The festival has also set Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s “La Bola Negra” as its Friday Spotlight and Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!” as its Sunday Spotlight. As previously announced, the festival will open with Jesse Eisenberg’s “The Debut.” Martin McDonagh, Brad Bird, Seth Rogen, Rosalind Eleazar, Guitarricadelafuente and casting directors Adam Caldwell and Bernard Telsey will be honored at this year’s festival. Billie Jean King and Bill Pullman are among the special guests.
Over the past decade, Middleburg has become a reliable fall stop for awards hopefuls. Being close to Washington, D.C., helps it draw national press and its small size gives filmmakers time for longer conversations with audiences. This year’s lineup continues that tradition.
Caldwell and Telsey will receive the festival’s Special Achievement in Casting Award and join a post-screening Q&A. The recognition arrives as the Academy’s achievement in casting category enters its second year. Representing “La Bola Negra,” Guitarricadelafuente wrote and performs the film’s original song, “La Nieve.” He will receive the International Spotlight Award, participate in a post-screening discussion and join the festival’s Songwriters and Composers Panel.
Gilroy will be on hand for a post-screening conversation following Searchlight Pictures’ “Behemoth!” where Pedro Pascal plays a gifted cellist and former child prodigy who returns to Los Angeles after two decades on the road to record film scores and confront his complicated family history. McDonagh will receive the Director Spotlight Award for “Wild Horse Nine,” also from Searchlight. Set just before the 1973 Chilean coup, the film stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as longtime CIA agents sent from Santiago to Easter Island, where they confront their dark pasts and a conspiracy unfolding around them.
Bird will receive the Spotlight Animation Award for Netflix’s “Ray Gunn,” a passion project more than 30 years in the making. Bird wrote and directed the sci-fi noir, which is set in Metropia, a city where humans and aliens live side by side. Rogen will receive the MFF Artistic Achievement Award at an “In Conversation with Seth Rogen” event covering several of his films at the festival.
He stars in Olivia Wilde’s A24 film “The Invite” alongside Wilde, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, playing one of two married couples whose relationships are tested by a dinner party that grows more unpredictable as the night goes on. Rogen also produced Leah Nelson’s animated film “Tangles” with Lauren Miller Rogen, Evan Goldberg and others. Based on Sarah Leavitt’s graphic memoir, it follows a young artist who moves home to care for her mother after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
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