The coronavirus, (COVID-19) pandemic is having a devastating impact on film festivals with many postponing or cancelling outright. Major festivals such as San Francisco International Film Festival and RiverRun International Film Festival have canceled, while others such as Richmond International Film Festival and Florida Film Festival have been postponed until the Summer or Fall.
The Richmond International Film Festival (RIFF), brings more than 135 award-winning film premieres from 20 countries, plus panels, 35+ bands, mixers, and daily events at venues across Richmond, Virginia. The festival kicks off Tuesday, April 21st and concludes Sunday, April 26th.
The Cuban horror film Is That You? (¿Eres tu, Papá) directed by Rudy Riverón Sánchez was awarded the top jury prize for Best Film at the 2019 Richmond International Film Festival. Prescience starring Eric Roberts, and the psychological thriller Nesting Dolls tied to win the Audience Award for Best Feature Film.
Actors Eric Roberts and Alfre Woodard along with Andy Stefanovich will be honored at this year’s 2019 Richmond International Film Festival (RIFF) with the festival’s most prestigious awards. Eric Roberts will receive the Legacy Award, Andy Stefanovich will receive the Pioneer Award, and Alfre Woodard will receive the Founders Awards. The 2019 Richmond International Film Festival kicks off Tuesday, April 23rd and concludes Sunday, April 28th.
The 2019 Richmond International Film & Music Festival (RIFF) brings more than 150 cutting edge award-winning film premiers from 30 countries, plus up to 40 bands, panels, and daily events at various venues across Richmond. The festival kicks off Tuesday, April 23rd and concludes Sunday, April 28th.
The Best of All Worlds (Die Beste aller Welten) by Adrian Goiginger[/caption]
The 2018 Richmond International Film & Music Festival (RIFF) wrapped on Sunday and handed out lots of awards to the wining writers, filmmakers, and musicians. The Richmond International Film Festival featured seven days of 150 cutting edge award-winning films from 35 countries – from France to Brazil, Australia to Cuba – plus up to 50 bands, panels, and daily events at various venues across Richmond.
Each year Richmond International Film Festival honors state and national leaders who are paving a future path in leadership and evoking inspiring change in our communities. This year the festival’s Pioneer Award for Excellence in Public Service & Leadership will be awarded to Governor Terry McAuliffe for his extraordinary work in public service, national leadership, and in successfully ending veteran’s homelessness in Virginia as he promised and helping get them into programs that create new purpose upon transitioning to civilian life. The Pioneer Award will be presented to Governor Terry McAuliffe by Governor Ralph Northam during RIFF”s Sunday, April 29 Military Spotlight at 2:30pm.
The Military Spotlight will feature a screening of Thank You For Your Service, a groundbreaking feature documentary that investigates the failed mental health policies within the US military and the deadly consequences to the troops. The film will screen Sunday, April 29 at 2:30pm at the Byrd Theatre, and will be followed by the Pioneer Award presentation and an extensive Q&A with filmmaker, Tom Donahue & leading experts Carrie Ann Alford (Director of Policy and Planning, Virginia Department of Veterans Services, William Rodriguez MSW (Founder at Torii Coaching and Consulting), and Brian Meyer (Clinical Psychologist and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder/Substance Use Disorders Specialist at the H.H. McGuire Veterans Administration Medical Center).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50LQGcb5knE
RIFF will bring another special guest to the festival, Rene Balcer, a top influencer in television and film who will present his feature documentary, Above the Drowning Sea with co-executive Producer, Carolyn & Hsu Balcer. The film is a documentary about WWII and Austrian immigrants who fled to Shanghai to escape Hitler and the Nazis and narrated by Julianna Margulies, Tony Goldwyn, and Nick Mancuso. It will screen Thursday, April 26th at 8pm at the Byrd Theatre with an extensive Q&A to follow. Rene Balcer is a co-Creator, writer, and executive producer of Law & Order.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkbUwHimFGg
Image: Terry McAuliffe, Virginia governor, meets with Soldiers during a visit to Fort Eustis, Va., Dec. 2, 2014. During his visit, McAuliffe asked the Soldiers questions about their military experiences, and thanked them for their service. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Kimberly Nagle/Released)
Buckout Road, Danny Glover[/caption]
The Richmond International Film Festival (RIFF) will feature several renowned special guests, including actor, producer and humanitarian, Danny Glover. Glover stars in the festival’s 2018 Closing Night film, Buckout Road, a horror thriller directed by Matthew Currie Holmes. The film also stars Henry Czerny, Evan Ross, and Dominque Provost-Chalkey. A special discussion will take place with Glover directly following the film’s screening which will be Sunday, April 29th at 5:15pm at the Byrd Theatre. Glover will also be presented with RIFF’s 2018 Legacy Award.
