors Carol Brandt, Chris James Thompson Cast Meredith Johnston, Rene Cruz Print Source Simple DCP
M With a quiet, meditative sensibility, this contemplative favorite from the SXSW Film Festival follows twentysomething grad school dropout Leigh as she escapes to the woods on a camping trip, taking a break from caring for her ailing mother. With no one else to join her, her ex-beau Cam tags along with his guitar and greying pug, and together they traverse the leafy environs on a whiskey-fueled weekend. Written by and starring Meredith Johnston as Leigh, and based on her own life experience, the film’s dialogue crackles with emotional authenticity as Leigh and Cam philosophize and confront old wounds, navigating the ghosts of their pasts. Shot amidst the dusks, rivers, and cornfields of director Carol Brandt’s native Wisconsin, Pet Names tracks a strong but confused young woman’s struggle for serenity while managing the pressures of complex relationships with her friends and family.
—Natalie Mulford
Fri O ct 5 6:15pm Rafael Sat O ct 6 5:00pm L arkspur
UK/US 2018 • 154 min
Director/Screenwriter Mike Leigh Producer Georgina Lowe Cinematographer Dick Pope Editor Jon Gregory Cast Rory Kinnear, Maxine Peake, Pearce Quigley, David Moorst, Rachel Finnegan Print Source Amazon Studios
Writer-director Mike Leigh (MVFF Tributee 2004) delivers a masterful epic with this sweeping panoramic journey through a little-known moment of England’s inglorious past that melds the stunning visual artistry of Mr. Turner (MVFF 2014) with the gritty realism of his earlier, committed social dramas like Secrets & Lies (MVFF 1996). Food shortages, diminishing wages, and chronic unemployment dog 19th century Manchester, England, despite its importance as a hub of the Industrial Age. In frustration, thousands of men, women, and children gather at the city’s St. Peter’s Field on August 16, 1819 to hear orator Henry Hunt (Rory Kinnear) demand reforms—only to be met by violent force. Leigh gracefully juggles multiple viewpoints: those of the powerful in London and Manchester, everyday Mancunian families struggling to survive, newspapermen trying to sway opinion, and the activists and radicals demanding change. Dick Pope’s expressive cinematography, Gary Yershon’s haunting score, and a brilliant cast of character actors bring history to vivid life.
—Pam Grady
Thur O ct 11 8:45pm Sequoia Sun O ct 14 8:00pm Rafael
SPONSORED BY MARIN
PITY
(OIKTOS)
WORLD CINEMA
Greece/Poland 2018 • 99 min
Director Babis Makridis Screenwriters Efthimis Filippou, Babis Makridis
Producers Amanda Livanou, Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Klaudia Ś mieja
Cinematographer Konstantinos Koukoulios Editor Yannis Chalkiadakis Cast Yannis Drakopoulos, Evi Saoulidou, Nota Tserniafski, Makis Papadimitriou, Georgina Chryskioti, Evdoxia Androulidaki Print Source New Europe Film Sales
In Greek with English subtitles There are grief-stricken men, and then there’s the hero of Greek filmmaker Babis Makridis’ biting satire, Pity : an unnamed lawyer (Yannis Drakopoulos, Chevalier ) whose wife is comatose. Between trips to the hospital to visit his unconscious spouse, he spends his days taking care of his son in their lavish apartment, enjoying the Mediterranean seaside, and accepting tea and sympathy from concerned friends. Soon, he realizes that he’s starting to enjoy the kind of attention and gifts that his wife’s ailment is bringing to him, and that’s when the black comedy really kicks into gear. Birthed from the same cinematic new wave that’s given us Yorgos Lanthimos ( The Lobster ) and Athina Rachel Tsangari ( Attenberg ), this deadpan take on the addictive qualities of the sorrow and the pity—which Makridis co-wrote with Lanthimos’ regular screenwriting collaborator Efthymis Filippou—is the perfect introduction to a bold new cinematic voice. —David Fear
Sun O ct 7 3:30pm L ark Tue O ct 9 3:30pm Rafael
US/UK 2018 • 106 min
Director Matthew Heineman
Screenwriters Arash Amel, Marie Brenner
Producers Matthew Heineman, Charlize Theron, Basil Iwanyk Cinematographer
Robert Richardson Editor Nick Fenton Cast Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Stanley Tucci, Tom Hollander, Alexandra Moen Print Source Aviron Pictures
OPENING NIGHT
M Four years after her Oscar ® -nominated breakthrough role in Gone Girl , Rosamund Pike delivers a breathtaking, career-defining performance in A Private War, transforming herself into the gravel-voiced, eye patchdonning American war correspondent Marie Colvin. Spanning nearly two decades, this powerful drama, which marks the narrative feature debut from Oscar-nominated director Matthew Heineman ( Cartel Land ), showcases the fearless dedication that pushes Colvin to the top of her otherwise male-dominated field, reporting from the dangerous frontlines of the Sri Lankan civil war and the Arab Spring. But that hyper focused, singular passion isn’t without a price, taking a toll on Colvin’s personal relationships as well as putting her own safety in jeopardy. Co-starring Stanley Tucci, Tom Hollander ( In the Loop ), and Jamie Dornan as Colvin’s trusted photo journalist partner Paul Conroy, A Private War is a gripping testament to both Colvin’s tenaciousness and Pike’s dedication to her craft. US PREMIERE —Diane de Monx
Thur O ct 4 7:00pm Rafael Thur O ct 4 7:45pm L arkspur
RAFIKI
Kenya/South Africa/France/Norway/ Netherlands/Germany 2018 • 82 min
Director Wanuri Kahiu Screenwriters
Jenna Cato Bass, Wanuri Kahiu Producer Steven Markovitz Cinematographer
Christopher Wessels Editors Isabelle Dedieu, Ronelle Loots Cast Patricia Amira, Muthoni Gathecha, Jimmy Gathu, Nice Githinji, Charlie Karumi, Patricia Kihoro Print Source Film Movement
M FOCUS: QUEER-ISH | TEENS&20s In English and Swahili with English subtitles Life in Nairobi is pretty simple for Kena: Make good marks in school, help her father as he runs for local office, take care of her forlorn mother, and play football with her guy friends. Though the lanky, androgynous teenager is more likely to be seen skateboarding around her housing estate than donning dresses like a “proper lady,” somehow no one ever questions her sexuality…possibly not even Kena herself. But when the beautiful pink-dreadlocked Ziki, the daughter of her father’s political rival, catches Kena’s eye, a world of possibilities opens up. As they share dreams of breaking free of familial and cultural expectations, it’s not long before local gossips’ tongues start wagging. And in a place where homosexuality is blamed on demon possession, being true to yourself can have dangerous consequences. Banned in Kenya for “legitimizing lesbianism,” this sweet, coming-ofage love story—the first Kenyan film to ever play at Cannes—is a revelation and an inspiration for all ages and genders.
—Angelique Smith
Fri O ct 12 6:00pm Rafael Sat O ct 13 8:00pm L arkspur
WITH SUPPORT FROM THE CONSULATE GENERAL OF GERMANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH FRAMELINE
SPONSORED BY
WORLD CINEMA
Mexico 2018 • 135 min
Director/Screenwriter/Cinematographer Alfonso Cuarón Producers Gabriela Rodriguez, Alfonso Cuarón, Nicolas Celis Editors Alfonso Cuarón, Adam Gough Cast Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa, Carlos Peralta, Nancy García Print Source Netflix
CENTERPIECE
M V In Spanish with English subtitles Oscar ® winner Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men ) returns to his homeland in marvelous style with his first Mexican film since his breakout Y tu mamá también (MVFF 2001). Set in 1970, Roma centers on Cleo (a wonderful Yalitza Aparicio), the indigenous housekeeper to a large Mexico City family. With remarkable attention to detail, Cuarón lovingly captures the energy and textures of his youth, from the movie palaces and slums to the affluent rancheros and crowded hospitals. As Cleo faces her own personal crisis, we also see a country beset with natural disasters and civil unrest. But through it all is the bonding she experiences with three generations of women she works for in a story where compassion, loyalty, and love can transcend differences in class and culture. It’s an emotional epic, filmed (by Cuarón himself) in beautiful black and white with hat tips to Renoir and Fellini. Intensely personal and profoundly moving, Roma is a stunner and deservedly won the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
—Sterling Hedgpeth
Mon O ct 8 6:00pm Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF MEXICO
Director Sean Hanish Screenwriter
Dmitry Portnoy Producers Sean Hanish, Paul Jaconi-Biery Cinematographer
Richard Wong Editor Anita Brandt
Burgoyne Cast Michelle Monaghan, Leem Lubany, Common, Alfred Molina, Mykelti Williamson, Alfre Woodard Print Source Cannonball Productions
M An incredibly timely story celebrating tenacity and hope in the face of adversity, Saint Judy stars Michelle Monaghan (Mission: Impossible - Fallout ) in a tender performance as a real-life immigration attorney who helped change US law to include women as a protected class. After having a vision of arms reaching through the bars of a cell pleading for help, Judy Wood decided to devote herself to immigration law to aid those in need. A single mother in her thirties, Wood started her own firm and, in one of her very first cases, found herself battling established law. Representing an Afghan immigrant who had been persecuted for opening a school for girls, Wood fought her way up to the Ninth Circuit Court and changed asylum law nationwide, finally allowing women to be included as a protected class. Saint Judy effectively recounts Wood’s story in this absorbing biopic, co-starring Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Leem Lubany, and Common.
—Elliott Breeden
Sat O ct 13 5:30pm Rafael Sun O ct 14 5:30pm L arkspur
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 78 min
Director/Screenwriter/Producer/Editor
Nina Paley Cast Hiram Paley, Nina Paley, Barry Gray Print Source Nina Paley
M FOCUS: ANIMATION NATION In English, French, Bulgarian, Hebrew, and Aramaic with English subtitles A disco-dancing Pharaoh, a crooning Angel of Death, Moses and his chorus line of dancing rams. This isn’t your bubbe’s Passover Seder. The long-awaited second feature from visionary director and animator Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues ) is an irreverent musical telling of the Book of Exodus, reimagining the freedom of the slaves from Egypt as an eclectic mixtape of funk, rock, and Motown, featuring songs from Pat Boone to Led Zeppelin to Oingo Boingo. With acerbic wit and a resplendent variety of animation styles, Paley’s vision is Schoolhouse Rock by way of Adult Swim, filtered through a feminist prism that derides the patriarchal tenets of the Passover story still rippling through the world today. Hilarious and razor-sharp, Paley’s latest is also achingly personal, incorporating candid conversations with her late father at the end of his life, lending the film a poignant emotional grounding amidst all the Passover madness. US PREMIERE
—Jesse Knight
Mon O ct 8 6:00pm L ark Tue O ct 9 8:45pm Rafael
SPONSORED BY
SPONSORED BY BSSP
WORLD CINEMA
Cuba/Spain 2017 • 93 min
Director Ernesto Daranas Serrano
Screenwriters Ernesto Daranas Serrano, Marta Daranas Producers Jaume Roures, Joel Ortega, Ramón Samada
Cinematographer Alejandro Menéndez
Editor Jorge Miguel Quevedo Cast Tomás Cao, Héctor Noas Uriza, Ron Perlman
Print Source West End Films
V In Spanish, Russian, and English with English subtitles Based on a true story, this whimsical and lighthearted tale remains grounded in human struggles and emotions through the eyes and ears of Sergio (Tomás Cao, Viva ), a young Cuban art professor and ham radio operator. Opening with a long zoom from outer space down to Earth, a lone figure rides his bicycle on the streets of Havana circa 1991 as Fidel Castro proclaims the continuation of the Cuban Revolution over the radio, even as the Soviet Union collapses. Sergio eagerly reaches out to the wider world, making friends on both sides of the Cold War, including Sergei, a Soviet cosmonaut orbiting alone on the Mir space station, and Peter (Ron Perlman), an American journalist in New York. Though the special effects are low-budget, they are terrific in recreating the interstellar world. Back on Earth, the film depicts Havana continuing to glow in gorgeous light and colors even as electrical blackouts, government surveillance, and goods shortages leave many Cubans restless and longing for escape.
—Brian Karl
Tue O ct 9 6:00pm L ark
Wed O ct 10 12:00pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH PLAZACUBA
(MANBIKI KAZOKU)
Japan 2018 • 121 min
Director/Screenwriter/Producer/Editor Hirokazu Kore-eda Cinematographer Kondo Ryuto Cast Franky Lily, Matsuoka Mayu, Jyo Kairi, Ando Sakura, Kiki Kilin, Sasaki Miyu Print Source Magnolia Pictures
In Japanese with English subtitles Master filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda ( Like Father, Like Son ; After the Storm , MVFF 2016) often focuses on the tenuous bonds of family in his intimate dramas, but that theme has rarely been expressed as beautifully as it is in this quietly devastating gem. The winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, Shoplifters concerns Osamu (Kore-eda regular Lily Franky), a kindly, elderly patriarch living in poverty who steals to make ends meet. When he and his son stumble upon a scared, abused little girl, Osamu decides to take her into his makeshift home—but is it a kidnapping or a rescue? Shoplifters wrestles with that question as it explores each member of Osamu’s extended family, showing how no two characters’ relationship is the same. Fans of Kore-eda’s hushed storytelling style will find a movie that’s uncommonly lovely and bittersweet, and for the uninitiated, Shoplifters is a marvelous place to become acquainted with one of international cinema’s most compassionate voices.
—Tim Grierson
Sat O ct 6 5:00pm L ark Tue O ct 9 3:00pm Rafael
Spain 2018 • 96 min
Directors/Producers Robert Bahar, Almudena Carracedo Cinematographer Almudena Carracedo Editors Kim Roberts, Ricardo Acosta Cast n/a Print Source Cinephil
M V In Spanish with English subtitles Since the death of Spain’s General Franco in 1975, the victims of his 40-year dictatorship have been awaiting justice for the crimes committed against them and their families. The 1976 “Pact of Forgetting,” an amnesty law meant to erase the county’s troubled history, did little to bridge the divide between victims and perpetrators, as it absolved both political prisoners and fascist henchmen of any wrongdoing. This award-winning and poignant documentary, executive produced by Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar, illustrates how a grassroots effort to bring those guilty of crimes against humanity to justice blossomed into a national movement of remembrance and, ultimately, forgiveness. Aided by human rights lawyers and the now-elderly plaintiffs, an Argentine judge battles the Spanish government and time itself to undo decades of state-imposed amnesia. The testimonies of the victims, set against the starkly beautiful Spanish countryside, are a powerful indictment of the country’s dark past of tyranny and oppression.
—Victoria Jaschob
Fri O ct 5 8:15pm L ark Sat O ct 6 7:30pm Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF SPAIN
SPONSORED BY SOL FOOD
SPONSORED BY JIM BOYCE TRUST AND KRIS OTIS
(DAS SCHWEIGENDE KLASSENZIMMER)
WORLD CINEMA
Germany 2018 • 111 min
Director/Screenwriter Lars Kraume
Producers Miriam Düssel, Susanne Freyer
Cinematographer Jens Harant Editor Barbara Gies Cast Leonard Scheicher, Tom Gramenz, Lena Klenke, Isaiah Michalski, Jonas Dassler, Ronald Zehrfeld Print Source Pyramide Films
FOCUS: TEENS&20s In German and Russian with English subtitles Director Lars Kraume ( The People vs. Fritz Bauer ) crafts another poignant and gripping portrait of mid-1950s Germany with The Silent Revolution . Two teenage boys sneak into a West German movie theater hoping to get a glimpse of their favorite pin-up, but come away bowled over by a newsreel depiction of Hungarian students taking to the streets in an effort to drive out the Soviet forces occupying their country. The actions of youth not much older than themselves inspires the teens and their classmates to make their own gesture of solidarity—two minutes of silence during class. To their surprise, this small act of defiance precipitates a chain of events that will test their friendships, their principles, the bonds of family, and the power structures that underlie the post-Nazi Soviet occupation. Remarkable performances by a new generation of German talent animate this powerful period drama with haunting parallels to our own era of creeping fascism.
