2025 Films & Events  

FILM GRID  |  FESTIVAL FAQ'S

Box office hours: Middleburg Community Center
Wed 10/15: 11:00am - 5:00pm
Thurs 10/16: 9:00am - 7:00pm
Fri & Sat: 9:00 am - 7:30pm
Sunday: 9:00am- 5:00pm

After the Hunt
In Luca Guadagnino’s thriller, a devastating accusation on a college campus unleashes a torrent of public and personal chaos that blurs the truth of what really happened beyond recognition. AFTER THE HUNT tells the searingly psychological story of gifted, unapologetically ambitious philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Oscar winner Julia Roberts), who is in an all-out bid for the tenure she knows her work merits. But when Alma’s prize student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) suddenly asks for her help, levelling charges against Alma’s colleague and close friend Hank Gibson (Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield)..

All That's Left of You
A deeply moving, multigenerational drama, ALL THAT'S LEFT OF YOU, follows a Palestinian teenager who gets swept into a protest in the Occupied West Bank and experiences a moment of violence that rocks his family. The film unfolds as his mother recounts the political and emotional threads that led to that fateful moment. Spanning seven decades and three generations, the film traces the hopes and heartaches of one uprooted family, bearing witness to the scars of dispossession and the enduring legacy of survival.

Arco
A magical and beautifully animated journey through time, ARCO is a dazzling adventure about a 10-year-old boy from a peaceful, distant future who accidentally travels back to the year 2075 (after borrowing his sister’s rainbow-colored, time-traveler robe), where he discovers a world in peril. As Arco develops a charming and touching friendship with a young girl named Iris, they band together and, along with her trusted robot caretaker Mikki, set out on a quest to get Arco home. But the two children may also be the only ones who can save our planet.

Ask E. Jean
ASK E. JEAN is the story of E. Jean Carroll’s remarkable life and indomitable spirit, told through her own voice, video clips, news footage, and conversations with close confidents -- from her early days as Miss Cheerleader USA to her rise as a trailblazing journalist, author, and popular advice columnist. Carroll broke gender barriers as the first female editor at Esquire, Playboy, and Outside magazines, helping to redefine women’s roles in media with her sharp wit and fearless voice. Director Ivy Meeropol (Indian Point, Heir to an Execution) expertly weaves together decades of archival footage to paint a vivid portrait of a gutsy woman with strong opinions.

Ballad of a Small Player
[FRIDAY SPOTLIGHT]
Lord Doyle (Oscar nominee Colin Farrell) is lying low in Macau, spending his days and nights on the casino floors, drinking heavily and gambling what little money he has left. As he struggles to keep up with his fast-rising debts, he is offered a lifeline by the mysterious Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a casino employee with secrets of her own. However, in hot pursuit is Cynthia Blithe (Oscar winner Tilda Swinton), a private investigator determined to bring him to justice for the past he's desperately fleeing. As Doyle tries to claw his way to salvation, the confines of reality begin to close in.

The Bend In The River
THE BEND IN THE RIVER documents the flow of life as it follows five close friends over nearly fifty years. Starting in 1978, director Robb Moss chronicled his friends' outdoor, rent-free life during one clothing-optional rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. In 2003, he filmed his friends again, coming to terms with their transition from being young and carefree to (primarily) responsible and middle-aged. Now, in 2025, Moss finds his friends in their 70s, grappling with the choices they've made as individuals and as a generation.

Billy Idol Should Be Dead
[SPECIAL SCREENING]
Directed by Jonas Akerlund, BILLY IDOL SHOULD BE DEAD is a feature-length documentary tracing the life and career of the punk pioneer turned rock ‘n’ roll icon. Through never-before-seen archival and personal interviews with Idol, his family,  peers and collaborators, the documentary digs deep into his emergence as a prototypical punk rocker, his meteoric rise as a global superstar in the MTV era and the myriad of challenges Idol had to overcome to not just survive.

Blue Moon
On the evening of March 31, 1943, legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart (masterfully portrayed by Ethan Hawke) confronts his shattered self-confidence at famed Sardi’s bar in New York City. As he drowns his sorrows talking to the sympathetic bartender (Bobby Cannavale), his former, longtime collaborator, Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), is celebrating the opening night of his groundbreaking Broadway hit, Oklahoma, penned with a new partner named Oscar Hammerstein.

