Star power
Mill Valley Film Festival provides plenty of award season fodder
For this year’s 39th Mill Valley Film Festival, which opens Thursday, Oct. 6, the stars have aligned — in more ways than one.
Thanks to savvy leadership, a strategic spot on the awards season calendar, and spectacular scenery that is a hop, skip and jump away from Hollywood, the venerated Bay Area event has positioned itself as one of the country’s most important bellwethers of Oscar gold: Six of the past eight bestpicture winners have made their California or U.S. premieres in the picturesque Marin County environs.
And now, more than ever, the celebrity guest list is beginning to equal the wattage of the prestigious offerings. Don’t get us wrong: The Mill Valley Film Festival is no stranger to high-profile visitors; its past gallery of in-person honorees could fill up several red carpets.
But this year, the star power seems to have reached a new level, headlined by Nicole Kidman, the Academy Awardwinning actress who next Sunday, Oct. 9, will receive a career tribute and screen her new film, “Lion.” Also appearing will be such luminaries as Amy Adams, Emma Stone, Annette Bening, Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Ewan McGregor, James Franco, Edward James Olmos, Gael García Bernal, Aaron Eckhart, Amber Tamblyn, Carl Lumbly, Kerry Bishé and Connie Nielsen.
Many of these actors, who have garnered more than a dozen Academy Award nom- inations among them, are appearing in or directing new films that are already generating Oscar buzz. For them, Mill Valley represents a serious yet relatively relaxed venue to promote their projects.
History is on their side. In the past eight years, the bestpicture winners that played at the festival are “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008), “The King’s Speech” (2010), “The Artist” (2011), “Argo” (2012), “12 Years a Slave” (2013), and “Spotlight” (2015).
During the two “down” years of that era, Mill Valley screened three best-picture nominees in 2009 (“An Education,” “Precious,” “Up in the Air”), and the same number in 2014 (“The Imitation Game,” “The Theory of Everything,” “Whiplash”), topped off by the appearance of “Theory’s”
best-actor Oscar winner, Eddie Redmayne.
In 2006, the festival welcomed both the eventual Oscar winners for best actor and best actress: Forest Whitaker (“Last King of Scotland”) and Helen Mirren (“The Queen”).
Yet the Mill Valley Film Festival is much more than a pre-Oscar splash. Its formidable section of international films consistently features many of the Cannes winners, including this year’s “I, Daniel Blake” (Palme d’Or) from Great Britain, and “The Salesman” (awards at Cannes for best actor and best screenplay) from Iran. Veteran actresses Isabelle Huppert, from France, and Sonia Braga, from Brazil, also have highly regarded films in the lineup.
The festival has always been a showcase for documentaries and for Bay Area filmmakers, and this year is no exception. Some of the local highlights include “Company Town,” a look at how incumbent Supervisor Julie Christensen squared off against challenger Aaron Peskin over Airbnb; “Unleashed,” a San Francisco story of pets that are incarnated as humans; and “Circus Kid,” a beguiling documentary about a kid and his father who were in San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus.
And last but not least, there will be nine nights of music at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, featuring about every genre under the stars.