Falling for Film Festivals | Middleburg Film Festival 2025 Highlights & Award Season Buzz

Alexandria, VA – Fall is for film festival lovers. Forget the upcoming holidays. Never mind leaf peeping in the Shenandoah. The Middleburg Film Festival is the place to be.

Last month the Middleburg Film Festival celebrated its 13th year bringing the best of the best in film. Annually the MFF showcases productions destined to dominate the awards season. To date the curated film selections have garnered 76 Academy Awards with five winning Best Picture Oscars: Spotlight, Moonlight, Parasite, Green Book, and Nomadland.

At Z MovieZ was present for all of them. Last year’s festival screened 15 films that went on to win Academy Awards, among other prized accolades. Including Best Picture (Anora), Best Director (Sean Baker, Anora), Best Actress (Mikey Madison, Anora), Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez), and Best Adapted Screenplay to Virginia’s own Cord Jefferson (American Fiction, starring DC native Jeffrey Wright).

Cord Jefferson and Zoe Saldaña both were in attendance at last year’s MFF with Saldaña receiving the Spotlight Actor Award for her performance in the musical/drama Emilia Pérez. This year the Spotlight Actor Award went to Colin Farrell for his role in Ballad of a Small Player.

Why Film Festivals Matter

Film festivals represent diversity in filmmaking, challenging geopolitical posturing and sociocultural mores. Much as protest literature is credited with a long history of effecting change (from Thomas Paine to Tupac), movies bring to light timely issues in a rapidly changing world.

Returning to Middleburg after his 2018 impactful movie-making achievement with Boy Erased, Joel Edgerton presented Train Dreams with a Q&A after screening. Joel was awarded this year’s Outstanding Achievement in Acting for his subtle and understated portrayal of Robert Grainier in Train Dreams, hailed as one of his very best performances.

More Six Degrees or Less of Separation from Alexandria

Kickoff films and first screenings at the MFF are frequently top contenders during awards season and not usually ready to drop mid to late October. In 2016 Loving, also starring Joel Edgerton, sparked the best of the fest opening night. Loving told the true story of the fight for the Constitutional right for interracial marriage led by Alexandria attorney Bernie Cohen. The screening attracted legal Illuminati such as former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Alexandria Commonwealth Attorney Randy Sengel.

Timely and Terrifying

While the jumpstart film Thursday night showcased Jay Kelly, the latest film starring George Clooney (co-written and directed by Noah Baumbach), the Special Achievement in Screenwriting Award was given to Noah Oppenheimer for A House of Dynamite. This nail-biter was directed by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow. This Noah crafts a screenplay like nothing you’ve seen about a topic that has weighed heavily on the world since Oppenheimer let the atomic genie out of the bottle.

Film Festivals Can Be Funny

Normally, as MFF Executive Director Susan Koch and Programming Director Connie White explained before the screening of Good Fortune, the Middleburg Film Festival doesn’t present a film dropping in theaters during the event weekend—least of all a comedy starring Keanu Reeves. But this isn’t your Constantine or Matrix or John Wick Reeves. Working from a twist on Heaven Can Wait/Wings of Desire premise, Good Fortune is the perfect vehicle to demonstrate the breadth of Reeves’s acting chops.

Given that Reeves is currently starring on Broadway performing as Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, you don’t have to take my word for it. But please do! Good Fortune makes you laugh and smile out loud, touching upon the current pandemic of socioeconomic disparity. The film’s a taking-to-task that makes us all think out loud. Don’t miss Good Fortune. In this season of gratitude, you’ll thank me later.