The Coronado Island Film Festival taking place November 10-13, 2022 in the seaside village of Coronado, California, opens this week with Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light as the Opening Night selection, Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection is the Centerpiece selection, and Maria Schrader’s She Said taking the Closing Night spot, along with CIFF’s traditional screening of Billy Wilder’s classic Some Like it Hot.
The impressive list of honorees will include Geena Davis, Jacqueline Bisset, Ron Shelton, Elegance Bratton, Charles Fox, and Vanessa Roth.
The Opening Night selection, Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light is a deeply personal drama starring Academy Award® -winner Olivia Colman. Also starring Micheal Ward, Tom Brooke, Toby Jones, and Colin Firth, the film is a love story that takes place in an English coastal cinema during the 1980s.
The Centerpiece screening will be Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection. The film focuses on a young, gay Black man, who decides to join the Marines to combat the rejection he has dealt with, doing whatever it takes to succeed in a system that would cast him aside.
The Closing Night selection of Maria Schrader’s She Said features two-time Academy Award® nominee Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, who together broke the Harvey Weinstein story. Also screening on Closing Night will be Billy Wilder’s classic Some Like it Hot (1959) as audiences can revel in the film at one of its famous locations.
Two-time Academy Award® winner and screen icon Geena Davis will accept the Legacy Award, honoring her career as an actress and the establishment of the Geena Davis Institute of Gender in Media, whose documented research has affected significant changes within the entertainment industry. The Institute, and Geena recently received the Governor’s Award at the 2022 Emmy Awards. A hosted book promotion event taking place at Hotel del Coronado will showcase her new memoir, Dying of Politeness, and a conversation with Geena.
International film star, Academy Award® nominated and Golden Globe Award® winner, Jacqueline Bisset, will be honored with The Cultural Icon Award. “Actress to Icon” Jacqueline will premiere her new film, Loren & Rose, with Director Russell Brown on Friday followed by a Saturday retrospective screening of Day for Night, with preeminent film historian, Leonard Maltin where they will discuss her diverse career from ballet dancer, fashion model to award-winning actress.
Ron Shelton, American film director, screenwriter and former minor league baseball infielder will receive the Leonard Maltin Award. Ron is known for the many films he has made about sports including Bull Durham, Tin Cup, Hollywood Homicide, Play It to the Bone, and White Men Can’t Jump and his most recent work on LA’s Finest, starring Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba. CIFF will present a special screening of Bull Durham followed by a Q&A with Shelton.
Award-winning and boundary-breaking director, writer and producer, Elegance Bratton, will accept the inaugural Trailblazer Award. Bratton began making films as a US Marine after spending a decade homeless. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, his work captures stories untold with an intention to show the universal power of our shared humanity.
Multi-award-winning composer and songwriter Charles Fox will accept the Transcendent Award. A documentary about Charles Fox’s life, Killing Me Softly with His Songs, will screen at CIFF, followed by a Q&A with Fox.
Academy Award® winning documentary filmmaker and social justice advocate, Vanessa Roth, will be honored with the Humanitarian Award. CIFF will screen Roth’s documentary Anxious Nation, which will serve as one of the festival’s social impact films. The film takes a deep look into the crisis of anxiety and mental health in America, especially its crippling impact on kids and families. Vanessa will partake in a discussion following the film alongside her producer and subjects from the film.
Other highlights among the Coronado Island Film Festival’s film lineup are three film festival favorites that have won awards and won over audiences in equal measure on the regional film festival tour include Ravi Kapoor’s charming Four Samosas. The film follows a happy-go-lucky, underachieving, wanna-be rapper who decides the best way to thwart his ex-girlfriend’s pending marriage to his arch-nemisis is to organize a jewery heist targeting her dowry jewels. Tom Huang’s Dealing with Dad is a crowd-pleasing comedy about a woman reluctantly heading back to her hometown to be with her brothers and deal with the sudden depression of their dad. However, they are faced with a dilemma when they discover they like him better depressed. Anna Baumgarten’s Disfluency has won numerous awards on the film festival circuit, including most recently taking Best Actress and Best Screenplay at the Newport Beach Film Festival. The film focuses on a scholar who returns home after failing her final college class, trying to put the pieces back together to come to terms with the confusing trauma that derailed her senior year.
