From the Director

We’re back. After an almost completely streamed 2020 Mill Valley Film Festival and a smaller theatrical footprint with our hybrid festival in 2021, our world is getting back to normal. It feels great to be back and to be going big with a festival that balances anticipated award releases with sublime discoveries, pure entertainment with films that will make you think, domestic gems and international fare, and indelible narratives and gripping documentaries.

We will welcome festival-goers not just at our home bases at the Smith Rafael Film Center and the Sequoia Theatre but we are also returning to the Lark in Larkspur and adding shows at Berkeley’s BAMPFA and San Francisco’s Roxie Theater along with an online component. We will host live shows at Mill Valley’s Sweetwater Music Hall, and our signature parties return, each with an outdoor element. Speaking of outdoors, 2022 marks the Festival’s return to Mill Valley’s Outdoor Art Club.

We have so many returning filmmakers this year that it almost feels like we are mounting a class reunion. Among them, local auteur Rob Nilsson, a festival favorite since year two of MVFF, finishes his Nomad Trilogy with Faultline. Martin McDonagh—last here with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri— reunites In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in the Aran Islands beloved of his plays for The Banshees of Inisherin. When last here, Noah Baumbach charted the dissolution of a relationship with Marriage Story (MVFF42). Now, he focuses on the whole family while sending up academia and consumer culture with his adaptation of Don Delillo’s White Noise. (And you will never look at a supermarket the same way again after witnessing Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and their movie family on their shopping forays.) We have returning directors that are really stretching the boundaries of what cinema can do. Not to give any of their movie magic away but required viewing not just for their content but for their innovations are Alejandro González Iñárritu’s (Biutiful, MVFF33) Bardo, which employs special effects in ways we haven’t seen before, and Darren Aronofsky’s (Variety Contenders, MVFF37) The Whale, which transforms actor Brendan Fraser—the recipient of MVFF 2022 acting honors-into a 600-pound man.

Many of the films I’ve just discussed will be in the MVFF spotlight as Big Nights. We are still finalizing guests as I write

this, but among the Big Nights are ones dedicated to Rian Johnson’s sequel to Knives Out (MVFF42), James Gray’s hotly anticipated Armageddon Time, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s elegant and erotic Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Tobias Lindholm’s The Good Nurse, starring two festival favorites, Jessica Chastain (The Debt, MVFF33) and Eddie Redmayne, feted for his performance in The Theory of Everything at MVFF37.

Two other films tapped for Big Nights are examples of how MVFF brings the world and its concerns to you. Both, in their very different ways, concern race. Chinonye Chukwu’s (Clemency, MVFF42) Till relates the story of Emmett Till through the eyes of his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, while Nanny—director Nikyatu Jusu is the recipient of the MVFF Award for Feature Debut—looks at race, immigration, and class through the lens of a psychological thriller. The festival adds to the debate over reproductive freedom with Phyllis Nagy’s drama Call Jane. Diane Robinson’s documentary The Young Vote looks at youth-led initiatives aiming to get their peers to the polls. Women in an isolated community respond to domestic abuse in Sarah Polley’s riveting Women Talking. Documentarian Evgeny Afineevsky immerses us in Ukrainian in battleground in Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom.

We continue to program the best of international fare. Two of my favorites this year are Maryam Touzani’s The Blue Caftan, a romantic drama from Morocco, and The Swimmers, Sally El Hosaini’s fictional rendering of swimmer Yusra Mardini’s incredible story as a Syrian refugee with Olympic dreams. And though we have retired the 5@5 moniker, the festival is still offering a wealth of shorts programs for your enjoyment. We continue to offer education programs to Bay Area youth, showcase the work of Latinx filmmakers with ¡Viva el cine!, celebrate women filmmakers with our Mind the Gap panels and activities, and amuse parents and kids alike with our family films. I’ve always believed that films that are made well—be they drama, comedy, documentary—that are entertaining, that are relevant to our lives, that fearlessly tackle difficult subjects or merely make us giggle will draw in an audience. It has been a tough two-and-a-half years where it sometimes felt like we would never see full theaters again. I am happy to see that fading into our collective rearview mirror and to be able to bring you the best of what Hollywood and international and independent communities have to offer once more in a big way with a festival that aims to dazzle.

Mark Fishkin Executive Director | Founder California Film Institute