32nd Hamptons International Film Festival Announces Early Lineup: R.J. Cutler’s Martha Stewart Doc to Open Fest

HamptonsFilm announced today that the 32nd annual edition of the Hamptons International Film Festival is set to open on Friday, October 4 with the East Coast Premiere of R.J. Cutler’s documentary feature Martha, profiling American businesswoman and lifestyle personality Martha Stewart, sponsored by Audi. 

The festival is also set to host the World Premieres of Erik Nelson’s Daytime Revolution and Dori Berinstein’s A Man with Sole: The Impact of Kenneth Cole; as well as Daniel Robbins’ Bad Shabbos, which will screen as a Spotlight selection.  HIFF also announced several films screening as part of this year’s Air, Land, and Sea, Films of Conflict & Resolution, and Views From Long Island Signature Program lineups, including Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s Nocturnes, the New York Premiere of Michael Premo’s Homegrown, and the North American Premiere of Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.  The 2024 Hamptons International Film Festival will run as an expanded, eleven-day event from October 4 through October 14.

Martha, directed by Academy Award-nominated and Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director RJ Cutler, is the definitive documentary on Martha Stewart, featuring a series of candid interviews with the icon herself.  From her early start on Wall Street to becoming the original influencer, the film follows Stewart as she continues to reinvent herself with each passing decade.  Stewart and Cutler are both scheduled to attend the festival with the film and participate in a post-screening talkback.  The documentary is scheduled to be released by Netflix later this year.

“It feels only fitting that we open this year’s event with R.J. Cutler’s portrait of Martha Stewart,” said HamptonsFilm Executive Director Anne Chaisson.  “We are delighted to welcome Martha—a truly trailblazing cultural figure and an East End resident of more than three decades—back to the Hamptons community with open arms and give her space to graciously share her inspiring story with us all.”

HIFF will host the World Premiere screenings of Kino Lorber’s Daytime Revolution, directed by Erik Nelson and transporting audiences back in time to the week that John Lennon and Yoko Ono descended upon a Philadelphia broadcasting studio to co-host the iconic Mike Douglas Show, at that time the most popular show on daytime television; and A Man with Sole: The Impact of Kenneth Cole, directed by Emmy Award-winner Dori Berinstein and following global fashion icon and social activist Kenneth Cole’s commitment to putting  ’cause’ before ‘commerce’ for 40 years.

“We are incredibly grateful to the teams behind Daytime Revolution and A Man with Sole: The Impact of Kenneth Cole for entrusting our festival to launch their projects for the first time,” said HamptonsFilm Artistic Director David Nugent.  “Both of these films are uniquely compelling in the ways they reintroduce audiences to familiar subjects, while showcasing new sides to these characters and adding to their already vibrant legacies.”

HamptonsFilm also announced that Daniel Robbins’ narrative feature Bad Shabbos will be presented as a Spotlight screening at this year’s festival.  Bad Shabbos, starring an ensemble cast featuring Kyra Sedgwick, David Paymer, and Cliff “Method Man” Smith, tells the story of an engaged interfaith couple who are about to have their parents meet for the first time over Shabbat dinner when an accidental death gets in the way.

The festival also announced a selection of films screening as part of this year’s Signature Program lineups.  The Views From Long Island program will host the North American Premiere of IFC Films’ Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.  The film, shot and set in Suffolk County and directed by Tyler Taormina, stars Matilda Fleming, Michael Cera, and Francesca Scorsese as members of a family gathering on Christmas Eve for what could be the last holiday in their ancestral home.  In the Films of Conflict & Resolution Signature Program, the festival will also present the New York Premiere of Michael Premo’s Homegrown, an unflinching chronicle of Americans at war with each other, and the growing movement pushing American democracy to the brink.  Grasshopper Film’s Nocturnes, a deeply immersive film directed by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan that transports audiences to a rarely seen place, and urges us all to look more closely at the hidden interconnections of the natural world, will screen as part of the Air, Land, and Sea program. 

Passes and packages for the 32nd edition of HIFF will be on sale beginning September 4, 2024, at the HamptonsFilm website.  Additional programming will be announced in the coming weeks.