Virginia Film Festival

The Pearl Button

In this beautifully visual and resonant film, master documentarian Patricio Guzmán examines Chile’s history of genocide…

Heart of a Dog

Centering on celebrated musician, performance artist, and writer Anderson’s beloved rat terrier Lolabelle, who died in…

Short Films: Sense of Place

These short films take you on a journey to places real and imagined. Explore a sinking…

Short Films: Craft

A collection of short films devoted to the art and obsession of craftwork. From a mother…

Short Films: Connection

A collection of short films about the way we connect with one another. Films include: Black…

Southeast 67

Preceded by the short film Amazing Journey (13 min.) This documentary combines raw, never-before-seen footage and…

Streit’s: Matzo and the American Dream

Chronicling the history of the last family-owned matzo bakery in America, Streit’s: Matzo and the American…

The Summer of Sangailé

Sangailé is fascinated by stunt planes. Afraid of heights and 17 years old, she has never…

Teenkahon (Three Obsessions)

This international art house film captures the changing face of morality, the degeneration of values, the…

They Look Like People

Suspecting that people are transforming into malevolent shapeshifters, Wyatt flees to New York City to seek…

Victoria

Outside a nightclub a young Spanish woman meets four local Berliners who promise to show her…

Youth

From Italy’s acclaimed director and recent Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino comes Youth, about two longtime friends vacationing…

Embrace of the Serpent

This visionary adventure epic tracks two parallel odysseys as a lone shaman leads two European ethnographers…

Eisenstein in Guanajuato

In 1931 Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein travels to Mexico to shoot a new film after being…

Doeville

Gail Rose never imagined she’d be wrangling deer in her sixties in the Shenandoah Valley. After…

Christine at the Crossroads

Christine, a young married woman, already feels detached from her husband and rebuffed by her mother…

Best of FAVS Program at GMU

Best of FAVS Program at GMU features a selection of top films from students in the…

But Not For Me

Will is a young writer living in the big city, barely scraping by on his copywriter’s…

Cemetery of Splendour

Soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic where doctors explore ways…

Brooklyn

Brooklyn tells the moving story of Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), a young Irish immigrant navigating her…

The Wave

This disaster drama by director Roar Uthaug is Norway’s submission for the upcoming Academy Award Best…

Ithaca

Fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley is determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger anyone has…

Carol

In 1950s New York City, young department store clerk Therese meets Carol, an alluring woman trapped…

The Kindergarten Teacher

Director Nadav Lapid explores what happens when fascination becomes obsession in this story about a teacher…

Cultivating Homegrown Film in Virginia

Join us for a discussion on how Virginia aims to be growing content creators of homegrown…

Paradise

Produced over the course of eight years beginning in 2007, Paradise is a feature-length nonfiction film…

An Evening with Larry Kramer

The VFF is honored to welcome the distinguished playwright and LGBT rights activist Larry Kramer for…

Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot

This is a free, unticketed event. Please arrive 15 to 30 minutes before the listed start…

Reconquest of the Useless

In Werner Herzog’s 1982 adventure film, Fitzcarraldo, the eccentric explorer Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald has the crazy…

Price of Love

In this gritty romantic drama by Ethiopian director Hermon Hailay, a taxi driver and beautiful prostitute…

Mountains May Depart

Beginning in 1999, Mountains May Depart highlights China’s exponential economic development and the subsequent changes in…

Mercy Street

This new PBS Civil War drama produced in and around Richmond, Virginia, takes viewers beyond the…

The Measure of a Man

Vincent London, winner of the 2015 Cannes Best Actor Award, gives one of his finest performances…

Light House Studio Short Films

These 12 short films from Light House Studio students include a mixture of narratives, music videos,…

Larry Kramer in Love and Anger

This powerful documentary candidly peers into the life of visionary author and playwright Larry Kramer, the…

Future Dreaming

Future Dreaming is the result of a chance meeting between two people on a boat in…

Faust

Murnau’s iconic adaptation of Goethe’s Faust echoes the dreamlike surrealism of his silent films like Nosferatu.…

Jack of the Red Hearts

Jack, a streetwise teenager and a casualty of the flawed foster care system, is in trouble…

Boom and Bust: America’s Journey on the Erie Canal

A meditation on economic cycles and the American Dream, this remarkable film tells the tale of…

Kevin Everson: Short Films

From internationally renowned filmmaker Kevin Everson comes a selection of short films that combines historical observations…

Buskin’ Blues

Preceded by the short film Boardwalk Músico Buskers, more commonly referred to as street performers, come…

Project Greenlight: The Leisure Class

The Leisure Class is the end product of the current season of HBO’s Project Greenlight, which…

Winds of Chemical Warfare

This probing documentary traces the history of chemical weapons, their international practices, and the catastrophic dangers…

The Scientist: Are We Missing Something?

