Virginia Film Festival

The Smell of Money

The overwhelming stench of pork products is infiltrating the air of eastern North Carolina. The Smell…

The Lives Between the Lines

World Premiere This intimate, powerful film documents the inspiration for and construction of the Memorial to…

Klondike

Official Oscar© Selection—Ukraine | Best Director Award Winner, 2022 Sundance Film Festival Klondike tells the story…

Good Boy

Screens before the feature film LIQUOR STORE DREAMS. A young Korean American with dreams of launching…

Portraits From A Fire

Tyler, an eccentric and lonely teenager, spends his days Vlogging (video blogging) his Indigenous community and…

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Lady Chatterley (Emma Corrin, The Crown), a wealthy young woman born into a life of immense…

Empire of Light

CLOSING FILM Academy Award-winning Director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, 1917) presents a love letter to the…

Devotion

Set in the Korean War, Devotion captures the tale of the U.S. Navy's first Black aviator, Jesse…

Good Night Oppy

In 2003, NASA sent Opportunity, a robotic rover, to Mars for a planned 90-day mission. Fifteen…

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

OPENING NIGHT FILM Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is the thrilling, star-studded standalone sequel to…

Descendant

2022 Sundance Film Festival, US Documentary Special Jury Award Winner Three miles north of downtown Mobile,…

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

Official Oscar© Selection—Mexico The latest film from five-time Academy Award-winner Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, Birdman, Amores…

2022 Opening Night Gala

21+ Event Join us for the start of the Virginia Film Festival at the Opening Night…

2022 Late Night Wrap Party

21+ Event Before the credits roll on the 35th annual Festival, join us at the Late…

Smooth Talk

Suspended between carefree youth and the harsh realities of the adult world, a teenage girl experiences…

Saint Omer

Grand Jury Prize Winner, 2022 Venice Film Festival The groundbreaking narrative debut from acclaimed documentarian Alice…

Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest

Director Nancy Svendsen captures the inspirational and ultimately tragic tale of Pasang Lhamu Sherpa’s journey to…

Tug of War

Official Oscar© Selection—Tanzania Denge is a revolutionary fighting for freedom from British colonial rule in his…

Short Films: Oh, The People You’ll Meet!

Program followed by Q&A with filmmakers from Runaway (director Eric Hurt, producer Jack Steinberg, producer Ty…

Short Films: It Only Takes Two

Program followed by Q&A with filmmakers from Home of the Brave (Ian Michael Welfley), Father Figure…

Powerlands

Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso is a young Navajo filmmaker investigating the displacement of her ancestors and…

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting chronicles the movement to end the use…

Short Films: All You Need Is Love

Program followed by Q&A with filmmakers and subjects from Tuning René Marie (Polina Buchak, Rachel Kessler,…

Ten Months

Mirae seemingly has everything going for her. She is a game engineer for an ambitious start-up,…

Mama’s Boy with Dustin Lance Black

Adapted from Black's memoir Mama's Boy: A Story from our Americas, this retrospective documentary chronicles the…

Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power

Emmy Award-winning directors Sam Pollard and Geeta Gandbhir combine first-hand accounts with striking archival footage to…

The Inspection

Inspired by writer-director Elegance Bratton’s own true story, The Inspection follows the journey of a young…

Heaven: To the Land of Happiness

Nam Sik, a meek hospital worker, desperately needs a costly medicine to treat his terminal illness.…

The Five Devils

Joanne and Jimmy live in a small, foggy village in the French alps with Vicky, their…

Eternal Spring

Official Oscar© Selection—Canada In March 2002, the outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong hijacked a state TV…

Close

Official Oscar© Selection—Belgium | 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Grand Prize Winner Thirteen-year-old neighbors Léo and Rémi…

Broker

2022 Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Winner, Song Kang-ho Hirokazu Kore-eda presents a humanistic, humorous, and philosophical…

All that Breathes

As masses of birds fall from the smog-filled skies of New Delhi amid environmental distress and…

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Golden Lion Winner, 2022 Venice Film Festival Academy-Award winning documentarian Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) chronicles the internationally…

Alcarràs

Official Oscar© Selection—Spain | Golden Bear Winner, 2022 Berlin Film Festival For as long as the…

After Sherman

Filmmaker Jon Sesrie-Goff travels to his minister father’s birthplace in Coastal South Carolina in the aftermath…

Vaychiletik

Vaychiletik (Dreams) tells the story of José Pérez, who the gods have granted the gift of…

Utama

Official Oscar© Selection—Bolivia Virginio and Sisa, an indigenous elderly couple living in the Bolivian highlands, have…

Under the Fig Trees

Official Oscar© Selection—Tunisia A group of teenagers in rural northwest Tunisia spend a summer working in…

Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb

The story of a friendship that spans five decades, this informative documentary explores Robert Caro and…

Straighten Up and Fly Right

Kristen (Kristen Abate) is a 20-something New Yorker, dreams of being a writer while making ends…

Stay Awake

Ethan and Derek are two brothers who are on the cusp of adulthood, yet leaving home…

Songs About Love

US Premiere A bittersweet black-and-white film about a young musician searching for his path in life,…

The Son

Hugh Jackman stars alongside Academy Award®-winners Laura Dern and Anthony Hopkins as a man whose life…

Scarlet

In a time of dramatic change, World War I veteran Raphaël returns to his village in…

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams

In the early 20th century, a young, impoverished Italian cobbler sailed from Naples to the United…

Refuge

Deep in the American South, Clarkston, Georgia, is a small rural town reminiscent of a United…

Nosferatu

100th Anniversary Screening w/Live Music A genre-defining film for the ages, Nosferatu celebrates its 100th anniversary…

My Father’s Dragon

FAMILY CENTERPIECE SCREENING Based on the beloved 1948 Newberry Award-winning children’s book, My Father’s Dragon is…

Mama Boy

Xiao-hong, a painfully shy, almost thirty-year-old fish store employee, lives alongside his control-freak mother, Meiling, who…

Living

The year is 1953. London is still rebuilding from the devastation of World War II, and…

Liquor Store Dreams

Preceded by short film GOOD BOY. Liquor Store Dreams follows director So Yun Um and her…

The Levys of Monticello

After his death in 1826, Thomas Jefferson left behind a mountain of personal debt, forcing his…

Karaoke

Karaoke follows Meir and Tova, a middle-class couple in their 60s who are getting tired of…

Huesera

Best New Narrative and Nora Ephron Prize Winner, 2022 Tribeca Film Festival After years of trying…

The Hole in the Fence

A group of boys from a prestigious Mexican private school attends an exclusive summer camp designed…

Headwaters Down

Once considered the most polluted waterway in the United States, the James River is no stranger…

Hazing

Byron Hurt explores the history and culture of hazing, a widespread, far-reaching practice that has long…

Hard Shell, Soft Shell

Az is a hopelessly romantic (or just hopeless?) twenty-something oyster farmer, plying his trade in the…

Godland

San Sebastian Film Festival Winner, Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Jury Award Upon arrival to the Danish colony of Iceland…

From Sudan to Argentina

World Premiere When the construction of the Aswan High Dam threatened to destroy the Ancient Egyptian…

Fashion Reimagined

For Amy Powney, the creative director of Mother of Pearl fashion brand, the fashion industry's contribution…

EO

Official Oscar© Selection—Poland At age 84, legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski (The Deep End, Moonlighting) has directed…

Devil Put the Coal in the Ground

Devil Put the Coal in the Ground creatively examines the historical impact of the extractive coal…

Clarissa’s Battle

Clarissa Doutherd is a single Black mother and activist living in Oakland, California who, after becoming…

Dani’s Twins

Dani’s Twins follows the pregnancy and early parenting life of Dani Izzie, a Virginia resident who…

The Cow Who Sang a Song Into The Future

Following the disappearance of thousands of fish in a river in southern Chile, a several decades-deceased…

Concerned Citizen

Things are going well for Ben and Raz, a well-to-do gay couple from Tel Aviv. After…

Black Fiddlers

The product of an intensive year's worth of uninterrupted field research, Black Fiddlers explores the legacy of African…

Beautiful Beings

2023 Oscar® Selection, Iceland Addi, a teenage boy raised by a clairvoyant mother, is the nominal…

Tekahionwake, Pauline

E. Pauline Johnson was a powerful wordsmith who traveled the North American continent sometimes in vaudeville-esque…

Scream

A year after her mother’s death, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campell) and her friends are terrorized by…

Little Shop of Horrors

Florist Seymour Krelborn (Rick Moranis) has his life completely upended when he finds a mysterious plant…

Dracula

Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) has just arrived in London with his thralls, bent on hunting down…

Searching for Luke

Screens before the feature film Monkey Beach. A young woman can't shake the mysterious figure who…

A Critical Eye Panel

Join nationally recognized journalists and film critics for a discussion on the current state of film…

Short Films: Facing Reality

Curated by our guest programmer, Joe Fab, this collection of shorts includes: Full Picture; "Hello," We…

Short Films: Being Human

Curated by our guest programmer, Joe Fab, this collection of shorts includes: Calf Rope, Feeling Through, Weep Not,…

9/11: Inside the President’s War Room

This insightful documentary explores the hours immediately after the attacks on 9/11 from the angle of…

The Lost Daughter

Based on the novel by Elena Ferrante, Leda (Olivia Colman) is a middle-aged divorcée devoted to…