October 15-18, 2020
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MIDDLEBURG FILM FESTIVAL OCTOBER 15-18, 2020 MIDDLEBURGFILM.ORG 1 FILMS 3 76 DAYS On January 23, 2020 the city of Wuhan, with a population of 11 million people, went into mandatory lockdown. Raw and intimate, 76 Days documents the struggles of patients and frontline medical professionals in Wuhan, ground zero for the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The filmmakers capture the despair and fear of the patients and their families. They show the compassion and selflessness of the hospital workers, outfitted in full PPE. Every bed is full with many more waiting to get in. An elderly patient with dementia wanders the halls, confused about his whereabouts. A hospital worker sits at a desk piled with cell phones and the personal belongings of those who have passed. It is her job to call their families. When a first-time mother is rushed into surgery for an emergency C-section, her husband is forbidden to be by her side. For days, she waits anxiously to meet and hold her baby daughter. This is a searing and unforgettable account of Wuhan’s lockdown that would last for a terrifying 76 Days. COUNTRY: USA/China YEAR: 2020 RUNNING TIME: 93 minutes DIRECTORS: Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, Anonymous PRODUCERS: Hao Wu, Jean Tsien PRINT SOURCE: Dogwoof THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15 7:00 PM Virtual | available for 24 hours from start date 4 AMMONITE Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) spends her days combing the desolate, rocky beaches of Lyme Regis, along the Southern English coastline. A self-trained paleontologist, Mary was once renowned for her discoveries, housed in the British Museum. Now largely forgotten, she supports herself and her sickly, widowed mother by selling common fossils to tourists. It’s the 1840’s, and science is still a man’s world. Mary’s solitary existence is interrupted when a wealthy visitor asks her to look after his young wife, Charlotte (Saiorse Ronan), who is consumed by grief from a personal tragedy. Mary’s embittered facade begins to crack as she begrudgingly nurses Charlotte back to health. The companionship the two lonely women find in one another soon becomes an all-consuming, passionate love affair, infusing both with new-found strength and purpose to their lives. Directed by Francis Lee (God’s Own Country) and featuring exceptional performances by both Winslet and Ronan, Ammonite is already being hailed as an Oscar® contender. COUNTRY: UK YEAR: 2020 RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes DIRECTOR: Francis Lee PRIMARY CAST: Kate Winslet, Saiorse Ronan, Gemma Jones, James McArdle PRODUCERS: Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Fodhlay Cronin O’Reilly COMPOSERS: Dustin O’Halloran, Volker Bertelmann PRINT SOURCE: Neon SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 9:15 PM Salamander Grand Lawn & Drive-In 5 ASSASSINS In 2017, Kim Jong-nam – the half-brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un – was assassinated in the bustling departures hall of Malaysia’s international airport. The spectacularly brazen murder happened in broad daylight, filmed entirely by security cameras. Footage showed two young women approaching Jong-nam from behind, covering his eyes with their hands, and pressing VX – the most lethal nerve gas on earth – into his eyes. He stumbled away and was dead within an hour. But if the murder was extreme, the story that came next was even more bizarre: The two women who killed Jong- nam claimed they had simply been hired to pull a video prank and had no idea what they were really doing. The Malaysian government scoffed, arrested and imprisoned the women, and put them on trial for murder, facing execution. Directed by Ryan White (Dr. Ruth, The Case Against 8), Assassins is the wildly improbable tale of a calculating dictator, a nefarious plot, a very public murder, and two women fighting for their lives. COUNTRY: USA YEAR: 2020 RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes DIRECTOR: Ryan White PRODUCER: Jessica Hargrave COMPOSER: Blake Neely PRINT SOURCE: Greenwich Entertainment SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 10:00 AM Virtual | available for 24 hours from start date 6 BILLIE The extraordinary jazz singer, Billie Holiday, was only 44 when she died, her body ravaged from years of hard living and drug abuse. In the 1970’s, Linda Lipnack Kuehl, a journalist and devoted Billie Holiday fan, began recording more than 200 hours of interviews in order to write the definitive book about the legendary singer known as Lady Day. But Kuehl died in 1979, from an apparent suicide, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript and boxes of audio cassettes. These tapes are heard for the first time in this riveting documentary from director James Erskine. There are interviews with the singer’s family, friends, lovers, colleagues, musical greats Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Charles Mingus, and Sylvia Syms – and even the FBI agents who kept Billie under surveillance. Their recollections and insights, combined with archival footage, stills, and mesmerizing performance clips, including “Strange Fruit”, a song based on a poem about lynching, provide an unforgettable portrait of the incomparable Lady Day. COUNTRY: UK YEAR: 2020 RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes