If one happens to be the kind of local movie fan who loves spending hours pouring over the Mill Valley Film Festival catalog every year, we won’t judge.
We get it. There’s no rabbit hole quite like that of a good, detailed film festival catalog.
All those movies. All those comprehensively-fact-packed synopses.
The slightly psycho pleasures of swinging between saying, “Oh my God. I can’t believe they got [fill-in-the-famous-actor-director-upcoming-movie of one’s choice”] and saying, “Oh my God. I’ve never heard of this [semi-unknown-actor-director-upcoming-movie]—but it looks so flipping cool.”
The point is, we love that. And we wouldn’t change it, even if we could. Our guess is that some readers probably spent countless hours browsing the addictively-detailed MVFF.com website, watching the embedded trailers, pouring over the 100-plus films awaiting audiences at this year’s 49th annual Mill Valley Film Festival, running Oct. 1 to 11, at numerous venues from Mill Valley to San Rafael to Larkspur to Berkeley.
That’s right. This year there are screenings at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
One of those is the 355-minute My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile, from Russian filmmaker Julia Loktev. It’s the follow-up to 2024’s five hours, 21 minute-long My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, about a group of Russian journalists facing harrowing, increasingly life-threatening bans on free expression in the days leading up to the invasion of Ukraine.
Part II shows what has happened to the exiled reporters in the years following their escape from Russia. In the film, they continue to defy the Russian propaganda machine by reporting and sharing the ugly truth with their compatriots back home through cleverly underground, but still dangerous, channels.
It screens Friday, Oct. 2 at 11am, and again on Saturday, Oct. 3 at 1pm. But that’s widely known.
Most cineastes have already snagged tickets for one of the five simultaneous opening night screenings of Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine and noted that the Oscar-winning director is expected to be present, along with actors Sam Rockwell, Parker Posey and Mariana Di Girolamo. They’ve probably splurged for the post screening Opening Night Gala at Marin Country Mart.
There’s no way they haven’t locked in tickets for one of the five concurrent closing night screenings of writer-director Jesse Eisenberg’s Oscar-buzzy The Debut, and noted that while its stars Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti are not scheduled to be present, Eisenberg currently is.
They’ve likely clocked that there seem to be fewer major celebrities appearing at MVFF this year. Fewer famous faces appearing in the program. Fewer special guests scheduled to receive the Mill Valley Film Festival Award or being feted at showcases honoring their careers.
Because if one is the kind of cinema obsessive who knows such things, then surely one’s heard that every film festival from Cannes and Venice to Telluride to Toronto has seen the same thing over the last few years, fewer “big films” on the schedule to build positive word-of-mouth and “Oscar buzz.” This is because many major distributors and studios, perhaps a bit gun-shy after high-profile films like Eddington cratered hard at Cannes and went on to be a big box-office bomb, are choosing not to launch their films at festivals this year.
With fewer big studio titles getting spots at places like Mill Valley, it’s given an opportunity to some of the lesser-known films and filmmakers to step up and take the spotlight. And those are the kinds of films that film festivals became famous for in the first place.
And many of the best-received, most talked about films from the earlier festivals have made their way into the Mill Valley Film Festival, where attendees will have their first chance to see what the buzz is all about.
That’s why certain people are excited by this year’s lineup. But there are other demos who need to be brought up to speed: the first-timers and the casually curious sometime attendees. The ones who haven’t already memorized the dates and times of all films and film-related activities for which tickets have already been purchased for the first 11 days of October.
The ones who read articles like this looking for a few good suggestions of under-the-radar titles to check the availability of. Movies whose makers are hoping will become the beneficiary of film festivals’ shift in focus this year. Movies like My Undesirable Friends. And movies like the following.
No Hands: The Wild Ride of the Schwinn Bicycle Company, narrated by Lance Armstrong, is a documentary from Bay Area director Daniel Clarke. Part history of the iconic bike brand, part look at how cycling and mountain biking became a huge cultural game-changer around the country, and on our own Mount Tam. Running 78-minutes long, it screens at noon on Friday, Oct. 2 at the Sequoia Theater in Mill Valley. The director is expected to be present.
Poetry, a 2010 gem by South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-Dong, the recipient of this year’s Auteur Award. Chang-Dong will be the subject of a spotlight event on Friday, Oct. 2 at 6pm, along with a screening of his newest film, Possible Love. A critical hit at the Venice Film Festival, it’s a 164-minute narrative film about two couples, one wealthy, one working class, who change each other’s lives in unexpected ways.
With Chang-Dong in town, the festival is taking the opportunity to show his indelible earlier film, Poetry, about a woman battling memory loss by learning and writing poetry. It’s a stunner, and it screens just once on Friday, Oct. 2 at 11:30am, at the Rafael Film Center. One may consider seeing both.
The Meltdown, a 109-minute drama from Chilean filmmaker Manuela Martelli (Chile, ’76). Set in 1992 as the country transitions into democracy after years of dictatorship, it follows a family who owns a ski resort, and how they deal with the disappearance of a guest. Sunday, Oct. 4 at 2:30pm, at the Rafael Film Center.
Miss Representation: Rise Up. From filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, this new documentary is a sequel to the 2011 film Miss Representation, carrying on its exploration of how technology, politics and corporate machinations exacerbate and amplify misogyny in our culture. Friday, Oct. 9 at 8:30 pm, Rafael Film Center. The director is expected to be present.
To learn more about these, and dozens of other films that will be screened this year, spend some time with the full schedule at MVFF.com.
