The 37th Virginia Film Festival will soon bring some of this year’s breakout cinematic productions to Charlottesville — and with them, some of their high-profile actors, directors and producers.
From Oct. 30 through Nov. 3, there’s a chance Charlottesville residents could bump into “New Girl” actor Lamorne Morris or “Ben-Hur” star Jack Huston on the city’s Downtown Mall.
They are just two of the 40 guest artists slated to appear at this year’s festival — an improvement on last year’s showcase limited by the actor and writer strike in Hollywood.
“Over the past several years, the Virginia Film Festival has cemented its reputation for offering deep and rich programming that matches up with any regional festival in the country,” festival director Jody Kielbasa said in a statement announcing this year’s lineup. “This year we are building on that reputation with an extraordinary program that highlights the best that cinema has to offer across the world and throughout all genres as we continue to be a driving cultural force not only here in Charlottesville but throughout the Commonwealth and beyond.”
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The Violet Crown theater on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall is seen on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023.
CAL CARY, THE DAILY PROGRESS
This 2024 programming will commence the evening of Oct. 30 at the Paramount Theater on the Downtown Mall with the premiere of “Anora,” a take on the age-old Cinderella story. The comedy garnered international praise at this past May’s Cannes Film Festival, where director Sean Baker took home the Palme d’Or, the highest honor given to the director of the festival’s best feature film.
“Anora” is set to receive even more accolades in Charlottesville. The film’s distribution company, Neon, has been awarded the festival’s Impresario Award for its avant-garde methods when it comes to film distribution which have evolved the “cinema-going experience.” Neon founder and CEO Tom Quinn is scheduled to accept the award for the company, which has several other films in the festival, including “The End,” “Men of War,” “The Seed of a Sacred Fig” and “Presence.”
Other notable screenings include the festival’s centerpiece film, “Emilia Pérez,” which also saw success at Cannes with its directors winning the Jury Prize and the four female leads — Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and Karla Sofía Gascón — sharing the best actress title.
There will also be a special award screening of “Saturday Night,” which captures the behind-the-scenes story of the first 1975 broadcast of the live sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live.” Morris, known for playing Winston in the TV series “New Girl,” plays Garrett Morris in the film and is slated to join the audience for a discussion after the screening.
Morris
In addition to the Emmy Award for best supporting actor he won earlier this year for his performance in the “Fargo” TV series, Lamorne Morris will be receiving the Virginia Film Festival’s Virtuoso Award for “Saturday Night.”
With 88 films screened over the course of five days between the Paramount Theater and Violet Crown downtown and Culbreth Theatre on University of Virginia Grounds, the film festival program showcases more than just the season’s most lauded films. The festival’s artistic director, Ilya Tovbis, said he wanted to emphasize work that exists in the gray areas between the boundaries of different genres.
“We have always focused on diversity in our programming but this year we are taking that even further with an increased focus on animation, a deeper dive into horror and genre films, and an overall eye toward looking ahead at what is to come in cinema,” Tovbis said in a statement.
The festival will also feature the work of Charlottesville native and award-winning director Clay Tweel.
Huston
The documentarian, who racked up awards for his film “Gleason,” depicting the life of former New Orleans Saints football player Steve Gleason after he was diagnosed with ALS, is returning to his hometown to screen “The Bitter Pill.” Tweel’s newest documentary tells the story of a West Virginia attorney who takes on Big Pharma in the largest civil battle in U.S. history after witnessing the opioid epidemic sweep through his hometown.
Aside from screenings, festival-goers can also attend an opening night gala at 9:30 p.m. Oct. 30 at the Jefferson Theater on the Downtown Mall and a wrap party at Three Notch’d Craft Kitchen & Brewery just off the Mall at 9:30 p.m. Nov. 2.
There are also three free and public panels at the Irving Theatre in the CODE Building in downtown Charlottesville scheduled for Nov. 2.
Production designers David Crank, whose portfolio includes “Knives Out” and “The Master,” and Kalina Ivanov, who has been named the festival’s Craft Award winner, will host a discussion at 10 a.m. Nov. 2 on the art of cultivating a film’s visual aesthetic. That conversation will be moderated by Tyler Coates, awards editor for Hollywood Reporter magazine.
Three individuals, either in the beginning or middle phases of their Hollywood careers, will be on the panel for the “Making It – Film Industry Career” discussion moderated by a member of the festival board, Scot Safon. That noon panel will include: actors Trent Garrett from the soap opera “All My Children” and Jacob Young from “The Walking Dead” TV series as well as production and support staffer Ruthie Petitto from the “Russian Doll” TV series.
The final panel, at 2 p.m., will focus on “Building A Show: Superman & Lois” with three of the superhero TV series’ showrunners and writers: Jai Jamison, Todd Helbing and Brent Fletcher. Their conversation will begin with a screening of the first episode from the fourth season “Superman & Lois,” which comes out this coming week.
Crowds pass by the Paramount Theater on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall on the second day of the Virginia Film Festival, Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023.
CAL CARY, THE DAILY PROGRESS
For more information on this year’s lineup, guest stars and ticket prices, visit virginiafilmfestival.org.