Bugonia
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’ (Poor Things, The Favourite) latest film is an explosive psychological thriller that offers a pitch-black comic window into our modern age of madness. Provocative and subversive, BUGONIA follows two conspiracy-obsessed young men (a never-better Jesse Plemons and talented newcomer Aidan Delbis) as they burst out of their online rabbit holes to kidnap Michelle (Oscar-winning Emma Stone), a high-powered CEO they are convinced is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.

The Choral
1916. As war rages on the Western Front, the Choral Society in the fictional town of Ramsden, Yorkshire, has lost most of its men to the army. Nearly two years after the start of World War I, the initial enthusiasm for joining the fighting had faded, and the losses had become unbearable. The choral organization's ambitious committee, determined to press ahead, decides to recruit local young males to increase its membership. They must also engage a new chorus master.

Christy
An unrecognizable Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, Euphoria) undergoes an astonishing physical transformation as she boldly tackles the role of groundbreaking boxer Christy Martin in director David Michôd's (Animal Kingdom) underdog tale of toil and triumph. Hailing from West Virginia's Appalachia with a coal miner father, Christy displays exceptional athletic talent from an early age. It's her ticket out of her narrow-minded small-town life. She enrolls in college on a basketball scholarship before turning her attention to "tough woman" contests.

Come See Me in the Good Light
The latest film from Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker Ryan White (The Case Against 8, Good Night Oppy), COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT tells the poignant and unexpectedly funny love story of poets Andrea Gibson (named Colorado's poet laureate in 2023) and Megan Falley as they face Gibson's incurable cancer diagnosis with joy, wit, and an unshakable partnership. The film invites us into Gibson and Falley's home, capturing the mundane and the monumental in equal measure.

Cover-up
COVER-UP plays like a political thriller as it traces the explosive career of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, beginning with his ground-breaking coverage of Vietnam’s My Lai massacre and the U.S. government’s effort to conceal the tragedy from the public. Cover-Up is both a portrait of a relentless journalist and an indictment of the U.S. government's long history of misinformation, impunity, and cover-ups. For six decades, Hersh has doggedly followed every lead, asked the tough questions..

The Cycle of Love
In this true story and undeniable crowd-pleaser, THE CYCLE OF LOVE, Oscar-winning director Orlando von Einsiedel (Virunga, The White Helmets) documents the journey of P.K. Mahanandia, a young Delhi street artist who in 1977 trekked 6,000 miles across continents on a rickety bicycle to reunite with a young Swedish woman named Lotta who had captured his heart on a visit to India. With just a few rupees to his name and his paintbrushes, P.K. sets off on a bike ride that would take him through northern India, Afghanistan, Iran..

Diane Warren: Relentless
[SPECIAL SCREENING]
Diane Warren, one of the most prolific songwriters of all time, with a four-decade track record of writing mega-hits for industry giants, emerges as a force to be reckoned with, in DIANE WARREN: RELENTLESS. Boasting 15 Academy Award nominations, an Honorary Oscar along with Grammy, Emmy, and Golden Globe Awards, Diane wrote some of the most iconic songs of our time. In this intimate documentary, filled with Diane’s signature humor, audiences get a rarely seen glimpse into Diane’s life and underdog journey to where she is today.

Eternity
[SATURDAY SPOTLIGHT]
In an afterlife where souls have one week to decide where to spend eternity, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen, His Three Daughters, Martha Marcy May Marlene) is faced with the impossible choice between the man she spent her life with (Miles Teller, Whiplash, The Fantastic Four) and her first love (Callum Turner, Masters of the Air, The Boys in the Boat), who died as a young soldier and has waited decades for her to join him. In this highly entertaining romantic comedy director David Freyne (Dating Amber) confronts age-old dilemmas..

The Eyes of Ghana
With THE EYES OF GHANA, Oscar-winning director Ben Proudfoot (The Last Repair Shop) has crafted a stunning portrait of 93-year-old documentarian Chris Hesse, the personal cameraman to forgotten African leader Kwame Nkrumah. Hesse was by the Ghanaian revolutionary’s side as he successfully led his nation’s liberation movement against colonialist rule. Now Hesse is racing against time and encroaching blindness to rescue and repatriate a secret trove of over 1,000 films that captured the birth of African independence in the 1950s and 1960s.

