38th Mill Valley Film Festival Lineup: Carol, The Danish Girl, Spotlight, Beasts of No Nation, Room and more

Erik Anderson September 15, 2015

**Carol, The Danish Girl, Spotlight, Beasts of Nation and Room will all appear at MVFF38**

ANNOUNCING COMPLETE LINEUP FOR THE
38TH MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL
Tom Hooper, Carey Mulligan, Sarah Silverman, Brie Larson, Tom McCarthy,
Catherine Hardwicke, Cary Fukanaga, Sir Ian McKellen, and Many More Scheduled to Appear!

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. (September 15, 2015) – Returning for its 38th year, the Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF), presented annually by the California Film Institute (CFI), runs Thursday, October 8 – Sunday, October 18, 2015. Internationally recognized for showcasing the best in independent and world cinema, the Festival draws thousands of attendees every fall to Marin County for 11 days of films, panel discussions, and musical performances. The Mill Valley Film Festival provides attendees with a chance to catch an early glimpse of potential Academy Award® contenders and discover some of the best films from around the world.

Focus Features bookends the festival with two of the most highly anticipated films this year, The Danish Girl, starring Oscar®-winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything, MVFF 2014) and directed by Academy Award®-winning director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, MVFF 2010) who will appear Opening Night, and Suffragette with director Sarah Gavron, producer Faye Ward and star Carey Mulligan, who are also scheduled to appear Closing Night.

OPENING NIGHT | Spotlight and The Danish Girl
For Opening Night, the Mill Valley Film Festival presents the Bay Area premieres of Tom McCarthy’s investigative drama Spotlight, starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams, and Tom Hooper’s transgender drama The Danish Girl, which stars Academy Award®-winner Eddie Redmayne (MVFF37) and Alicia Vikander. Both directors will be present for their respective screenings.

Spotlight Screens Thursday, October 8 at 7 & 7:15PM at the Cinéarts Sequoia
The Danish Girl screens Thursday, October 8 at 7 & 7:15PM at the Century Larkspur
Screenings followed by Opening Night Gala at 9PM at Marin Country Mart in Larkspur

Also featured on the first night of MVFF38 is the World Premiere of Heart Like a Hand Grenade, an intimate look at Bay Area based rock group Green Day recording their album American Idiot.

CLOSING NIGHT | Suffragette
For its Closing Night Film, the 38th Mill Valley Film Festival has chosen Suffragette, the story of the women who were foot soldiers in the fight for the right to vote in the early 20th century, ordinary women who risked their jobs, homes, children and even their lives. The film stars MVFF Spotlight Awardee and Academy Award®-nominated actress Carey Mulligan, former MVFF Tributee Academy Award®-nominated actress Helena Bonham Carter and three-time Academy Award®-winner actress Meryl Streep.

Sunday, October 18 at 5PM at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center
Sunday, October 18 at 5PM and 5:15PM at Cinéarts Sequoia
Screenings followed by Closing Night Party at 7PM at Terrapin Crossroads

Highlights of the 38th Mill Valley Film Festival include:

John Crowley’s Brooklyn follows Eilis Lacey’s (Saoirse Ronan) journey from Ireland to America in the search for a home in the early 1950’s.

The Netflix original film Beasts of No Nation directed by Cary Fukanaga (True Detective, Jane Eyre) follows the young Agu who is forced to join a group of rebel fighters in an unnamed African country led by Commandant (Idris Elba). Based on Uzodinma Iweala’s book of the same title. Oakland native Fukunaga will be in attendance.

Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix, Son of Saul is a debut film from Hungarian director László Nemes. A prisoner of Auschwitz in 1944 is forced to burn the corpses at the concentration camp, and finds among them the body of a boy he takes for his son.

Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, Dheepan is the latest film from celebrated director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust & Bone). Featuring novelist, and former Tamil Tiger child soldier Antonythasan Jesuthasan in a leading role, the story focuses on three Tamil refugees that have fled war-ravaged Sri Lanka in the hope of reconstructing their lives in France.

Todd Haynes’ (Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven) British-American romantic drama Carol stars Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara (winner of Best Actress at Cannes) and Kyle Chandler. This captivating, sensuous and richly observed film tells the story of a young shopgirl in the early 1950’s who falls for an older, married woman.

Academy Award® winners Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford play 60 Minutes producer Mary Mapes and journalist Dan Rather in Truth, a riveting account of the 2004 television scandal that erupted after Rather’s report alleging George W. Bush received preferential treatment that allowed him to dodge the Vietnam War.

Winner of the Best Director Prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Hou Hsiao Hsien’s The Assassin is set during the Tang Dynasty in China and follows a young woman who is ordered to kill the man she loves, or break definitively with the “order of Assassins.”

Director Pablo Larrain’s follow up to his Oscar-nominated No, The Club follows a crisis counselor who is sent by the Catholic Church to a small Chilean beach town where disgraced priests and nuns, suspected of crimes ranging from child abuse to baby-snatching from unwed mothers, live in seclusion after an incident occurs.

In 45 Years, a couple receives an unexpected letter, which contains potentially life-changing news the week leading up to their 45th wedding anniversary. Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay won Best Actress and Actor at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival for their roles in Andrew Haigh’s film.

Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2015 Berlinale, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi is a look at a day with Panahi as a taxi driver chauffeuring passengers through the streets of Teheran. The acclaimed Iranian director has been banned from making films and is restricted from leaving his country.

A dramatic thriller set against the backdrop of historical events and directed by Steven Spielberg, Bridge of Spies centers on Brooklyn Lawyer James Donovan (Tom Hanks) who is thrust into the center of the Cold War when the CIA sends him to negotiate the release of a captured American U-2 pilot.

Filmmakers including Wes Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, David Fincher and Richard Linklater discuss how Francois Truffaut’s 1966 Book “Cinema According to Hitchcock” influenced their work in Kent Jones’ documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut.

Justin Kurzel’s dynamic rendition of Shakespeare’s classic Macbeth will have its U.S. Premiere at the festival. The film stars Michael Fassbender as Macbeth and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth.

Sembene! tells the story of the father of African film, dockworker and fifth-grade dropout Ousmane Sembene. His life unfolds through archival footage and interviews in this compelling tribute to his genius.

The fascinating Tikkun depicts the gradual untethering of a young ultra-orthodox scholar in Jerusalem. The film won the top prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival this past year.

The complete information for the 38th Mill Valley Film Festival is available online at www.MVFF.com.

The 38th Mill Valley Film Festival runs from October 8 – 18, 2015.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.