Dr. Raphael Mechoulam is a Nobel Prize nominee and an internationally renowned chemist—he also happens to…

My Little Chickadee

Celebrating its 75th anniversary, this iconic Western comedy stars Mae West as the feisty Flower Belle…

Mully

What happens when a six-year-old boy in Kenya is abandoned by his family and left to…

Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings

Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings focusses is a retrospective of the artist’s wall drawings in North Adams,…

Pixar Short Films: 2007-2012

Disney and Pixar present an incredible collection of 12 short films, featuring multiple Academy Award nominees…

Songcatcher

After being passed up for a well-deserved promotion, fearless musicologist Dr. Lily Penleric ventures into the…

The Redfern Story

The Redfern Story documents the efforts of a small group of untrained, but passionate, activists in…

Sembene!

Sembene! documents the life of Ousmane Sembene, a self-taught novelist and filmmaker who fought a 50-year…

Stinking Heaven

In the early 1990s married ex-junkies Jim and Lucy run a crumbling commune for sober living…

H8RZ

Preceded by the short film Rogue Taxidermy (7 min.) Alex, the lone survivor of a massive…

Take Me to the River

Ryder, an artsy and confident California teen, heads to Nebraska for a family reunion. After planning…

Theory of Obscurity: a Film about The Residents

Filmmaker Don Hardy investigates the infamously anonymous, avant-garde music collective known as The Residents on their…

Christmas, Again

For a fifth consecutive December, a heartbroken Noel returns to New York City to work the…

The Birth of a Nation

A century after its debut, Griffith’s groundbreaking film remains one of the most important works in…

The Maltese Falcon

Considered by many historians to be the first Film Noir, The Maltese Falcon stars the legendary…

Monroe Hill

Monroe Hill offers an unprecedented overview of President James Monroe’s first farm in Albemarle County, the…

Rosenwald

Director Aviva Kempner examines the often-overlooked philanthropy and civil rights activism of Julius Rosenwald, the former…

Louder Than Bombs

An upcoming exhibition celebrating photographer Isabelle Reed three years after her untimely death brings her eldest…

Court

An independent and multilingual film, Court examines the Indian legal system through the trial of an…

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is the first feature-length documentary to explore the Black…

Employees’ Entrance

Kurt Anderson is the unscrupulous general manager of a department store, and although his ruthless devotion…

Another Way of Living: The Story of Reston, VA

Visionary American urban planner Robert Simon believed that building community is more important than creating buildings.…

Born on the Fourth of July

Ron Kovic enlists in the Marines and, by 1968, is a sergeant fighting in the Vietnam…

Babe

Preceded by the short film The Present “That’ll do, Pig, that’ll do.” Babe, the classic family film…

Dough

A curmudgeonly widower stubbornly clings to his livelihood as a kosher bakery shop owner in London.…

Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem

This layered documentary delves into celebrated actor Theodore Bikel’s charismatic storytelling and masterful performances with a…

Taxi

Internationally acclaimed director Jafar Panahi drives a yellow cab through the vibrant streets of Tehran in…

Radical Grace

In 2011 the Vatican was reprimanding American nuns for “radical feminism”—for focusing on social justice work…

Polyfaces

Set amid the stunning Shenandoah Valley, this joyful documentary details the innovative agricultural techniques of Polyface…

Ocean Frontiers: The Dawn of a New Era in Ocean Stewardship

Ocean Frontiers: The Dawn of a New Era in Ocean Stewardship takes the viewer on an…

My Friend Victoria

Victoria, a young girl from a humble background, spends the night with the bourgeois family of…

Lost Colony

While navigating life with his hyperprotective mother, teenaged Loren struggles with his pregnant girlfriend’s ambivalence toward…

Lamb

Superbly shot and movingly acted, Lamb traces the disturbing yet intimate friendship between a middle-aged man…

I Saw the Light

I Saw the Light tells the story of the iconic singer-songwriter Hank Williams, who revolutionized country…

Cheatin’

Oscar-nominated Bill Plympton, the “King of Indie Animation,” hand-draws and directs this animated adult tale of…

Bound: African vs African Americans

The divide between Africans and African Americans is complex and seldom explored. Opening with personal testimonials…

Return to Cuba: In the Footsteps of Walker Evans

Just weeks before the American and Cuban governments reconciled, a group of renowned photographers traveled to…