Key West Film Festival Announces Official Lineup, Featuring MARRIAGE STORY, JUST MERCY, & More!
By: Kaitlin Milligan Oct. 30, 2019
The 8th Annual Key West Film Festival announces its official 2019 lineup including major fall films from Noah Baumbach and Destin Daniel Cretton. More than 115 films and V/R pieces will be shown during the 5-day festival, which runs November 20-24. Nearly half of the feature films at the festival will be Florida festival premieres.
Baumbach's MARRIAGE STORY (Netflix), starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, and Cretton's JUST MERCY (Warner Bros. Pictures), starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx serve as the marquee Centerpiece films, joining the previously announced Opening and Closing Night Films, Martin Scorsese's THE IRISHMAN (Netflix) and Trey Edward Shults's Hollywood, FL-based WAVES (A24). The latter two films play as part of the festival's 5th Annual Critics Focus program, in which two of the nation's top critics curate the slots and have a pre-screening discussion. Shults will appear for a Q&A moderated by Collins and Yamato.
Director of Programming Michael Tuckman says, "We are once again elated to be showcasing some of the major contenders for the Oscars this year and giving audiences in Key West a first look at these films, which are sure to be talked about for decades to come. And we are equally proud of the spotlight we are placing on Florida-based stories, not just through our extensive local programming, but as seen through so many films in our main slate program that take place in or are connected to Florida."
Other Spotlight films include the Florida premieres of Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman's AFTER PARKLAND, who will both attend the festival, and Bert & Bertie's TROOP ZERO, starring Viola Davis and Allison Janney and written by Florida native Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild). Another Florida native, acclaimed filmmaker Ondi Timoner, returns to KWFF with a special director's cut of her film MAPPLETHORPE, which took home the award for Best LGBTQ Film at KWFF 2018.
Film critics in attendance at this year's festival will include Collins, Yamato, and Eric Kohn, Executive Editor & Chief Critic of IndieWire; David Fear, Senior Editor and critic at Rolling Stone; Eugene Hernandez, Co-Publisher of Film Comment; Monica Castillo of RogerEbert.com; Tomris Laffly of Variety; Shirrel Rhoades of Adams Publishing Group, and Hans Morgenstern of the Miami New Times. These critics will participate in the 5th Annual Critics Panel, moderated by Eric Kohn, and collaborate to decide the winner of KWFF's fourth annual Critics Prize. Unique in its nature, the Critics Prize, voted on by the critics in attendance, is presented to one film from the entire program.
Special events this year include previously announced appearances by Florida native Kimberly Peirce and legendary actor Tom Skerritt, who will be honored with the prestigious Golden Key Awards on the 20th Anniversary of BOYS DON'T CRY and the 40th Anniversary of ALIEN, respectively.
The fourth annual Golden Key for Costume Design will also take place, this time with an award honoring Arianne Phillips, whose recent work was showcased in Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. Deborah Nadoolman Landis, a past president of the Costume Designers Guild and former Governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, will helm a video presentation of the award.
New to the program this year is the Kibbitz with Critics series, in which the curating critics share two of their favorite films from the last year over brunch. Collins will present Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar's AMERICAN FACTORY and Yamato will present Florida-raised Lulu Wang's THE FAREWELL.
Additional films in the main slate with ties to Florida include PAHOKEE, A WOMAN'S WORK: THE NFL'S CHEERLEADER PROBLEM, and THE INFILTRATORS. Special guests from each of these films will appear at the festival.
The festival will take place in Key West from November 20-24, and includes special event screenings and a curated selection of over 30 feature films and shorts programs encompassing narrative features, documentaries, foreign language cinema, LGBTQ cinema, VR, and works by Florida filmmakers. The shorts programs were curated from hundreds of submissions from Florida, the United States, and a dozen other Latin American, Caribbean, European, and Asian countries.
The complete line-up is as follows. Eugene Hernandez and Brian Brooks assisted in the curation of the LGBTQ programming and the Virtual Reality programming was curated by Matthew Bolish. Filmmaker Ruth Reitan, a graduate of the University of Miami MFA program and KWFF alumnus, directed the program.
CRITICS FOCUS - OPENING NIGHT
THE IRISHMAN,Martin Scorsese
CRITICS FOCUS - CLOSING NIGHT
WAVES*,Trey Edward Shults
CENTERPIECE SCREENING
JUST MERCY,Destin Daniel Cretton
CENTERPIECE SCREENING
MARRIAGE STORY,Noah Baumbach
GOLDEN KEY AWARD WINNERS
4th ANNUAL GOLDEN KEY FOR COSTUME DESIGN
SPOTLIGHT
AFTER PARKLAND*,Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman
AMERICAN SPECTRUM
DRIVEWAYS*,Andrew Ahn
SAINT FRANCES,Alex Thompson
TROOP ZERO*,Bert & Bertie
DOCUMENTARIES
A WOMAN'S WORK: THE NFL'S CHEERLEADER PROBLEM*,Yu Gu
BULLY. COWARD. VICTIM. THE STORY OF ROY COHN*,Ivy Meeropol
MIDNIGHT TRAVELER,Hassan Fazili
PAHOKEE,Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan
RAISE HELL: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MOLLY IVINS,Janice Engel
THE INFILTRATORS,Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra
WELL GROOMED,Rebecca Stern
LGBTQ FILMS
AND THEN WE DANCED,Levan Akin
CIRCUS OF BOOKS,Rachel Mason
CUNNINGHAM*,Alla Kovgan
END OF THE CENTURY,Lucio Castro
MAPPLETHORPE (DIRECTOR'S CUT)*,Ondi Timoner
PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE,Céline Sciamma
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
ATLANTICS*,Mati Diop
BACURAU*,Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles
OUR TIME MACHINE*,Yang Sun and S. Leo Chiang
SYNONYMS,Nadav Lapid
THE WHISTLERS*,Corneliu Porumboiu
KIBBITZ WITH CRITICS
AMERICAN FACTORY,Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar
THE FAREWELL,Lulu Wang
FLORIDA FOCUS
A NAME WITHOUT A PLACE, Kenny Riches
Errol Flynn'S GHOST: HOLLYWOOD IN HAVANA,GasparGonzález
ICE PALACE, A LOVE LETTER*,Mark C. Burns
SHORTS PROGRAMS
World Comedy I
World Comedy II
World Student Docs/Drama
Animation + FL Student Docs/Drama
FL Docs
World Drama/Thriller
FL Psych/Thriller
Florida and World Student Comedy
FL Student Comedy
Environmental Docs & Animation
Havana Shorts
Virtual Reality
Videos