Frankenstein
Three-time Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pinocchio) adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation. Oscar Isaac stars as the mad scientist Victor Frankenstein opposite an equally tender and raging Jacob Elordi as the hulking, uncontrollable monster he creates from disparate body parts.

Good Fortune
GOOD FORTUNE is about a well-meaning but inept angel named Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) who meddles in the lives of a struggling gig worker named Ari (Aziz Ansari) and Jeff, a wealthy venture capitalist (Seth Rogen). Ari is down on his luck and just can’t catch a break. The likeable (and very rich) Jeff lives a leisurely life in a beautiful, oversized house. Hoping to show the downtrodden Ari the worthiness of his life, Gabriel swaps Ari's life for Jeff’s, hoping Ari will realize that having anything anyone could want isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Direted and written by Aziz Ansari.

Hamnet
[CENTERPIECE]
1580 England. Impoverished Latin tutor William Shakespeare meets free-spirited Agnes, and the pair, captivated by one another, strike up a torrid affair that leads to marriage and three children. Yet, as Will pursues a budding theater career in far-away London, Agnes must manage their home life alone. When tragedy strikes, the couple’s once unshakeable bond is tested. Reeling from the unfathomable death of their eleven-year-old son, their overwhelming grief sets the stage for the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.

Hedda
Writer-director Nia DaCosta (The Marvels) has crafted a provocative, modern reimagining of Henrik Ibsen's classic play Hedda Gabler. In this bold version, newly married Hedda (a mesmerizing Tessa Thompson) finds herself torn between the lingering ache of a past love and the encroaching suffocation of her present life. Over the course of one charged night, long-repressed desires and hidden tensions erupt, pulling her and everyone around her into a spiral of manipulation, passion, and betrayal.

A House of Dynamite
When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond. From Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) comes a riveting political thriller, packed with tension and anxiety. The nightmare scenario unfolds in real time and from three different locations – a remote military outpost in Alaska where an unidentified incoming missile is first detected; the White House Situation Room trying frantically to assess the situation.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
With the whiplash pace of a thriller, writer-director Mary Bronstein takes audiences into an inventive, unexpectedly funny, yet startlingly relatable fever-dream of parental anxiety. Rose Byrne gives an exceptional, one-of-a-kind cinematic performance of ultra-pressurized motherhood as Linda, an overwhelmed therapist who finds herself in a state of frenzy and obsessive dread as she grapples with a mounting series of head-spinning crises. A minor disaster in their family apartment forces Linda and her daughter to move to a motel far beyond her comfort zone.

Is This Thing On?
Oscar-nominated director Bradley Cooper (Maestro, A Star is Born) returns, both behind and in front of the camera, with IS THIS THING ON? a movie that embraces the messiness of life and suggests that you're never too old to rediscover yourself. Will Arnett (who also co-wrote the screenplay) and Oscar winner Laura Dern (Marriage Story) star as Alex and Tess, college sweethearts now facing the tedium of a middle-aged marriage on route to divorce. As they navigate co-parenting, Tess, a former Olympic athlete, confronts the sacrifices she has made for their family.

It Was Just an Accident
Despite facing censorship, imprisonment, and a 20-year filmmaking ban, Iranian director Jafar Panahi (Taxi) continues to create powerful works, many of them in secret. His latest, IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT, centers on Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), an unassuming mechanic, who has a chance encounter with Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), a man he strongly suspects to be his former sadistic jailhouse captor. Panicked, Vahid gathers several former prisoners, all abused by that same captor, to try and confirm Eghbal's identity.

Jay Kelly
[OPENING NIGHT FILM]
For the festival’s opening night film, Academy-award nominated filmmaker Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) turns his lens to the film industry and the interior world of an artist searching for meaning with JAY KELLY. George Clooney stars in the role of a lifetime as an aging movie star, who finds himself in the back nine of his life and career, wondering where the time went. How have his choices led him to this place, and just how wide has the gap become between who he believes himself to be and who he actually is?

