WTOP's Jason Fraley previews the Middleburg Film Festival (Part 1)
Are you looking for a special sneak peek at future Oscar contenders before they are even released nationwide?
The 11th annual Middleburg Film Festival returns to Middleburg, Virginia, next week from Oct. 19-22 at the Salamander Resort & Spa and other cool venues around the rustic town of wineries and horseback riding.
The lineup kicks off Thursday, Oct. 19 with the opening night screening of “Rustin,” starring Emmy-winner Colman Domingo as civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, the architect of the 1963 March on Washington who was pushed to the background due to his sexuality. Director George C. Wolfe will be presented with the festival’s Impact Award.
Friday, Oct. 20 honors Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino with the Distinguished Composer Award. The Loudoun Symphony Orchestra will perform a tribute concert to his prolific career, including Pixar’s “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “Coco,” as well as live-action blockbusters like “Star Trek,” “Jurassic World,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Spider- Man: No Way Home,” “War for the Planet of the Apes” and “The Batman.”
Friday also brings “The Zone of Interest” by director Jonathan Glazer, who previously made the creepy sci-fi thriller “Under the Skin” (2013). Based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, the film follows Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the concentration camp. The historical drama won the Grand Prix and FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Saturday, Oct. 21 brings a special tribute to Oscar winner Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”), who will receive the Agnès Varda Trailblazing Film Artist Award. The festival will also screen her latest film “Saltburn,” starring Barry Keoghan as Oxford University student Oliver Quick, who finds himself drawn into the world of a charming aristocrat, who invites him for a summer retreat to his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, Saltburn.
Saturday also presents “The Holdovers,” the latest by writer/director Alexander Payne of “The Descendants” (2011) and “Nebraska” (2013).Payne reunites with “Sideways” star Paul Giamatti, who plays a curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit students with nowhere to go. He eventually forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker.
It all culminates Sunday, Oct. 22 with the closing night film “Maestro,” the second directorial feature by Bradley Cooper after “A Star is Born” (2018). Coproduced by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, the biopic chronicles the life of legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and his wife Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (Carey Mulligan) over the course of their nearly three decades of marriage in postwar New York City.
Hailed by The Washington Post for “his savantlike ability to name every Best Picture winner in history," Jason Fraley began at WTOP as Morning Drive Writer in 2008, film critic in 2011 and Entertainment Editor in 2014, providing daily arts coverage on-air and online.
