Oscar Hopefuls Abound in Hamptons Film Fest Lineup

Columbus Day weekend on the South Fork has come to mean much more than changing leaves and pumpkin picking. It is also a weekend of film, lots and lots of film. The Hamptons International Film Festival will begin on Oct. 6, and by the time it ends on Oct. 10, it will have screened 126 films, both features and shorts, narrative and documentary.

On Tuesday, the festival announced the bulk of its lineup. It includes some of the most anticipated releases of the Academy Awards season as well as smaller, independent films and a selection from 32 countries. They include 8 world premieres, 9 North American premieres, and 20 United States premieres. The full guide is on the festival website.

The festival has already announced that it will open with "Loving," Jeff Nichols's film about a couple whose Supreme Court case did away with laws against interracial marriage in 1967. It will close with Ewan McGregor's interpretation of "American Pastoral," Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a charmed family whose world falls apart after a violent crime.

In between, it will screen films such as the much-praised "Manchester by the Sea," Kenneth Lonergan's film about a working-class family in a Massachusetts fishing village; "Strange Weather," starring Holly Hunter as a grieving woman in the Deep South trying to find answers so she can move on with her life, and Mike Mills's "20th Century Women," a drama set in Southern California in the late 1970s. These five films, already generating awards buzz from previous festival screenings, will cost the most at $35 per ticket. 

This year's Spotlight Films will include "Bleed for This," "Burn Your Maps," "Christine," "Julieta," "La La Land," "Lion," "Moonlight," "The Ticket," "Una," and "Wakefield." Tickets for Spotlight films, which have or are likely to have distribution, cost $28. The remaining films are $15 per ticket.

The festival's World Cinema selections represent smaller films from both domestic and foreign sources. The documentary titles are "Davi's Way," "Score: A Musical Documentary," "Supergirl," "Marathon: The Patriots Day Bombing," "Franca: Chaos and Creation," "Santoalla," "Bunker77," "Sour Grapes," "Into the Inferno," "God Knows Where I Am," "Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent," and "Southwest in Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four."

The narrative films include "All the Beauty," "The Teacher," "Blue Jay," "Goldstone," "Original Bliss," "The Red Turtle," "Don't Call Me Son," "Frantz," "Halal Love (and Sex)," "The Handmaiden," "Lost in Paris," "The Salesman," "Lovesong," "Donald Cried," "I, Daniel Blake," "Paterson," "Toni Erdmann," and "Under the Shadow."

The festival's View From Long Island section will feature "Legs: A Big Issue in a Small Town," which is also a World Cinema selection. It follows the battle between Sag Harbor Village and two homeowners, Ruth Vered and Janet Lehr, after they install a massive Larry Rivers sculpture on the exterior of their house. "The Killing Season," a documentary that will run on the A&E channel, will follow the investigation of the deaths of 10 sex workers whose bodies were found UpIsland on Gilgo Beach. Two short films will be included in this section: "Black Swell" by Jacob Honig stars Richard Kind, and "Prophet of Plas-teek" by Joshua Cohen takes place in Montauk. "God Knows Where I Am," is a documentary produced and directed by two brothers, Todd and Jedd Wider, with Long Island connections.

There will be eight programs of short films in addition to those running before features. They are the Narrative and Documentary Short Film Competitions, New York Women in Film and Television: Women Calling the Shots, Away We Go! Shorts for All Ages, Student Short Films Showcase, Get Off My Cloud, Runs in the Family, and Tilt & Shift. 

This year's Films of Conflict and Resolution section will feature titles such as "Disturbing the Peace," about former soldiers from Israel and Palestine becoming peace activists. Other films include "Fire at Sea," about the European migrant crisis; "I Am Not Your Negro," based on a James Baldwin manuscript, and "Sonita," about an Afghan refugee who dreams of becoming a rapper.

The Compassion, Justice, and Animal Rights section will include "The Ivory Game," about attempts to save African elephants from extinction, and "Unlocking the Cage," a film by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker of Sag Harbor. It looks at the efforts of an animal rights lawyer trying to establish case law to ensure animals have legal protection.

New this year is a Focus on Norwegian Film showcase for films tied to Norway. They will include "All the Beauty," "Late Summer," "Magnus," and "It's Alright."

"Betting on Zero," the audience favorite from the festival's SummerDocs series, will have an encore screening. Another special screening will take place on Oct. 9 at the Southampton Arts Center, which will show "The Addams Family," the 1991 film, based on the Sagaponack resident Charles Addam's cartoons.

The festival box offices, at Obligato on Main Street in East Hampton and the Southampton Arts Center on Job's Lane, open on Monday, when individual tickets will go on sale. Ticket packages and passes are on sale now at hamptonsfilmfest.org. The official festival guide will be published by The Star and distributed with this Thursday's issue of the paper.