36th Annual Virginia Film Festival Wrap-Up: Ava DuVernay and Matthew Heineman's Latest Works Score Audience Award Wins
From October 25-29, the 36th annual Virginia Film Festival brought some of 2023's most exciting and insightful new works of cinema to Charlottesville, where the University of Virginia hosts the festival. Nearly 20,000 festival attendants (local and out-of-towners) enjoyed five days packed with free and paid screenings, industry talks, and discussion forums. At a time of the year when regional film festivals take the spotlight in introducing cinephiles to movies ahead of their theatrical releases, the Virginia Film Festival continues to grow its respect and fanbase as one of the most accessible and delightful film festivals on the East Coast. At this year's edition, Ava DuVernay's Origin took home the VAFF Audience Award for Narrative Feature, with Matthew Heineman's American Symphony taking the same prize for Documentary Feature.
As an unseasonably intense sun blazed overhead, VAFF attendees hurried from screening to screening over the festival's five-day run, from the historic Paramount Theater to the Violet Crown Cinema on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall to the University of Virginia's Culbreath Theatre and other locations around the city. Arranged into themes and series (including Black Excellence, From Page To Screen, and Music on Film), the VAFF program was well-organized for any movie-goer to navigate with ease, making it a straightforward process to find a screening to fit anyone's tastes. This year's edition of the Virginia Film Festival boasted over forty sold-out screenings.
Although the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike kept actors from showing face to promote their work, this year's Virginia Film Festival lacked no star power, with many filmmakers in attendance as their films screened.
Writer/director Cord Jefferson –– recipient of the VAFF Breakthrough Director Award –– was at the Paramount Theater on the second evening of the festival to introduce the sold-out Gala screening of his latest work, American Fiction, which has proven to be a hit this festival season after winning the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Audience Award at the Middleburg Film Festival. The following evening, DuVernay was onsite at VAFF to present the U.S. premiere of Origin, inspired by the work of writer Isabel Wilkerson and her 2020 bestseller, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Duvernay expressed her purposeful decision for her latest work to make its stateside debut at VAFF, just a few hundred yards away from where the atrocities of the 2017 Charlottesville car attack took place, an act of terrorism initiated by a white supremacist affiliated with neo-nazism. The last Gala screening of this year's VAFF program featured Heineman, winner of the festival's Directorial Achievement Award for the Jon Baptiste documentary American Symphony, followed by a vibrant performance from Baptiste that brought the entire crowd to their feet. Other artists in attendance at this year's VAFF included Maestro makeup artist Kazu Hiro, directors Riley Keough and Gina Gammell with their film War Pony, and Nikki Giovanni in support of Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.
This year's VAFF triumphed with many other compelling screenings that proved influential over the emotions and perspectives of their audiences. Many sobs and sniffles could be heard at the evening screening of Andrew Haigh's moving ghost story All of Us Strangers at UVA's Culbreath Theatre. Inversely, chuckles and laughs were plentiful during Fallen Leaves and May December. Other VAFF screenings brought favorites from this year's biggest film festivals to Charlottesville, including Evil Does Not Exist, La Chimera, Perfect Days, and The Taste of Things.
The 36th edition of VAFF continued to exemplify the festival's "commitment to taking the audience beyond the screen to explore some of the most important issues of our time." VAFF's rich and diverse program reflects the state of movies today, offering unique experiences for all of its devoted patrons. In a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult for movie lovers outside of major cities to experience arthouse and international cinema outside of streaming services, VAFF's loyalty to the theatrical experience holds significant importance in preserving the communal and cultural value of cinema.
The Full List of 2023 VAFF Winners:
2023 VAFF Audience Awards:
Narrative Feature: Origin
Documentary Feature: American Symphony
Narrative Short: Dreams of Home
Documentary Short: Black Godfather of Scuba
2023 Programmers' Awards:
Narrative: American Fiction
Documentary: No Ordinary Campaign
Narrative Short: For the Moon
Documentary Short: 1-15-41
Other Awards:
Visionary Award: Ava DuVernay (Origin)
Directorial Achievement Award: Matthew Heineman (American Symphony)
Breakthrough Director Award: Cord Jefferson (American Fiction)
Changemaker Award: Nikki Giovanni (Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project)
Chronicler Award: Nicole Newnham (The Disappearance of Shere Hite)
Craft Award: Kazu Hiro (Maestro)
Governor Gerald L. Baliles Founder's Award: Ricardo Preve (Sometime, Somewhere)
For more information, visit the Virginia Film Festival’s website.