—Michael LoPresti
Tue O ct 9 2:30pm Sequoia Wed O ct 10 6:15pm Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF GERMANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH GOETHE-INSTITUT/ BERLIN & BEYOND FILM FESTIVAL
India/France 2018 • 96 min
Director/Screenwriter Rohena Gera
Producers Rohena Gera, Brice Poisson
Cinematographer Dominique Colin Editor Jacques Comets Cast Tillotama Shome, Vivek Gomber, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Rahul Vohra, Divya Seth Shah, Chandrachoor Rai Print Source mk2 Films
M In Hindi, English, and Marathi with English subtitles Movie romance doesn’t have to be all steamy clinches and sweep-youoff-your-feet orchestral crescendos. Sometimes, as in Rohena Gera’s first fiction feature about the growing affection between a live-in maid and her well-off employer, it can be nothing more fervid than private moments of mutual understanding and shy, sweet looks of longing and desire. Sir follows tender-aged widow Ratna from rural India as she moves to the big city with dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Working hard as a housekeeper in Ashwin’s swanky Mumbai high-rise apartment, Ratna sends money home for a younger sister’s studies while warding off criticism from in-laws as she seeks to develop her skills through an apprenticeship with a tailor. Meanwhile, Ashwin is trapped in a box of privilege’s making. Delicately observed, Sir limns the social and economic chasm between these two unlikely hearts. Whether or not they are united in the end is less important than each one’s quiet determination to break free from the narrow bounds of their class and gender-based expectations. US PREMIERE
—Shari Kizirian
Wed O ct 10 9:00pm Rafael
Thur O ct 11 3:00pm Rafael
WORLD CINEMA
France/Qatar 2018 • 80 min
Director/Screenwriter Meryem Benm’Barek Producer Olivier Delbosc Cinematographer Son Doan Editor Céline Perreard Cast Maha Alemi, Lubna Azabal, Sarah Perles, Faouzi Bensaïdi, Hamza Khafif, Nadia Niazi Print Source Be For Films
M In French and Arabic with English subtitles Sofia is a confident, assured, and naturalistic debut from Moroccan-born, Belgian-educated writer-director Meryem Benm’Barek. At her parents’ comfortable, middle class home in Casablanca, 20-yearold Sofia leaves the table, doubled over in pain. When her cousin Lena, a medical student, comes to check on her, she asks Sofia the loaded question: “When was your last period?” Suffering from pregnancy denial, Sofia has been completely oblivious to her own state. Thinking quickly, Lena discreetly takes Sofia to a hospital and uses her connections to get her checked in to give birth. Under Moroccan law, having a baby out of wedlock is punishable by up to a year in jail, and the hospital gives Sofia twenty-four hours to name the father. Sofia finds herself forced to weigh the grave consequences of telling the truth, not only to authorities but to her family. Benm’Barek took home the Best Screenplay award in the Un Certain Regard section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
—Elliott Breeden
Thur O ct 11 8:45pm L arkspur Sun O ct 14 11:30am Rafael
WITH SUPPORT FROM THE CULTURAL SERVICES OF THE FRENCH EMBASSY IN THE UNITED STATES
CFI FRENCH CINEMA SPONSOR TV5MONDE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE DE SAN FRANCISCO
(IL SE PASSE QUELQUE CHOSE)
WORLD CINEMA
France 2018 • 101 min
Director Anne Alix Screenwriters Anne Alix, Alexis Galmot Producer Thomas Ordonneau Cinematographer Aurélien Py Editor Anna Riche Cast Lola Dueñas, Bojena Horackova Print Source Shellac
M In French with English subtitles Aquamarine seas, tucked-away beaches, pink salt lagoons, lavender-covered roundabouts— this is the dreamy stuff of the gay-friendly guidebook that free-spirited Dolores (frequent Almodóvar collaborator Lola Dueñas) is struggling to write as she drives through Provence. Enter the bereft, middle-aged Irma, with a splash… her suicide thwarted when Dolores pulls her out of the water. The two hit the road together, meandering through a southern France much more complex than its postcard picturesqueness. Through the prism of this tenuous new friendship between outsiders, we are offered glimpses of something happening in this sunny landscape, but what? A meditation, a transformation, an initiation? Director Anne Alix’s beautiful, mysterious film is all of those things. Immigrants pick fruit and tend sheep, can sardines and weld pipes, swim and dance, but they are also trying to make something happen, to survive, to find happiness, to connect. Dolores’s GPS exhorts, “Take the exit. Take the exit.” Yes, do. NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
—Lucy Laird
Fri O ct 5 8:30pm L arkspur Sat O ct 6 2:30pm L ark
WITH SUPPORT FROM THE CULTURAL SERVICES OF THE FRENCH EMBASSY IN THE UNITED STATES
CFI FRENCH CINEMA SPONSOR TV5MONDE
US 2018 • 94 min
Director/Producer Michael Franti
Cinematographers Anthony Thoen, John Roderick Editors John Roderick, Anthony Thoen Print Source Michael Franti
A What does it mean to be human? What connects people around the globe? How can we celebrate the beauty of love and life in a world turned upside down? These are just a few of the questions world-renowned musician Michael Franti explores in this captivating and stirring documentary. Through his socially conscious work in Spearhead, Bay Area-based artist Franti has dedicated his life to speaking up for the underrepresented by creating positive energy during chaotic times. This striking film shines a glowing light on people around the world who embrace hope amidst overwhelming challenges. Through stories and songs, Franti captures the energy and drive of a diverse group of inspirational modern-day heroes. From an Indonesian midwife to a young couple battling the ravages of ALS, Franti uncovers the love and humanity possible in dire conditions and exposes his own struggles, creating an emotional resonance that is moving and motivating at once.
—Brendan Peterson
Mon O ct 8 6:00pm Sequoia* Fri O ct 12 12:30pm Sequoia
IN ASSOCIATION WITH DO IT FOR THE LOVE
*Live music event to follow at Sweetwater. Separate ticket required. See page 98 for details.
FAMILY FILMS/WORLD CINEMA
Germany/Kenya 2018 • 78 min
Director Likarion Wainaina Screenwriters Wanjeri Gakuru, Silas Miami, Kamau Wa Ndung’u, Mugambi Nthiga Producers Sarika Hemi Lakhani, Marie SteinmannTykwer Cinematographer Enos Olik
Editor Charity Kuria Cast Stycie Waweru, Marrianne Nungo, Nyawara Ndambia Print Source Juno Films
M In English, Kikuyu, and Swahili with English subtitles Superhero dreams are the same in every language: rise, fly, vanquish, triumph! In this utterly charming and beautifully crafted family drama—which won awards at both the Berlin and Edinburgh International Film Festivals—these dreams color the days with joy and hope for a terminally ill girl in coastal Kenya. Home from the hospital, Jo (Stycie Waweru, in a brilliant debut) obediently takes her medicine and bundles herself in layers of blankets, even as the invisible foe she’s battling gains advantage. When left alone, she summons her mind’s powers, creating small bursts of supermagic. Her sister, Mwix, realizes what Jo needs most and sets about transforming their village into Jo’s own superhero realm. With brightly humorous homage to Hollywood and a wonderful view into vibrant community-strong village life, Supa Modo makes you believe–as the greatest tales do–in the superest power of all: love. Age 10+
—Deanna Quinones
Thur O ct 11 6:15pm Sequoia Sun O ct 14 2:30pm Sequoia
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF GERMANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH CHILDREN FOR CHANGE
SPONSORED BY COMPASS REAL ESTATE
SPONSORED BY JIM BOYCE TRUST AND KRIS OTIS AND RESONANCE PHILANTHROPIES
(KYOYANG NGARMO)
WORLD CINEMA
India/US 2018 • 91 min
Directors Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam Screenwriter Tenzing Sonam
Producers Ritu Sarin, Shrihari Sathe Cinematographer David McFarland Editor Jabeen Merchant Cast Tenzin Dolker, Jampa Kalsang Tamang Print Source White Crane Films
In Tibetan with English subtitles A vivid story of exile and memory, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam’s follow-up to Dreaming Lhasa centers on Dolkar, a young woman living and thriving in North Delhi’s Tibetan refugee colony. Her life is disrupted when a mysterious activist and refugee arrives, invoking recollections and long-suppressed questions about her childhood escape across the Himalayas. Dolkar is thriving. She attends pop dance classes, works a steady job, and celebrates her 25th birthday with a loving group of friends, mostly fellow immigrants from Tibet who also live in Majnu ka Tila, the Tibetan refugee colony in North Delhi. But Dolkar’s deepening friendship with the sweet mustachioed Dorjee takes an unexpected turn when he introduces her to a man he calls Gyatso-La, an alleged political activist and recent escapee from Tibet, triggering haunting memories of Dolkar’s childhood journey through the Himalayas as she left her home in Tibet. As Dolkar gets to know Dorjee and Gyatso-La, parallel stories of past and present begin to unfold, complete with Chinese spies, soldiers on the prowl, and the yearning for family left behind. US PREMIERE
—Alexis Whitman
Sat O ct 13 5:00pm Sequoia Sun O ct 14 2:15pm L arkspur
IN ASSOCIATION WITH BUDDHIST FILM FOUNDATION
UK 2018 • 96 min
Director Oliver Parker Screenwriter
Aschlin Ditta Producers Stewart Le Marechal, Anna Mohr-Pietsch, Maggie Monteith Cinematographer David Raedeker Editor Liana Del Giudice
Cast Rob Brydon, Rupert Graves, Jane Horrocks, Daniel Mays, Thomas Turgoose Print Source IFC Films
In the irreverent spirit of The Full Monty, Swimming with Men follows a gang of hardluck misfits who form a men’s synchronized swimming team and then seek redemption the only way they know how: by courting humiliation and competing in the world championships. In truth, the competition is irrelevant, as the film truly celebrates the enduring salve of male companionship in the face of aging, loneliness, failure, death, midlife crisis, and existential ennui. And its central pleasure is watching its bevy of beloved British character actors have a hilarious time bickering, melting down, and ultimately caring for one another while flapping, vanity-free, in the pool. Evocative underwater photography and some genuinely impressive swimming add to the delight as Rob Brydon ( The Trip ), Daniel Mays ( Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ), Rupert Graves ( Sherlock ), Jane Horrocks ( Absolutely Fabulous ), and more more don their trunks and goggles, making like pudgy mermaids as they learn to swim together.
—Jeff Campbell
Tue O ct 9 6:15pm Sequoia
Wed O ct 10 2:45pm Rafael Fri O ct 12 3:15pm Sequoia
US 2018 • 89 min
Director Norah Shapiro Producers Chris Newberry, Norah Shapiro, Jennifer Steinnman Cinematographer Chris Newberry Editors Jen Bradwell, Eli Olson
Cast Ilhan Omar Print Source The Film Sales Company
A M Navigating multilayered prejudice with grace and grit, Ilhan Omar serves as a voice for the voiceless and an inspiration to the global new wave of women running for public office as she seeks to unseat a 43year incumbent from the Minnesota House of Representatives. If Omar wins the election, she will be the first Somali American elected to a legislature in the United States. A skillful community organizer and young wife and mother, Omar reaches out to those in her district being left behind: Somali and other East African refugees and immigrants dealing with poverty and high unemployment; college students bearing crushing loan debt; and voters seeking more social and environmental justice. This intimate, riveting account of Omar’s 2016 run reflects the national Democratic Party’s chasm between entrenched moderates and younger, more progressive candidates, often female and people of color. The twists and turns of Omar’s trailblazing career amplify the message at this sea change in US politics: Stop asking permission to run.
—Carol Harada
Sun O ct 7 5:30pm Rafael Tue O ct 9 8:30pm L arkspur
IN ASSOCIATION WITH MARIN COUNTY YOUNG DEMOCRATS
SPONSORED BY MARIN CONVENTION & VISITORS BUREAU
BY
FAMILY FILMS
Total Program 73 min
FOCUS: ANIMATION NATION Nonverbal and in English This baker’s dozen of short films from all corners of the globe showcases the incredible imagination and inspiration of today’s talented animators. Bats that live in libraries? Lemurs that fly dirigibles? Posters that come to life? A little girl who lives in a zoo? Lions that need more exercise to catch their prey? A princess who hates royal life? Water buffaloes that give you a ride to school? They’re all here—and so much more: Coin Operated (Nicholas Arioli, US 2017, 5 min), Rouff (Benjamin Brand, Johannes Engelhardt, Markus Eschrich, Johannes Lumer, & Julius Rosen, Germany 2017, 7 min), Dark Dark Woods (Emile Gignoux & Mik Løvenbalch Kirchheiner, Denmark 2017, 6 min), Awaker ( Probouzec ) (Filip Diviak, Czech Republic 2017, 9 min), Undiscovered (Sara Litzenberger, US 2017, 3 min), A Priori (Maïté Schmitt, France 2017, 6 min), I Want to Live in the Zoo (Evgenia Golubeva, UK 2017, 6 min), Painted (Olivia Derie, Belgium 2017, 4 min), Two Balloons (Mark Smith, US 2017, 9 min), Post No Bills (Robin Hays & Andy Poon, Canada 2017, 5 min), Lion ( Löwe ) (Julia Ocker, Germany 2018, 4 min), Superperson (Philip Watts, Australia 2017, 2 min), Outdoors (Sarah Chalek, France 2017, 7 min). Age 6+
—Joanne Parsont
Sat O ct 6 11:30am Rafael
Fri O ct 12 10:30am Rafael* Sun O ct 14 11:45am L ark
*CFI Education screening open to school groups and general public
(TARDE PARA MORIR JOVEN)
Chile/Brazil/Argentina/Netherlands/ Qatar 2018 • 110 min
Director/Screenwriter Dominga Sotomayor Producers Dominga Sotomayor, Rodrigo Teixeira, Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo Cinematographer Inti Briones Editor Catalina Marín Duarte Cast Demian Hernández, Antar Machado, Magdalena Tótoro, Matías Oviedo, Antonia Zegers Print Source Stray Dogs
M V FOCUS: TEENS&20s In Spanish with English subtitles On the cusp of her blooming sexuality, 16-year-old Sofía (Demian Hernández in an arresting screen debut) relies upon on her younger peers for youthful exploration and companionship. Set during Chile’s tenuous post-dictatorship transition to democracy, Too Late to Die Young follows a group of artistic and bohemian cosmopolitans who have fled the cities and relocated to a mountainous enclave outside Santiago. While the adults focus on daily necessities of life like electricity and plumbing, Sofía oscillates between a need to reconnect with her mother and the powerful discovery of her own allure. Writer-director Dominga Sotomayor ( Thursday Till Sunday, MVFF 2012) makes excellent use of the beauty of nature with sunkissed images of the rivers and the forests in the lush surroundings. Too Late to Die Young earned Sotomayor the Best Director prize at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. As the first female director to receive this coveted prize, Sotomayor represents a growing surge of female talent emerging from Chile.
—Janis Plotkin
Sun O ct 7 11:15am Rafael
Tue O ct 9 3:15pm L arkspur Fri O ct 12 3:15pm Rafael
Germany/France 2018 • 101 min
Director/Screenwriter Christian Petzold Producers Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Michael Weber Cinematographer Hans Fromm bak Editor Bettina Böhler Cast Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese, Lilien Batman Print Source Music Box Films
In German and French with English subtitles A refugee who has escaped from a prison camp in wartime France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead writer in a desperate attempt to flee to safer shores from the transit port of Marseilles. The ruse brings Georg (Franz Rogowski, In the Aisles , MVFF 2018) into a complicated triangle with the writer’s wife and her lover, all caught in the narrowing noose of a hostile occupation. Despite this classic thriller set-up—the story is based on Annea Seghers’ 1942 novel of the same name, and the film at times selfconsciously echoes Casablanca —savvy director Christian Petzold ( Phoenix ) boldly resists telling his story as a standard period intrigue. Instead, by shooting Transit in contemporary Marseilles, dressing his characters and sets in a modern idiom, and narrating Georg’s story through an after-the-fact voiceover, Petzold brilliantly creates a kind of timeless purgatory where the plights of refugees, from all eras and lands, start to overlap and blur.