This year’s screenings include:
Oct. 30
■ Short films from Charlottesville’s own Light House Studio: “Bestest Cop,” “George’s Kitchen Adventure,” “Super Spectacles the Llama,” “Diego Sanchez: Guitar Hero to Zero,” “Bananaman,” “The New Friend,” “The Vinegar Hill Documentaries,” “Detective Samurai,” “Mirrored Reality,” “Fast Fashion,” “Cancelled,” “Retrospective Series: Mary Hillard,” “Breaking Eighty,” “Funny Business,” “Boundaries and Consent PSA,” “Charlottesville’s 3rd Space,” “Cantor Cereal,” “Wake Up,” “Pure Coincidence,” “We Made It,” “Curtain Call” and “Les Amoureux”: 5:30 p.m. at Violent Crown.
■ “Soundtrack to a Coup D’état”: 6:45 p.m. at Violent Crown.
■ “Anora”: 7 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “Catch a Killer”: 7:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The Kingdom”: 8 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “La Cocina”: 8:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
Oct. 31
■ “Blitz”: 5 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “Defenders of Democracy: The Thin Blue Line”: 5 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “On Becoming A Guinea Fowl”: 5:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ A collection of short films that explore “The Space Between” with “Ripe!,” “Seventeen,” “A Crab in the Pool,” “Evanescence” and “Makayla’s Voice: A Letter to the World”: 5:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Every Little Thing”: 6 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Prodigal Daughter”: 7:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Get Away”: 7:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Memoir of a Snail”: 8 p.m. at Culbreth.
■ “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”: 8:10 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Ms. Apocalypse”: 8:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Unstoppable”: 8:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Talk to Her”: 8:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
Nov. 1
■ “Amadeus”: 12:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Tautuktavuk (What We See)”: 2 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “A Traveler’s Needs”: 2:15 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ A suite of short films by Kevin Jerome Everson featuring “When the Sun is Eaten (Chi’bal K’iin),” “The Wood Thrush and the Bobwhite Quail,” “Chelsea Drive” and “Dooni: 3 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Bird”: 4 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “In The Kaleidoscope,” a collection of short films, including “Cicatriz (Seed),” “Percebes,” “Heaven Doesn’t Know My Name,” “The Stage” and “Head in the Clouds Feet on the Ground”: 4:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird”: 4:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Rooted”: 4:50 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Luther: Never Too Much”: 5 p.m. at Culbreth.
■ “Under the Volcano”: 5:15 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Zurawski v Texas”: 5:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Demba”: 7:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The Piano Lesson”: 7:30 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “The Penguin”: 7:50 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Jazzy”: 8 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Bob Trevino Likes It”: 8:10 p.m. at Culbreth.
■ “The Girl With The Needle”: 8:15 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Transplant”: 8:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
Nov. 2
■ “Juvenile: Five Stories”: 10 a.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Next Generation Storytellers’ High School Short Films” featuring “Fire of the Heart,” “Untitled Artist,” “From the Moon to Her Son,” “The Sanguine Teens Solution,” “The Flip Side” and “Until Daylight Comes”: 10 a.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “A Little Princess”: 10:15 a.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The Bitter Pill”: 11 a.m. at Culbreth.
■ “The Glassworker”: 11:30 a.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The Black Sea”: 12 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “A Real Pain”: 12 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “I Hope This Helps!”: 12:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Shaking It Up: The Life and Times of Liz Carpenter”: 1 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Presence”: 1:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”: 2:15 p.m. at Culbreth.
■ “Dahomy”: 2:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The World According To Allee Willis”: 2:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Inthrive: Incarceration Survivors’ Voices”: 3 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Emilia Pérez”: 3:30 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “Plastic People”: 3:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Unlikely Allies”: 4:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “FAQ”: 4:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Adrianne & The Castle”: 5:20 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “All We Imagine As Light”: 5:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Wilfred Buck”: 6:10 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Pavements”: 6:30 p.m. at Culbreth.
■ “Nightbitch”: 7:30 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “Saturday Night”: 7:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Vermiglio”: 7:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Universal Language”: 8:10 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “We Shall Not Be Moved”: 8:20 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ A sneak peek of “Mayfair Witches”: 8:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
Nov. 3
■ “Flow”: 11 a.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light”: 11 a.m. at Culbreth.
■ “Day of the Fight”: 11:15 a.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Don’t Cry, Butterfly”: 11:30 a.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The Fire Inside”: 12:10 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “The Shepherd and the Bear”: 2 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Bad Shabbos”: 2:15 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Dementia and Living Well”: 2:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Eephus”: 2:45 p.m. at Culbreth.
■ A collection of short films called “Dissolving Dreams” featuring “Nea,” “Margarethe 89,” “Irma,” “Brim, Broome, Boulevard” and “Trapped”: 2:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Nocturnes”: 3 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The End”: 3:30 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “I’m Still Here”: 4:45 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point”: 5 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Sabbath Queen”: 5:15 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Men of War”: 5:30 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The Summer Book”: 6 p.m. at Culbreth.
■ “The Count of Monte Cristo”: 6 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “Chainsaws Were Singing”: 9 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The Room Next Door”: 8 p.m. at the Paramount.
■ “Our Wealth In Common,” a collection of short films featuring “At Capacity,” “Azi,” “Pine Grove: More Than A School,” “How She Was,” “Lost/Found” and “Uprooted”: 8:20 p.m. at Violet Crown.
■ “The Last Showgirl”: 8:30 p.m. at Culbreth.
Emily Hemphill (540) 855-0362
ehemphill@dailyprogress.com
@EmilyHemphill06 on X
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