Additional highlight among the documentaries include Denny Tedesco’s Immediate Family. The filmmaker’s follow up to his popular The Wrecking Crew documentary, Immediate Family follows the next wave of musicians who would create the Singer-Songwriter sound backing everyone from James Taylor, Carole King, Don Henley and Linda Ronstadt, to Crosby & Nash, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, and Keith Richards. Brent Huff’s The Jackie Stiles Story delves into the life of the 5’8″ girl from a small Kansas town, who became a basketball legend in the Midwest. Alexandre O. Philippe’s Lynch/OZ connects the famous nd eccentric film auteur with Victor Fleming’s film The Wizard of Oz, which is one of David Lynch’s most enduring obsessions. Following the screening, there will be a Q&A moderated by Leonard Maltin, Director/Writer Alexandre O. Philippe and Director Amy Nicholson.
Along with the films and the presentations to honorees, various special engagements will be featured throughout the festival including the “Babe and Lloyd Return to Coronado” panel featuring Babe Ruth’s grandson and Babe Ruth historian, Tom Stevens, Suzanne Lloyd, Harold Lloyd’s granddaughter and President of Harold Lloyd Entertainment, TV Celebrity and former announcer for the San Diego Padres, John Weisbarth, and Film historian, Tim Reid. Moderated by Leonard Maltin, they’ll discuss Babe Ruth’s pioneering history as a “sports celebrity” acting in Hollywood films, unknown facts and anecdotes, as well as Babe and Harold’s fun and fascinating connections to Coronado and San Diego.
The festival introduced Masterlabs with great success last year and this year, DANTE’S INFERNO, a Director’s MasterLab hosted by Joe Dante, will focus on his trademark cinema. PARALLEL WORLDS: ART IN FILM SERIES will feature Danish Director Andreas Koefoed, who will screen his 2022 critically acclaimed feature documentary, The Last Leonardo. Famed Australian Digital Artist and Animator, Kathryn Smith, will feature a unique presentation and exploration using 2D and 3D animation as an art form of expression with themes covering consciousness.
2022 Coronado Island Film Festival Official Selections
OPENING NIGHT
Empire of Light
Director: Sam Mendes
Country: UK; Running Time: 113 min
Sam Mendes fills his superbly cast, deeply personal drama with surprises, all emerging from a cinema in a working-class town in 1980s England. Hilary (Olivia Colman, in another knockout performance) is a single woman who runs the ticket booth, where she meets Steven (played with stirring confidence by relative newcomer Micheal Ward). Though on its surface a love story, Empire of Light is not what you might expect, as Mendes sidesteps the expected nostalgia to instead follow the credo written on the cinema’s walls: “Find in light where darkness lies.”
CENTERPIECE
The Inspection
Director: Elegance Bratton
Country: USA; Running Time: 120 min
A young, gay Black man, rejected by his mother and with few options for his future, decides to join the Marines, doing whatever it takes to succeed in a system that would cast him aside.
CLOSING NIGHT
She Said
Director: Maria Schrader
Country: United States; Running Time: 128 min
Two-time Academy Award® nominee Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman, An Education) and Zoe Kazan (The Plot Against America, The Big Sick) 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 shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood and altered American culture forever.
Some Like it Hot (1959)
Director: Billy Wilder
Country: USA; Running Time: 120 min
After witnessing a Mafia murder, slick saxophone player Joe (Tony Curtis) and his long-suffering buddy, Jerry (Jack Lemmon), improvise a quick plan to escape from Chicago with their lives. Disguising themselves as women, they join an all-female jazz band and hop a train bound for sunny Florida. While Joe pretends to be a millionaire to win the band’s sexy singer, Sugar (Marilyn Monroe), Jerry finds himself pursued by a real millionaire (Joe E. Brown) as things heat up and the mobsters close in.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Bull Durham (1988)
Director: Ron Shelton
Country: USA; Running Time: 120 min
In Durham, N.C., the Bulls minor league baseball team has one asset no other can claim: a poetry-loving groupie named Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon). As the team’s season begins, Annie selects brash new recruit Ebby Calvin Laloosh (Tim Robbins), whom she christens “Nuke,” to inspire with the religion of baseball. Nuke also receives guidance from veteran player Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), who settles Nuke’s erratic pitching and teaches him to follow the catcher’s lead.
