Films

A French doctor who treats Alzheimer’s patients and a Japanese theater director form a bond that is intellectual, creative, and spiritual in Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s humorous, painful, and constantly surprising drama.

When a mining project threatens her ancestral lands, Sámi reindeer herder Maia calls upon her estranged uncle for legal advice, but his return opens deep familial wounds in indigenous Sámi filmmaker Elle Sofe Sara’s inventive, visually arresting musical drama.

A car becomes the connective tissue of director Stephanie Ahn’s absorbing, Sundance award-winning debut, as an accident brings two broken souls together, drawing them into an intimate, if fumbling, relationship.

When life becomes fiction, the boundaries begin to blur. Pedro Almodóvar turns filmmaking, memory, desire, and betrayal into a colorful, melodramatic journey fueled by singer-songwriter Chavela Vargas’s music and the director’s unmistakable cinematic flair.

Kona is a forest-dwelling cat who lives with her mom and grandma. When her mother disappears, Kona embarks on a quest to find her alongside Colin, an orphaned pup, and Bernard, a runaway circus bear.

In Florian Zeller’s elegant psychological drama, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are successful professionals (architect and editor, respectively) married to their work, and to each other. Paul Dano, Stephen Graham, and Patrick Schwarzenegger co-star.

Esiri brothers Arie and Chuko transposes Mrs. Dalloway’s timeless story to contemporary Nigeria in this fiery reimagining of the Virginia Woolf classic, starring a luminous, profoundly melancholic Sophie Okonedo as the eponymous Lagos society woman.

Two soldiers fall in love amidst World War I in celebrated Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s (Close) latest work. Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne shared Best Actor at Cannes for this tender drama that mixes sensual sex scenes with stark combat sequences.

Julianne Moore is a suburban housewife who yearns to perform in her New Jersey hometown’s latest theater production and Paul Giamatti is the director who must coax out her inner diva in Jesse Eisenberg’s sharp, funny musical comedy.

A Bulgarian archaeologist investigates the disappearance of a former lover in this absorbing Cannes prizewinner. German director Valeska Grisebach works with a nonprofessional cast to create a slow-burn thriller with the grit of a Western and the scope of Chinatown.

In the forests of southern Nepal, a mother searches for her missing daughter as wild elephants roam the night, in a haunting and tender story of chosen family, belonging, and survival.

After playing composer Richard Rodgers in Blue Moon and RAF meteorologist James Stagg in Pressure, Andrew Scott hits the biopic trifecta with his portrayal of Ian Charleson as the actor prepares to play his final role, Hamlet.

When his bass player dies in a car accident, grieving jazz pianist Bill Evans stops playing and retreats to his parents’ home in this stunning drama that unreels with the rhythm of improvised music.

Austrian writer/director Sandra Wollner won the Cannes Un Certain Regard Award for this unique, immersive drama that follows a family on a journey to Tenerife a year after a tragedy.

In Molly Manners’ witty and winsome debut about the pains of girlhood, quirky British boarding school besties Flic and Minna decide to become worldly Oxbridge candidates by getting some practice in romance.

An unforgettable study of identity, family, and generational remorse, the stunning Fatherland traces the relationship between renowned writer Thomas Mann and his accomplished actress-writer daughter Erika amidst the ruins of postwar Germany.

Norway’s inflexible child protection laws disrupt the lives of a devout immigrant family in Cristian Mungiu’s atmospheric Palme d’Or-winning family drama and legal thriller, starring superstars Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan.

A lonely woman, a mischievous nine-year-old, and an unexpected friendship transform an ordinary apartment into a tender, funny world of connection, beautifully captured in Fernando Eimbcke's luminous black-and-white film.

The lives of a musician and a police detective unexpectedly dovetail in Marie Kreutzer’s (Corsage, MVFF45) latest provocative drama when a search warrant for a filmmaker’s hard drives upends the life of his wife.

