The always exquisitely curated NashFilm, the Nashville Film Festival, opens on Thursday, September 18 and runs through September 24 with a diverse menu of cinema. The Nashville Film Festival is the oldest running film festival in the South (this is the 56th!) and is an Academy Award qualifying festival. The program includes a mix of indies, docs and international cinema, including world and North American premieres.
The most high profile events at NashFilm will be:
- Opening night’s Man on the Run, the story of Paul McCartney’s life and career after the breakup of the Beatles, fresh off its world premiere two weeks ago at Telluride. Director Morgan Neville has delivered two of the very best recent biodocs (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain).
- Nicole Kidman will appear personally for Q&A and a special screening of Cold Mountain.
- The centerpiece biodoc John Candy: I Like Me.
- The closing night film, Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring Diego Luna, Tonatiuh and Jennifer Lopez.
- Omaha, an indie drama starring John Magaro that garnered buzz at Sundance.
- Rebuilding, another Sundance indie drama starring Josh O’Connor.
- The Baltimorons, the first film directed by Jay Duplass since 2012, a sweet and funny film that won the Best Narrative Feature Audience Award at SXSW.
The Nashville Film Festival embraces its home in Music City with a strong program of music films. This year, NashFilm celebrates the beloved John Prine with You Got Gold. There’s also Finding Lucinda, a singer-songwriter’s road trip to explore the stories that formed the powerfully raw songs of Lucinda Williams. There are also documentary features on genre-buster Sun Ra, grunge icon Eddie Vedder, Gospel artist Carl Bean, emerging flamenco star Yerai Cortés and Christian rappers LeCrae and the 116 Clique. It’s hard to imagine a more diverse slate of music docs.
My favorite element of most NashFilm fests is the discovery of new auteurs with their ballyhooed first films. This year’s slate includes these first films:
- Peacock: new Austrian director Bernhard Wenger won a prize at Venice, where his droll debut was also nominated for Best Film in the Critic’s Week.
- Mad Bills to Pay: the Bronx’s Joel Alfonso Vargas was nominated for Best First Film at Berlin and won a NEXT Special Jury Award at Sundance
- Color Book: Atlanta’s David Fortune has won eight festival awards in the US and France with his inaugural film.
- Fucktoys: Nashville’s hometown girl Annapurna Sriram, who also stars, won a Special Jury award at SXSW with her first feature.
- Slanted: Chinese-Australian filmmaker Amy Wang won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW with her calling card.
All in all, this year’s NashFilm presents 140 films from 30 countries. Peruse the program and get tickets. I’ll be publishing my fest recommendations on September 16. Here’s the trailer for The Baltimorons.