The 2018 festival will also welcome special guest Lee Aronsohn. Aronsohn is one of America’s most successful television writers and producers. He co-created the sitcom Two and a Half Men and wrote the original music for the series. Aronsohn also served as an executive producer, writer and director for The Big Bang Theory and has written for many other notable television shows, including The Love Boat, Who’s the Boss?, Murphy Brown, Grace Under Fire and Cybill.
On Thursday, April 26th at Bowtie Movieland from 6:30-8pm, Aronsohn will present his feature documentary film, 40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Band. This will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker about his experience making the film, his music and television background and a discussion on how the film and television industries have evolved into what they are today.
The Colorado-based legends, Magic Music Band, was started in 1969 and is dubbed as the state’s first “jam band.” Hailing from various cities around the United States, the group began as a merry troop of renegades whose brotherhood was eternally forged in the music they made that spread throughout the country. RIFF patrons are invited to wear 1970’s hippie attire to the film’s screening in celebration of the band and the unforgettable magic they brought to the 1970’s era.
RIFF brings London-based live music collective Ibibio Sound Machine to Richmond, Virginia in honor of the festival’s spirit to celebrate diverse perspectives, cultures and international music. The group will be performing at The National on Thursday, April 26th at 7:30pm with Rodney the Soul Singer Stith to open.
Ibibio Sound Machine was started by producers Max Grunhard, Leon Brichard and Benji Bouton, who were all enthusiasts of African grooves from the 1970s and ’80s. This trio began creating drum’n’bass tracks around the voice of the electrifying frontwoman Eno Williams. Their sound is inspired in equal measure by the golden era of West African funk and disco, post-punk, and modern electro.
ABOVE THE DROWNING SEA,[/caption]
The 2018 Richmond International Film & Music Festival brings a seven-day fest of more than 150 cutting edge award-winning films, plus up to 50 bands, panels, and daily events at various venues across Richmond, Virginia.
The seventh edition of the festival kicks off Monday, April 23rd with the Opening Night film, NONA. and concludes Sunday, April 29th with the annual Red Carpet Awards where prizes selected by the Grand Jury and audience will be awarded in various categories for all film, music, and writing categories.
NONA is a compelling narrative feature film written and directed by Michael Polish, which stars Kate Bosworth (also the Producer/Executive Producer), Sulem Calderon, and Jesy McKinney. NONA follows the harrowing path of a young Honduran girl from her home in San Pedro Sula, across four countries, into a living hell of servitude in a world of modern day sex slavery. Kate Bosworth and Michael Polish will be in attendance, and Bosworth will receive this year’s esteemed Founder’s Award for her work as a producer on the film. The Founder’s Award is given to the film and filmmaker that captures the heart and spirit of the festival – stories that reveal truths that are often untold or overlooked, and to those artists on the frontlines of creating necessary yet artful dialogue in their work.
Also in the spotlight are BUCKOUT ROAD, a horror thriller directed by Matthew Currie Holmes starring Danny Glover, Henry Czerny, Evan Ross, and Dominque Provost-Chalkey. The feature is a story of how a college class project on the creation and destruction of modern myth turns terrifying when a trio of young people come to realize the many evil urban legends surrounding New York State’s famed Buckout Road may, in fact be real.
