42nd Mill Valley Film Festival at BAMPFA

October 5–12, 2019

BAMPFA is pleased to partner with the Mill Valley Film Festival to present selected screenings from MVFF42 in the Barbro Osher Theater.

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  • Marighella

  • Why Can't I Be Me? Around You

  • Aurora

  • The Kingmaker

  • Varda by Agnès

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Coup 53

    • Saturday, October 12 12 PM
    Taghi Amirani
    United Kingdom, 2019

    Cowritten and edited by Oscar winner Walter Murch, this documentary is a fascinating investigation into the 1953 Anglo-American coup d’état in Iran that displaced democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the despotic Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as shah.

    Taghi Amirani and Walter Murch in Person

  • Varda by Agnès

    • Saturday, October 12 3:15 PM
    Agnès Varda, Didier Rouget
    France, 2019

    In the last of her prodigious life’s work, the legendary, delightfully irreverent Agnès Varda conducts a personal career retrospective as only she can, with accomplished skill, inimitable charm, wit, reverie, and copious wonder.

  • CANCELED—The Cave

    • Friday, October 11 3 PM
    Feras Fayyad
    Syria, Denmark, Germany, United States, Qatar, 2019

    This screening has been canceled due to the UC Berkeley campus power shutdown. If you have purchased tickets online for a Mill Valley Film Festival screening via the MVFF website, please call 415.383.5256 or contact info@cafilm.org for information on refunds. Note: If you purchased in person at BAMPFA, please email bampfa@berkeley.edu or call 510.642.1412 during regular business hours.

    The Oscar-nominated team behind Last Men in Aleppo takes us to “The Cave,” an underground hospital in war-torn Syria. The camera is a mute witness to the heroic staff’s daily efforts to keep a grasp on ordinary life even as they cope with an endless stream of grave obstacles.

  • CANCELED—Aurora

    • Friday, October 11 5:30 PM
    Miia Tervo
    Finland, 2019

    This screening has been canceled due to the UC Berkeley campus power shutdown. If you have purchased tickets online for a Mill Valley Film Festival screening via the MVFF website, please call 415.383.5256 or contact info@cafilm.org for information on refunds. Note: If you purchased in person at BAMPFA, please email bampfa@berkeley.edu or call 510.642.1412 during regular business hours.

    Hard-partying, commitment-phobic Aurora is true to her name—at once luminous and dark, beautiful and bound to burn out. An encounter with an Iranian man seeking asylum in Finland gives her new purpose and takes the film in unexpected directions.

    Mimosa Willamo in Person

  • Journeys Beyond the Cosmodrome

    • Wednesday, October 9 7 PM
    Jeanne C. Finley, Lyazzat Khanim
    United States, 2019

    This haunting, poetic film calls forth the dreams of teenage orphans in Kazakhstan, who use words, pictures, and music to craft mesmerizing prophecies of what adulthood and independence will mean to them. With Carol Dysinger’s Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl).

    Jeanne C. Finley and Carol Dysinger in Person

  • The Kingmaker

    • Sunday, October 6 5 PM
    Lauren Greenfield
    United States, Denmark, 2019

    First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos was notorious for her lavish lifestyle before she and her husband Ferdinand were forced into exile during the 1986 revolution. Now she’s back, a return captured in this unvarnished portrait by Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles).

  • The Whistlers

    • Sunday, October 6 7:30 PM
    Corneliu Porumboiu
    Romania, France, Germany, Sweden, 2019

    Acclaimed director Corneliu Porumboiu delivers a sleek, exhilarating thriller about an undercover cop who learns an obscure whistling language while infiltrating the mob. It’s a stunningly smart genre exercise full of double-crosses, showdowns, and seductions.

  • Why Can’t I Be Me? Around You

    • Saturday, October 5 4:30 PM
    Harrod Blank
    United States, 2019

    A chance encounter between recently transitioned mechanic Rusty Tidenberg and filmmaker Harrod Blank sparked this captivating portrayal of the multifaceted life of a transgender woman, captured through a series of intimate conversations about cars, drag races, and resilience.

    Harrod Blank and Rusty Tidenberg in Person

  • Marighella

    • Saturday, October 5 7 PM
    Wagner Moura
    Brazil, 2019

    Acclaimed actor Wagner Moura (Narcos) makes his directorial debut with this no-holds-barred biopic of one of Brazil’s most divisive historical figures, the politician and Marxist insurrectionist Carlos Marighella.