Ten days, five venues, and a lineup that runs from
a McDonagh-Rockwell
reunion to Lee
Chang-dong's long-awaited comeback — the 49th
edition of the Mill Valley Film
Festival (MVFF49), presented by the California Film Institute
(CAFILM), is shaping up to be one of the festival's biggest
years yet. The MVFF49 runs Thursday, October 1 through Sunday,
October 11, 2026, with 94 features and 80 shorts from 45
countries, screening across the Sequoia Cinema in Mill Valley,
the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, the
Lark Theater in Larkspur, and BAMPFA in Berkeley.
Opening Night on October 1 belongs to "Wild Horse
Nine" (UK/USA/Chile 2026 | 118 min.), the fifth
film from writer-director Martin
McDonagh, fresh off premieres at Venice and
Telluride. John Malkovich
and Sam Rockwell
play CIA officers dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island
just before the 1973 Chilean coup, and Rockwell sticks around
the following day to receive MVFF's Actor Tribute.
The Centerpiece film, "I Play
Rocky" (USA 2026 | 127 min.),
is Peter
Farrelly's account of how Sylvester Stallone talked his
way into starring in his own script. Anthony
Ippolito has drawn raves for his uncanny turn as the young
Stallone.
The festival closes on October 11 with Jesse
Eisenberg's "The
Debut" (USA 2026 | 105 min.), his third feature as
writer-director. Julianne Moore
plays a shy New Jersey housewife who loses herself in a local
musical production, opposite Paul Giamatti
as the domineering director who pushes her there.
Beyond the Big Nights, The MVFF49 runs a full slate of Spotlight
and Tribute programs pairing filmmakers and actors with
onstage conversations around their new work, plus a tribute
with a live performance to songwriter and
producer Linda
Perry. The MVFF49 also debuts two new sections, New Directors
and Animation, spotlighting first-time and emerging filmmakers
alongside animated features.
Documentaries have an unusually strong presence this year,
including new work from veteran nonfiction
filmmakers: "When A Witness
Recants" (USA 2026 | 112 min.), Dawn Porter's
account of three Black Baltimore teens wrongfully imprisoned
for 36 years; "Union
Town" (USA 2026 | 106 min.), Barbara
Kopple's look at New York City delivery workers organizing
against UPS and Amazon; "Musk"
(UK/USA 2026 | 225 min.), Alex Gibney's
exhaustive portrait of the tech billionaire;
and "My Undesirable
Friends: Part II – Exile" (USA 2026 | in
Russian | 355 min.), Julia Loktev's
continuation of her chronicle of Russian journalists in
exile. They're joined by "Everest: The
Other Side" (USA/China/Nepal 2026 | 110 min.),
about ski mountaineers attempting Everest's North
Face; "Burgundy"
(France 2026 | in French | 90 min.), a portrait of the French
wine region's winemakers and workers; and two directorial
feature debuts: photographer Alessandra
Sanguinetti's "The Illusion of
an Everlasting Summer" (Argentina/USA 2026 | in
Spanish | 94 min.), tracing two cousins growing up in the
Argentine Pampas over 25 years, and
musician Sean Ono
Lennon's "threeasFOUR:
Full Circle" (USA 2026), a portrait of the
avant-garde New York fashion collective. The festival also
just added the West Coast premiere of "NAZA"
(UK 2026 | 80 min.), Yuval Abraham
and Rachel Szor's
Venice Special Jury Prize winner examining the systems behind
Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza.