La Grazia
Masterful Italian director/writer Paolo Sorrentino (Hand of God) returns to the world of Italian politics with LA GRAZIA, an elegantly crafted and restrained portrait of Mariano De Santis (Toni Servillo), the fictional President of the Italian Republic who is reckoning with age, power, and moral obligation as his term comes to an end. Amid his final days in office, two remaining duties arise as De Santis, a widower and a Catholic, faces a pair of difficult petitions for presidential pardon. Both bring with them actual moral dilemmas..

Left-Handed Girl
After working alongside Oscar-winning director Sean Baker (Anora) as the producer of films including Tangerine and The Florida Project, filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou makes her impressive solo-directing debut with an intimate, intergenerational coming-of-age portrait. LEFT-HANDED GIRL centers on a single mother (Janel Tsai) and her two daughters (featuring terrific performances by Nina Ye and Shih-Yuan Ma) as they return to Taipei after several years of living in the countryside, hoping to open a stand at a bustling night market.

Love+War
Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the team behind the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, turn their lens on Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario with LOVE+WAR. The film follows Addario as she documents the war in Ukraine and reflects on covering conflicts in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, and Libya. She’s been kidnapped twice while on assignment. Working as a war journalist is an adrenaline-charged career that is known for taking a deep toll on the personal lives..

The Mastermind
A tale of art and crime set in a Massachusetts suburb in 1970, Kelly Riechardt’s latest film, THE MASTERMIND, reshapes the classic heist movie into a quiet study of one’s decisions and their unforeseen outcomes. Josh O’Connor (Challengers) is perfectly cast in the role of James Blaine Mooney, an unemployed carpenter, husband, and father -- and son of a local Judge. He’s yet to live up to the expectations of his comfortable middle-class upbringing, and dabbles in petty art theft on the low down.

Mr. Scorsese
MR. SCORSESE is a fascinating film portrait of a man through the lens of his work, exploring the many facets of a visionary who redefined filmmaking, including his extraordinary career and unique personal history. With exclusive, unrestricted access to Martin Scorsese’s private archives, the 5-part documentary series (the first two will be screened at the festival) is anchored by extensive conversations with the filmmaker himself and never-before-seen interviews with friends, family, and creative collaborators..

No Other Choice
From acclaimed director Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden) and based on Donald E. Westlake's novel "The Ax", NO OTHER CHOICE follows Man-soo (Lee Byung-hun) on a desperate hunt for a new job after his abrupt layoff from the paper company he dutifully worked at for 25 years. Desperate to find a new job as his life begins falling apart, he hatches a ruthless plan to get rid of his competition. Park's film transplants Westlake's novel to present-day South Korea, where seniority counts for little and seeking out employment proves to be a cutthroat business.

Nouvelle Vague
NOUVELLE VAGUE is Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater’s love letter to the revolutionary magic of the French New Wave, reimagining the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, which ultimately cemented Godard as a pioneer of global cinema. As critic turned director Godard makes and breaks the rules, a mix of fresh faces and first-rate talent — including Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Guillaume Marbeck as Godard himself — bring his spontaneous, electric film to life.

Nuremberg
Based on the book "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist" by journalist Jack El-Hai, writer-director James Vanderbilt (Truth) has crafted a riveting historical drama chronicling the events that brought the Nazi high command to justice in the wake of World War II. As the world grapples with the unveiled horrors of the Holocaust, U.S. Army psychiatrist Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) is assigned the extraordinary task of assessing the mental state of Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s notorious second in command..

The President's Cake
As people across 1990s Iraq struggled to survive the impacts of war and food shortages, the country's president, Saddam Hussein, required each school in the country to prepare a cake in a mandated celebration of the tyrant's birthday. Despite her efforts to avoid selection, her classmates select 9-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef) for the task. She sets out to complete the assignment, accompanied by her grandmother, Bibi (Waheeda Thabet Khreiba), and her beloved pet rooster, using her wits and imagination to gather the ingredients that they can't afford to buy.

A Private Life
Renowned American psychiatrist Lilian Steiner (two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster), now living in Paris, suspects foul play when her patient Paula (Virginie Efira) dies suddenly from a supposed suicide. Deeply troubled and searching for answers, Lilian, turned amateur sleuth, launches an investigation into the matter with the help of her devoted, go-along ex-husband (Daniel Auteuil). Discovering files have been stolen from her office and increasingly convinced it was murder, she soon finds herself caught up in her own personal mysteries..