ABOVE THE DROWNING SEA, a documentary feature about the dramatic escape of tens of thousands of Jewish refugees’ escape to Shanghai featuring Julianna Margulies, Tony Goldwyn, and Nick Mancuso. The film is directed by Rene Balcer who is also writer, executive producer, and co-creator of Law & Order. Balcer will present the film alongside co-executive producer Carolyn Balcer with an extensive Q&A discussion to follow.
DOUBLE TAKE directed by Jay Gard and a short crime mystery in the vein of HEAT, MEMENTO, and TRUE DETECTIVE. With a swiss-clock style plot, DOUBLE TAKE threads together two diamond heists with multiple twists and an intense interrogation between old enemies. The film stars Adrian Pasdar and David James Elliott.
THE BLACK GHIANDOLA, a narrative short starring J.K. Simmons, Johnny Depp, David Lynch, and Laura Dern. The film is produced by Tamika Lamison and the Make a Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization that grants children suffering with cancer their final wish to make a film. The film and foundation will receive a special honor at the 2018 festival.
DADDY, a documentary short that tells the story of youth basketball coach and drug trafficker, Curtis Malone. In 1993 Curtis founded the DC Assault, an AAU basketball team whose mission was to keep inner city boys off the streets by helping them earn college scholarships, and it included a hundred Division I student athletes and several NBA players. But on August 9th 2013, Curtis’ double life caught up with him. In addition to Curtis, the film includes interviews with the NBA players he raised, the DEA agents who investigated him, and the U.S. Attorney who prosecuted him.
DIMINUENDO, a sci-fi romance starring James Deen, Richard Hatch, Chloe Dykstra, Leah Cairns, Walter Koenig, Bryn Pryor, and more. When asked to direct the biopic of Cello Shea about his actress girlfriend who killed herself a decade ago, the has-been filmmaker Haskell Edwards becomes obsessed with the lifelike robot created to mimic her.
Also in the lineup is PERFECT BID: THE CONTESTANT WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, a feature documentary starring Ted Slauson, Bob Barker, Kevin Pollak, Drew Carey, and Holly Hallstrom. The film details Ted Slauson, a math teacher from Texas who spent the majority of his life memorizing the prize amounts on The Price Is Right. The documentary explores how Ted went from bidding to banned, and was involved in a Perfect Bid scandal that was covered in Esquire, Time Magazine & others. This year marks the 25th Anniversary of Ted’s most famous appearance on the show.
AYLA THE DAUGHTER OF WAR, this Turkish feature film set in 1950, is a story about the ravages of the Korean War as Sergeant Süleyman stumbles upon a a half-frozen little girl, with no parents and no help in sight. Frantic, scared and on the verge of death, this little girl captures the heart of Süleyman, who risks his own life to save her, smuggling her into his Army base and out of harms way. Ayla, almost effortlessly, brings an uncanny joy to the Turkish brigade in the grip of war.
THE RIBBON ON THE KITE, a narrative short by filmmaker Gianlorenzo Albertini that features a compelling look at PTSD through the eyes of Daerik, an army veteran who returns to his hometown after being discharged from the military. Now homeless and suffering from severe PTSD, he tries to drown out the painful memories of a mission in Afghanistan where his men were killed. In the meantime, Rebecca, a very young girl, attempts to find her brother who suddenly disappears after the war later finding that the homeless man living on the river bank nearby is her lost brother.
NONA[/caption]
Nona, a narrative feature film written and directed by filmmaker Michael Polish (Twin Falls Idaho, Northfork, The Astronaut Farmer) and co-produced by Kate Bosworth will be the Opening Night film at the 2018 Richmond International Film Festival (RIFF). Together Bosworth and Polish will present the film on opening night Tuesday, April 24th at 7:15 p.m. at the historic Byrd Theatre with a Q&A to follow.
Bosworth will also be distinguished with the festival’s 2018 Founder’s Award. The Founder’s Award honors a filmmaker whose work champions stories of truths often untold or overlooked. It seeks to recognize artists on the frontlines, creating necessary yet artful thought and dialogue in their work.