Producers embrace journeyman actor-turned-screenwriter Sylvester Stallone’s boxing story, but no studio wants to invest in a film without a star—and Stallone wrote the part of Rocky Balboa for himself—in this behind-the-scenes drama charting the making of Rocky.

Some things arrive in waves: sunlight, joy, but also grief and loss. Director Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated adaptation of AJ Dungo’s 2019 graphic novel is an indelible story of love between two teenagers and their passion for each other and the sea.

Three eras, one buried story. La bola negra is a mesmerizing cinematic journey through love, memory, persecution, and the quiet wounds passed from one generation to the next, told with haunting beauty.

French teenagers take a summer class trip to Naples, Italy, in this marvelous coming-of-age film that is subtle, mysterious, and intelligent. Marine Atlan’s feature debut garnered the Cannes Critics Week Best Picture award.

In this striking neo-noir debut, a fiercely independent Lagos taxi driver’s careful life is upended when she becomes the driver for a group of glamorous, reckless sex workers—including her long-lost childhood friend.

When their overburdened mother abandons her family to join an all-female commune, her teenage daughters try to break the leader’s iron grip in Guy Nattiv’s heart-wrenching slow-burn psychological thriller, inspired by his own family history.

Andrew Haigh tells an intimate, tenderly heartbreaking tale of personal awakening and familial reckoning set in the gorgeously snow-clad Mountain West of the 1950s, starring Fred Hechinger in a stunning turn.

Finding the love of your life can be exhilarating and a little crazy. Margaret Qualley creates a nuanced portrait of a young woman on the verge as a nurse whose life is upturned by the pandemic.

In AIDS-era New York, an artist throws himself into work, love, music, and desire, surrounded by people who challenge the boundaries of intimacy, loyalty, and the life he wants to live.

Against the backdrop of Chile’s transition to democracy, a disappearance at a ski resort pulls a nine-year-old girl into the adults’ pact of silence in director Manuela Martelli’s unnerving political allegory.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s first feature in a decade, this chilling reimagining of La femme infidèle and Unfaithful masterfully explores the depths of corruption in Putin’s Russia through a story of crime and infidelity.

Slow Horses’ Rosalind Eleazar delivers a sexy, funny, anguished performance as the one-time star of a hit TV show urgently striving for a single piece of career good luck in Chris Rock’s strikingly truthful showbiz tale.

With their third collaboration, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson continue to caress our humanity through a tender coming-of-age tale. Attuned to the mysterious ebbs and flows of grief with humor and heartbreak, Mouse is a gentle stunner.

After losing her son in a tragic accident, a mother travels from one family to another carrying an apology that may be impossible to accept, in Gabriel Martins' delicate, deeply human meditation on grief and forgiveness.

Noah Segan delivers an elegant love letter to one of cinema’s favorite towns through the five-borough odyssey of an old-world pickpocket trying to make it right with a crime family he accidentally antagonized.

Mining the country’s past through a personal New York story of derailed ambitions, James Gray dismantles the notion of the American Dream with a harrowing, ‘80s-set crime-thriller. His finest film to date feels like a new classic.

A woman facing an early Alzheimer’s diagnosis and the possibility of her teenage son’s imprisonment, joins a poetry class and works on a single poem in Lee Chang-dong’s exquisite drama.

A hesitant, complex relationship develops between two married couples when a wealthy, well-meaning pair befriends working-class partners, victims of brutal economic injustice.

Johnny Flynn and John C. Reilly star as community leaders confronting wildfire and other threats in a small Western town in 1870. Dara Van Dusen’s feature debut is both familiar and eerily apocalyptic—a notable accomplishment.

A family faces an impossible question when love and responsibility collide, as three generations of women navigate aging, desire, independence, and the unexpected ways we care for one another.

While preparing for an upcoming swimming trip to Brazil, best friends La Maestra and Paula see their bright futures upended one fateful night. First-time feature director Fernanda Tovar crafts a moving coming-of-age drama in this Berlinale award winner.

MVFF partners with CalArts, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, California College of the Arts, and CSU Long Beach for a stellar showcase of animated work directed by female and nonbinary filmmakers. This selection features films reflecting family, friendship, life, death, and cultural identity.