—Peter L. Stein
Thur O ct 11 8:30pm Sequoia Fri O ct 12 11:45am Sequoia
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF GERMANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH GOETHE-INSTITUT/ BERLIN & BEYOND FILM FESTIVAL
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 89 min
Directors/Editors Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn Screenwriters Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn, Sarah Dziedzic Producers Annalise Lockhart, Nathan Silver, C. Mason Wells Cinematographer Whitney Horn Cast Benjamin Crotty, Laetitia Dosch, Marianna McClellan, Andre Frechette III, Travis Nutting, Michael Murphy Print
Source Two Plains & a Fancy, LLC
M Welcome to Colorado 1893, home to friendly small towns with world-famous hot springs—the kind of attraction perfect for big city visitors like a New York dandy (Benjamin Crotty), a former confidence woman (Marianna McCellan), and a Parisian geologist (Laetitia Dosch, Keeper, MVFF 2015). These curious tourists hope to sample the local healing waters, but along the way, horny fashion-forward yokels, ghostly belle du jour spirits, and your run-of-the-mill time travelers from the future keep dropping detours into their path. Blessed with gorgeous Super 16mm cinematography and campy, deadpan dialogue (“What these horses need is a taste of the pistol!”), this fractured frontier tale from lo-fi filmmaking duo Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn ( L for Leisure ) is one strange trip through the old, weird American West, an absurdist horse opera in the spirit of Hal Hartley.
—David Fear
Fri O ct 5 8:45pm Rafael
Sun O ct 7 7:00pm L arkspur
US 2017 • 86 min
Directors Jamie Vega Wheeler, Justin Carlton Producers Rolin Jones, Adam O’Byrne, Laurel Miller Cinematographer Ruben Contreras Editor Ryan Johnson
Cast Ryan Kattner, Cyrus Ghahremani, Casey Butler, Yuumi Suzui, Kevin Riggin Print Source Cartwheel Films
M Eccentric musician Ryan Kattner has traveled the world as the frontman of Man Man, playing in front of enormous crowds at Coachella, his songs showcased in Nike commercials and TV shows like Weeds . After all this success, what could be next? Maybe one giant step backwards is just what he needs. With his former bandmates settling down with kids, wives, and mortgages, it’s back to square one for Kattner, leaving Man Man behind for a tour with his new musical venture Honus Honus—fully equipped with dingy hotel rooms, diminished crowds, and a group of young musicians. This immersive doc is a real band adventure. Viewers embark on a one-of-a-kind journey with Kattner to experience the true highs and lows of the road, as one artist redefines what it means to be successful.
—Alexis Whitman
PRECEDED BY
THE MODERN LIVES: BACK OF MY MIND
US 2018 • 4 min
Director Bill Plympton
Oscar ® nominee and cult animator Plympton marries his distinctive style to the music of former Black Crowes member Jackie Greene in this stylish short, part of his Modern Lives song cycle.
Sat O ct 13 5:30pm Sequoia* Sun O ct 14 7:45pm L ark
*Live music event to follow at Sweetwater. Separate ticket required. See page 99 for details.
SPONSORED BY
US 2018 • 109 min
Director Maryam Keshavarz Screenwriters Maryam Keshavarz, Jonathan Mastro Producers J.C. Chandor, Neal Dodson, Anna Gerb Cinematographer Drew Daniels Editor Andrea Chignoli Cast Susan Sarandon, Matt Bomer, Lola Kirke, Edie Falco, Julian Morris, Adepero Oduye Print Source Roadside Attractions
M Academy Award ® winner Susan Sarandon offers a riveting performance as Helen, an emergency room nurse whose journalist son on foreign assignment is held for ransom by the Islamic State. When the US government proves to be as much of a threat to her son’s survival as his ISIL captors, Helen makes contact with a covert network of donors and journalists working independently, beyond the reaches of American law, to aid in the release of her son. Featuring a starstudded cast which includes Matt Bomer ( Magic Mike ), Lola Kirke ( Mistress America ), Adepero Oduye ( Pariah , MVFF 2011), and the always exceptional Edie Falco as a wealthy and well-connected activist who comes to Helen’s aid, Iranian American filmmaker Maryam Keshavarz follows her 2011 Sundance Film Festival award-winning Circumstance with this heart-wrenching and urgent portrait of our times.
—Nadia Ismail
Sat O ct 13 7:15pm Rafael Sun O ct 14 5:00pm L ark VIPER CLUB
SPONSORED
WORLD CINEMA
Colombia/Ecuador 2017 • 96 min
Director Santiago Caicedo Screenwriter Enrique Lozano Producers Carolina Barrera, Santiago Caicedo Cinematographers Powerpaola, Santiago Caicedo Editors Simón Hernández, Jorge Vallejo, Santiago Caicedo Cast María Cecilia Sánchez, Martina Toro, Alejandra Borrero, Diego León Hoyos, Mara Gutiérrez, María Parada Print Source Stray Dogs
M V FOCUS: ANIMATION NATION | TEENS&20s In Spanish with English subtitles This exquisitely animated coming-ofage tale, based on the graphic novel memoir by Colombian-Ecuadorian artist Power Paola, follows Paola from her conception to the trials and tribulations of young adulthood. In Quito, Ecuador, Paola navigates life as the baby of the family, constantly at odds with her older sisters and her loving but stern parents—her father an ex-priest who gives them communion at home, her mother a fortune teller. The film charts their family dysfunction in a frank and refreshing manner thanks to the distinct voice of Paola, imbuing Virus Tropical with an intimacy that renders it funny, tender, and moving all at once. The beautiful black-and-white animation style stays true to the film’s origins, capturing both the nostalgia and anguish of growing up. The first feature of video artist and animator Santiago Caicedo, Virus Tropical won audience awards at the SXSW and BAFICI Film Festivals.
—Elliott Breeden
Fri O ct 12 6:00pm L ark Sun O ct 14 11:30am Sequoia*
*Screening followed by Graphic Novel Writing Workshop for teens. See page 103 for details.
Japan/France 2018 • 109 min
Director/Screenwriter Naomi Kawase Producers Satoshi Miyazaki, Marianne Slot, Naomi Kawase Cinematographer Arata Dodo Editor Yoichi Shibuya, François Gédigier Cast Juliette Binoche, Masatoshi Nagase Print Source Elle Driver
M In English, French, and Japanese with English subtitles In the latest work from Naomi Kawase (The Mourning Forest ), French journalist Jeanne (an ever-radiant Juliette Binoche, who can also be seen in Non-Fiction at the Festival this year) travels to Japan in search of ‘Vision,’ a rare healing herb that appears once every 1000 years. Arriving in the magical Yoshino Mountains she encounters Aki, a wise woman who prophesies the greatly anticipated time of this mysterious arrival. Tomo the forest keeper (frequent Kawase collaborator Masatoshi Nagase, Radiance , MVFF 2017) takes Jeanne in and intuitively feels the subtle changes occurring in the cloudshrouded woodland. New connections are forged while past events are evoked. With the spores of ‘Vision’ soon to be released, time itself slips from logical order, and nature presides over the sun-dappled trees swaying in the cacophonous wind. Laced with spectacular cinematography, Kawase commendably translates spiritual inquiry into exquisite cinema. The spirit of wonder and awe, uttered in whispered tones, is anchored by the film’s beautiful premise: “The time is now for the triumph of happiness that lies in each of our hearts.”
—Janis Plotkin
Visit mvff.com for screening information
US 2018 • 94 min
Director Abby Epstein Producers Ricki Lake, Giancarlo Canavesio, Sol Tryon Cinematographers Christopher Gallo, Clare Major, Paulo Netto, Richard Pearce, Jenna Rosher Editor Kristen Nutile Print Source Abramorama
M This bold documentary from Abby Epstein ( The Business of Being Born ) follows five children with cancer and their parents as they desperately try to move past marijuana’s reputation as a recreational joyride and embrace its centuries-old history as an effective medicine, and one that offsets the negative side effects of chemotherapy and may even shrink tumors. Several of the subjects begin a concentrated cannabinoid regimen with Mara Gordon of medical marijuana purveyor Aunt Zelda’s, but will the drug be the miracle they seek? How much can we know about dosage and impact when the government has blocked significant medical testing for 80 years? Pediatricians, drug policy experts, and herbalists weigh in on the history and science of marijuana. Most persuasive of all are the patients and their families as they convincingly argue that it’s time to rethink marijuana on a national scale and move past the cloud of fog that follows this herb.
—Alexis Whitman
Fri O ct 12 9:00pm Sequoia Sat O ct 13 12:15pm Sequoia
SPONSORED BY NICE GUYS
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 101 min
Director/Screenwriter Elizabeth Chomko
Producers Keith Kjarval, Bill Holderman, Albert Berger Cinematographer Roberto Schaefer Editor Tom McArdle Cast Hilary Swank, Michael Shannon, Robert Forster, Taissa Farmiga, Josh Lucas, Blythe Danner Print Source Bleecker Street Media
M After her mother Ruth (Blythe Danner) is seized by a bout of dementia that jeopardizes her physical well-being, Bridget (Hilary Swank) arrives in Chicago, joining her brother Nicky (Michael Shannon) and father Burt (Robert Forster) as they grapple with the effects of Ruth’s deteriorating mental health. While cramped together under the same roof over Christmas, the family attempts to navigate an unthinkable predicament, facing impossible decisions and inevitable consequences. Expertly traversing the minefield of fraught connections and buried resentments of a family in crisis, writer-director Elizabeth Chomko’s stirring and slyly funny debut feature is also a twilight-age love story about two people determined to stay together despite nature’s best effort to tear them apart. Leading a pitch-perfect ensemble that also includes Taissa Farmiga and Josh Lucas, Swank delivers her best work in years, and Danner is devastating as the matriarch whose slipping memory transports her throughout different stages of her life at any given moment.
—Jesse Knight
Sun O ct 7 9:00pm Sequoia
WORLD CINEMA
Ukraine/Poland/Macedonia 2018 • 100 min
Director/Screenwriter Marysia Nikitiuk Producers Igor Savychenko, Roman Klympush, Volodymyr Filippo Cinematographers Michal Englert, Mateusz Wichlacz Editors Ivan Bannikov, Milenia Fiedler, Blazhe Dulev Cast Sonya Halaimova, Anastasiia Pustovit, Maksym Samchik, Mariia Svizhynska Print Source Latido Films
M In Ukrainian with English subtitles Lush cinematography, deft art direction, and impressive performances round out a genreblending tapestry, punctuated with healthy doses of sex and adventure. Against the wishes of her grandmother and her recently bereaved mother—who want her to stay put in their small hometown of Lozova and marry a pig farmer—teenage Larysa plots to run away with handsome young rebel Scar. Only her young cousin Vitka seems to understand Larysa, as village gossip and her family’s wrath follow her wherever she goes. While interweaving the stories of three generations of women coping with loss, When the Trees Fall focuses on the passionate tale of amour fou at its center. Larysa longs for Scar to sweep her away, but he has business to settle before he can give her the life she desires. First-time director Marysia Nikitiuk deftly entwines symbolic and narrative elements, crafting a magical tale of youthful rebellion.
—Emelie Mahdavian
Fri O ct 12 6:00pm L arkspur Sat O ct 13 6:30pm L arkspur
US 2018 • 65 min
Director/Cinematographer Connie Field Producers Connie Field, Gregory Scharpen Editor Gregory Scharpen Cast The Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckhert, Van Ahn Vo, Jonathan Berger, Harriet Chessman Print Source Clarity Films
M Hugh Thompson was more than a whistleblower. The 24-year-old major was a hero to most, a traitor to some, and a veritable angel to those whose lives he saved when, on March 16, 1968, he landed his Army observation helicopter to intervene at the site where US soldiers were murdering hundreds of Vietnamese civilians. Fifty years later, a group of artists with diverse connections to the Vietnam War collaborate on a chamber opera exploring the agitated soul of the 67-year-old Thompson during his final hours, as he reckons with his life and the disgraceful treatment he received at the hands of his army and government in the aftermath of the My Lai Massacre. Vivid archival images frame the rehearsals of the Kronos Quartet, composer Jonathan Berger, librettist Harriet Scott Chessman, renowned tenor Eckert, and virtuoso Vietnamese instrumentalist Van-Anh Vo as they proceed toward a premiere through deeply stirring yet musically and emotionally challenging terrain. NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE —Rob Avila
Thur O ct 11 6:30pm Sequoia Fri O ct 12 6:30pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH BERKELEY FILM FOUNDATION AND THE CENTER FOR ASIAN AMERICAN MEDIA
VALLEY OF THE DOCS
US 2018 • 78 min
Director/Producer/Cinematographer
Zachary Stauffer Editor Eli Olson Print
Source Zachary Stauffer
A The married father of two young sons with a degree from the United States Naval Academy, 29-year-old Navy Lt. Wes Van Dorn died when the helicopter he was piloting crashed off the coast of Virginia Beach, VA, during a 2014 training exercise. Motivated by her grief, his wife Nicole seeks an explanation for the cause of the disaster. Her efforts spur a local reporter’s investigation, which uncovers a long history of negligence and institutional failings around the MH-53 helicopter—the model Van Dorn was piloting when he was killed, and among the deadliest aircraft in the US military fleet. Through incisive reporting and interviews with Van Dorn’s colleagues and family, Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? is at once a poignant picture of one family’s tragedy and a revelatory inquiry into the murky inner-workings of the American defense establishment. WORLD PREMIERE
—Michael LoPresti
Sun O ct 7 4:00pm L arkspur
Tue O ct 9 3:15pm Rafael
IN ASSOCIATION WITH INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING PROGRAM AT THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AT UC BERKELEY AND THE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
Director Steve McQueen Screenwriters Gillian Flynn, Steve McQueen Producers Iain Canning, Steve McQueen, Arnon Milchan Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt
Editor Joe Walker Cast Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya Print Source Twentieth Century Fox
M In visionary director Steve McQueen’s hotly anticipated follow-up to the Best Picture-winning 12 Years a Slave (MVFF 2013), Widows offers a compelling glance into class, gender, and racial struggles in America under the guise of a riveting, hugely entertaining heist film. When a $2 million robbery ends in disaster, four very different women are left with a debt none of them can afford. With less than a month to retrieve the cash, the women—exceptionally played by Oscar ® winner Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, and Carrie Coon—band together to try to pull off their late husbands’ next big score. McQueen and co-screenwriter Gillian Flynn ( Sharp Objects ) brilliantly bring to life Lynda La Plante’s British crime novel of the same name, substituting the South Side of Chicago for the mean streets of London. Widows also features a breakout performance from Cynthia Erivo alongside star-studded support from Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya, and Robert Duvall. —Joe Bowman
Sat O ct 6 7:00pm Sequoia Mon O ct 8 2:15pm Rafael
WILD DAZE
VALLEY OF THE DOCS
US 2018 • 102 min
Director/Screenwriter Phyllis Stuart Producers Phyllis Stuart, Cecilia DeMille Presley, Andrew Sugerman Cinematographers Kosmos Mwongela, Meryem Ersoz, Gilbert Maina Editors Yumeng Chen, Ting Yu, Laura Lacy Cast Dame Dr. Jane Goodall, Keith David, Will Travers, Holly Dranginis, Koko Print Source Phyllis Stuart
A M In her compelling documentary, Phyllis Stuart explores African wildlife on the brink as human activity takes its toll. Humans are tied to animal welfare in ways both ethical and existential. Through interviews with a wide swath of experts from Dame Jane Goodall to trophy hunters, Stuart offers a multifaceted view of African ecosystems as they relate to global animal rights, human rights, and the environment. Rampant corruption that allows poaching, the ivory trade, and the illicit bush meat market to flourish complicates animal rights activists’ fight to save species that are nearing extinction. With passion and conviction, Wild DaZe invites us to take on the role of protector in response to the widespread exploitation of our environment and the animals who call it home. WORLD PREMIERE —Nadia Ismail
Mon O ct 8 6:30pm Rafael Wed O ct 10 8:30pm L arkspur Sat O ct 13 5:30pm L arkspur
IN ASSOCIATION WITH WILDLIFE WORKS
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 104 min
Director Paul Dano Screenwriters Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan Producers Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zoe Kazan Cinematographer Diego García Editors Louise Ford, Matthew Hannam Cast Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ed Oxenbould, Bill Camp Print Source IFC Films
SPOTLIGHT: CAREY MULLIGAN and PAUL DANO
M Amid a trio of great performances in Paul Dano’s assured directorial debut, Carey Mulligan is a standout, brilliantly revealing a woman’s emergence from her husband’s shadow to find her own liberation, potentially wounding those she loves in the process. The focus is on a teenager growing up amid parental strife in small-town Montana in the early 1960s. Patriarch Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) has relocated his family again for a menial new job while dissatisfied wife Jeanette (Mulligan) feels trapped by her circumstances and son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) just hopes to stay long enough to make friends. Surely and delicately, the film depicts the growing rift between Jerry and Jeanette—he leaves to go fight fires while she becomes more forthright and impulsive—and how it forces Joe to find his own interests and allegiances. Dano and actor Zoe Kazan ( The Big Sick ) collaborated on the screenplay of this evocative adaptation of Richard Ford’s acclaimed novel.