Day for Night (1973)
Director: François Truffaut
Country: French; Running Time: 116 min
Day for Night chronicles the production of Je Vous Présente Paméla (Meet Pamela, or literally I introduce you to Pamela), a clichéd melodrama starring aging screen icon Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont), former diva Séverine (Valentina Cortese), young heartthrob Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and a British actress, Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset), who is recovering from both a nervous breakdown and the controversy over her marriage to her much older doctor.
The Island of Lost Girls
Director: Ann-Marie Schmidt
Country: United States; Running Time: 103 min
This may be a family film, but it’s also one of the coolest, craziest and most intense nature thrillers ever made. It’s the story of three young girls trying to stick together as they get trapped in a sea cave filled with crashing waves, hundreds of sea lions, and monstrous elephant seals.
Women Talking
Director: Sarah Polley
Country: USA; Running Time: 104 min
In 2010, the women of an isolated religious community grapple with reconciling their reality with their faith. Based on the novel by Miriam Toews.
ADDITIONAL NARRATIVE FILMS
Corsage
Director: Marie Kreutzer
Country: USA; Running Time: 113 min
Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Vicky Krieps) is idolized for her beauty and renowned for inspiring fashion trends. But in 1877, ‘Sisi’ celebrates her 40th birthday and must fight to maintain her public image by lacing her corset tighter and tighter. While Elisabeth’s role has been reduced against her wishes to purely performative, her hunger for knowledge and zest for life makes her more and more restless in Vienna. She travels to England and Bavaria, visiting former lovers and old friends, seeking the excitement and purpose of her youth. With a future of strictly ceremonial duties laid out in front of her, Elisabeth rebels against the hyperbolized image of herself and comes up with a plan to protect her legacy.
Dealing with Dad
Director: Tom Huang
Country: USA; Running Time: 106 min
Margaret Chang is rocked from her perfect alpha-mom-corporate-manager life when she has to go back to her hometown to deal with her overbearing dad who’s usually an outspoken jerk but is now despondent and won’t leave the house. Since she can’t deal with her parents by herself, she drags along her older sad sack brother, ROY to help her. When they arrive back to their childhood home, they discover that their mom SOPHIE (equally overbearing) and youngest angry comic book nerd brother (still living with parents) are happy with this situation, since their dad is so much more pleasant depressed than well. The siblings struggle to understand what depression is, and whether it’s worth getting their dad better. In the meantime, they reconnect as a family by bickering and reminiscing about the bad times with Dad, learning that their familial bond is stronger than they realize.
Disfluency
Director: Anna Baumgarten
Country: USA; Running Time: 100 min
After failing her final college class, Jane returns home to her family’s lake house and–with the help of her friends and family–she comes to terms with the confusing trauma that derailed her senior year.
Four Samosas
Director: Ravi Kapoor
Country: USA; Running Time: 80 min
Happy-go-lucky, underachieving, wanna-be rapper Vinny is dismayed to learn that his favorite ex-girlfriend Rina is planning to marry his smarmy arch-nemesis. Determined to disrupt the wedding as well as fund the dreams of his family and friends, he and his band of neighborhood pals concoct a plan to steal Rina’s dowry jewels from her father’s supermarket safe. But can this motley crew actually pull off a heist? Lighthearted and engaging, this film is big on charm and brimming with scrappy, indie-spirit.
Juniper
Director: Matthew J. Saville
Country: New Zealand; Running Time: 94 min
When teenager Sam (George Ferrier from TV series Dirty Laundry) is sent home from boarding school, the last thing he wants is to help his dad (The Luminaries’ Martin Csokas) care for his cranky, newly arrived, gin-swilling grandmother Ruth. The two immediately butt heads. But a bond grows between them as Ruth reveals her fearless spirit, and a desire to grab life while she still can. Ruth is played by legendary British actor Charlotte Rampling (45 Years, The Night Porter).