MVFF partners with CalArts, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA and CSU Long Beach for a second showcase of animated work directed by female and nonbinary filmmakers. Films include kid-friendly topics like animals, family, friendship, big dreams, and outer space. Appropriate for grades 1-5 (ages 6-10)

When the local pool closes, pre-teen Pola leads the charge to save it in this upbeat and inspiring story of activism, kid-style, and the enduring power of friendship, awash in wildly creative costumes, musical dance numbers, and fabulous young talent.

Legendary auteur Mike Leigh turns his trademark humanist lens on the lives of best friends Rosie and Amy, social workers dealing with demanding clients and Amy’s aging parents. It’s a precarious work-life balance…but nothing a glass of wine can’t fix.

MVFF tributee Sam Rockwell won an Oscar® for his role as a hotheaded, dimwitted cop battling Frances McDormand’s raging, inconsolable mother in Martin McDonagh’s black comic, renegade masterpiece.

What begins with an unexpected connection between two families becomes a tender, quietly funny portrait of love, loss, and belonging, reminding us that sometimes the family we find is the one we never imagined.

A pair of CIA agents, Easter Island, and a mysterious assignment: Martin McDonagh delivers a darkly funny, visually stunning thriller fueled by the irresistible chemistry of John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell.

A French doctor who treats Alzheimer’s patients and a Japanese theater director form a bond that is intellectual, creative, and spiritual in Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s humorous, painful, and constantly surprising drama.

After playing composer Richard Rodgers in Blue Moon and RAF meteorologist James Stagg in Pressure, Andrew Scott hits the biopic trifecta with his portrayal of Ian Charleson as the actor prepares to play his final role, Hamlet.

The lives of a musician and a police detective unexpectedly dovetail in Marie Kreutzer’s (Corsage, MVFF45) latest provocative drama when a search warrant for a filmmaker’s hard drives upends the life of his wife.

Three eras, one buried story. La bola negra is a mesmerizing cinematic journey through love, memory, persecution, and the quiet wounds passed from one generation to the next, told with haunting beauty.

Slow Horses’ Rosalind Eleazar delivers a sexy, funny, anguished performance as the one-time star of a hit TV show urgently striving for a single piece of career good luck in Chris Rock’s strikingly truthful showbiz tale.

With their third collaboration, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson continue to caress our humanity through a tender coming-of-age tale. Attuned to the mysterious ebbs and flows of grief with humor and heartbreak, Mouse is a gentle stunner.

Mining the country’s past through a personal New York story of derailed ambitions, James Gray dismantles the notion of the American Dream with a harrowing, ‘80s-set crime-thriller. His finest film to date feels like a new classic.

A hesitant, complex relationship develops between two married couples when a wealthy, well-meaning pair befriends working-class partners, victims of brutal economic injustice.

Sam Rockwell will be honored with a special MVFF Tribute Program, featuring a screening of Wild Horse Night, clips from his career, and an in-depth conversation, and preceded by an earlier screening of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, another Martin McDonagh film starring Rockwell, whose performance earned him an Academy Award.

A breakup from the point of view of a young woman hoping to glue the pieces together but discovering that some broken things cannot be fixed.

A snow monkey bathing in a natural hot spring has an out-of-body experience and requires some well-trained snowflakes to revive him with their magical powers.

What happens when what you thought you wanted no longer fulfills. Should you take that giant leap into the unknown?

A moving tale of three generations of Chinese women whose dreams and struggles are linked by one pair of scissors.

A beautifully told first-person account of a youthful stowaway who finds solace and companionship with the ship’s cat.

A child of divorce learns how to appreciate time with Mom and time with Dad in a family that is together but apart.

When the agents from the underworld come to her door, an elderly woman resists their call until certain conditions are met.

Inspired by the life of Queen Hsin Phyu Ma Shin and the late 19th-century massacre at Mandalay Palace—a tale of intrigue among the royalty in Myanmar.