—Rod Armstrong
Fri O ct 5 7:00pm Sequoia Tue O ct 9 9:00pm Rafael
WORLD CINEMA
Iceland/France/Ukraine 2018 • 101 min
Director Benedikt Erlingsson
Screenwriters Benedikt Erlingsson, Ólafur Egill Egilsson Producers Benedikt Erlingsson, Carine Leblanc, Marianne Slot Cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson Editor Davíð Alexander Corno Cast Halldóra Geirhardsdóttir, Jóhann Sigurðarson, Juan Camillo Roman Estrada, Jörundur Ragnarsson, Haraldur Stefansson Print Source Magnolia Pictures
M In Icelandic with English subtitles A congenial village choir director with a secret life as a renegade eco-activist is the unlikely subject of Benedikt Erlingsson’s ( Of Horses and Men ) suspenseful, impassioned, and soaringly uplifting film imbued with the devilish delights of Nordic humor (think of The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared , MVFF 2014). For starters, heroic Halla (the unforgettable Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir), in Valkyrie pose, aims her bow and downs the lines of a local power plant with a single arrow. Victorious, she bounds across the stunning Icelandic landscape, deftly dodging an army of pursuing officers. But back in the village, she practices tai chi and dreams of adopting a Ukrainian orphan girl. As the net tightens around her, Halla’s life and future are on the line. Besides the breathtaking locales, Erlingsson employs a brilliant concept with the score, with Icelandic and Ukrainian musicians appearing onscreen and providing superbly sonorous commentary on the action.
—Rod Armstrong
Fri O ct 12 6:15pm Sequoia Sat O ct 13 3:00pm L arkspur Sun O ct 14 5:15pm L arkspur
(ISHA OVEDET)
WORLD CINEMA
Israel 2018 • 93 min
Director Michal Aviad Screenwriters
Sharon Azulay Eyal, Michal Vinik, Michal Aviad Producers Amir Harel, Ayelet Kait
Cinematographer Daniel Miller Editor Nili Feller Cast Liron Ben Shlush, Menashe Noy, Oshri Cohen Print Source M-Appeal
M In Hebrew with English subtitles A young mother reentering the workforce discovers she must navigate more than a new career in this searing portrait of sexual harassment. Orna (the fiercely compelling Liron Ben Shlush) lands a plum job in real estate and, under the tutelage of charismatic, predatory CEO Benny (Menashe Noy), quickly climbs from executive assistant to sales manager of luxury apartments. With her innate capacity to seal a deal, she is destined for sky-high commissions, and with three children, her family could use the economic boost. As Orna’s confidence and experience grow, so does her discomfort. Does she have actual talent? Are the late hours necessary or does Benny simply want her under his thumb? Orna gamely keeps working for him, summoning all her wiles to rediscover her self-worth. With this, her 10th film and second narrative feature, director Michal Aviad once more casts her insightful gaze on a woman’s life within Israel’s patriarchal society. US PREMIERE
—Lucy Laird
Sun O ct 7 6:00pm L ark
Mon O ct 8 8:30pm L arkspur
WITH SUPPORT FROM CONSULATE GENERAL OF ISRAEL
SPONSORED BY
SPONSORED BY STRAWBERRY VILLAGE
SPONSORED BY
US CINEMA
US 2018 • 97 min
Director/Producer/Cinematographer/ Editor Mike Gibisser Screenwriters Mike Gibisser, Gretchen Akers, Frank V. Ross, Bryan Saner, Rebecca Spence, Jim Snitzer Cast Gretchen Akers, Frank V. Ross, Bryan Saner, Rebecca Spence, Jim Snitzer, Alex Stein Print Source Mike Gibisser
Take a deep breath. Feel the world around you. Hear the sounds. Now you’re ready to experience this visual tour-de-force and meditative exploration of love and loss. After Maureen’s boyfriend falls into a sudden coma, she returns to her Midwestern hometown to care for him. Alongside her sister and her father, who is also dealing with a partner’s illness, Maureen faces a gloomy reality of sterile hospitals and dramatic uncertainty that makes her ponder her own existence. Filmmaker Mike Gibisser captures the fragility of life in a profoundly poetic and straightforward way. Pulsing with a stripped-down Terrence Malick-like energy, this captivating film focuses on the sights and sounds of everyday existence amid questions of mortality and memory. Vivid performances, bursts of startling emotion, and breathtaking camera work fuel the intimate and intense action. Focused on the little moments that have the most meaning, Gibisser creates a human-fueled, hypnotic vibe that just might alter how you experience the world.
—Brendan Peterson
Thur O ct 11 9:00pm Rafael Fri O ct 12 2:00pm L arkspur
2018 • 67 min
Director/Producer Arwen Curry
Cinematographers Andrew Black, John Kiffmeyer, Lincoln Else Editors Juli Vizza, Andrew Gersh Cast Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, David Mitchell, Annalee Newitz
Print Source Arwen Curry
M Well before certain wondrous wizarding worlds were established in popular fiction, Berkeley-born Ursula K. Le Guin ( A Wizard of Earthsea , The Dispossessed ) was building fantastical future worlds and adeptly sorting out issues like religion, sexuality, gender, politics, and the natural world. Le Guin’s writing not only paved the way for future Harrys and Hermiones, she also influenced multitudes of writers and readers with the scope and depth of her world-building and her comprehensive elevation of science fiction and fantasy to new levels of artistry, accessibility, and excellence. In Bay Area native Arwen Curry’s fascinating documentary, Le Guin’s worlds live beyond the 22 novels she wrote, explored in the words of the celebrated author herself, bolstered by endearing tributes from fellow fantasy authors and devotees Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, and more. Pioneer, feminist, mother, wife, literary giant, Ursula K. Le Guin’s own story is one of triumph and a world unto itself.
—Leah LoSchiavo
Fri O ct 5 6:00pm L ark Mon O ct 8 12:00pm Sequoia
IN ASSOCIATION WITH BOOK PASSAGE AND CALLIFORNIA HUMANITIES
SPONSORED BY
WORLD CINEMA
Egypt 2018 • 97 min
Director/Screenwriter A.B. Shawky
Producer Dina Emam Cinematographer
Federico Cesca Editor Erin Greenwell
Cast Rady Gamal, Ahmed Abdelhafiz, Shoq Emara, Hany El-Tabei Print Source Strand Releasing
In Arabic with English subtitles Beshay is a resident (and “Mr. Charisma”) at one of Egypt’s remaining leper colonies, earning his living selling salvageable dross from the village dump. Grieving the recent death of his wife, he hitches his donkey to his cart and embarks on a desert journey to find the family that abandoned him in childhood. Never one to miss out on an adventure, Beshay’s sidekick and assistant, a 10-year-old Nubian orphan nicknamed “Obama” jumps in for the ride, seeking his own roots, as well. With a remarkable nonprofessional cast featuring Rady Gamal (an actual resident of the Abu Zaabal leper colony), Yomeddine —literally “Day of Judgment” in Arabic—is an uplifting, magical film filled with compassion and respect for difference in a world increasingly bereft of these qualities. With gentle humor and startling moments of grace, A.B. Shawky’s first feature is a life-affirming tale of human dignity and the resilience of the human spirit.
—K.D. Davis
Tue O ct 9 12:30pm Rafael Wed O ct 10 3:00pm Rafael
THURSDAY OCT 4
SEQUOIA
7:00pm Green Book 155 min page 32
RAFAEL
7:00pm A Private War 131 min page 32
LARKSPUR
7:30pm Green Book 130 min
7:45pm A Private War 106 min
US ON SOCIAL MEDIA FACEBOOK : @MillValleyFilmFestival TWITTER : @MVFilmFest
INSTAGRAM : @millvalleyfilmfest
FRIDAY OCT 5
SEQUOIA
3:00pm The Guardians 104 min
4:00pm Little Woods 105 min
6:00pm Everybody Knows 132 min
7:00pm Wildlife 134 min page 45
9:00pm Art Paul of Playboy: The Man Behind the Bunny 73 min
RAFAEL
3:00pm The Independents 97 min
3:30pm Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People 89 min
6:15pm Pet Names 76 min
6:30pm 3 Faces 100 min
7:00pm Cold War 118 min page 51
8:45pm Two Plains & a Fancy 89 min
9:00pm 5@5 Come to the Sunshine 69 min
LARK THEATER
6:00pm Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin 67 min 8:15pm The Silence of Others 96 min
LARKSPUR
6:00pm Obey 96 min
6:15pm 5@5 Circle Game 69 min
8:30pm Something Is Happening 101 min 8:45pm Charm City 106 min
OLD MILL PARK
7:00pm Zootopia 108 min
SATURDAY OCT 6
SEQUOIA
11:00am It’s a Girls’ World 92 min
12:00pm Charm City 106 min
2:00pm ...As If They Were Angels 87 min
4:00pm The Favourite 121 min
6:45pm The Parting Glass 120 min page 59
7:00pm Widows 128 min
9:30pm Everybody Knows 132 min
RAFAEL
11:30am A Ton o’ Toons 73 min
11:45am The Independents 97 min
12:00pm Free Solo 97 min
2:30pm The Great Buster 102 min
3:00pm Beautiful Boy 136 min page 57
5:00pm Art Paul of Playboy: The Man Behind the Bunny 73 min
7:00pm 22 July 137 min
7:30pm The Silence of Others 96 min
8:00pm Little Woods 105 min
LARK THEATER
2:30pm Something Is Happening 101 min
5:00pm Shoplifters 121 min
8:15pm All These Small Moments 92 min
LARKSPUR
5:00pm Pet Names 76 min
5:15pm The Guardians 104 min
8:00pm Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People 89 min
8:15pm 3 Faces 100 min
OUTDOOR ART CLUB
10:00am PANEL: Mind the Gap Summit pt. 1 240 min
2:00pm PANEL: Mind the Gap Summit pt. 2 240 min
SUNDAY OCT 7
SEQUOIA
11:00am 5@5 The Way It Is 95 min
11:45am Moving Stories 98 min
2:30pm Bias 88 min
3:00pm Holly Near: Singing for Our Lives 70 min
5:30pm The Hate U Give 155 min page 69
6:00pm Boy Erased 139 min page 63
9:00pm What They Had 101 min
9:15pm The Hi De Ho Show 100 min
RAFAEL
11:00am Coco 105 min
11:15am Too Late to Die Young 110 min
1:30pm From Mexico, Con Amor 72 min
2:00pm Museo 115 min
2:15 pm WORKSHOP: Crowdfunding to Build Independence 120 min
3:30pm The Parting Glass 95 min
5:00pm The Great Buster 102 min
5:30pm Time for Ilhan 89 min
6:15pm Daughter of Mine 97 min
8:00pm Grit 80 min
8:15pm All Square 93 min
9:00pm El ángel 126 min
LARK THEATER
12:45pm Effortless French 104 min
3:30pm Pity 99 min
6:00pm Working Woman 93 min
8:45pm All These Small Moments 92 min
LARKSPUR
4:00pm Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? 78 min
4:30pm Bushwick Beats 83 min
7:00pm Two Plains & a Fancy 89 min
7:30pm Ash Is Purest White 150 min
OUTDOOR ART CLUB
11:00am PANEL: State of the Industry
THE HIVERY
2:00pm WORKSHOP: From Scene to Screen for Teens 180 min
MONDAY OCT 8
SEQUOIA
11:30am Free Solo 97 min
12:00pm Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin 67 min
2:00pm Beautiful Boy 111 min
3:00pm Cold War 88 min
6:00pm Stay Human 94 min
8:45pm The Lost City of the Monkey God 100 min
9:00pm Bushwick Beats 83 min
RAFAEL
10:15am Moving Stories 98 min
12:30pm Obey 96 min
2:15pm Widows 128 min
3:15pm Holly Near: Singing for Our Lives 70 min
3:30pm All Square 93 min
6:00pm Roma 160 min page 36
6:30pm Wild DaZe 102 min
9:15pm 5@5 Eastern Rain 77 min
LARK THEATER
6:00pm Seder Masochism 78 min
8:30pm Museo 115 min
LARKSPUR
6:00pm Grit 80 min
6:15pm 5@5 Come to the Sunshine 69 min
8:30pm Working Woman 93 min
8:45pm El ángel 126 min
TUESDAY OCT 9
SEQUOIA
12:00pm Art Paul of Playboy: The Man Behind the Bunny 73 min
12:15pm Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People 89 min
2:30pm The Silent Revolution 111 min
3:00pm Boy Erased 114 min
6:00pm The Front Runner 113 min
6:15pm Swimming with Men 96 min
8:45pm 22 July 137 min
9:15pm Daughter of Mine 97 min
RAFAEL
10:15am The Big Bad Fox... 88 min
12:30pm Yomeddine 97 min
3:00pm Shoplifters 121 min
3:15pm Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? 78 min
3:30pm Pity 99 min
6:00pm Chained for Life 92 min
6:30pm Angst 100 min
6:45pm Earth, Our Home: The New Environmentalists 91 min
8:45pm Seder Masochism 78 min
9:00pm Wildlife 104 min
9:15pm 5@5 Coyote 69 min
LARK THEATER
6:00pm Sergio and Sergei 93 min
8:45pm Los adioses 85 min
LARKSPUR
3:15pm Too Late to Die Young 110 min
6:00pm 5@5 Eastern Rain 77 min
6:15pm The Lost City of the Monkey God 100 min
8:30pm Time for Ilhan 89 min
8:45pm In the Aisles 125 min
WEDNESDAY OCT 10
SEQUOIA
11:15am The Front Runner 113 min
12:30pm Effortless French 104 min
2:15pm The Favourite 121 min
3:30pm Birds of Passage 125 min
6:00pm One Voice 64 min
6:30pm Destroyer 148 min page 81
8:15pm Non-Fiction 108 min
RAFAEL
10:30am Earth, Our Home: The New Environmentalists 91 min
12:00pm Sergio and Sergei 93 min
2:30pm Burning 148 min
2:45pm Swimming with Men 96 min
3:00pm Yomeddine 97 min
6:00pm Border 111 min