Last Out
Director: Ame Livingston
Country: United States; Running Time: 140 min
Army Green Beret Danny Patton is a modern-day warrior fighting battles that range from tribal Afghanistan to his own living room. As the corrosive gears of war begin to rip apart his family, his integrity, and his soul, Danny is thrust into his final, eternal mission. On the other side, with Valhalla beckoning, he discovers that combat can be fueled by vengeance or by love…it just depends which price you are willing to pay. You’ve heard the war stories of the ‘first in’. This is the untold true story of the last out.
Loren + Rose
Director: Russell Brown
Country: USA; Running Time: 83 min
A single meal frames this three-act story of the indelible bond between Loren, a promising filmmaker, and Rose, a storied actress looking to reinvigorate her career. From a lunch meeting to discuss a possible collaboration grows a years-long friendship between two people whose love of art, understanding of grief, and faith in life’s potential guide them through personal and creative hardships. Kelly Blatz and Jacqueline Bisset star with a chemistry that is at once authentic and intoxicating.
My Donkey, My Lover & I Antoinette dans les Cévennes
Director: Caroline Vignal
Country: France; Running Time: 97 min
Antoinette, a school teacher, is looking forward to her long-planned summer holidays with her secret lover Vladimir, the father of one of her pupils. When learning that Vladimir cannot come because his wife organized a surprise trekking holiday in the Cévennes National Park with their daughter and a donkey to carry their load, Antoinette decides to follow their track, by herself, with Patrick, a protective donkey.
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
Anxious Nation
Directors: Vanessa Roth, Laura Morton
Country: United States; Running Time: 100 min
Anxious Nation takes a deep look into the crisis of anxiety and mental health in America, especially its crippling impact on kids and families. Over the past three decades, the biggest public health threats to teenagers in the United States came from binge drinking, drunken driving, teenage pregnancy and smoking. Today, these have been replaced by soaring rates of mental health disorders—especially anxiety. In a rare public advisory in early 2022, the U.S. surgeon general warned of a devastating mental health crisis among adolescents, creating a national emergency. Like pouring gasoline on an already out of control inferno, anxiety and its impact were intensely exacerbated by the pandemic.
The Best Chef in the World
Director: Ben Proudfoot
Country: USA; Running Time: 90 min
The French Laundry, run by legendary chef Thomas Keller, has often been recognized as the best restaurant in the world, but few know the story of its original founder, Sally Schmitt. In an emotional final interview before her passing in March 2022, Sally tells her own story as a pioneering chef of California cuisine and sets the table for another way to look at life: where balance, rather than recognition, is the ultimate prize.
Immediate Family
Director: Denny Tedesco
Country: United States; Running Time: 102 min
Directed by Denny Tedesco who made the original The Wrecking Crew documentary, Immediate Family follows the next wave of musicians who would create the Singer-Songwriter sound backing everyone from James Taylor, Carole King, Don Henley and Linda Ronstadt, to Crosby & Nash, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, and Keith Richards. This small team of players would go on to change the course of musical history, creating the sound of the 70’s and all that came after.
The Jackie Stiles Story
Director: Brent Huff
Country: United States; Running Time: 94 min
This is the story of a 5’8″ girl from a small Kansas town, population 600, who became a basketball legend in the Midwest. Against all odds, Jackie became the all-time leading scorer in NCAA history, a record she held for 16 years. This feat was accomplished through hard work and unwavering determination. Jackie has beat numerous opponents throughout her career but now she is facing her biggest challenge. In 2017, Jackie was diagnosed with Ocular Melanoma cancer in her eye.
Killing Me Softly With His Songs
Director: Danny Gold
Country: USA; Running Time: 103 min
Killing Me Softly with His Songs is a musical documentary about the life and work of composer Charles Fox, known for pop hits such as “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” “I Got a Name,” and “Ready to Take a Chance Again,” as well as iconic television show themes for Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Love Boat, and Wonder Woman. He is also the composer of numerous salsa records, which are so popular internationally that it is a safe bet that even as you read this, someone somewhere is dancing to a Charles Fox mambo or pachanga.