Nona puts a face to Central America’s sex trafficking industry. It follows the harrowing path of a young Honduran girl from her home in San Pedro Sula, across four countries, into a living hell of servitude in a world of modern day sex slavery. Nona is an acronym, of sorts, for “No Name.” This is the first feature co-produced by the husband and wife producing team through their newly formed production company, Make Pictures Productions.
“We are thrilled to present Nona as the opening night film, which captures the heart and spirit of the festival,” said RIFF Founder and Producer, Heather Waters. “We are proud to offer a platform for brave, socially-conscious filmmakers like Michael and Kate to shine a light on a dark space impacting women and young girls around the world and establish dialogue that can pave the way towards change.”
image: via screengrab
Wish You Well
The Richmond International Film Festival (RIFF), will kick off on Thursday, February 26 with Wish You Well, a coming-of-age drama set in 1940s Virginia written by best-selling author David Baldacci and starring Josh Lucas and Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn.
The festival will continue over the next three days with screenings at the Byrd, the Virginia Historical Society, and Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas.
New this year, RIFF is teaming up with producing sponsor, Swedish Match, a Sweden-based tobacco company with U.S. headquarters in Richmond, to bring patrons a Swedish film spotlight and community outreach during the festival. Through the spotlight, patrons will experience a taste of Swedish lifestyle, arts and culture.
Swedish films included in the spotlight are this year’s Golden Globe nominated Force Majeure, which is also Sweden’s official Oscar entry for consideration of Best Foreign Language Film of the year. The film is directed by Ruben Ostlund and stars Johannes Kuhnke. Force Majeure debuts opening night at Movieland with a Swedish mixer to take place prior to the screening. The second Swedish spotlight film is the best-selling adaptation, The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared directed by Felix Herngren and starring Sweden’s funniest man, Robert Gustafsson, which plays at the Byrd Theatre on Sunday afternoon.
Closing out Sunday afternoon is the world premiere of Living in a Food Desert, a feature documentary directed by Jesse Vaughan that takes an inside look at the food desert crisis affecting hundreds of thousands in Virginia. The film features Mount Olive Baptist Church, FeedMore, Tricycle Gardens, Lynchburg Grows, Shalom Farms and Renew Richmond with interviews that include Leslie Van Horn, First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe, Delegate Delores McQuinn, Dr. Jewel Hairston, Douglas Pick, John Lewis, Sally Schwitters, Daron Chavis, and others. Produced by Jesse Vaughan and Cedric Owens for Virginia State University’s College of Agriculture.
A sample of other features and shorts in festival competition are: Sewing Hope, a feature documentary narrated by Forest Whitaker that follows a Ugandan Nun who has dedicated her life to helping women terrorized by Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army Salgan & Salgan, a feature documentary, which profiles legendary tango pianist, Horatio Salgan Wildlike, directed and written by Frank Hall Green and starring Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek, I Robot, Déjà vu), Ann Dowd (Compliance, Side Effects, Marley & Me, Garden State), Ella Purnell (Maleficient, Never Let Me Go, Kick-Ass 2), Brian Geraghty (The Hurt Locker, Flight, Jarhead, Bobby), Nolan Gerard Funk (House at the End of the Street, X-Men 2), and Diane Farr (Numb3rs, About Cherry) The Japanese Dog, Romania’s official Oscar entry for consideration of Best Foreign Language Film of the year, directed by Tudor Cristian Jurgiu. Des Eclats de Verre, Sundance Grand Prize Jury and Audience Award winner and this year’s Best Short Winner at the Toronto International Film and Video Festival Audience of One directed by KARP and starring Taylor Gray (Star Wars Rebels, Thunderstruck) and Spencer Daniels (Star Trek, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) Imagine, directed by Jonathan Steven Green and Jahanara Saleh and starring Scott Wolfe (Party of Five, White Squall) Love They Nature, narrated by Liam Neeson Someone You Love: The HPV Epidemic, narrated by Vanessa Williams Blood and Circumstance, a film recently shot in Virginia.