6:15pm The Silent Revolution 111 min
6:30pm Can You Ever Forgive Me? 132 min page 75
9:00pm Sir 96 min
9:15pm Chained for Life 92 min
LARK THEATER
6:30pm Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait 63 min
8:45pm Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait 63 min
LARKSPUR
11:00am It’s a Girls’ World 92 min
6:00pm Moving Stories 98 min
6:15pm 5@5 Coyote 69 min
8:30pm Wild DaZe 102 min
8:45pm Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story 87 min
THURSDAY OCT 11
SEQUOIA
11:15am Burning 148 min
11:45am Little Woods 105 min
2:30pm Bathtubs Over Broadway 87 min
6:15pm Supa Modo 78 min
6:30pm The Whistleblower of My Lai 65 min
8:30pm Transit 101 min
8:45pm Peterloo 154 min
RAFAEL
12:00pm Los adioses 85 min
2:00pm The Hate U Give 130 min
2:30pm ...As If They Were Angels 87 min
3:00pm Sir 96 min
6:00pm Ernesto 125 min
6:15pm Amalia the Secretary 91 min
6:30pm Maria by Callas 113 min
9:00pm World of Facts 97 min
9:15pm 5@5 Boho Dance 79 min
9:15pm Bodied 120 min
LARK THEATER
6:00pm Becoming Astrid 123 min 9:15pm Border 111 min
LARKSPUR
10:30am From Mexico, Con Amor 72 min
6:00pm Northern Wind 91 min
6:15pm 5@5 Circle Game 69 min
8:30pm Birds of Passage 125 min
8:45pm Sofia 80 min
FRIDAY OCT 12
SEQUOIA
11:45am Transit 101 min
12:30pm Stay Human 94 min
2:45pm Chris the Swiss 90 min
3:15pm Swimming with Men 96 min
6:00pm Ben Is Back 103 min
6:15pm Woman at War 101 min
8:45pm Collisions 82 min
9:00pm Weed the People 94 min
RAFAEL
10:30am A Ton o’ Toons 73 min
12:15pm In the Aisles 125 min
3:00pm Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story 87 min
3:15pm Too Late to Die Young 110 min
3:30pm Non-Fiction 108 min
6:00pm Rafiki 82 min
6:30pm The Whistleblower of My Lai 65 min
6:45pm The Kindergarten Teacher 127 min page 87
8:30pm TBA 9:00pm 5@5 Daisy Summer Piper 74 min
LARK THEATER
2:00pm Becoming Astrid 123 min
6:00pm Virus Tropical 96 min 8:45pm Ernesto 125 min
LARKSPUR
12:00pm 5@5 The Way It Is 95 min 2:00pm World of Facts 97 min
3:00pm Amalia the Secretary 91 min
6:00pm When the Trees Fall 100 min 6:15pm 5@5 Boho Dance 79 min
8:45pm Lemonade 88 min 9:00pm The Parting Glass 95 min
SATURDAY OCT 13
SEQUOIA
11:30am I Am Maris 80 min
12:15pm Weed the People 94 min
2:00pm Harvest Season 87 min
3:00pm 5@5 Daisy Summer Piper 74 min
5:00pm The Sweet Requiem 91 min
5:30pm Use Your Delusion 90 min
8:00pm TBA
8:15pm Capernaum 121 min
RAFAEL
11:15am Northern Wind 91 min
11:30am Can You Ever Forgive Me? 107 min
12:00pm MASTER CLASS: The Heroine’s Journey Onscreen 90 min
2:00pm From Baghdad to The Bay 68 min
2:15pm One Voice 64 min
2:30pm Becoming Astrid 123 min
4:30pm An Afternoon with Eleanor Coppola and Allie Light 90 min
4:45pm Alifu the Prince/ss 96 min
5:30pm Saint Judy 106 min
7:15pm Viper Club 109 min
7:30pm Chris the Swiss 90 min
8:30pm The Hi De Ho Show 100 min
LARK THEATER
11:30am The Kindergarten Teacher 97 min
2:00pm Bias 88 min
5:30pm Bathtubs Over Broadway 87 min
8:00pm Mug 91 min
LARKSPUR
12:30pm The Big Bad Fox... 83 min
3:00pm Woman at War 101 min
3:45pm It’s a Girls’ World 92 min
5:30pm Wild DaZe 102 min
6:30pm When the Trees Fall 100 min
8:00pm Rafiki 82 min
9:00pm TBA
TENNESSEE VALLEY TRAIL
10:00am Active Cinema Hike 120 min
MARIN COUNTRY MART
2:00pm The Hoopla! 120 min
SUNDAY OCT 14
SEQUOIA
11:00am Ash Is Purest White 150 min
11:30am Virus Tropical 96 min
2:15pm From Baghdad to The Bay 68 min
2:30pm Supa Modo 78 min
5:00pm If Beale Street Could Talk 142 min page 37
8:00pm Ben Is Back 103 min
8:15pm TBA
RAFAEL
11:00am TBA
11:15am TBA
11:30am Sofia 80 min
1:30pm Capernaum 121 min
1:45pm Destroyer 123 min
2:00pm Lemonade 88 min
5:00pm If Beale Street Could Talk 142 min page 37
8:00pm Peterloo 154 min
8:15pm Maria by Callas 113 min
8:15pm Mug 91 min
LARK THEATER
11:45am A Ton o’ Toons 73 min
2:15pm Alifu the Prince/ss 96 min
5:00pm Viper Club 109 min
7:45pm Use Your Delusion 90 min
LARKSPUR
11:30am I Am Maris 80 min
12:00pm Collisions 82 min
2:15pm The Sweet Requiem 91 min
2:45pm Harvest Season 87 min
5:15pm Woman at War 101 min
5:30pm Saint Judy 106 min
7:45pm 5@5 Festival Faves 100 min
8:00pm TBA
OUTDOOR ART CLUB
2:00pm WORKSHOP: Graphic Novel Writing for Teens 120 min
FRIDAY OCT 5
CONCERT - Freddy Jones Band Doors open – 8:00pm Show starts – 9:00pm
SATURDAY OCT 6
CONCERT - Jarvis Cocker Doors open – 7:30pm Show starts – 8:30pm
SUNDAY OCT 7
CONCERT - Holly Near Doors open – 5:30pm Show starts – 6:30pm
MONDAY OCT 8
CONCERT - Michael Franti Doors open – 8:00pm Show starts – 9:00pm
TUESDAY OCT 9
CONCERT - Black Zeppelin Doors open – 7:00pm Show starts – 8:00pm
WEDNESDAY OCT 10
CONCERT - Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir Doors open – 8:00pm Show starts – 8:30pm
THURSDAY OCT 11
FILM - Evolutionary Blues – 6:00pm CONCERT - Faye Carol Show starts – 8:00pm
FRIDAY OCT 12
CONCERT - Half Pint Doors open – 8:00pm Show starts – 8:30pm
SATURDAY OCT 13
3:00pm PANEL: Medical Marijuana 4:20pm PANEL: The Waldos 420 Cannabis - Podcast
CONCERT - Honus Honus Doors open – 8:30pm Show starts – 9:00pm
Jaden Alexander
Ralph Berets
Jordon Briggs
Frank Chan
Teresa Concepcion
Tom Corwin
Anna Cosentine
Jeremy De Forge
Frieda de Lackner
Charles Dickey
Jackie Dobson
Emma Penaz Eisner
Daniel Reed Eisweirth
Suzanne Engelberg
Sarah Escalante
Romina Alexandra Garcia
Dianne Griffin
Natalia Guecheva
Sandy Handsher
Aaron Hansen
Hilary Hart
Kramer Herzog
Emily Hoover-Finnigan
Joanna Ke
Nancy Kelly
Hossein Khosrowjah
Thor Klippert
Carolyn LaHorgue
Britta Leijonflycht
Alexandra Lexton
Angie MacKenzie
Berta McDonnell
Claudia Mendoza-Carruth
Becky Mertens
Isabella J Miller
Marilyn Mulford
Alisha Nieh
Katie Norby
Rachel Olson
Venus Oriane
Radica Ostojic-Portello
Tom Pankratz
Cynthia Pepper
Mark Phillips
Kenn Rabin
Devin Ross Richey
Carlos Rodriguez
Corey Rosen
Shaheen Sayani
Grace Pearl Shaw
John Slattery
Joseph Smith
Dale Sophiea
Lincoln Spector
Jesse Spencer
Cathy Summa-Wolfe
Ellen Thomas
Benjamin Thornton
Regina Tsasis
Sophia Verbiscar
Grace Williamson
Lori Wright
Kenji Yamamoto
Abas Zadfar
Sydney Zahradka
Come by our flagship store and say hello! Mention this ad and receive 15% off your purchase.* We’re
Since 1995, we’ve been proud to partner with the Marin community in our mission to make the world a better place to live, work, and splash around in.
CENTURY LARKSPUR
500 Larkspur Landing Cir, Larkspur
CINÉARTS SEQUOIA
25 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley
LARK THEATER
549 Magnolia Ave, Larkspur
SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER
1118 Fourth St, San Rafael
ARRIVE EARLY To guarantee admittance, ticket and pass holders must be in the appropriate line 30 minutes prior to published showtime. Doors typically open 30 minutes before showtime.
n Entry to theaters occurs in the following order:
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n Seat saving is not allowed.
n Outside food and beverages are not permitted.
n All cell phones and devices must be turned off prior to program introduction.
n The use of cameras and other recording equipment is strictly prohibited during all screenings and programs.
n Take personal items and trash with you as you exit.
Please DO NOT sit in a reserved seat unless it has been arranged for you. Please DO NOT stand near the reserved seats in hopes that they will be released. MVFF staff and volunteers will release reserved seats whenever possible, but it is not guaranteed, and the aisles need to remain clear while the theater is being seated.
ACCESSIBILITY
MVFF is excited to partner with the Marin Center for Independent Living (MCIL) to continually improve our efforts to ensure you have access to all Festival amenities. Please ask on-site staff if you need assistance with early seating and/or assisted-listening devices. If you require effective communication in the form of an ASL Interpreter, please contact us at info@cafilm.org at least 10 days prior to the screening you will be attending.
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OUTDOOR ART CLUB
1 W. Blithdale Ave ., Mill Valley
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BEFORE & AFTER YOUR MOVIE
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OUTDOOR ART CLUB, 1 West Blithedale Ave
Oct 5–13 10:00am—9:00pm
Oct 14 10:00am—5:00pm
SAN RAFAEL
MARK FISHKIN ROOM, 1112 Fourth St
Oct 5–13 10:00am—9:00pm
Oct 14 10:00am—5:00pm
FILMMAKER CHECK-IN (Mill Valley only ): Oct 4–13 Noon—5:00pm
FILMMAKER HAPPY HOUR: 5:00–7:00pm (both lounges)
FILMMAKER LOUNGE ACCESS: All badges with an “L”
Join us at the Outdoor Art Club in downtown Mill Valley for:
Special programs
Festival merchandise
Beer, wine and snacks for sale
Filmmaker check-in
Filmmaker Lounge (badge holders with Lounge access only)
Open daily to the general public (excluding special events)
SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER, 1118 Fourth St
Sept 9
Sept 10
12:00–6:00pm Premier Patron and above
4:00–8:00pm Director’s Circle and above
Sept 11-12 4:00–8:00pm Gold Star and above
Sept 13–14 4:00–8:00pm All CFI members
Sept 15–Oct 3 4:00–8:00pm General public
Oct 4–14 O ne hour before first screening each day to 15 min after last show starts
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, 85 Throckmorton Ave
Sept 15–Oct 3 11:00am–3:00pm
Oct 4–14 O ne hour before first screening each day to 15 min after last show starts
Open one hour before first screening each day: LARK THEATER | CENTURY LARKSPUR
General admission
CFI members
Seniors (65+)
$16.50
$14.00
$15.00
Students $15.00
(Purchase online or in person. Present student ID at box office)
5@5 Programs
Youth (12 & under)
$10.50
$8.00
Convenience Fees: (All fees are nonrefundable)
Phone
$3.75 per order
$10.00 flat fee per order
In-person No service fee
You must bring a valid photo ID that corresponds with the name on the credit card used to purchase the tickets.
All ticket orders are final. No refunds, exchanges, substitutions, or reprints. MVFF is not responsible for lost, stolen, forgotten, or damaged tickets, or tickets misdirected by the post office.
Save time and skip Will Call! Select the Print-atHome option when purchasing tickets online, and then either print your ticket at home or show it on your mobile device at the theater for scanned entry.
Tickets are the property of the California Film Institute/Mill Valley Film Festival, which reserves the right to admit or refuse access to the theater at the discretion of an authorized representative. Tickets are NOT for resale.
Rush tickets for sold out shows often become available after advance tickets have sold out.
The Rush line forms outside each venue one hour before showtime.
Rush tickets are sold on a first-come, first-served basis approximately 15 minutes prior to showtime.
No discounts
Patrons have a 90% success rate of getting into shows through the Rush Line. Line up early!
Platinum Donor Events are accessible to Platinum, Investor and Leadership level donors. To find our more about these private events, please go to cafilm.org/donor
California Film Institute and its representatives may photograph, film, and/or otherwise record attendees at all festival activities. By attending, you consent to such photography, filming and/or recording and to any use in any and all media throughout the universe in perpetuity and without compensation for the use of your appearance, voice, and name for promotional and/or advertising, or any other purpose by California Film Institute and its affiliates and representatives.
Grab a change of pace at the Courtyard San Francisco Larkspur Landing/Marin County, nestled in Marin County not far from the heart and buzz of downtown San Francisco or the beautiful Napa Valley. Spread out and rest easier in over 146 ENERGY STAR certified, thoughtfully appointed guest rooms and suites. Each features plush Marriott linen, enhanced Paul Mitchell amenities, and smart work spaces with complimentary high speed wireless internet. Grab a jumpstart to your morning with a healthy grab-and-go item, or wind down at the end of the day with a cocktail from our lobby Bistro. Plus, we have over 1,300 sq. ft. of flexible event space should you need to plan a meeting, seminar, reception, or social engagement. Designed for the business professional and weekend explorer alike, our hotel gives you the choices to create the perfect Bay Area trip.