DIRECTOR: James Erskine PRODUCERS: Victoria Gregory, Barry Clark Ewers, James Erskine, Laure Vaysse PRINT SOURCE: Greenwich Entertainment SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 3:00 PM Virtual | available for 24 hours from start date 7 BLITHE SPIRIT It’s hard to resist a British comedy featuring Dame Judi Dench – and Blithe Spirit is no exception. Dench plays a spiritualist medium named Madame Arcati, who’s enlisted to conduct a séance by Charles (Dan Stevens), a crime novelist suffering from a severe case of writer’s block on his overdue screenplay. But things go terribly awry when Madame Arcati attempts to evoke her magical power. Instead of helping Charles, she accidentally summons the spirit of his late wife, Elvira (Leslie Mann), who died 5 years prior in a tragic accident. Not surprisingly, the return of Elvira (who is only visible to Charles) doesn’t go over well with his controlling, current wife, Ruth (Isla Fisher). What ensues is a hilarious love triangle, with both wives doing their best to sabotage the other. Directed by Edward Hall (Downton Abbey) and based on the play by Noel Coward, which he penned in 1941 as a wartime diversion. This latest Blithe Spirit production is a highly entertaining and much welcome distraction in 2020. COUNTRY: UK YEAR: 2020 RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes DIRECTOR: Edward Hall PRIMARY CAST: Judi Dench, Dan Stevens, Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher PRODUCERS: Nick Moorcroft, Meg Leonard, Hilary Bevan Jones COMPOSER: Simon Boswell PRINT SOURCE: IFC Films THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15 9:15 PM THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15 9:15 PM Salamander Grand Lawn Salamander Drive-In 8 COLLECTIVE On October 30, 2015, a deadly fire in a Bucharest nightclub claimed the lives of 27 people. Nearly 200 more were injured, but expected to recover. In the weeks and months that followed, dozens more began dying from their seemingly treatable injuries. Catalin Tolontan, the editor of an unlikely publication, Romania’s Sports Gazette, launched an investigation. What the sports editor and his team of reporters uncovered was beyond what anyone could have imagined – a health care scandal that went to highest level of government and would eventually oust their country’s Prime Minister. This is a riveting story of corruption and greed that will keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s also a testament to a team of intrepid journalists who were determined to discover the truth and hold accountable those who were responsible for the tragic, needless deaths of their citizens. Presented by The Washington Post Press Freedom Partnership. COUNTRY: Romania, Luxembourg YEAR: 2019 RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes DIRECTOR: Alexander Nanau PRODUCERS: Hanka Kastelicová, Bernard Michaux, Alexander Nanau COMPOSER: Kyan Bayani PRINT SOURCE: Magnolia Pictures SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 3:00 PM Virtual | available for 24 hours from start date 9 FRIDAY SPOTLIGHT FILM CONCRETE COWBOY After 15- year-old Cole (Caleb McLaughlin, Stranger Things) is expelled from school in Detroit, his single mother is terrified he will fall victim to a life on the streets. Seeing no other way to save her son, she takes Cole to live with his estranged father Harp (Idris Elba) in North Philadelphia for the summer. Harp is struggling with his own demons. He’s found a measure of peace buying and rehabilitating horses for inner city cowboys at the Fletcher Street Stables. An urban cowboy himself, Harp is part of a community of African American urban riders that dates back more than 100 years. As Cole struggles to heal the fractured relationship with his father, culture shock sets in and he’s desperate to get back to Detroit. Tasked with cleaning the stables, he begins hanging out with his drug-dealing cousin at night. When the community’s beloved stables and horses are seized by the city, Cole must make a decision on which path he will take. COUNTRY: USA YEAR: 2020 RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes DIRECTOR: Ricky Staub PRIMARY CAST: Idris Elba, Caleb McLaughlin, Jharrel Jerome, Lorraine Toussaint PRODUCERS: Lee Daniels, Tucker Tooley, Idris Elba COMPOSER: Kevin Matley PRINT SOURCE: Tucker Tooley Entertainment FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 6:45 PM FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 7:00 PM Salamander Grand Lawn & Drive-In Virtual | available for 24 hours from start date 10 THE DISSIDENT The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was critical of his beloved Saudi Arabia and of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s policies. On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul and never came out. His fiancée and dissidents around the world are left to piece together clues to his brutal murder—and in their dogged quest for truth, they expose a global cover-up perpetrated by the very country he loved. With exclusive access to the Turkish government’s evidence, to Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, and to Khashoggi’s close friend and fellow Saudi insurgent, Omar Abdulaziz, Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Bryan Fogel unearths hidden secrets in this real-life international thriller that will continue to rock the world long after the headlines have faded away.