The Lost Leonardo
Director: Andreas Koefoed
Country: Denmark; Running Time: 96 min
The Lost Leonardo (2021), a documentary from Danish filmmaker, Andreas Koefoed, traces the discovery of the rare “Salvatore Mundi” by the Renaissance master, Leonardo Da Vinci; the painstaking process of vetting its veracity and uncovering the multi-layered stories and mysteries surrounding this rare art find which initially sold for $ 1,175 in 2005 and then was auctioned for $ 450 million in 2017.
Lynch/OZ
Director: Alexandre O. Philippe
Country: USA; Running Time: 108 min
Victor Fleming’s film The Wizard of Oz (1939) is one of David Lynch’s most enduring obsessions. This documentary goes over the rainbow to explore this Technicolor through-line in Lynch’s work.
River
Directors: Jennifer Peedom, Joseph Nizeti
Country: USA; Running Time: 75 min
A journey from source to sea, River is a cinematic and musical odyssey that explores the remarkable relationship between humans and rivers. Throughout history, rivers have shaped our landscapes and our journeys; flowed through our cultures and dreams. River takes its audience on a journey through space and time; spanning six continents, and drawing on extraordinary contemporary cinematography, including satellite filming, the film shows rivers on scales and from perspectives never seen before. Its union of image, music and sparse, poetic script will create a film that is both dream-like and powerful, honouring the wildness of rivers but also recognises their vulnerability.
Song For Hope – The Ryan Anthony Story
Director: Chris Haigh
Country: United States; Running Time: 80 min
This is the incredible story of Ryan Anthony, the renowned principal trumpet of the Canadian Brass and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Despite being diagnosed with a rare, terminal blood cancer and given just months to live, Ryan and his wife, Niki, started a charity called CancerBlows which organizes huge music concerts with the world’s greatest trumpet players, raising millions for cancer research and helping Ryan to live (and play) for another eight years! During that time, while undergoing treatment, he climbed Mt. Fuji with his oncologist to raise further funds and awareness for his disease, playing Amazing Grace at the summit as the sun rose.
SHORT FILMS
A Cartoon of a Cat Sleeping
Director: Randall Christopher
Country: United States; Running Time: 7 min
Auntie
Director: Fawzia Mirza
Country: United States; Running Time: 7 min
Battle of the Titans: 24 Hours of Spa
Director: Gray Pham
Country: United States; Running Time: 30 min
Bus Girl
Director: Jessica Henwick
Country: United States; Running Time: 11 min
Call Casting
Director: Kasper Vejlo Kristensen, Dylan Bruno
Country: United States; Running Time: 7 min
Coronado High: The Story of the Coronado Company
Director: Baxter Simpson
Country: United States; Running Time: 8 min
Croissant
Director: Iver Bostad
Country: Norway; Running Time: 2 min
Do Not Feed The Pigeons
Director: Antonin Niclass
Country: United Kingdom; Running Time: 9 min
El Carrito
Director: Zahida Pirani
Country: United States; Running Time: 15 min
Family Recipe
Director: Kamari Bright
Country: United States; Running Time: 5 min
Fish Fingers (Fischknusperli)
Director: Lars Mulle
Country: Switzerland; Running Time: 8 min
Five Cents
Director: Aaron Hughes
Country: United States; Running Time: 5 min
Flat Earther
Director: Brian James Crewe
Country: United States; Running Time: 10 min
Flying Fur
Director: Alicia Wszelaki, Matthew Nothelfer
Country: United States; Running Time: 36 min
Forgetting Caroline
Director: Alexis Duran
Country: United States; Running Time: 15 min
Free to Care
Director: Chris Temple, Owen Dubeck