To reserve your room, call (415) 925-1800, or visit CourtyardLarkspurLanding.com
Courtyard by Marriott® San Francisco Larkspur Landing/Marin County Larkspur, CA
T (415) 925-1800
CourtyardLarkspurLanding.com
CFI EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/FOUNDER
MVFF FOUNDER/DIRECTOR
Mark Fishkin
DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMMING
Zoë Elton
PROGRAMMING
SENIOR PROGRAMMERS
Karen Davis
Janis Plotkin
PROGRAMMER
Kelly Clement
US INDIES PROGRAMMER
Ilya Tovbis
PROGRAMMING MANAGER / SHORTS PROGRAMMER
Sterling Hedgpeth
PROGRAMMING ASSOCIATE
Dominique O’Neil
PROGRAMMING ASSISTANT
Celeste Truffaut-Wong
FAMILY FILMS PROGRAMMER
Joanne Parsont
MUSIC FILMS PROGRAMMER
Charles Dickey
ANIMATION PROGRAMMER
Amanda Todd
PANELS MANAGER / ACTIVE CINEMA COORDINATOR
Maribel Guevara
MIND THE GAP PROJECT MANAGER
Susan Murdy
CLIPS EDITOR
Marcus Pun
PROGRAMMING RESEARCHERS
Jordan Briggs
Margherita Ghetti
Kasey James
Claudia Mendoza-Carruth
Isabella Miller
FESTIVAL OPERATIONS
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
Jeromy Zajonc
OPERATIONS MANAGER
Dave Feiferis
OPERATIONS COORDINATOR
Sarah Poppitz
VOLUNTEER MANAGER
Faridah Gbadamosi
VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR
Douglas Flint
FRONT DESK PRODUCTION ASSISTANT
Stephanie Lytle
TECHNICAL OPERATIONS & PRODUCTION
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Dan Zastrow
ASSISTANT TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Ryan Hastie
EXHIBITION MEDIA MANAGER
Jesse Dubus
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Paul Hegarty
PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS
Daniel Freeman
Paul Kellogg
THEATER OPERATIONS
THEATER OPERATIONS MANAGER
Christa Lynn Luckenbach
THEATER OPERATIONS COORDINATOR
Miriam Benezra
THEATER OPERATIONS ASSISTANT
Amanda Gallegos
VENUE MANAGERS
David Corry
Cola Engel
Drew Highlands
Alex Mills
Emily Shurtz
HOUSE MANAGERS
Cassady Brown
Alana Davis
Christopher Dodge
Lluvia Fernandez
Piper Hanson
Willita Mahone
Andrea Nilosek
Derek Petrillo
Caitlyn Pozerski
LINE MANAGERS
Romina Alexandra
Dylan Boom
Kristian Corpuz
Katy Darr
Eileen Level
Michael Mcllraith
Jaclyn O’Grady
Brian Patterson
Lauren Skager
PROJECTIONISTS
Addie Backus-Place
Griffin Couillard
Cody Gehret
Ryan Hastie
Phil Hoffman-Harris
Cody Silva
Colton Silvers
Josh Stithem
Sophia Verbiscar
Josh Wakeland
Steve Yamane
GUEST & TRANSPORTATION SERVICES
GUEST SERVICES MANAGER
Joanny Rivera
GUEST SERVICES COORDINATORS
Brenda Berliner
Ali Giordani
TRANSPORTATION MANAGER
Albert Chow
TRANSPORTATION COORDINATOR
Grace Shaw
FESTIVAL BOX OFFICE
TICKETING SERVICES
PROVIDED BY BOX CUBED
Ben Armington
Mitch Vaughn
BOX OFFICE STAFF
Tatiana Bookbinder
Tiffany Collins
Mark Curran
Adam Cuttler
Lucy Laird
Ashlyn Perri
Kendra Robinson
Jacob J Rodriguez
Ian Stewart
Daniela Weinreich
SPECIAL EVENTS MANAGER
Yvonne Fox
OPENING & CLOSING NIGHT MANAGER
Mimi Cunningham
EVENTS COORDINATOR
Michele Tharp
OUTDOOR ART CLUB COORDINATOR
Aileen Fowler
FILMMAKER LOUNGE COORDINATOR
Bobby Pin
SAN RAFAEL FILMMAKER LOUNGE
ASSISTANT
Alec Estes
MILL VALLEY FILMMAKER LOUNGE ASSISTANT
Derrick Dover
MARKETING AND PUBLICITY
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & PUBLICITY
Shelley Spicer
CFI MARKETING COORDINATOR
Leah LoSchiavo
SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR
Chris Markisz
MVFF MARKETING, PUBLICITY, & PROMOTIONS COORDINATOR
Laura Barber
WEB & DIGITAL MEDIA MANAGER
Courtney Buffington
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Brian Lehman
PRODUCTION ARTIST
Richard Denney
PUBLICATIONS MANAGING EDITOR
Joe Bowman
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCTION, PREPRESS
Richard Repas
COPY EDITOR
Pam Grady
PUBLICISTS
Stephanie Clarke
Clara Franco
Vince Johnson
Karen Larsen
HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER
Tommy Lau
HOUSE VIDEOGRAPHER
Mike Van Metre
MARKETING INTERNS
Dario Apodaca
Colin Galeste
Keith Turnage
Jane Williams
DEVELOPMENT AND MEMBERSHIP
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT
Liana Bender
CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
Beau Blanchard
MAJOR GIFTS AND FOUNDATIONS
MANAGER
Katy Hogan
CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE
Nick Friedman
MEMBERSHIP MANAGER
Doreen Aviv
MEMBERSHIP ASSOCIATE
Alyssa Cox
SPONSORSHIP ACTIVATION COORDINATOR
Catherine Stanley
DEVELOPMENT DONOR COORDINATOR
Annette Lindemann
DEVELOPMENT INTERNS
Julia Apffel
Jack Flynn
Anna Gregory
Eislyn Snyder
Elise Todaro
Dillen White
CFI EDUCATION
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION
Joanne Parsont
MVFF EDUCATION MANAGER
Melanie Nichols
MVFF FILMMAKERS GO TO SCHOOL COORDINATOR
Shakira Refos
EDUCATION ASSISTANT
Catherine Anderson
EXECUTIVE OFFICE
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
Maureen Galliani
CFI RELEASING STRATEGIST
Jonathan Marlow
FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
Dane Callihan
FINANCE MANAGER
Connie Chang
FINANCE ASSOCIATE
Laura Austin
IT & OPERATIONS MANAGER
Norman Mello
CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER
DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMMING
Richard Peterson
GENERAL MANAGER
Dan Zastrow
RAFAEL PROGRAM ASSOCIATE
Alexandra Cantin
PROGRAM CONSULTANT
Jan Klingelhofer
ASSISTANT MANAGER
Jordan Jones
SHIFT MANAGERS
Melina Christensen
Vincent Lucido
SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER STAFF
Brianna Cady
Myles Cohen
Dante Cokinos
Cailan Ferguson
Nick Ginwala
Brandon Llamas
Thalia Loppies
Luis Reyes
Zack Shinnick
Eli Torgensen
Fresca Varagnolo
Mia Yun
•
• Complimentary
Bu tler, Shine, Stern & Partners
D esign & Print Production
Digital Media Maven
Production, Digital Prepress
Brian Lehman
C ourtney Buffington
Giraffex, Inc. - Richard Repas
Managing Editor Jo e Bowman
A dvertising Sales
W inifred MacLeod
AGENCY L arsen Associates
Principal
Publicist
K aren Larsen
V ince Johnson
AGENCY Hamilton Ink
Pr incipal
Publicist
Stephanie Clarke
Clara Franco
AGENCY
C o-Chariman
C o-Chariman
ACD/Writer
A rt Director
D esigners
Producer
Account Executive
Bu tler, Shine, Stern & Partners
Jo hn Butler
Greg Stern
Ralf De Houwer
Mary Wuensch
Mike Hughes, Lori Kayko
Tyler Stubbs, Tyler Neely
C helsie Earl
Production Co Cleaver Content
Directors
Director of Photography
Editors
Motion Graphics
J ohn Butler, Jason Apple
Jason Apple
Jason Apple, Nico Litonjua
Tom Yaniv
A udio and Sound Effects Nate Beltz
Talent
T hanks
Mark Lewis, Kelsey Honz, Lauren Chatman, Gabi Da Silva, Tyler Stubbs, Mick Laugs, Doug Gawoski
M VFF, The County of Marin, Jeanette at Core Pilates – Sausalito
MVFF41 THEATRICAL TRAILER | Compilation Reel
T he Understory
Highway 1 Creative
D eluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema
l -inc Design
Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce
Fabián Aguirre & Maya Pisciotto
C hristopher Markisz
S cott Kulander, Kayla Myers
L isa Berghout, Ed Apodaca
Jim Welte
Your event is special, perhaps once-ina-lifetime special. Bartenders Unlimited makes it easy for you to enjoy the occasion with an extensive array of beverage packages and signature cocktails designed to enhance any celebration, served with exemplary professionalism. Perfect for Weddings, Corporate Functions, Social Mixers, Fundraisers, Reunions, and Special Events, Bartenders Unlimited is California’s preeminent beverage caterer. Contact Bartenders Unlimited today at 415 454-3731.
Your event is special, perhaps once-ina-lifetime special. Bartenders Unlimited makes it easy for you to enjoy the occasion with an extensive array of beverage packages and signature cocktails designed to enhance any celebration, served with exemplary professionalism. Perfect for Weddings, Corporate Functions, Social Mixers, Fundraisers, Reunions, and Special Events, Bartenders Unlimited is California’s preeminent beverage caterer. Contact Bartenders Unlimited today at 415 454-3731.
Your event is special, perhaps once-ina-lifetime special. Bartenders Unlimited makes it easy for you to enjoy the occasion with an extensive array of beverage packages and signature cocktails designed to enhance any celebration, served with exemplary professionalism. Perfect for Weddings, Corporate Functions, Social Mixers, Fundraisers, Reunions, and Special Events, Bartenders Unlimited is California’s preeminent beverage caterer. Contact Bartenders Unlimited today at 415 454-3731.
Betsy Abendroth
Fabián Aguirre
Allied Global Marketing
Gunnar Almer
Forrest Alvarez
Amazon Studios
Ed Arentz
Zoe Arthur
Amy Astley
Michal Aviad
Krissy Bailey
Jerry Barrish
BAWIFM
Andrea Bertolini
Aleksandra Biernaka
Tim Bird
Judy Bloch
Adrienne Bowles
Jordon Briggs
Girija Brilliant
Larry Brilliant
BSSP
Shakti Butler
Megan Butler
Rita Cahill
California Newsreel
Michelle Cameron
Brenda Chapman
Robert Chevara
Chicago Film Festival
Laurence Christen
Jessica Colvin
Joni Cooper
Noah Cowan
Graziella Danieli
Dave Altizer Photography
Ninfa Dawson
Janae Desire
Michelle Devereaux
Annie Easton
Chaz Ebert
Stacy Egide
Michael Ehrenzweig
Alison Emilio
Amir Esfandiari
Allison Essoyan
Farabi Cinema Foundation
Blye Faust
Josh Fesler
Film Fatales
Finnish Film Foundation
Nancy Fishman
Focus Features
Karen Folger Jacobs
Kate Fox
Melinda Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Frameline
Tom Franco
Elizabeth Gabler
Sid Ganis
Renée Gasch
John Goddard
Goethe Institut
Jill Golden
Brian Gordon
Suzanne Gray
Nancy Gribler
Robin Gurland
Lynne Hale
Cerise Hallam Larkin
Melanie Hamburger
Catherine Hardwicke
Courtney Harrell
Hilary Hart
JoAnn Hastings
Robin Hauser
Aude Hesbert
John Hessler
Brook Holston
Jörn Horaczek
Melissa Howden
Marcus Hu
Ericka Huggins
John Hulls
Julie Huntsinger
Icelandic Film Centre
IFC
IMCINE
Ernie Johnston
Michelle Kantor
James Kasey
Deborah Kaufman
Aaron Kayce
Ralph Kaywin
Pat Keaney
Nancy Kelly
Laura Kim
Kino Lorber
Vivian Kleiman
Jan Klingelhofer
Grace Kraaijvanger
Machu Latorre
Tommy Lau
Allison Levenson
Alexandra Lexton
Erin Lim
Meredith Lipsky
Jacqui Lopez
Tom Luddy
Monique Luddy
Becky MacDonald
Misha MacLaird
Magnolia Pictures
Tano Maida
Gerry Maravilla
Sue Maslin
Niall McKay
Gary Meyer
Laura Minorsky
Bente Mirow
Chris Morgan
Brighde Mullins
Holly Near
Russell Nelson
Sierra Nguyen
Norwegian Film Institute
Mike Olcese
Emiko Omori
Marilyn Ortiz
Shurer Osnat
Megan Moss Pachon
Anna Paquin
Paramount Pictures
Sabryna Phillips
Maya Pisciotto
Pixar
Mimi Plauché
Polish Film Institute
Natacha Pope
Sue Priolo
David Proctor-Bonbright
Elaine Proctor-Bonbright
Lucia Proctor-Bonbright
Marcus Pun
Mariell Rahmani
Richard Repas
Rodrigo Reyes
Roadside Attractions
Chris Robbins
Stuart Robertson
Daniella Robinson
Chloe Roddick
Diana Rodgers
Rachel Rosen
Gary Rubin
Helen Russell
John Sanborn
Kevin Schaub
Tom Schlesinger
Martin Schwartz
Donna Seager
SFFILM
Alireza Shahrokhi
Norah Shapiro
Lynnette Shaw
Tiffany Shlain
Lucy Shiels
David Shultz
Osnat Shurer
Melissa Silverstein
Wendy Slick
Stacy Smith
Tomek Smolarski
Jennifer Steinman
Ricki Stern
Ray Stone
Jennifer Stott
Strand Releasing
Isabelle Sugimoto
Anne Sundberg
Laura Swanbeck
Swedish Film Institute
Sweetwater Music Hall
Lisa Taback
Angela Tabora
Danielle Taormina-Keenan
Telluride Film Festival
Bev Thorman
Kyle Thorpe
Corey Tong
Iris Torres
Gary Traverso
François Truffart
The Understory
Mike Van Metre
Dana Vasquez
Gustavo Vazquez
Delfin Vigil
Warner Bros. Pictures
John C. Weaver III
Valerie Weiss
Judith Williams
Paul Wright
Cecilia Zamora
Betsy Zeger
Sue Zemel
Place at the top of the page.
EVENt DESIGN RENTALS FABRICATION Fabric Treatments GRAPHICS STAGING
Proud Sponsor of the Mill Valley Film Festival Celebrating 41 Years of showcasing quality American independent and foreign films.
and FILM RESOURCE OFFICE
The iconic Czech-American director and screenwriter Miloš Forman had a particular resonance for the Bay Area: both of his Academy Award ® -winning films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984), were produced here. He was recipient of a Tribute at MVFF in 2002.
Our beloved volunteer with a generosity of spirit and a saucy sense of humor, Muriel Hammond and her husband Murray regularly plied festival staff with support, wisdom, and a non-stop supply of cookies.
Screenwriter, author, and film writer for the Pacific Sun, Mal Karman annually wrote comprehensively about Mill Valley Film Festival with a depth and thoughtfulness that is unrivalled. We miss his passion for film and filmmakers.
Jeanne Moreau, the legendary French actress, director, and doyenne of the New Wave, was MVFF’s first international tributee in 1982. As she entered the Sequoia, “Le tourbillon,” the song she sang in Jules et Jim, was playing. During her visit, she went shopping at Cost Plus: A limo took her there.
Judy Stone’s intellect, passion, insight, and drive made her one of the world’s great film critics. A tenacious seeker of the truth, she championed filmmakers from across the globe. She was renowned for her mango chutney and for getting people to feed her parking meter when she was watching films.
Rose Marie’s extraordinary career spanned nine decades and multiple disciplines on screen, on stage, and on air, frequently in the vanguard as her early days in vaudeville led to radio, film, and then—television. Most widely known as Sally Rogers, the comedy writer on The Dick Van Dyke Show, it’s only in recent years that her importance as a role model has become evident. We honored her with an Opening Night Tribute in 2017.
Playwright and actor Sam Shepard lived in Mill Valley for several years, near the 2AM Club. Many of his groundbreaking, career-defining plays launched at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where he was artist-in-residence. The Pulitzer-winning writer was on a writing panel at MVFF in the early 1980s with soon-to-become screenwriting guru Syd Field. After Field expounded his theories, there were gasps when Shepard completely dismissed them. Both inspired a generation of writers.
In 1984, Harry Dean Stanton was honored as an MVFF Tributee in conjunction with the screening of Paris, Texas (written by Sam Shepard). Paris, Texas was a turning point in a career notable for indie and cult classics like Two-Lane Blacktop and Repo Man. Legend has it that the live show he did at the Sweetwater that year was his first public performance as a singer and musician.
PROUD SPONSOR OF THE 41ST MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL
3 FACES
Kino Lorber www.kinolorber.com
22 JULY
Netflix netflix.com
A PRIORI
Maïté Schmitt maite.schmitt@gmail.com
LOS ADIOSES
Lux Box Films www.luxboxfilms.com
AGENT OF CONNECTION
Cash Studios
Evan Neff www.cashstudios.co
ALIFU THE PRINCE/SS
Reel Suspects
Alberto Alvarez Aguilera www.reelsuspects.com
ALL SQUARE
Mill House Motion Pictures www.mhmp.tv
ALL THESE SMALL MOMENTS
The Film Sales Company www.filmsalescorp.com
AMALIA THE SECRETARY
Habanero Film Sales
Alfredo Calvino www.habanerofilmsales.com
EL ÁNGEL
The Orchard www.theorchard.tv
ANGST
IndieFlix
Ann Skrobut www.indieflix.com
ANY WEDNESDAY
Hilder Productions
David Lundstedt lumpatx@gmail.com
ARE YOU STILL SINGING?
