Tobias Lindholm’s The Good Nurse screens as the Fiction Centerpiece of the 2022 Montclair Film Festival, taking place October 21-30, in Montclair, NJ, and Academy Award® winner Eddie Redmayne will be honored with the festival’s Performance Of The Year Award. Tobias Lindholm along with Eddie Redmayne will attend a post-screening Q&A with Stephen Colbert.
In the film, Amy (Jessica Chastain), a compassionate nurse and single mother struggling with a life-threatening heart condition, is stretched to her physical and emotional limits by the hard and demanding night shifts at the ICU. But help arrives when Charlie (Eddie Redmayne), a thoughtful and empathetic fellow nurse, starts at her unit. While sharing long nights at the hospital, the two develop a strong and devoted friendship, and for the first time in years, Amy truly has faith in her and her young daughters’ future. But after a series of mysterious patient deaths sets off an investigation that points to Charlie as the prime suspect, Amy is forced to risk her life and the safety of her children to uncover the truth.
Mark Fletcher’s Patrick and the Whale screens as the festival’s Nonfiction Centerpiece, with subject Patrick Dykstra attending for a post-screening Q&A session. For years, Patrick Dykstra has dedicated his life to traveling the globe, following and diving with whales. Over the years, Patrick has learned how whales see and hear, how they perceive other creatures in the water, and how they behave at close quarters. He has a finely tuned sense and knows how to act when within touching distance of a whale – what to do, what not to do and when. This allows him to consistently get closer than anyone else alive – a truly unique skill. Using stunning underwater footage, Patrick and the Whale explores the fascinating nature of the sperm whale, attempting to shine a light on its intelligence and complexity, as well as highlighting its current and past relationship with humankind.
Elegance Bratton will be honored with the festival’s Breakthrough Director & Writer Award after the screening of his new film The Inspection as the festival’s 2022 Breakthrough Film. Inspired by his own story, Elegance Bratton’s deeply moving The Inspection is the story of a young, gay Black man named Ellis (Jeremy Pope, in a stunning performance). Rejected by his mother and with few options for his future, Ellis decides to join the Marines, doing whatever it takes to succeed in a system that would cast him aside. But even as he battles deep-seated prejudice and the grueling routines of basic training, he finds unexpected camaraderie, strength, and support in this new community, giving him a hard-earned sense of belonging that will shape his identity and forever change his life.
Darren Aronfosky’s The Whale screens as a Special Event, with star Brendan Fraser joining Stephen Colbert for a post-screening Q&A. Based on the acclaimed play by Samuel D. Hunter, Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale is the story of Charlie (Brendan Fraser, in a career best performance), a reclusive English teacher living with severe obesity who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) for one last chance at redemption. A heartbreaking portrait of love, loss, and second chances, The Whale is a profoundly beautiful story of a fractured family trying to find forgiveness in a sea of regret.
Closing the 2022 Festival is Maria Schrader’s She Said, Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan star as New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, who together broke one of the most important stories in a generation— a story that helped propel the #MeToo movement, shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood and altered American culture forever. She Said is a film about the process and power of good journalism and the ways in which we depend on reporters to bring injustice to light at a time when the truth still has the power to change the world.
These films and special guests join the festival’s 2022 Opening Night Film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.