Country: United States; Running Time: 11 min
Freedom Swimmer
Director: Olivia Martin-McGuire
Country: United Kingdom; Running Time: 15 min
Guardian Angel
Director: Tobias Kampmann
Country: Denmark; Running Time: 23 min
Hear My Voice
Director: Daniele Guerra
Country: United Kingdom; Running Time: 12 min
Home
Director: Virginia Gilbert
Country: United Kingdom; Running Time: 12 min
In Search of Boozers and Schmucks
Director: Hrag Yedalian
Country: United States; Running Time: 13 min
Into Dust
Director: Orlando von Einsiedel
Country: United Kingdom; Running Time: 40 min
Jeff
Director: Walter Joesph Woodman
Country: Canada; Running Time: 6 min
John Leguizamo Live at Rikers
Director: Elena Francesca Engel
Country: United States; Running Time: 26 min
Lane Five
Director: Matthew Van Sliger
Country: United States; Running Time: 17 min
Little White Shadows
Director: Ayannah Love
Country: United States; Running Time: 9 min
Lost Art
Director: Leif Ramsey
Country: United States; Running Time: 16 min
Louis I. King of the Sheep (Louis 1er Roi des Moutons)
Director: Markus Wulf
Country: Germany; Running Time: 8 min
Miyeok-Guk
Director:
Country: United States; Running Time: 9 min
Molly’s Light
Director:
Country: United States; Running Time: 7 min
My Happy Place
Director: Devin Scott
Country: United States; Running Time: 18 min
Nice To Meet You All
Director: Guen Murroni
Country: United Kingdom; Running Time: 12 min
Nicholas Brothers: Stormy Weather
Director: Michael Shevloff
Country: United States; Running Time: 20 min
Night of the Living Dread
Director: Ida Melum
Country: United Kingdom; Running Time: 11 min
Notice Me
Director: Kurt Andrew Schneider
Country: United States; Running Time: 11 min
Nuisance Bear
Director: Jack Weisman, Gabriela Osio Vanden
Country: Canada; Running Time: 14 min
Pete the Pond
Director:
Country: United Kingdom; Running Time: 15 min
Runner
Director: Hanne Bruun
Country: Denmark; Running Time: 12 min
Sandstorm (Mulaqat)
Director: Seemab Gul
Country: Pakistan; Running Time: 20 min
She Dreams At Sunrise
Director: Camrus Johnson
Country: United States; Running Time: 11 min
Sole Trail
Director: Daniel M. Dyer, Petey Dyer
Country: United States; Running Time: 35 min
Steakhouse
Director: Špela Čadež
Country: Slovenia; Running Time: 10 min
Stranger at the Gate
Director: Joshua Seftel
Country: United States; Running Time: 30 min
Table for 3 (Mesa para 3)
Director: Álvaro G. Company, Meka Ribera
Country: Spain; Running Time: 13 min
The Bank Loan (El Crédito)
Director: Alex Escudero
Country: Spain; Running Time: 20 min
The Interview
Director: Inga Moren Tapias
Country: United States; Running Time: 9 min
The Most Boring Granny in the Whole World
Director: Damaris Zielke
Country: Germany; Running Time: 7 min
The Originals
Director: Cristina Maria Costantini, Alfie Kim Koetter
Country: United States; Running Time: 10 min
The Oubliette
Director: Max Hendrickson
Country: Ireland; Running Time: 10 min
The Pomegranate Tree
Director: Kanika Vora
Country: United States; Running Time: 18 min
The Prince and the Goblin
Director: Cory Byam
Country: United States; Running Time: 12 min
The Sentence of Michael Thompson
Director: Kyle Thrash, Haley Elizabeth Anderson
Country: United States; Running Time: 25 min
Wei-Lai
Director: Robin Wang
Country: United States; Running Time: 14 min
When I Get Grown-Reflections of a Freedom Rider
Director: Chris Preitauer
Country: United States; Running Time: 31 min
Who (Quién)
Director: Carlos Martin
Country: Spain; Running Time: 18 min
Winter of ’79
Director: Julia Elihu
Country: United States; Running Time: 21 min
Yellow Wallpaper
Director: Ricky Rhodes
Country: USA; Running Time: 18 min
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