Gillian Barnes gillianleighbarnes@gmail.com
ART PAUL OF PLAYBOY: THE MAN BEHIND THE BUNNY MoraQuest Media
Jennifer Hou Kwong moraquest.com
...AS IF THEY WERE ANGELS Health, Education & Videotape, Inc.
Terry Strauss strauss.terry@gmail.com
ASH IS PUREST WHITE
Cohen Media Group
Debbie Acosta cohenmedia.net
AWAKER
Kurz Film Verleih verleih.shortfilm.com/en
BATHTUBS OVER BROADWAY
Impact Partners
Dan Cogan www.impactpartnersfilm.com
BEAUTIFUL BOY
Amazon Studios studios.amazon.com
BECOMING ASTRID
Music Box Films www.musicboxfilms.com
BEN IS BACK Roadside Attractions roadsideattractions.com
BIAS
Finish Line Features, LLC
Tierney Henderson www.finishlinefeaturefilms.com
THE BICYCLE THIEF
Kerry Skinner info@parkbenchpictures.co.uk
THE BIG BAD FOX AND OTHER TALES GKids
Ryan Kane gkids.com
BIRDS OF PASSAGE
The Orchard www.theorchard.tv
BORDER
Neon neonrated.com
BOY ERASED
Focus Features www.focusfeatures.com
BREAK THE CAMERA
Second Seed Productions boss@secondseedproductions.com
BRENTWOOD
Filmsignal
Sharon Everitt www.filmsignal.com
BURNING
Well Go USA www.wellgousa.com
BUSHWICK BEATS
Aleksey Ageyev ageyeff@gmail.com
BZZZ
Anna Cetti annaccetti@gmail.com
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?
Fox Searchlight Pictures www.foxsearchlight.com
CANDACE
Emma Weinstein emma.weinstein@yale.edu
CAPERNAUM
Sony Pictures Classics www.sonyclassics.com
CAROLEE, BARBARA & GUNVOR BY LYNNE SACHS
Lynne Sachs lynnesachs@gmail.com
THE CENTER OF A BOOK
Muckle Mouth Joshua Moore jsmoore09@gmail.com
CERULIA
IMCINE
Gloria Mascorro festivals@imcine.gob.mx
CHAINED FOR LIFE
Aaron Schimberg tokyochorus@gmail.com
CHARM CITY
PBS Distribution
Erin Owens pbsdistribution.org
CHRIS THE SWISS
Urban Distribution International Arnaud Bélangeon-Bouaziz www.urbandistrib.com
COCO
Walt Disney Pictures movies.disney.com
COIN OPERATED
Nicholas Arioli nick.arioli@gmail.com
COLD WAR
Amazon Studios studios.amazon.com
COLLISIONS
Richard Levien richard.levien@gmail.com
CRAIG’S PATHETIC FREAKOUT
Graham Parkes grhmparkes@gmail.com
DARK DARK WOODS
Emile Gignoux e.gignoux@laposte.net
DAUGHTER OF MINE
Strand Releasing strandreleasing.com
THE DAY THAT
Dorian Tocker doriantocker@gmail.com
DEAR HENRI, Matthew Sandager matthew@matthewsandager.com
DESTROYER
Annapurna Pictures annapurna.pictures
THE DRESS OF MYRIAM
Lucas H. Rossi ovestidodemyriam@gmail.com
EARTHRISE
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee evaughanlee@globalonenessproject.org
EFFORTLESS FRENCH
Xavier Sayanoff sayanoff@gmail.com
ERNESTO
mk2 films mk2films.com
EVERYBODY KNOWS
Focus Features www.focusfeatures.com
THE FAVOURITE
Fox Searchlight Pictures www.foxsearchlight.com
THE FIDDLER
Brett Marty bret@speculativefilms.com
A FIELD GUIDE TO BEING A 12-YEAR-OLD GIRL
Closer Productions
Katrina Lucas closerproductions.com.au
FOOTPRINT
Sara Newens sara.newens@gmail.com
FREAKS OF NURTURE
National Film Board of Canada
Jane Butteridge www.nfb.ca
FREE LIKE THE BIRDS
joeyngloria LLC
Gloria La Morte www.joeyngloria.com
FREE SOLO
National Geographic www.nationalgeographic.com
FROM BAGHDAD TO THE BAY
Erin Palmquist erin@erinpalmquist.com
THE FRONT RUNNER
Sony Pictures Classics www.sonyclassics.com
GALINHA
João Pereira-Webber jpereirawebb@wesleyan.edu
THE GREAT BUSTER: A CELEBRATION
Cohen Media Group
Debbie Acosta cohenmedia.net
GREEN BOOK
Universal Pictures www.universalpictures.com
GRIT
Cynthia Wade Productions, Inc. www.cynthiawade.com
THE GUARDIANS
Billie Mintz billie@billiemintz.com
HARVEST SEASON
Quiet Pictures
Bernardo Ruiz bernardoruiz.com
THE HATE U GIVE
Twentieth Century Fox www.foxmovies.com
HEADS OR TAILS
H264 Distribution
Jean-Christophe J. Lamontagne www.h264distribution.com/en
A HOLE
Maribel Suárez marisubel@hotmail.com
HOLLY NEAR: SINGING FOR OUR LIVES
Jim Brown jimbrownproductions@gmail.com
HULA GIRL
Snap Pictures, Inc.
Amy Hill riesshill@icloud.com
I AM MARIS: PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG YOGI ro*co films
Ariana Garfinkel rocofilms.com
I AM MY OWN MOTHER
Zox Project zoxproject@gmail.com
I WANT TO LIVE IN THE ZOO
Evgenia Golubeva jane.golubeva@gmail.com
IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
Annapurna Pictures annapurna.pictures
IN THE AISLES
Music Box Films www.musicboxfilms.com
THE INDEPENDENTS
RGB Film, Inc. Greg Naughton gnaught2@gmail.com
JESSZILLA Emily Sheskin emilysheskin@gmail.com
JOSEPH PULITZER: VOICE OF THE PEOPLE Oren Rudavsky Productions orenrudavskyproductions.com
KANNAPOLIS: A MOVING PORTRAIT Finn Taylor finnt@pacbell.net
THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER Netflix netflix.com
LAST STOP IMCINE
Gloria Mascorro www.imcine.gob.mx
THE LAW OF AVERAGES Elizabeth Rose ebr2125@columbia.edu
LEMONADE Mongrel www.mongrelmedia.com
LION
Studio FILM BILDER Bianca Just www.filmbilder.de
LITTLE WOODS Neon neonrated.com
LONG TIME COMING: A 1955 BASEBALL STORY
Jon Strong jon@strongfilms.com
THE LOSS
una+one films
Machu Latorre unaplusonefilms@gmail.com
THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD
Benenson Productions
Wendy Wager benensonproductions.com
LUCINA Gerardo Rueda grueda95@outlook.com
LUCY VS. THE LIMITS OF VOICE IMCINE
Gloria Mascorro www.imcine.gob.mx
MAD GOD, PART 3
Tippett Studio
Corey Rosen crosen@tippett.com
MARIA BY CALLAS
Sony Pictures Classics www.sonyclassics.com
MATEO AND THE CINEMA
Luis Felipe Hernández Alanis animatitlan@gmail.com
#METOO GUMSHOE
Ilyse Mimoun imimoun1@aol.com
THE MODERN LIVES: BACK OF MY MIND
THE MODERN LIVES: GOOD ADVICE THE MODERN LIVES: MODERN LIVES THE MODERN LIVES: TUPELO Plymptoons www.plymptoons.com
THE MOON’S MILK
Ri Crawford ritransactionary@gmail.com
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS: 8 TRUE STORIES
Gary Weimberg gary@lunaproductions.com
MOVING STORIES
Argot Pictures
Jim Browne www.argotpictures.com
MUG
Memento Films www.memento-films.com
MUSEO
Vitagraph Films www.vitagraphfilms.com
THE NEW ENVIRONMENTALISTS: FROM HANOI TO PARIS Mill Valley Film Group
Will Parrinello willmvfg@gmail.com
NON-FICTION
IFC Films
Matt Landers Matt.Landers@ifcfilms.com
NORTHERN WIND
Be For Films
Claire Battistoni www.beforfilms.com
OBEY
Wide Management www.widemanagement.com
OCULUS
Behrooz Qiassi oculus-shortmovie@gmail.com
ONE CAMBODIAN FAMILY PLEASE FOR MY PLEASURE
Shatterbox www.tntdrama.com/shows/shatterbox
ONE VOICE
Jed Riffe Films jedriffe@gmail.com
OUTDOORS
Yummy Films
François Heiser francois@yummy-films.com
PAINTED
Olivia Derie oliviaderie@hotmail.com
THE PARTING GLASS
Dark Star Pictures
Mike Repsch darkstarpics.com
PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE. Rayka Zehtabchi raykazehtabchi@gmail.com
PET NAMES
Simple DCP
Julia Colbert Ruiz julia@simpledcp.com
PETERLOO Amazon Studios studios.amazon.com
PITY
New Europe Film Sales
Ewa Bojanowska ewa@neweuropefilmsales.com
POLIANGULAR
IMCINE
Alexandra Castellanos Solis www.imcine.gob.mx
POST NO BILLS
Robin Hays haysr@me.com
A PRIVATE WAR
Aviron Pictures aviron.com
RAFIKI
Film Movement
Maxwell Wolkin www.filmmovement.com
RAINBOW BRIDGE
Rivkah Beth Medow rivkahbeth@gmail.com
RICOTTA
Canal 22
Melina Diazmercado Delfin www.canal22.org.mx
ROMA
Netflix netflix.com
ROUFF
Lucia Scharbatke Film.wildboar@gmail.com
RUNNER
Clare Cooney cooneycm@gmail.com
SAINT JUDY
Cannonball Productions
Derek Beamer derek@cannonballproduction.com
THE SCHOOL OF HONK
Patrick Johnson johnson_patrick@wheatoncollege.edu
SEDER MASOCHISM
Nina Paley nina_paley@yahoo.com
SERGIO AND SERGEI
West End Films
Alex Pye www.westendfilms.com
SHERBERT ROZENCRANTZ, YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL
Natalie van den Dungen natalie.vandendungen@gmail.com
SHOE SHINER
Lux Visual Storytelling
Andrés Gallegos andresgallegos.y@gmail.com
SHOPLIFTERS
Magnolia Pictures
Martin Wendel www.magnoliapictures.com
THE SILENCE OF OTHERS Cinephil
Shoshi Korman cinephil.com
THE SILENT REVOLUTION
The Festival Agency ed@thefestivalagency.com
SILVIA IN THE WAVES
Giovana Olmos olmos.gio@gmail.com
SIR
mk2 Films
Anne-Laure Barbarit mk2films.com/en
SKIP DAY
Some Shorts
Wouter Jansen info@someshorts.com
SOFIA
Be For Films
Claire Battistoni www.beforfilms.com
SOMETHING IS HAPPENING
Shellac Félicie Roger www.shellac-altern.org
SOULS OF TOTALITY
Richard Raymond richard@may13films.com
SPANKO
Melanie Zoey Weinstein melaniezoey@gmail.com
SPECIAL DAY
Nikolai von Keller nickvonkeller@gmail.com
STARDUST
IMCINE
Gloria Mascorro www.imcine.gob.mx
STAY HUMAN ACTIVIST
Cielo Alano www.activist.co
SUPA MODO
Juno Films junofilms.com
SUPERPERSON
Philip Watts pwatts@me.com
THE SWEET REQUIEM
White Crane Films whitecranefilms.com
SWIMMING WITH MEN
IFC Films www.ifcfilms.com
THE TEACHER AND THE FLOWER
Daniel Irabién daniel@estudiocarabas.com
TIME FOR ILHAN
The Film Sales Company
Graham Fine www.filmsalescorp.com
TINTICO’S AFTERNOONS
IMCINE
Gloria Mascorro www.imcine.gob.mx
TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG KIMSTIM kimstim.com
TRANSIT
Music Box Films www.musicboxfilm.com
TSAR BOMBA aug&ohr medien augohr.de
TWO BALLOONS
Mark Smith twoballoonsfilm@gmail.com
TWO FOR DINNER
Eleanor Coppola eleanor_coppola@ffcnotes.com
TWO MEDUSAS
Black Valley Films
Scott Hamilton Kennedy www.blackvalleyfilms.com
TWO PLAINS & A FANCY
Lev Kalman lev.and.whitney@gmail.com
TWO PUDDLES
Ian Bignell submissions@festivalformula.com
UNDISCOVERED
Sara Litzenberger sara.litzenberger@gmail.com
USE YOUR DELUSION
Cartwheel Films
Jamie Vega Wheeler jamievwheeler@gmail.com
VIPER CLUB
Roadside Attractions roadsideattractions.com
VIRUS TROPICAL
Stray Dogs www.stray-dogs.biz
VISION
Semira Hedayati semira@elledriver.eu
WAVES FROM THE SKY IMCINE
Gloria Mascorro www.imcine.gob.mx
WEED THE PEOPLE
Abramorama
Karol Martesko-Fenster www.abramorama.com
WHAT THEY HAD
Bleeker Street Media bleeckerstreetmedia.com
WHEN THE TREES FALL
Latido Films
Marta Hernando www.latidofilms.com
THE WHISTLEBLOWER OF MY LAI Clarity Films
Connie Field www.clarityfilms.org
WHO KILLED LT. VAN DORN? Investigative Reporting Program
Zachary Stauffer investigativereportingprogram.com
WIDOWS
Twentieth Century Fox www.foxmovies.com
WILD DAZE
Phyllis Stuart infg@enthusetv.com
WILDLIFE
IFC Films www.ifcfilms.com
WOMAN AT WAR Magnolia Pictures www.magnoliapictures.com
A WORD TO THE WISE Gangway Media
Jordi Esgleas Tarifa marroi3@gmail.com
WORKING WOMAN
M-Appeal
Torsten Schulze www.m-appeal.net
WORLD OF FACTS
Mike Gibisser mike.gibisser@gmail.com
WORLDS OF URSULA K. LE GUIN
Arwen Curry arwencurry@gmail.com
YOMEDDINE
Strand Releasing strandreleasing.com
* Denotes country of interest
AFGHANISTAN
Saint Judy*
ARGENTINA
El ángel
Too Late to Die Young
AUSTRALIA
A Field Guide to Being a 12-Year-Old Girl
Sherbert Rozencrantz, You’re Beautiful
Superperson
BELGIUM
Painted
BRAZIL
The Dress of Myriam Galinha*
Too Late to Die Young
BULGARIA
Seder Masochism*
CAMBODIA
One Cambodian Family Please for My Pleasure*
CANADA
...As If They Were Angels* Freaks of Nurture
The Guardians
Heads or Tails
The Law of Averages
Lemonade
Post No Bills
Silvia in the Waves
CHILE
Shoe Shiner
Too Late to Die Young
CHINA
Ash Is Purest White
COLOMBIA
Amalia the Secretary
Birds of Passage
The New Environmentalists: From Hanoi to Paris*
Virus Tropical
CROATIA
Chris the Swiss
CUBA
Ernesto
Sergio and Sergei
CZECH REPUBLIC
Awaker
DENMARK
Becoming Astrid
Birds of Passage
Border
Dark Dark Woods
Grit
One Voice*
ECUADOR
Virus Tropical
EGYPT
Yomeddine
FRANCE
A Priori
Ash Is Purest White
The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales
Cold War
Effortless French
Everybody Knows
Maria by Callas
The New Environmentalists: From Hanoi to Paris* Non-Fiction
Northern Wind Outdoors
Rafiki
Seder Masochism*
Sir
Sofia
Something Is Happening
Transit
Woman at War
FINLAND
Chris the Swiss
GERMANY
Becoming Astrid
Chris the Swiss
Daughter of Mine In the Aisles
Lemonade
Lion
Rafiki
Rouff
The Silent Revolution
Supa Modo
Transit
GREECE
Pity
ICELAND
22 July Woman at War
INDIA
Moving Stories*
Sir
The Sweet Requiem
INDONESIA
Grit
IRAN
3 Faces Oculus
IRAQ
Moving Stories*
IRELAND
The Favourite
ISRAEL
Seder Masochism* Working Woman
ITALY
Daughter of Mine Everybody Knows Lucy vs. the Limits of Voice
JAPAN
Ernesto Shoplifters
KENYA
Rafiki
Supa Modo
LEBANON
Capernaum
MACEDONIA
When the Trees Fall
MEXICO
Los adioses
Birds of Passage
Bzzz
Cerulia
Collisions*
Harvest Season*
A Hole
Last Stop
Mateo and the Cinema Museo
Poliangular
Ricotta
Roma
Stardust
The Teacher and the Flower Tintico’s Afternoons
Waves from the Sky
NETHERLANDS
Rafiki
Too Late to Die Young
NORWAY
22 July
One Voice*
Rafiki
PHILIPPINES
The New Environmentalists: From Hanoi to Paris*
POLAND
Cold War
Mug
Pity
When the Trees Fall
QATAR
Sofia
Too Late to Die Young
ROMANIA
Lemonade
Moving Stories*
RUSSIA
The New Environmentalists: From Hanoi to Paris*
SOMALIA
Time for Ilhan*
The New Environmentalists: From Hanoi to Paris*
Rafiki
Burning
Moving Stories*
El ángel
Everybody Knows
The Loss
The Silence of Others
A Word to the Wise
Becoming Astrid
Border
Lemonade
Chris the Swiss Daughter of Mine
One Voice*
Tsar Bomba
Alifu the Prince/ss
Northern Wind
UK
Angst
The Bicycle Thief
Cold War
The Favourite
I Want to Live in the Zoo
Obey
Peterloo
A Private War
Skip Day
Souls of Totality
Swimming with Men
Two Puddles
Widows
When the Trees Fall
Woman at War
Agent of Connection
All Square
All These Small Moments
Ā mrik ā
Angst
Any Wednesday
Are You Still Singing?