Rebuilding
A touching and beautifully told story of the American West, REBUILDING follows Dusty (Josh O’Connor), a reserved, divorced father whose ranch has burned to the ground in a devastating wildfire. Now living alone in a trailer community on a government-run campsite, Dusty finds solace with his new neighbors who have also lost everything as he begins to reassemble his life and reconnect with his ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and young daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre). Dusty is determined to rebuild on the land that’s been passed down through his family for generations.

Rental Family
[CLOSING FILM]
Set against modern-day Tokyo, RENTAL FAMILY follows Philip (Brendan Fraser), an out-of-work American actor who struggles to find jobs until he lands an unusual gig: working for a Japanese "rental family" agency playing stand-in roles for strangers. When his agent sends him on a last-minute job requiring him to wear a black suit, Philip jumps at the opportunity – only to find he's been hired to act as a mourner at a funeral for a man who is lying, still alive, in an open casket.  As Philip immerses himself in his clients' worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality.

The Secret Agent
[INTERNATIONAL SPOTLIGHT]
Brazil, 1977. Marcelo (Wagner Moura), a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run and living under an alias during the country’s military dictatorship. Trying to reunite with his son, he travels to Recife during Carnival, but soon realizes that the city is not the non-violent refuge he seeks. An insidious atmosphere of surveillance, paranoia and danger encircles him as corruption permeates every crevice. An enthralling melodrama, featuring a superb cast , acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho's (Bacaru, Aquarius) latest film has already garnered top honors including Best Director for Mendonça and Best Actor for Moura at the Cannes Film Festival

Sentimental Value
When sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), the once-renowned director offers Nora, a talented stage actress, a role in what he believes will be his comeback film and repair their broken family relationships. After Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star (Elle Fanning). Suddenly, the two sisters must navigate their difficult, unresolved history with the father who abandoned them as children and deal with an American celebrity dropped right into the middle of their complex family dynamics.

Sirât
The glorious and forbidding Moroccan desert serves as the backdrop for this extraordinary psychological journey, crafted by filmmaker Oliver Laxe (Fire Will Come). Laxe has created an audacious and shocking sensory experience in telling the story of a middle-aged father, Luis (Sergi López), as he frantically searches for his missing daughter. She disappeared months earlier at one of the region's many endless, sleepless rave parties. Surrounded by electronic music and a raw, unfamiliar sense of freedom..

Sound of Falling
Over the course of more than a century, four girls each spent their youth on the same farm in the Altmark region of northern Germany. Although separated by time, their lives begin to mirror each other. Erika is a teenager living during World War II with an unforgiving father; Angelika comes of age in the German Democratic Republic of the 1980s; Alma appears in the early 20th century, and Lenka lives in the present day, long after the fall of the Wall. Told through the eyes of these individual women and girls..

Spirit
[SPECIAL SCREENING]
SPIRIT is an inspiring docuseries that follows the co-ed cheer team from George Washington High School in Philadelphia. The four-part series follows the "G-Dub" team as they compete at the district, state, and national levels, and make history as the first cheer squad from the School District of Philadelphia to make it to the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) High School Nationals, the largest cheerleading competition in the world.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Scott Cooper's latest film chronicles the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 “Nebraska” album when he was a young musician on the cusp of global super stardom, struggling to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past. Recorded on a 4-track recorder in Springsteen’s New Jersey bedroom, the album marked a pivotal time in his life and is considered one of his most enduring works — a raw, haunted acoustic record populated by lost souls searching for a reason to believe.

The Tale of Silyan
From Tamara Kotevska, the Oscar-nominated director of Honeyland, comes a poignant and visually stunning story set in the heart of her homeland of North Macedonia. Nikola, a farmer grappling with the harsh realities of new government policies, finds himself unable to sell his land or crops. When his family leaves in search of a better life abroad, Nikola takes a job as a landfill attendant, where he encounters an injured white stork, Silyan – with its elegant body adorned in white feathers and strong black wings.