And within the broader lineup,
Asian cinema has an especially strong showing this year, led
by two returning masters. Hirokazu
Koreeda brings the Bay Area premiere
of "Look
Back"
(ルックバック | Japan 2026
| in Japanese | 100 min.), a live-action adaptation of Tatsuki
Fujimoto's manga about two middle-school girls, the outgoing
Fujino and the reclusive Kyomoto, who bond over drawing and
grow up together as manga artists. Alongside it is Lee
Chang-dong's "Possible
Love" (가능한 사랑 |
South Korea 2026 | in Korean | 164 min.), his first feature in
eight years, which won the Grand Jury Prize and FIPRESCI Prize
at Venice this fall and is South Korea's Oscar submission; it
arrives at the MVFF with an Auteur Award and Spotlight slot on
October 2. Rounding out the sidebar: "Elephants in
the Fog"
(तिनीहरू | Nepal
2026 | in Nepali | 103 min.), Abinash Bikram
Shah's debut about a Kinnar community, which won the Un
Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes this year;
and "A Girl
Unknown" (China/France 2026 | in Mandarin | 125
min.), Zou Jing's
Cannes Critics' Week-winning debut about China's one-child
policy. Both of the latter land in the New Directors
section.
Other masters have work in the festival
too. Pedro
Almodóvar's "Bitter
Christmas" (Amarga Navidad | Spain 2026 | in
Spanish | 111 min.) screens as part of the
lineup. James Gray is
on hand with a Spotlight Program of his own
for "Paper
Tiger" (USA/Brazil/Italy 2026 | 115 min.), his
Cannes-selected crime drama starring Adam
Driver, Scarlett
Johansson, and Miles Teller
as a Queens family entangled with the Russian mob in 1986.
The festival also leans into its Bay Area roots, with local
films screening alongside the bigger premieres,
including Beth de
Araújo's "Josephine"
(USA 2026 | 121 min.), shot in San Francisco and
starring Channing Tatum
and Gemma Chan as
parents of a young girl, Josephine (Mason
Reeves), coping with trauma after witnessing a violent
crime.
Awards season regulars know to watch Mill Valley's lineup
closely, and the MVFF49 won't break that habit. It's the same
story every year: a run of international discoveries deep
enough to make the whole festival feel like a treat for Bay
Area film lovers, not just an Oscar preview.
What follows are reviews of a few films from this year's
program.
Click on each film title or poster to view showtimes and
ticket details on the MVFF49's
official website.
Between the two masters getting Auteur Awards this
year, it would be easy to miss the film that might be
the best thing at the MVFF49
entirely: Fernando
Eimbcke's arresting fifth
feature "Flies,"
which won two prizes out of Berlin this year and
hasn't lost an ounce of its charge since.
Olga (Teresita
Sánchez) has built a life out of routine,
alone in a sprawling Mexico City apartment complex
across from a hospital, until money troubles push her
to rent out a room. Her new tenant (Hugo
Ramírez) turns out to have smuggled in more
than his luggage: his nine-year-old son, Cristian
(Bastian
Escobar), whose mother is in the hospital across
the street. What starts as an intrusion Olga never
agreed to slowly becomes the first real connection
she's let herself have in years.
Escobar, in his acting debut, is the film's live wire
as the mesmerizing young boy Cristian, who escapes
into an invented arcade game called Cosmic Defenders
Pro whenever the real world gets to be too much. He
gives Cristian a curiosity that refuses to be dimmed
by circumstance, and his determination to see his mom
cracks Olga open scene by scene. Ramírez, a
veteran stage actor making his feature film debut,
gives a natural performance as Cristian's father, and
his every move and word carries the weight of a man
trying to stay hopeful through something genuinely
terrible. He shows the deepest affection to Cristian
and brings him hope while doing his best to survive.
Hugo Ramírez and Bastian Escobar
in Flies
The bond that eventually forms between Olga and
Cristian recalls Walter
Salles's "Central
Station" (1998), another story of a guarded
woman and a young boy finding in each other something
neither expected to need. Eimbcke doesn't chase that
film's scale, and the film is better for staying
small: shot in black and white by cinematographer
María
Secco, it finds its poetry in apartment hallways,
hospital waiting rooms, and the ordinary rhythms of
two strangers slowly becoming family.
"Flies"
won the Berliner Morgenpost Readers' Jury Award and
the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at this year's
Berlinale, and it's not hard to see why: this is a
film that earns its emotion honestly, without ever
reaching for it. It's easily one of the best films at
the MVFF49 this year, and not one to miss.