Art Paul of Playboy: The Man
Behind the Bunny
...As If They Were Angels
Backyard Bees
Bathtubs Over Broadway
Beautiful Boy
Ben Is Back
bias
Boy Erased
Break the Camera
Brentwood
Bushwick Beats
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Candace
Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor by Lynne Sachs
Censored
The Center of a Book
Chained for Life
Charm City
Coco
Coin Operated Collisions
Craig’s Pathetic Freakout
Dance with Me
Davy Jones Can’t Fly
The Day That
Dear Henri, Destroyer
Earthrise
Experimenting with Animation
The Favourite
The Fiddler
Footprint
Free Like the Birds
Free Solo
From Baghdad to The Bay
The Front Runner
Galinha
Goodbye Sam
Gray Areas
The Great Buster:
A Celebration
Green Book
Grit
Harvest Season
The Hate U Give
The Hi De Ho Show
Holly Near: Singing for Our Lives
Hula Girl
I Am Maris: Portrait of a Young Yogi
I Am My Own Mother
If Beale Street Could Talk
The Independents
JessZilla
Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People
Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait
The Kindergarten Teacher
The Last Straw
The Light of My Life
Little Woods
The Look
Long Time Coming: A 1955
Baseball Story
The Lost City of the Monkey
God
Lucina
Mad God, Part 3 #metoo gumshoe
The Modern Lives: Back of My Mind
The Modern Lives: Good Advice
The Modern Lives: Modern Lives
The Modern Lives: Tupelo
The Moon’s Milk
Mothers and Daughters: 8 True Stories
Moving Stories
The New Environmentalists: From Hanoi to Paris
One Cambodian Family Please for My Pleasure
One in Thirty: The Story of Henry Oster
One Voice
The Parting Glass
Perception
Period. End of Sentence.
Pet Names
Peterloo
Pop
A Private War
Rainbow Bridge
The Rat
The Redwood Grove
Roma
Runner
Saint Judy
The School of Honk
Seder Masochism
Skip Day
Souls of Totality
Spanko
Special Day
Stay Human
The Sweet Requiem
Time for Ilhan
Two Balloons
Two for Dinner
Two Medusas
Two Plains & a Fancy
Undiscovered
Use Your Delusion
Viper Club
Weed the People What They Had
The Whistleblower of My Lai
Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?
Why, God?
Widows
Wild DaZe
Wildlife World of Facts
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
The New Environmentalists: From Hanoi to Paris*
The Whistleblower of My Lai*
Abbasi, Ali Border
Alexander, Stewart
The Bicycle Thief
Alix, Anne
Something Is Happening 152
Anderson-Smith, Grant
Davy Jones Can’t Fly 123
Antabli, Sarah
One in Thirty: The Story of Henry Oster 123
Antonelli, John
The New Environmentalists: From Hanoi to Paris 134
Arioli, Nicholas
Coin Operated
Assayas, Olivier Non-Fiction
Aviad, Michal
Working Woman
Bahar, Nicole
Ā mrik ā
Bahar, Robert
The Silence of Others
Barnes, Gillian
Are You Still Singing?
Benenson, Bill
The Lost City of the Monkey God
Benm’Barek, Meryem Sofia 151
Beristáin, Natalia
Los adioses 124
Bispuri, Laura Daughter of Mine 134
Bogdanovich, Peter
The Great Buster: A Celebration 137
Brand, Benjamin Rouff 154
Brandt, Carol Pet Names 147
Bresnan, Patrick
Skip Day
Brown, Jim
Holly Near: Singing for Our Lives
Budzyna, Maggie
Censored
Burgos, Andrés
Amalia the Secretary
Caicedo, Santiago Virus Tropical
Carlton, Justin
Use Your Delusion
Carracedo, Almudena
The Silence of Others
Carrillo, Sofía
Cerulia 121
Cash, Ivan Agent of Connection
Castaldo, Anne Outdoors
Castellanos Solis, Alexandra Poliangular
Cetti, Anna Bzzz
Chalek, Sarah Outdoors
Chang-dong, Lee Burning
Chang, Tiffany
One in Thirty: The Story of Henry Oster 123
Chin, Jimmy Free Solo 136
Cho, Stephanie
One in Thirty: The Story of Henry Oster 123
Chomko, Elizabeth What They Had 157
Cobham-Hervey, Tilda
A Field Guide to Being a 12-Year-Old Girl 141
Colangelo, Sara The Kindergarten Teacher 87, 142 Cooney, Clare Runner
Coppola, Eleanor Two for Dinner
Crawford, Ri The Moon’s Milk
Cuarón, Alfonso Roma
Curry, Arwen Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
DaCosta, Nia Little Woods 143
Dano, Paul Wildlife 45, 159
Daranas Serrano, Ernesto Sergio and Sergei
Dávila Cabrera, Héctor
Derie, Olivia
Edgerton, Joel
Asghar
Peter
Connie
Whistleblower of My Lai
Fischer Christensen, Pernille
Flaming, Paige
Franti, Michael
Emile
Nathan
John
Golubeva, Evgenia
Vincent
Greengrass, Paul
Greyhavens, Teal
Ciro
Hays, Robin
Post No Bills 154
Hedges, Peter
Ben Is Back 128
Heineman, Matthew
A Private War 32, 148
Heller, Marielle
Can You Ever Forgive Me? 75, 131
Hernández Alanis, Luis Felipe
Mateo and the Cinema 137
Herrera, Mónica
Lucy vs. the Limits of Voice 137
Hill, Amy
Hula Girl 121
Horn, Whitney
Two Plains & a Fancy 155
Hyams, John
All Square 125
Imbert, Patrick
The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales 129
Irabién, Daniel
The Teacher and the Flower 137
Jenkins, Barry
If Beale Street Could Talk 35, 140
Johnson, Patrick
The School of Honk 144
Jones, Jamie
Obey 146
Jordan, Julian
The Last Straw 123
Kahiu, Wanuri
Rafiki 148
Kalman, Lev
Two Plains & a Fancy 155
Karliner-Li, Isaac
Dance with Me 123
Kawase, Naomi Vision 156
Keeling, Timothy
Two Puddles 122
Kennedy, Scott Hamilton
Two Medusas 141
Keshavarz, Maryam Viper Club 155
Kiani, Nasim
Oculus 121
Kofmel, Anja
Chris the Swiss 132
Kore-eda, Hirokazu
Shoplifters 150
Kraume, Lars
The Silent Revolution 151
Kusama, Karyn
Destroyer 81, 134
Kwong, Jennifer Hou (Jian Ping)
Art Paul of Playboy: The Man Behind the Bunny
Labaki, Nadine
Capernaum
Lanthimos, Yorgos
The Favourite
Latorre, Machu
The Loss
Leigh, Mike Peterloo
Lemay, Alexandra Freaks of Nurture
Levien, Richard Collisions
Lewis, Miranda Autumn
Rat
Light, Allie
Any Wednesday
Litzenberger, Sara Undiscovered
Løvenbalch Kirchheiner, Mik
Dark Dark Woods
Lowin, Sara
One in Thirty: The Story of Henry Oster 123 Lucas, Ivete
Skip Day
Lukas, A.M.
One Cambodian Family Please for My Pleasure
Lumer, Johannes
Makridis, Babis
Marty, Brett
Mattar, Walid
McQueen, Steve
McSweeny, Erina
Light of My Life
Medow, Rivkah
Mendoza, Paola
Mesarchik, August
Ilyse
Poon, Andy
Post No Bills 154
Raymond, Richard
Souls of Totality 122
Reitman, Jason
The Front Runner 134
Renner, Benjamin
The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales 129
Retik, Max
The Look 123
Riess, Chris Hula Girl 121
Rose, Elizabeth
The Law of Averages 122
Rosen, Julius Rouff 154
Rosetti, Oskar
Tsar Bomba 121
Rossi, Lucas H.
The Dress of Myriam 122
Rouquié, Adrien
Outdoors 154
Rudavsky, Oren
Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People 142
Rueda, Gerardo
Lucina 139
Ruiz, Bernardo Harvest Season 139
Ruizpalacios, Alonso Museo 145
Ryan, Catherine
Mothers and Daughters: 8 True Stories 121
Sachs, Lynne
Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor by Lynne Sachs 124
Safir, Jack Gray Areas 123
Sakamoto, Junji Ernesto 135
Sandager, Matthew
Dear Henri, 141
Sandman, Gracie
One in Thirty: The Story of Henry Oster 123
Santoyo, Gildardo Waves from the Sky 137
Sarbib, Chloe Bushwick Beats 131
Sarin, Ritu
The Sweet Requiem 153
Sayanoff, Xavier Effortless French 135
Sayeeda Moreno, A. Bushwick Beats 131
Schimberg, Aaron Chained for Life 132
Schmitt, Maïté A Priori 154
Shapiro, Norah Time for Ilhan 153
Shawky, A.B. Yomeddine
Sheskin, Emily JessZilla
Shoaf, Brian Bushwick Beats 131
Sinha, Sonejuhi Bushwick Beats 131
Skerritt, Matt Angst 126
Skinner, Kerry
The Bicycle Thief 141
Smith, Mark C. Two Balloons 154
Sofia, Jenna Break the Camera 122
Sonam, Tenzing The Sweet Requiem 153
Sotelo Lázaro, Aldo Stardust 137
Sotomayor, Dominga Too Late to Die Young 154
Spencer, India
One in Thirty: The Story of Henry Oster
Stark, Patrick Any Wednesday
Stauffer, Zachary Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?
Strauss, Terry ...As If They Were Angels
Strong, Jon
Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story
Stuart, Phyllis Wild DaZe
Stuber, Thomas
Suárez, Maribel
Swander, Kat
Taplitz, Theo
Finn
A
Allison
Aroma
Auberge
Bartender’s
Belcampo
Bellam
Best
BevMo
BioMarin
Body
Bossa
Compass
DigIn
Dolby
EACH
Edible
Equator
Four
Frogs
Highway 1 Creative
Hillside Tavern
ICB Artists
iHeartMedia San Francisco
Fornaio 179
Incavo Wine & Tasting Collective ... 209
Intrepid Studios ................... 62
Jackson Square Partners ........... 35
Kaiser Permanente
Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant
Marin
5@5 Boho Dance 121
5@5 Circle Game 121
5@5 Come to the Sunshine 121
5@5 Coyote 122
5@5 Daisy Summer Piper 122
5@5 Eastern Rain 122
5@5 The Way It Is 123
3 Faces 123
22 July 123
A Priori 154
Los adioses 124
An Afternoon with Eleanor Coppola and Allie Light 124
Agent of Connection 121
Alifu the Prince/ss 124
All Square 125
All These Small Moments 125
Amalia the Secretary 125
Ā mrik ā 123
El ángel 126
Angst 126
Any Wednesday 124
Are You Still Singing? 122
Art Paul of Playboy: The Man
Behind the Bunny 126
...As If They Were Angels 127
Ash Is Purest White 127
Awaker 154
Backyard Bees 123
Bathtubs Over Broadway 127
Beautiful Boy 57, 128
Becoming Astrid 128
Ben Is Back 128
bias 129
The Bicycle Thief 141
The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales 129
Birds of Passage 129
Border 130
Boy Erased 63, 130
Break the Camera 122
Brentwood 122
Burning 130
Bushwick Beats 131
Bzzz 137
Can You Ever
Forgive Me? 75, 131
Candace 121
Capernaum 131
Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor by Lynne Sachs 124
Censored 123
The Center of a Book 142
Cerulia 121
Chained for Life 132
Charm City 132
Chris the Swiss 132
Coco 133
Coin Operated 154
Cold War 51, 133
Collisions 133
Craig’s Pathetic Freakout 122
Dance with Me 123
Dark Dark Woods 154
Daughter of Mine 134
Davy Jones Can’t Fly 123
The Day That 122
Dear Henri, 141 Destroyer 81, 134
The Dress of Myriam 122
Earth, Our Home:
The New Environmentalists 134
Earthrise 134
Effortless French 135
Ernesto 135
Everybody Knows 135
Experimenting with Animation 123 The Favourite 136
The Fiddler 121
A Field Guide to Being a 12-Year-Old Girl 141
Footprint 121
Freaks of Nurture 121
Free Like the Birds 141
Free Solo 136
From Baghdad to The Bay 136
From Mexico, Con Amor 137
The Front Runner 137
Galinha 141
Goodbye Sam 123
Gray Areas 123
The Great Buster: A Celebration 137 Green Book 33, 138
Grit 138
The Guardians 138 Harvest Season 139
The Hate U Give 69, 139
Heads or Tails 122
The Hi De Ho Show 139
A Hole 139
Holly Near: Singing for Our Lives 140
Hula Girl 121
I Am Maris: Portrait of a Young Yogi 140
I Am My Own Mother 122
I Want to Live in the Zoo 154
If Beale Street Could Talk 35, 140 In the Aisles 141
The Independents 141
It’s a Girls’ World 141
JessZilla 141
Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People 142
Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait 142
The Kindergarten Teacher 87, 142
Last Stop 121
The Last Straw 123
The Law of Averages 122 Lemonade 143
The Light of My Life 123
Lion 154
Little Woods 143
Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story 143
The Look 123
The Loss 122
The Lost City of the Monkey God 144 Lucina 139
Lucy vs. the Limits of Voice 137
Mad God, Part 3 121
Maria by Callas 144
Mateo and the Cinema 137
#metoo gumshoe 122
The Modern Lives: Back of My Mind 155
The Modern Lives: Good Advice 121
The Modern Lives: Modern Lives 122
The Modern Lives: Tupelo 121
The Moon’s Milk 121
Mothers and Daughters: 8 True Stories 121 Moving Stories 144
The New Environmentalists: From Hanoi to Paris 134 Non-Fiction 145 Northern Wind 146 Obey 146 Oculus 121
One Cambodian Family Please for My Pleasure 122
One in Thirty: The Story of Henry Oster 123 One Voice 146 Outdoors 154
Painted 154
The Parting Glass 59, 147