Train Dreams
Based on the novella by Denis Johnson, TRAIN DREAMS is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), whose life unfolds during an era of unprecedented change in early-20th-century America. Orphaned at a young age, Robert grows up among the towering forests of the Pacific Northwest, where he helps expand the nation’s railroads. After a tender courtship, he marries Gladys (Oscar-nominated Felicity Jones) and they build a loving home together. However, his work takes him far from her and their young daughter for extended periods. Oscar-nominated writer-director Clint Bentley (Sing Sing, Jockey) beautifully captures a long-gone time and place. Joel Edgerton gives one of the year’s most authentic and memorable performances.

The Voice of Hind Rajab
January 29, 2024. Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 6-year-old girl is trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her. The young girl’s name was Hind Rajab. Oscar-nominated director Kaouther Ben Hania (Four Daughters) uses the real-life emergency calls and voices recorded by the Palestine Red Crescent as the spine of the film, which focuses on the increasingly tense and frantic atmosphere as the first responders desperately try to answer the scared young girl’s plea for help – and the overpowering helplessness they experience as the clock ticks

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) returns for his most dangerous case yet in the third and darkest chapter of Academy-award nominated Rian Johnson’s murder mystery opus. When young priest Jud Duplenticy (a terrific Josh O’Connor) is sent to a small-town church to assist charismatic firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), it’s clear that all is not well in the pews. Wicks’s modest but devoted flock includes devout church lady Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), circumspect groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church) and many more unforgettable characters. A terrific whodunit, it was the second runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival.

Variety Creative Collaborators Conversation & Award Presentation
The Middleburg Film Festival is honored to welcome director JON M. CHU, cinematographer ALICE BROOKS and film editor MYRON KERSTEIN to the festival for a conversation and awards presentation as the recipients of the 2025 Creative Collaborators Award, presented by Variety. This is the first time the Variety Creative Collaborators award has been presented to a trio and recognizes their outstanding work together on films including In The Heights, Home Before Dark, Wicked and the upcoming Wicked: For Good.

CONCERT FEATURING Kris Bowers
A beloved signature event of the festival is our CONCERT celebrating a distinguished film composer. This year, KRIS BOWERS will return to MFF as the Featured Film Composer for a concert featuring a selection of his most acclaimed and award-winning scores performed by a 60-piece orchestra. Bowers, who scored The Eyes of Ghana which is screening at the festival, won his first Academy Award for his documentary short film The Repair Shop, alongside Ben Proudfoot and earlier this year, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his score for The Wild Robot.

CONVERSATION: CREATIVE PROCESS IN MUSIC FOR FILM
Nine of the world's most accomplished and talented composers and songwriters will share film clips of their work and talk about their creative process in crafting songs and scores. Participants include: Composers Max Richter (Hamnet), Kris Bowers (The Wild Robot, The Eyes of Ghana), Nathan Johnson (Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery), Lesley Barber (Billy Knight) and Songwriters Diane Warren (Diane Warren: Relentless), Aiyanna Lee (Highest 2 Lowest), Billy Idol and J. Ralph (Billy Idol Should be Dead) and EJAE (Kpop Demon Hunters).

Cocktails & Contenders
Love the Oscars? Love the Oscar race? Don’t miss our annual Contenders conversation with CLAYTON DAVIS (Senior Awards Editor, Variety) and JAZZ TANGCAY (Senior Artisans Editor, Variety). Since launching the 2013, the Middleburg Film Festival has become of the biggest stops during the fall awards season. And no one is more on top of who the likely contenders are than Clayton and Jazz. We'll be offering a celebratory cocktail (or mocktail) as you join them for their yearly Oscar predictions. There were 63 Oscar nominations among the films shown at last year’s MFF. How many will there be this year?

Ai Panel
Artificial intelligence is poised to reshape countless sectors, and the film industry is no exception. How will AI affect the future livelihoods of film professionals and how will concerns of ethics, copyright infringement and intellectual property be addressed as the industry wrangles with the rapid influx of this equally exciting and concerning new technology? Moderated by Puck’s AI correspondent, Ian Krietzberg.

Talk Back to the Critics.
Our terrific DC film critics return to MFF for another lively TALK BACK TO THE CRITICS conversation about your favorite – and (to put it politely) your least favorite films. You know that movie with the 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes that you couldn’t stand? Or the one every critic panned, but you’ve seen 8 times and still cry? This is your chance to let the critics hear from you – the audience. Tell them what they’ve missed, where they went wrong, and what’s overrated or underrated.